Okay. I made a mistake. I took the Lightning Reflexes <RC98> quality at character generation. I get it now. Bad idea.

That being said, I'm hoping someone can help me mitigate now that I have some karma. The description says it gives 'a +2 Reaction attribute modifier, which is not cumulative
with any other Reaction or Initiative enhancement'.

I'm pretty sure that means I can rule out the Adept Attribute Boost for Reaction <2r4a195>. Right?

Also, does that mean I should forget the Improved Physical Attribute power <2r4a196> for Reaction?

Nope, you're pretty much boned. Your best bet is to just pretend you don't have it, because (since I assume you are an Adept), you want Increase Reflexes anyways - which give you reaction, and thus will already hit you in the not-stacking.

D'oh!

You can still take those powers or anything else which grants you +Reaction. The different bonuses will just not be cumulative (i.e. add up), so only one applies...unless your GM wants to shaft you, it should be the highest.

yeah that quality is really only for people who are going hardcore mundane.

Your best bet is to ask your GM about aquiring, gaining, and losing qualities in play. (the section on spending karma in the core book puts this forth as a possibility)

Discuss trading it out for something else - most GM's are fairly reasonable as far as 'oops, this is my first character, didn't realize it was so bad' when approached properly.

Most GM's will let you tweak your character in the first few session to swap out the things that didn't work like you thought they would. That would generally include dropping a quality that wasn't as good (or was much worse, depending) that you thought it was.

Talking to my gm sounds like the best option. I was making a face/adept, and figured it wouldn't be too restrictive. Then i realized how easy it was to raise attributes with adept powers.

Thanks for the assistance.

It's also worth considering for a Free Spirit PC. While a FSPC is a magician and can cast spells to augment reflexes, the FSPC can't use foci to maintain the spells and lose them when going astral, as the spells are Physical. And being able to go astral and rematerialize elsewhere is one of the prime abilities of this PC type, in my opinion. So the spells are much less valuable to them than to other magicians. The quality sticks around, though.

with Lightning Reflexes, you can still use any form of IP enhancement (Edge, Drugs, Magic, etc) you just won't benefit of some initiative points (2 tops).

it still works for Reaction tests.

I don't know, i took it for my Banshee face, as she has 2 IP:s naturally i desided thats enought and just wanted some extra reaction.

My TM took it, since it's unlikely I'll ever acquire Acceleration anytime soon.

I also hada player who took it, though to be completely fair, she was a hardcore mundane (a book-worm, shy type. Also, the medic of the group). It really just comes down to preferences and seeing where it lies. I agree with limited re-speccing in this case.

On a related idea, has anyone played with the idea of expanding Lightning reflexes into similar qualities for other attributes? If so, how did it turn out? (And would this be better as another thread?)

See, I was just coming here to post on how weird the quality is, with the specific point of 'think about how weird it would be for other attributes'.

Born Female
Your Intuition attribute gets a +2 modifier, which can't be raised by any other means.

Honestly, that'd be the one. Intuition is hardest to raise. God, imagine getting this for *Strength*.

Defenitely on the low end of usefulness. But, I think Willpower would be pretty prized as well, and not just for Hotsim and mages.

Edit: Thinking about it, I've had players who ran out of qualities they really wanted for characters (as well as I for some NPC's), but using the last 15 points of Qualities might be useful for making strength a not-so-dump stat. If this were the case, their would be better choices, still (like the afformentioned Willpower and intuition)

Let's see:
Body: way too good, since all enhancements here are either magic or miniscule
Agility: easily available via augs, but magic is expensive. Would definitely take it as an adept.
Reaction: already exists
Strengh: kinda like agility

Any mental attribute other than Logic: must have for mages/TMs, so probably imbalanced.

Maybe, but real Strength only costs 20 BP, and even just +1 real Str for 10 would be a better deal in the end. For Int and Wil, I'd really have to think about allowing it, because it's not nearly the tradeoff that Reaction is.

Yeah, Elfenlied.

I won't disagree with it being imbalanced, but it would be a sacrifice (although it is a better deal then focused concentration, to be sure). Especially for mages, who already tend to tweak things with Increase [Attribute] spells to increase their drain pool (at least *some* mages seem to, especially on Dumpshock), and it would save those mages some points there, but it would be less effective in the long run (+2 bonus vs +3 or higher, depending on how high they raised the natural). I would also rule any of those qualities to be "natural", meaning if they didn't start with them, they can't get them, but that is GM preference.

I say it would be a can of worms that might be worth exploring, but I like to give my players (and sheet-granted NPC's) advantages like that. If I try it out, I'll be sure to post results on the boards (I think this relatively unlikely, as my current crop of players are not looking to re-roll guys. And they have a good story developing.)

I can tell you that most mundane combat characters in my group would probably take the body and intuition increases. Please keep us posted about how it affects your game, I'd like to see how it unfolds.

Focused concentration ignores attribute maximums and stacks with anything. Surely that's a sweet deal?

Sure. But it still counts against (starting) quality points. And costs 5 more points then a theoretical attribute quality, for the same bonus. Of course, both together *could* work well, but would take away from the precious karma the mage needs to get more powerful otherwise.