Just wanting to know how all of you are treating Hand of God.

The way my fellow GM and I are looking at it for now (we alternate GMing and are trying to stick house rules the same for both games) is a one and done deal. You get it once, and only once, per character.

Just want to see how other people are treating it! Thanks in advance!

I thought the rule was, you burn 1 permanent point of edge, and receive any "storyline" penalties the GM attaches dependant upon circumstances. These can include negative qualities, stat hits, etc.

I could see everything from permanent physical or psychological damage to loss of equipment, etc.

Oh dont get me wrong, all that applies as well. But what we are doing is that you burn the edge, you take the penelties, and you get to live. But the Hand of God doesnt apply to you again.

So if a character has 9 edge, they can only burn one before dying permanently?

First, congrats on 9 edge, no idea how you got there, but cool.
Second, yes. you can use the edge up to that point, but if it gets down to the point where you have already used your Hand of God and you dont have docwagon, etc...then sorry, roll up a new one. Shadowrunners die, its part of the job, if there is no threat of perm death, there is no fun (IMO). whats the challenge if you can burn an edge, and then buy it back with Karma, rinse/repeat.

We thought about working something out to limit it to a certain # of times, etc etc etc, but didnt want to deal with it, and we decided that once is enough.

I hadn't realized that they had changed this from the original 4ed where you burned ALL edge points. In my games, that's what happens and yes, you only get one HoG per PC, ever. I think the text saying that you only burn one point of Edge permanently and no reference to this being a one shot deal cheapens the concept.

Vlad

Do you make edge purchases cheaper to make up for the large loss of utility, or do you just dislike edge?

I guess I just fail to see the logic in it. Burning an edge, especially a higher rated point of edge, is more costly then starting a new character. I tend to want my players to burn that point, because starting over fresh seems like a cop out, and potentially dicks the party over.

No we do not make edge purchases cheaper, and you can still use and/or burn edge for the other purposes listed, this is simply a modification to one of the many uses for edge.


*** edited for spelling

Im not aware of any other purpose for burning edge, could you elaborate?

And now to get back to the proper rail of the topic, this wasnt intended as a place for people to pick apart how I do things, I simply wanted to know how other GMs are handeling it out there (thank you Vlad)

I dont have my books (at work) but one use is to get a "critical success".

Burning edge is listed on page 75 of SR4A, and, in my game, if you want to do something that can normally be done with edge, but you are out, you can burn an edge. It all matters on how much you want it. Most people dont want to burn edge.

As a future DM, I plan to let my people do exactly what hand of god is intended to do, let their character live.

A: you are removed from the current encounter.
B: you suffer a point of edge loss.
C: you take penalties I come up with.
D: you have the option to reroll if I deem that your character cannot meaningfully return to the current storyline without delaying everything.


That's about it. You might want to look at it as a permanent reduction to edge max instead, making the punishment more meaningful for HoG.

Well, no. The Hand of God, or Dues ex Machina as it's usually referred to, is about stepping in above and beyond the scope of the rules to achieve some goal, in your case, it's to save a player. My confusion was based upon your previously unstated rules change that gimps edge, for as of yet, no good reason.

I tend to be pretty lenient about things like this. Sure, death is part of the risks you're taking, but it's no fun to get randomly geeked because some random nameless Knight Errant goon rolled spectacularly well on a burst of fire from a submachine gun and you somehow rolled spectacularly poorly on your resistance roll.

I let my players spend a point of Edge to negate the damage from a single attack to avoid random geekery like that. So invoking the Hand of God rule would be for more serious things, like getting caught in a crossfire ambush or something. I'd let my players invoke the Hand of God to remove their characters safely from the entire scene. Like if you got caught in a crossfire ambush, the gunfire would some Random Joe Driver floor his accelerator at the same time as you jumped, resulting in you landing painfully - and probably injured, but alive - in his passenger's side chair as he sped away from the scene.

Another prime example would have something randomly encounter the problem. IE in the wastelands something big and nasty engages the problem while you and your team get away, it ends the encounter and you suffer the circumstances, but at least your team isn't dead, or maybe it changes the encounter from a "firefight" to a "run for your life".

Bear who walks through walls?

Ahh...but only your food has anything to fear from him!

De nada, chummer. I am always interested in how others handle their games. I take a lot away from DS in improved ways to handle things in my own games. At the same time, I don't always agree with what appears to be the "consensus" rulings from the majority of DS'ers. Which is fine. I don't ever need to BE right or typically ever argue. I do what I think is right for my games. Everyone else does what is right for their games. The SR police will never come knocking on anyone's door because they are "doing it wrong." Well, except that one time. And that has all been cleaned up by now. I am sure you'll never manage to find a log of it anywhere. Catalyst will deny it ever had ANY assets involved.

Vlad

The way I play it, the HoG is an agreement between the GM and the player: "do you want this character to survive this?". If we both feel that keeping the character alive is more interesting, I'll allow the player to burn and Edge point, even if has already used HoG before. If we feel that it'd make a better story if the character died there, or if there is no way to explain how the character can survive, there won't be any HoG, even if the character has a lot of Edge and has never used a HoG before.

How exactly is Edge "gimped" by his house rule?

Does anyone else think that it's strange that it's far more expensive for Mister Lucky (Edge to use HoG than for Mister Bad Luck (Edge 1)? If they want to buy their Edge up again after the loss, that is 40 or 10 Karma respectively. I think it should just be the other way around, right?

Also, do you allow burning your Edge down to 0? Usually, a 0 in any attribute causes you to stop functioning for some reason (see Decrease Attribute Spells), would you do the same for Edge?

At my table, Edge has a minimum value of 1, so you cannot use HoG if your value is 1. Also, buying Edge after your first HoG counts as buying Edge from 1 to 2, and it gets progressively more expensive than that.

Not me. As with other attributes, it's harder to get to/stay at the top.
Any alternative would elicit calls for the same to apply elsewhere - I.e. going from 5 to 6 in Agility, say, should be relatively easy since the guy's so good at being agile.

I run 3E so it is not quite the same, but i use one HOG per PC ever. They are free from any further harm even if they used it while knocked out in a burning building or something. They loose all karma pool and all good karma. Usually a character will have burned through most of their karma pool before this point though.

No. I don't think it's strange at all. It's a concept called opportunity cost.

Mr. Bad Luck has a cheaper cost to rebuy burnt edge because he's given up the opportunity of having a significant edge pool for use in order to develop other areas. On the other hand, Mr. Lucky gave up other opportunities in order to increase his Luck and have those options available to him during a scene.

See and this is exactly it. There are so many examples where HoG can be useful to keeping a campaign enjoyable. We had an occasion where I accidentally incinerated an entry level character joining our group because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and failed a save. If our GM could of got him outa the way, maybe he would of stuck around to continue playing.

There are always exceptions to be made for any rule, the ability to make a good case as to why you should be able to use HoG in a situation is the hallmark of a good player, and the ability to see and possibly accept the reasoning of a well thought out and presented argument is the hallmark of a good GM. No rule should ever be completely inflexible, what we are discussing here would be more of a general ruling I would think.

I put in the limit that it does not change the situation you're in. So if the PC is bound and gagged and then shot execution style, yeah he survives the first, second, and third shot (assume three edge), the fourth shot to the head will kill him.

That is pretty much a dick move, though.

He gets shot in the head... Dead (whether it is once or 4 times). The Player burns that Edge, and the antagonist, knowing the character is dead, shoves him in a trunk, takes him out to the pier and throws him into the ocean. Amazingly enough, because the character Burned Edge, his body floats up under the pier, and begosh and begorah, he isn't truly dead. He has a hell of a scar, a probable attribute loss for multiple gunshots to the head, and maybe even some other grevious wounds, but he is alive.

The Burnt edge is to have the character inexplicably survive the situation. Not to force the player to burn Edge to negate each and every fatal gunshot to the head, avoid drowning, avoid attracting sharks, survive the infections sure to crop up, and any other happenstance from the scene as it happens. Otherwise the mecahnic does not really work. If you just want to kill the character, don't let him Burn Edge.

Doesn't that defeat the point? I thought the whole point was:

He gets shot, the bullet lodges into his head-planted commlink, instead of exploding out of the back of his skull, he is for all intents dead to them, they leave. Someone or something saves him. I would give him some form of brain damage (logic or intuition hit), maybe have them take his equipment or something, and put him out of action for a while. But he survives.

I agree...

I would have to agree with JK and TJ.

An example. I recently got splattered on a job gone bad, the rest of the team got out. I burned my Edge (the other players dont know yet, just the other GM and I) and we are having a one-off to RP my naked ass outta there, i have escaped the immediate danger, and he is comming up with something to explain it away, should be a fun RP session.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while we plotted weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious blueprints of Thors,
While I nodded, nearly napping suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my safehouse door.
'Tis a visitor,' I muttered, to the elf named Pelidor,
Only this and nothing more.

you sir, are a genius, and rarely have i seen the prose of the great Poe so well re-worded!

I tend to believe that subtle shifts in the words can be much better than complete rewording. Also, subtle shifts are easier to do quickly.

I think that doing it this way gave a bit of a steampunk flair to it. I just didn't have the time to go through it but I had intended the phrase "naked Vykos" inserted somewhere.

I allow HoG to be used exactly as is stated in the book - since it is the character's Edge, they determine whether or not they will burn Edge to survive. As a GM, I've only ever had an NPC HoG once, and it was for story purposes. The team was contracted for a hit out in international waters and the sniper (super-sniper, 7 Edge human) totally wftpned the target on the deck of his yacht from 1.5 km away. The target burned a point of Edge to survive the shot, so the sniper had to take another shot as the guy was being dragged down belowdecks and was blocked by the walls (shooting through walls, blind fire, ect.). The group, which was on a fishing boat, ended up stashing all their firearms in bags and attaching them to the net and lowering the net because the target's personal bodyguards started searching all the boats in the area. After about 30 mins of waiting, the guards finally got to their boat. After searching and not finding anything, they asked for the net to be raised, "just to make sure." I had the group do a Teamwork Edge Test, the result of which was catching a couple hundred pounds of fish - enough to make them look legit and hide their stashed weapons with fish bodies.

Not only did the group complete the 'run, but they also got some profit from selling some of the fish and got to eat some real fish for once also.

He's saying that if you've got 5 edge, you can burn the 1st edge just fine, but if you ever find yourself in another life and death situation, even a year later, you can't burn another point of edge. It really kills the value of edge when it comes to 9-lives type characters, for seemingly a knee-jerk arbitrary decision.

Not really, the question here isnt a life or death situation. The question is a death situation. You dont burn edge for HoG untill you are dead.

There are other uses for using and burning edge before your dead.

example. Auto-fire Machine gun firing at you, you think it will geek you and either A) dont have enough dice to dodge or B) dont think you want to chance it. - Burn an edge for a critical success on the dodge test , i.e. avoid the attack entirely.

This bothers me about burning edge. The swing space of the effect of burning edge is huge.

It goes from... Critical Success on a Hacking test, to avoiding getting geeked, to making a death not occur albeit with some penalties.

This sounds oddly familiar. It may be rolling around in my sig somewhere.

Kinda one of the reasons why we limited the HoG to 1 time. and as for the crit success on hacking, well, if you REALLY want to burn it for that...

You're probably better of making it a burn of edge and a burn to the unaugmented max.

I think you are thinking to little on the critical success... If you even roll 1 dice, you can use it for feats of "insane".

Like running and dodging full-long into auto-gun fire where you would only survive via a critical success. Not only that when you do critical success you not only come out of it unscathed but on top of the people shooting the gun.

Edge can be burned for amazing feats... that's the idea.

So why is it okay to burn edge multiple times for one kind of amazing feat but not for another? The other reason is that it's never a good idea for a GM to play NPCs with different rules than PCs. Here's a prime example.

You introduce a recurring baddie. Your players manage to geek him. You use hand of god to keep him alive. They encounter him again and the successfully geek him. Well crap. Your campaign is over because the big bad can't HoG twice. If you do HoG him, then you're using a double standard.

Yes, I know what he's saying. He wants his game to be a little more lethal, so that players only have one absolutely insane, no-matter-how-implausible, "get out of death" free card. To me, even that is plenty generous. I don't see how limiting that one specific usage of Edge -- only for Hand of God -- serves as anything harsh enough to be called "gimping" the entire attribute.

You can still spend Edge points as normal to keep from every needing to Hand of God it, after all. Characters with high Edge are far less likely to need to beg for survival in the first place, aren't they? So you lose the multi-application aspect of one (rarely used) aspect of the attribute...I don't see that as a "gimping," personally. Like any House Rule, players need to be in on it (springing it on someone as a "Got'cha!" when they tried to HoG a second time would kind of suck), but I don't feel like it's some terrible weight around Edge's neck, dragging it down to the point it's suddenly worthless.

NPCs are probably going to get less mileage out of the Hand of God, if only because PCs are the kind of paranoid buggers who read the Evil Overlord List and won't consider someone to be 'dead' until they are damned good and dead - for example, the mage Assenses him to be a genuine corpse and tests it out by having a spirit Possess said corpse, or else they'll decapitate him and incinerate his head or something.


I mean, not necessarily the first time, but the second time they find someone alive who's supposed to be geeked, they're likely to pull out all the stops.

In my my case (and I will go out on a limb and say in Vykos case as well from the other things he has said in this thread) it is not a "knee-jerk arbitrary decision." It's a decision based on how deadly do you want your game to be.

It's not like there isn't precedent. The original 4th Ed. rules have you burning ALL your Edge. The 3rd Ed. rules Hand of God state that your character can only do this ONCE and require you to burn all your Karma (somewhat equivalent to Edge in 4th).

As far as builds go, I would advise a player not to try to build a 9 Lives character for my table because... it's not going to be a possible strategy!

Key words here: "my table"and "advise"

I am not running official Mission games. The options and home rules I choose to use for the ejoyment of my table are exactly that... for the enjoyment of my table. We like a deadly, risky game. Any player sitting down at my table is going to understand my tables' stance on how to handle HoG and a multitude of other things when they are designing their character. If I see a new player (or any player for that matter) designing a character where I think their intent might not josh with how things go in our games, I am going to talk to them about it before it would become a detriment. All characters must meet the approval of the GM before being played. That's a pretty universal rule.

Once more, anything goes at anyone's table. The important thing is that everyone involved has fun. That's why there IS variance from table to table. And if a player comes to my table and doesn't like how things are done, then we will talk about what changes could be made to the game to make it more fun and get a consensus from all the players. That's why there are optional rules and house rules in nearly every game being played.

Vlad

I actually like this idea of the max edge being reduced as well, after all even a cat only has 9 lives ...

As to the OP's question, HoG has only happened once at my table. I would be happpy to let the character use it again - after all, given the fact that the GM also gives penalties (attribute loss and/or negative qualities) it is not something any player would do lightly or abuse. But if you are running a lethal campaign, it makes sense to limit HoG to one time only.

Unlike Elfenlied, I would allow a character with Edge 1 to burn Edge ... although if he did, like an awakened character whose Magic has gone to 0 he would permanently lose the special attribute. As always, YMMV.

See this is the key here, before we make a house rule we (the two GM's) sit and talk about it, usually for several hours, many times with one or more of the more experienced gamers as well. (there are a two of our players that are pretty new to gaming in general, and we are ALL fairly new to SR4).

We sit down, have a talk, sometimes a fight and hash out how we want to handle it. My co-gm was flat flabbergasted and disgusted with the rules (or lack thereof) regarding ramming, and re-wrote the entire section.

And as far as comments made earlier about "gimping" edge with this one limitation, I dunno, that kinda seems to me like saying, well, you limited SnS ammo to not add net hits, so therefore you are gimping all guns ever.

-Peace

Another important aspect if giving negative qualities or impact against the character can lead to whole new storylines to fix those problems. Have brain damage? Time to either, start saving up the money for expensive regenerative brain surgery or, find another way to fix it, through storyline. Lose your equipment? Maybe you should hunt down the smug bastards that stole it. Become afflicted with a negative quality? find a way to get rid of it.