QUOTE (Ictoagn @ Jul 29 2012, 04:05 AM)
Thanks for the suggestions for those who gave them. I decided to go with the mentor spirit idea, balanced out by a debt the spirit, to be paid in the form of a favor.
I certainly didn't mean to spark a debate about it, though. As for whether or not there should be consequences, my only previous experience with a similar mechanic is WFRP's fate point system. For those not familiar with the system, the genre equivalent to the quadriplegic street samurai would be perfectly acceptable for preventing death due to spinal injury, so my bias towards heavy punishment comes from there.
Also, on the subject of newness, I meant new to Shadowrun, not playing/GMing.
Ictoagn,
Welcome to Dumpshock. Please rest assured that most threads don't run to 9 pages or more, but as you can see there are a helluva lot of people with hugely differing opinions on the game here, and hot debate is often the tone. Please don't worry about sparking debate, that's what many posters live for!
I think by going with the mentor spirit idea you may have pulled your punches, but as people like ZeroPoint have emphasized your players are new to the game and the idea is for everyone to have fun. Personally I would probably have given the PC the Scorched 1 NQ, but YMMV.
In the SR4 campaign I GM, only once has a PC used HoG to escape death when an enemy mage hit the team with a fireball. The sammie took some damage from the spell, but what killed him was the EX-EX ammo in his primary and 2ndry weapons going off. HoG meant he survived, but as well as the burnt Edge, I gave the PC -1 CHA to represent the physical and psycological impact of the burn scarring. As a sammie this was not the end of the world for him, although RP-wise these days he won't get out of bed without putting on his nanopaste face (which continues to hit him in the wallet, we have abstracted it as an addition to his lifestyle costs, and of course being constantly in disguise is a hidden benefit of this nyuyen sink).
A lot of this thread has for some reason focussed on hitting a sammie with the Quadraplegic NQ for some reason. This is a bit of a strawman arguement, as it is a pretty extreme NQ to hit someone with, especially a sammie, and I agree wholeheartedly with the posters who say that IF the GM were thinking about something this drastic they should get the player on board before springing it on them. Unlike ShadowDragon et al, I do believe that as well as the point of Edge burned the GM can and should give the player some other penalty depending on how the near-death went down - whether it is a NQ, or the loss of a ATT point here and there, or something else like a cranial bomb (with the resulting loss of Essence) for a PC left for dead in a corp facility. I don't really like the idea of giving PQs as well (certainly not so much as to 'balance things out'), but could see giving a PQ like Guts in addition to a particularly nasty penalty.
Enjoy, and I look forward to hearing how your game goes from time to time. Don't hesitate to ask DS whenever you have any rules queries or whatever, among the BS I am sure you will get some good advice!
