HoG specifically states that you burn (or permanently lose) 1 point of edge. The only way to get it back is to pay the karma to buy another point.

Right. So… if you consider 'buying a new point' to mean 'earning your Edge back', then sure.

I would say no, since I'm certain a cyber torso still does not rip out your spinal column and replace it. But if they can do wired reflexes, than can probably repair the damage to the spine that causes most paralysis anyway. OTOH, it's a negative quality option isn't it? So maybe they can't.

There is a spinal cord replacement in Augmentation, though it says 'Research Only'. … Perfect! 70k¥ and 6 weeks. There's usually no good reason you can't handwave something if they pay off the karma (or whatever).

Just as a reminder to those of us who read Neuromancer...

Case was a Decker. A hacker. And in events prior to the book, he got effed royally and was burned out so he could no longer jack in. so what did he do? he became a face (though not a great one) until he could find a clinic that could repair the damage so he could jack in again.

Now as to the idea of a Paraplegic Street sam, I wouldn't do it to a player unless they were ok with it. I would pull them aside, and lay out some plans for them with reassurances that they would have the opportunity to repair the damage later, and give them options of what to do with the character in the meantime.

for example, what I might do is give them the paraplegic negative quality, and give them a month of physical therapy and healing. Then I would give them 40 karma (the amount that the negative quality is worth) to spend on skills for their new role. May possibly allow them to reduce some of their previous primary skills by one and gain karma that way as those skill go unused and become rusty.

So now you have a parapalegic samurai with a high reaction, and he picks up skills to be a drone rigger. He may not be the best drone rigger in the world, but he'd be decent, and jacked into a drone, he could still kick some but for a while...meanwhile he keeps working to remove his negative quality, and once he builds up enough karma...a contact lets him know he's found a delta clinic that may be able to fix him up. Some cash and karma later, he's walking on his own two legs. He's still got pretty decent combat skills, if they are a little rusty, and he's got a much broader skill base now.

But just to re-iterate, i would talk with the player about such a thing before doing it. I wouldn't just shove down their throat. And again, it really depends on the circumstances whether I would do anything at all other than karma loss and some time bedridden.

PPFFFFFFT if it costs 70K to fix a spine, just get Move-By-Wire installed!

The most important part of the OP's post as far as I am concerned is that it sounds like it was a first run for a NEWBIE. slamming a newbie with negative qualities from using a HOG on a first run is CRASS and down right unaccepable from a good GM.

having the player not being able to use the mage because he is in a coma is good enough. The spell should still be sustained as per the rules. I would suggest however that you find a way for the player to particpate in the adventure. Newbies need as much game time in the begining as possible to get everyone famaliar with the game and it's rule. I would suggest the group calls in a temporary mage back up to finish the mission, who will take the original mages or % of his cut from the ru. This will allow the player, to continue to learn the rules of the mage and play the game which is the most important thing for newbies in the begining.

Fixing a spine does not cost 2 Essence+, even if it is experimental.

The point really is that the GM should be asking the player if he's willing to take on a Negative Quality. If the answer is no, then the loss of the Edge until it can be bought back will have to be enough. If the GM does not ask, then there is a problem.

And honestly this is exactly my point. It's DM discretion. Not to be a dick, but suck it up buttercup is exactly how this should read.

Parapelgic street samurai? They have a surgery for that... or FFS get more augged out. You could have an adventure on this solely, or reroll the character as a starting level character who has to learn the whole new game based on the fact that his previous role was taken away from him.

I'm just saying, DM makes the decisions, there is a whole lot of play that could happen based on them, and its up to how you as a player and your DM look at it. This is open for discussion at best, and you are voluntold what you will do at worst.

If a GM chooses to take away the entire teams equipment based on the consequences of the session, that is his or her perogative, if you don't like that as a player you can off your character right there and leave the session. The DM can and will choose, if the player chooses to play in that world, the DM may ask, but it is not a requirement of him. Back to the basic fact is...

"YOUR CHARACTER SHOULD BE DEAD... SUCK IT UP BUTTERCUP"

As for slamming a newbie... welcome to shadowrun, it's an RPG, you as the DM choose how to apply. But based on the fact that the DM, CAME TO OUR FORUM ASKING FOR CONSEQUENCES, means he asked our opinion. Which is the point... give your opinion and discuss, do not tell us what is right and wrong.

And attitudes like this are a perfect example of why the hobby isn't growing.

I concur.

No.He isn't, it's a "Hand Of God Hail Mary".It's not a "Spirit Pact" in the Quality form of it, it's just a Faustian Deal with a spirit that the Edge Burning allowed to happen.

Essentially, the Spirit cast a really high powered "Stabilize" on the character, with some magical healing, in exchange for future Karma, or Essence, in the future. Good deal for the Free Spirit when you think about it.

It also horked off the Insect Spirits that they were fighting, so the Spirit was winning even more.I use this pic for when the group is about to do a Faustian deal.

Until now, it's scared them, "I don't want Uncle Alice to have a piece of my SOUL!!!"No, just looks like Alice Cooper. I use a Fan-Made pic of him for my Faustian Deals with a Free Spirit. *Points Up To Link*

Hey, they got to have style and panache as well!

If you want to go play a softcore RPG, go play one of dozens of other RPG's or MMO's or computer based RPG's that make consequences ez, I hear DnD 4th ed is pretty good at WoW like gameplay. Your attitude is half the problem, if you want to play softcore shadowrun you can, BUT THAT IS THE PEROGATIVE OF THE DM AND HIS GROUP, not the game as a whole. This isn't a negative attitude by the way, just a statement of fact about the reality of playing an RPG.

If you have a problem with that attitude, roger that, stick with your group, carebear it up. From the rest of us that aren't offended as easily as you are though... Grow a pair. Honestly if Warmachine can print it in their front cover and people are fine with it, and you are offended, how are you even playing shadowrun without suckling on your thumb, holding a teddy bear and having someone whisper reassurances in your ear?


Also just an FYI, just because I say, "It's the DM's choice" does not mean: The DM can, the DM should.

AMEN!!! I have started many new players. At the start when they are creating their characters I warn them. I tell them "This is a dark game. It is not D&D where you are out to rid the world of evil. If you are not up for that then this game is not for you. If you are up for that, then let's go have some fun!" And I like the Warmachine motto. I think everyone should "play like they got a pair!"

This post silly and counter productive and total ignores common sense in roleplaying. Regardless of a game peprecieved difficulty or darkness the purpose of a newbie game is to teach the rules to player in a fun and enjoyable way. Punishing a newbie in such a way that the game is un fun is stupid. Adding negative qualities to a player that does not fully grasp the rules is stupid. Adding another layer of complexity for no other reason to a newbie to show how tough your game is , is stupid. The game is not played in a vacum, the nature of the players and the Dm matters. A newbie Gm with newbie players should not be concerned with showing how punitive a game,can be, he should be concerned with creating a fun environment for fostering his players ability to learn the rules of the game. Once the players have achieved something beyond a rudimentry grasp of the rules, then the Gm can go about showing how tough the world of shadowrun is and can be.

So just because someone doesn't want to eat a lot of crap and get screwed over constantly they automatically want "softcore", "to Care Bear it up" or "need to grow a pair"? Thank you for providing even more reason that the hobby isn't growing.

Again that is up to the individual table (both GM and players). I run dark gritty games and I let the players know about it right up front. I have run many groups from newbies to seasoned players and everyone has had fun. I have even mixed the groups so that a team of seasoned vets are mentoring a group of newbies. It is all in how you present the game and how much fun you make it.

I will say this though, I have never had a player use HoG to keep a character going. They tend to like the idea that when a character is dead, there was a reason for it and who are they to argue. I would like to opportunity to play with this option (the HoG one) as a GM but have never had the chance. If a newbie asked to use HoG, I might give a negative quality depending on the circumstance of the death. I treat everyone equally and the newbie is no different than my seasoned runners (with the exception of the GM fiat every now and again).

If an encounter is so difficult that a character (or God forbid the entire team) dies, then the GM messed up and went overboard with the opposition. Injured--even severely--is one thing, but dead...no. If a character dies, the GM needs to own up and admit that he messed up and do something to make up for it.

Dark and gritty has nothing do with it. what is the point of making the character crippled. That is an advanced option that would be challenging for even a seasoned player. Hoisting that on a newbie is silly and serves zero purpose. There is nothing wrong with being harsh, but there is a time and place for it, this isn't it.. the loss the edge point and lost of the pc for a session is more than sufficient. Creating a situation where newbie has to learn even more rules without even fully understanding the most basic ones, is just bad GMing in opinion.

There are many reasons a PC dies, here's some:

1. Bad luck (holy crap, the sec mage toasted the troll).
2. Poor decision making on part of the PC's (like deciding to fight it out with a gang in their home turf).
3. Failure to gather intel that would have made their jobs easier (Hmm so you didn't realize there was hole in the fence, next time maybe you should check it out).
4. GM opposition being to tough for the runners (um yeah that's lofwyr, and yeah you slotted him royally, you want to duke it out or start making new PCs), sometimes by accident (um yeah, its the GMs fault), somtimes on purpose.

Has anyone else noticed that the OP hasn't said a word since their first post? I think all this conflict and aggression may have scared them off....

That is a load of bull!!! There are these things called bad dice nights... you know when the dice are just not in your favor! It is not the GM's fault if your team decides that they need to stay and fight it out when they are clearly out manned/gunned. And there are times I put encounters in there that there is no reasonable choice but the fall back, regroup, and try a different strategy. I do that for a reason because you are not the biggest and baddest out there all the time. There is always someone bigger and better than you are. If you can't see that then it is not the GM's fault, it is yours! If a character dies, then it is because they took more damage then they were able to handle. Maybe they should have sought cover. Maybe they glitched that last damage resistance roll. Maybe they should have zigged instead of zagging. None of those are GM problems, so you cannot blame a character death on the GM. Yes there are times when the GM (and I do mean me) messes up. At the end of an encounter if it is a TPW I will evaluate it and if it was my fault I will rewind back to before the encounter and restructure. But I would say most of the character deaths in my games have been player caused.

The hobby isn't growing because people see various conventions and the weirdos it draws out and in turn assume that is how all geeks behave.
The hobby isn't growing because there is an idiotic fear of RPGs instilled by religion.
The hobby isn't growing because kids these days want easy fun and don't want to have to work for it. They're rather zone out playing Angry Birds than expend the effort to create a character.
The hobby isn't growing because local comic shops that would have been the traditional gathering place for new players are shutting down or don't carry the material. I know my area comic book shops don't carry Shadowrun material. I have to have them order it in for me. But good lord do they have a ton of D&D 4th edition. This is probably the single largest reason it isn't growing. People aren't going to invest $30 in a game they may never play or may not comprehend the rules enough to get others to play. The product MUST be in shops so people can peruse it and look at how things are done. It MUST be in shops so that it signifies that people are playing it.
The hobby isn't growing because Shadowrun is a fringe setting. Which, pretty much anything but D&D is a fringe setting, and Shadowrun is exacerbated by a distinct lack of popular media that is even close to what Shadowrun represents. White Wolf have a metric crapton of popular culture vampires to push people towards it. D&D has pretty much any high fantasy movie (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, soon to be the Hobbit). What does Shadowrun have? Johnny Mnemonic, Bladerunner only for a visual representation of the world, and what else? Regardless, they're all movies that most young people have probably not seen.
The hobby isn't growing because at least at the first release of Shadowrun, the rules were confusing vague, and weren't really organized in coherent manner. It was better with release of SR4a.

All you're doing is displacing the very real problems that face the product onto a faux problem by trying to blame the attitude of players. Attitude doesn't matter because with the wonderful thing that is PnP, anyone should be able to pick it up and run the game.



Or the players could have done something entirely idiotic that they shouldn't have. Something idiotic like... I don't know.... fighting when they should have fled.

It's the GM's job to put together the encounters and to ensure that the PCs have a reasonable chance to be able to overcome those encounters. I'm not saying the PCs shouldn't be injured at all, but ALL of the encounters should be possible to be overcome. If the PCs die, then the GM did not do his job properly.

Fleeing is overcoming a challenge.

I have to disagree, pcs die for lots of reasons, sometimes It's fault, sometomes dumb luck. GM should not be there to ensure pc's dont die, if they die, they die.

So, a character cannot die, now? Really?
Remind me to never play in your games, then. Death MUST be a possoibility for the game to have any meaning. If you cannot die, why are you even rolling dice? Go write a novel instead.

I'm gonna dogpile, too. This is simply wrong. You're hardly helping your case against 'hardcore' when you go so far to the other extreme. Characters die in SR.

Not all encounters should be able to be 'beaten'. For example, if the characters kick down Ghost Walkers door and demand satisfaction, they have earned every bit of the slaughter they are about to receive. Sometimes it is simply the wisest course of action to get the hell out.

I am of the opinion that the players should nearly always be challenged. It should always feel like theres the possibility that they might take two to the chest and suddenly find themselves wishing they'd sprung for a Doc Wagon subscription.

No. Death does not need to be a possibility. One can make them THINK that it is even if it's not.

That would be a good D&D4.0 DM, SR is not D&D and should not IMHO be run this way. Verisimilitude is one of the key aspects to any campaign in SR--while in D&D (depending on DM) it is usually an after thought.

Fact is that a PC may be a badass, and could stomp gangers till the cows come home. At least until the one with the hunting rifle picks you off.

And what purpose does this trickery serve? Either you tell them afterwards that there was never risk of death, which would sharply reduce their appreciation of the experience, or you don't and forever you were playing a different game to everyone else. Can't decide which I like less.

I see where your coming from and I think I agree for the most part.

Any standard encounter I create, every mission i craft, is always going to have a way for the PCs to succeed without death. BUT, that doesn't mean that they won't do something stupid. If they can do a mission without fighting the greater dragon, than they should. If they decide they want to fight them anyway...than it's their fault if they die.

But for a team of newbs learning the ropes, I absolutely agree. I wouldn't kill a character if I can avoid it. you know why?

Character creation takes frikken forever. And a newb is going to take 10 times as long as they pour through all the books and look at every option, and then you have to review it, point out how the effed this or that up, those skills don't work together like that, these bonuses don't stack like that, this trait is just stupid and cheesy so change it.....and no you can't start with 124 cyber dicks....

2 weeks later he may have a playable character...but if he's anything like my brother, probably not (took him 2 months to finish his character enough that he was playable...still missing some things though...like contacts, knowledge skills, and lifestyle)

So if they are going to spend the next several sessions working on a new character instead of enjoying the runs, then they may just walk from your table...decide that SR isn't for them and go back to D&D version 7.5 or whatever version they're on now. And throwing a bunch of drastic negative qualities on a new player may make them feel the same way or wish they had just started a new character.

And even if you tell them ahead of time that SR is a hardcore game, if they are coming from D&D then even if they know to be careful and do their legwork, they won't know or understand the world or rules well enough to do so properly. They may try to do legwork, but never think to talk to their contacts, or never think to check particular matrix resources, or won't think to do a solid steakout and physical security check, or a big one for former D&D players...verify information given rather than taking it on face value. Some of those habits have to be built and new players don't always remember to do all of the above.

It is the GM's responsibility to express these things to players though however cheesy.

IF you players run into a cyberzombie in some old ruins... Your job is to give the emphasis.

Make the scene spooky, show the remains of former explorers who happened to be in the same place as the PC's. Provide them a goal and a reason to get out.

All comes down to it, when they choose to continue to explore, give them the cyberzombie. But don't outright kill them. Let them encounter it chewing on something or killing something. Have it turn, give them the full dread of the situation. Allow them to pump 100's of rounds into it, collapse the ceiling onto it, hit it with high explosives. Then when they smile, and say "holy crap we killed it". Have the rock start to move... have the thing immerge, and tell them what they did... "As the bloody mess of metal and flesh emerges, scathed but unhindered, unbridled rage in its eyes... one impulse runs through your collective minds... we... should... probably... RUN!!1"

A DM can control his players, but its important to let them explore the bounds of that control... If they choose to continue to try to push those bounds the DM can't control that. It's the players choice to explore those bounds, its the GM's job to reign them in while having fun... it's also the GM's job to make their choices matter. That, is the difference between a good GM and a bad one.

So, no one else uses a spirit based on Alice Cooper?

no, but I'm starting to consider having a spirit based on a crazy Canadian.

"Funny story, guys. I once met a spirit that would not stop beating me with a cane until I played some archaic rpg with him."

Oh I would, but I'm such a fan I'd fear not doing it justice!

For newbie players, I give help by mentioning things his/her pc knows (based on the back ground/skillset of the PC). I don't make decisions for them though and they can pretty much do as they please (sandbox style mostly).

I totally agree. Death is always a real possibility, otherwise you are not playing Shadowrun. There is a myriad of ways to avoid it, but it is always a possibility. And how often it happens is mostly up to the characters and the dice gods.

If I ever go through the expensive process of making an ally spirit for my current mage, it's going to look like that.

"Kept talking about how it never got to be a player, too. Weird, that."

The Hand of God is there for a player to say "Well, crap. That's not good, but I don't want to lose my character."

This could be anything from having critically glitched a dice roll to climb up a skyscraper that otherwise would have resulted in a plunge to certain doom, finding themselves locked in a bank vault with an armed bomb that they have no skills to defuse, having the dice commit mutiny and turn a curbstomp battle with some random gangers into a curbstomp for the wrong team, or what-have-you.


The point of a role-playing game, any role-playing game, is to have fun.

If verisimilitude is more important to you than that your players have fun, I'm going to give you the same advice you give to GMs advocating "the players should never die." That advice being "Go write a novel." Go write a verisimilitudinous novel wherein the criminals on their first real heist get rapidly and swiftly overwhelmed by a massive response of armed company men because they plain slipped up and forgot to check for Stealth RFID chips and as a consequence get massacred in their homes. Yea, it shall be verisimilitudinous and consequenceful.

And it won't be a very fun story to read, either.



This is an RPG. It exists to be fun. If the player feels his character should die - such as, say, making a dramatic last stand, emptying a magazine from an Ares Predator into the snout of a Great Dragon whilst shouting "Frag you!" then so be it. The Shadows will tell the tale of his demise for years to come - futile, but defiant to the end. (Whether that's a good or bad thing will be up to the teller.) If he decides "You know what, this is kinda retarded, I'd rather not die now," and invokes the Hand of God, then there you go. He survives. If, and only if he feels like it would be fun going forward, then have the dragon make him his bitch. If he doesn't, then the dragon is taken by a fit of benevolence and/or humor and can't stop laughing, until he just takes wing and departs, leaving the stunned imbecile with the realization that he shouldn't be alive, yet is, and always looking over his shoulder at the sound of anything flapping.


Above all, it should be fun. Crippling the street samurai and then expecting him to somehow take up a group position he has no skills for - and likely has no Karma to buy skills for - is absurd and futile, and basically all he will be doing will be leeching the per-session Karma. If the player somehow thinks that would be fun, then go for it, but don't just slam him with it without talking it over.

Got your legs crushed off by an airlock and dragged away by your buddies? Mr. Johnson was feeling unusually benevolent and paid for cloned legs, or else one of your contacts likes you enough to get them replaced for you, and you now him two big ones.

Get caught trapped in an elevator with twenty kilos of C-12 on a ticking timer? The detonator's a dud or it was wired wrong. Go down alone to ghouls? Luckily for you that team of ghoul-hunters that was tracking your gunfight off before they could so much as take a bite, and they dragged your ass to a street doc at the low price of helping themselves to some of your axillary gear.


"Fun" is something you make with others, it's not something you inflict on them.

That was already addressed before this even started:
StealthSigma gave one example, and yes, an extreme one. But you can't say that one example could never be fun, and you can't say anyone said that's the only possible extra consequence. It is clear from the RAW that extra consequences of some kind are strongly suggested (not required), beyond the mandated loss of Edge and timeout.

No, but I might in the future.

Exactly.

Good contribution.

Surely the man who got to *avoid death* can pay for his own cloned legs? They're not that expensive. The point is that the RAW is pretty clear about suggesting extra consequences, and there is a huge array of possibilities for those. In certain situations, even one as extreme as Quadriplegia could be appropriate and acceptable to the player, though there's no reason at all to assume that's a standard or ordinary result. Even the whiniest player should be okay with something minor, like Flashbacks, the loss of a hand, an unfortunate scar, or something. Most things can be bought off or solved, though many things could easily become beloved details of the character.

Not always. For me, it's bad enough to have to pay the Karma to replace the point of Edge. If you want to put some kind of a negative quality on me atop that, then I expect and require a counterbalancing positive quality.

Flashbacks to the time some pipe-hitting trog heavies took exception to me and beat me over the head with their pipes? Okay, but the neurological fuck-uppage and subsequent realignment in therapy left me ambidextrous, or something like that.

You expect and require wrong. Both as a player and by the RAW, that's totally off base. The RAW is, again, clear that losing Edge and having a timeout are the minimum, and suggests extra is eminently possible; positives are utterly impossible, though. As a player, it's absurd to start demanding positives for the privilege of not dying.