And if you keep track of them all you get to draw up a nice family tree showing how all the guys who tried to kill you were related.

At what point are you waxing grandmothers with Uzis (that is, grannies packing Uzis, not Uzi'ing grandmothers, though you might also have an Uzi,) and third cousins twice removed?


Unless you picked a fight with an entire family in Appalachia, that's not likely.

Sure it is.

Your Enemy quality just got "Vendetta: Hatfields" added to it.

Congratulations.

Sorry, not according to the Rules. *shrug*

Why does it have to be a relation? You killed your enemy, and one of his business partners takes an intense dislike to what you did. Bam, New Enemy, and not even related.

Just give up, man. Some people are just after ways to screw their players--using the rules rather than the more obvious 'fiat screw'--rather than trying to run a fun game, so they want it as difficult as possible to "take care of" those NQ's.

I wouldn't have any problem with an extended side-plot to get rid of an NQ, but I would make it an undertaking which would normally be significant enough to net the NQ holder, say, 2x the BP cost of the NQ in karma (which the NQ holder would, of course, not get)

voila, RPing your way out of an NQ and still making sure there's karmic justice

Why is it so difficult to take care of those NQ's... More often than not, those social type NQ's morph into other Social Type NQ's in play. This happens all the time. It is not a mechanism to screw over a player at all. It is a mechanism to make sure that your NQ's actually have an impact in play. Don't want that NQ to have an impact, either don't purchase it, or buy it off with Karma, as the rules tell you to do. *shrug*

Or if you have a GM that cares more about how fun the game is rather than how long he can poke and prod at a NQ or how long he can slow down a character's advancement, he'd be willing to let certain qualities slide on out without that part.

Honestly, I could care less, but what gets me is how many people in this thread have gone Rules Lawyer on the matter (and yes, I do mean the worst of the worst form of Rules Lawyer).

but then, if you're going to let some NQs be removed easily, you should do the same for all NQs. they got the same bonus from it, they should pay (approximately) the same price; if that's 45,000 credits for the guy with in debt, it should be roughly equivalent to 45,000 credits for anyone else who wants to remove 30 BP worth of negative qualities.

you're supposed to be getting bonus BP because you are taking a penalty of some form or another. if there's no penalty, there should not have been any bonus.

i don't have a problem with not charging karma to remove negative qualities (not really, anyways... i don't think it's unreasonable either though, considering they bloody well *gained* karma or BP from those negative qualities already). i have a problem with charging for some, but not others. "it doesn't make sense" is all well and good, but it isn't as important as treating everyone fairly. no game-world concern is as important as treating your players fairly; the game world is imaginary. the whole thing can catch on fire without really having a significant impact on anything important. a new world can be imagined, new characters can be made, and a new game begun, or you can even just pretend you never imagined the whole world catching on fire in the first place. it is not so easy to undo treating a player unfairly.

if you're going to let some qualities be removed without karma costs but not others, than the only fair way to do that which i can see is to not award bonus BP or karma at character creation. after all, if the quality isn't worth karma later, why is it worth karma in chargen at all?

This. Exactly and precisely this.

Because, if you don't, then you are screwing over someone - whichever player has the NQ that can't be bought off with cash, or solved with a bullet to someone's head.

Plus, honestly, as I said before, there are plenty of negative qualities that would be absurdly simple to get rid of, if you didn't have to pay karma do so. You can get rid of distinctive SURGE qualities such as unusual hair with comparatively cheap biomods. You can flip out and shoot your "dependent" because she forgot to take the trash out. You can rage-quit your day job.

The moral of the story here is, if you're not willing to deal with consequences of having NQ's don't take them to begin with.
As opposed to you know... Getting extra BPs and assume you'll just be able to neglect the downsides.

That is exactly it. Everyone wins, you stay with RAW, and (presumably) everyone has a good time doing it.
Removing an enemy? The mission to track him down and kill him just so happens to be worth exactly the right amount of karma to do so - the difference being you spend yours to remove the NQ and your team mates rank up to level six in Matrix Games: Guitar Hero.
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The biggest argument AGAINST spending karma for NQs seems to come back to "In Debt." My two cents is "In Debt" gives you two things: Money and additional BP. Paying back the covers the first part, but you're still in the hole for all that excess BP you got. By not making them spend the karma you're effectively saying "For every 5,000:nuyen: you spend later you get 5 extra BPs now," which doesn't add up as 1BP will take care of that.

Just out of curiosity, why are you guys buying off NQs in the first place? Were the inflicted post chargen as a result of actions, did you not like the direction it was going with your character development, or did you just want an easily removable source of extra BPs for kickass backflips? ...or a fourth option?

I don't know why GM's always seem to get so pissy about players taking NQ's just for the points. Giving players BP's for NQ's pretty much ensures that motivation. If you don't like it, here's a good house rule - characters have the normal 35 point limit for positive qualities, but instead of getting points for negative qualities, everyone flat out gets 35 points, and then they can pick out whatever negative qualities they want, or none at all. Any negative qualities they pick can be resolved through normal roleplaying, expenditures, or character actions - no having to sacrifice your character's advancement potential, no enemies that stick like teflon when they should logically die or even morph into allies, and any flaws that get picked will be ones that the player wants for the character, rather than some least-damaging option grudgingly taken for a BP bribe.

not sure i agree with this entirely, but at least this system treats all players equally. i don't think i'd use it for my personal house rules, but that's more a matter of taste than it is a matter of problems.

taking negative qualities can lead to better roleplaying, potentially. but then, i suppose the solution is simple enough: taking negative qualities is useful in terms of being something to role-play about your character, and i think most GMs award small amounts of karma based on roleplaying, so you'd have people hopefully picking negative qualities that they think fit the character and which they'll enjoy RPing.

It's not really very good business to throw good money after bad. If your business partner had a blood-vendetta against someone that he started when one of his brothers got killed by someone his brother had been hounding, and he pursued it to the point where they decided that the only way to get him and his to stop chasing that guy and his team was to drag him and everyone who loved him enough to kill for him into the Puyallups and blew their heads off with an Assault Cannon to ensure they couldn't in ten million years come back... Do you want to antagonize that guy?

Because that's not good business. It is, however, going to result in you getting an assault cannon lobotomy.



I like this idea. This, and/or the idea of negative qualities being Karma farms that cough up Karma when they become drawbacks.

Negative Qualities (and all other aspects of a character) are the choice of the player. Everyone works within the same system, everyone who plays in my game face the same choices. I do not deny that some choices are better than others; if my player is unsure how a Negative Quality will play out, he can ask me, or more likely often I will tell them beforehand. Knowing how the NQs are being played, the player makes an informed choice, everyone makes those same choices. I will not deny that not all options are equally viable, I will only ensure that all options will be played as RAW as I can make them. In fact, I tell my players that there are options that are better than others and if their character story allow for those options, then they are well advised to use those options. And if the character make use of lesser options, then they will be told that taking those options are ill-advised.

@Glyph That's a really interesting idea, would be interesting to watch how it turn out in practice.

I don't know if I would need it, since I am not so hung up on making the players suffer for every negative quality, or making every one have to be integral to the character's background. But it would be good for GMs who complain about cheesy negative qualities. Because let's face it, not taking them basically means you are making a character with 35 less points than everyone else. You are put into a situation where you either lose points, or have to gimp your character in some way. The latter may not matter as much to people who want to play a flawed noir type character who is an alcoholic with a crooked parole officer leaning on him and a stripper girlfriend that he always has to bail out of trouble. But if all you want is to play a tough ork from the wrong side of town who is good with his fists and with guns, then you will look at negative qualities with an eye for picking the less debilitating ones, rather than ones that fit the character.

And yet, people's definition of FUN is different. The things I am talking about are fun to me and those I play with. So, I don't see the problem. If you did not want to be messed with, why are you taking Negative Qualities to start with? That is their sole purpose in the game. *shrug*

But again, you are making an assumption here that may not hold true in the game world. I can see a lot of ways to have the Enemy morph over time. Maybe it is not even related to the last enemy you offed at all, but is a result of another action you took in game. Shadowrunners make enemies all the time. Not all of them are formalized. *shrug*

Hell, I do not always use the 35 points of NQ's that are available. Probably about half the time... You are not less powerful, becuase those who want to remove the NQ's will have to pay to remove them. And if they decide to NOT remove them, they have to suffer the consequences of actually having them. It all balances out in the end. *shrug*

I think I'm in the camp with TJ. I pick NQs that fit the character concept. I will buy them off if the character out-grows the quality or it becomes too much of a burden to the fun of the game (for me or the team). As a player I'm quite content to pay the karma to rid myself of the quality. I don't see paying the karma as a loss for the character as the character is still gaining something for the expenditure; it's just not an increase in a skill or attribute that is being gained.

I am also a player that is willing to pay karma for new contacts (though our current GM hasn't made that a requirement). I'm familiar enough with RAW that paying karma for the things I want in game is how balance is maintained. I think that the reason the GM hasn't had anyone pay karma for contacts is because most of the contacts we have gained all of the characters have gained at the same time (team level contacts) but I could be mistaken.

In my opinion if you don't want your negative qualities, don't take them or be willing to buy them off. It's pretty simple and it's RAW. *shrug*

-D