Was considering certain negative qualities, and possible variations for them.

Reduced Senses 5 to 15 BP (Blind/Deaf). I've had a GM tell me that it's impossible to have Blind along with the Adept power Astral Perception. Also complicating matters, cybereyes can replace lost eyes or grant sight, while the higher cost covers a cerebral dysfunction that renders the ganglia, visual cortex, and/or the superior colliculus incapable of processing retinal impulses. In standard SR, would that actually prevent an Adept/Mystic from using Astral Perception, or merely render them impossible to accurately describe sensations as anything comprehensible to somebody who already has vision? Would a cerebrally blind person be able to substitute Ultrasound linked to the sound-receptors in their brain? Notably, they'd still be "color blind" in the meat if that did work.

Day Job: what if somebody has demands on their time, but does not receive money for it? Examples would be schools (esp. for young hackers or college mages), charity organizations, church groups, [insert defining trait]-ist groups, etc. I was considering stepping up the BP bonus by 1 increment for not receiving pay, or making a similar negative quality for such a thing at that sort of bonus:


New Quality: Tight Schedule - due to other obligations, your runner is not always fully available for "business." If the runner does not put in the required time each week, he/she/ze risks loss of status with an organization, loss of contact loyalty, and/or people snooping about your business. This time is unpaid (unlike Day Job).

For each 5 BP, the runner needs to spend a total of at least 10 hrs each week during normal social hours (daylight/early evening). Double the cost if the time cannot easily be changed (Mon-Fri, 6pm-8pm for a Book Club at the coffee shop where Marcus, the Ork Underground community figure, reads his poetry, or 6-8am at the local soup kitchen frequented by Hobo Bob, a man with his ear on the pulse of the local homeless/SINless population, or 10am-2pm Mon+Wed+Fri for your Sperethiel class). Each missed appointment accumulates a die of "suspicion." Roll against the loyalty rating (if not a contact, Loyalty 0). If "Suspicion" wins, the contact/organization loses a point of loyalty. If applied to a non-contact, each success on "suspicion" means the person/organization is more likely to take action, i.e. 1 = a demerit/Parent-Teacher conference/loss of station, 3 = missing person report/detention/increased oversight, 5 = police report/suspension/expulsion. If the character wishes, they can "make up for lost time" by spending twice the owed time during his other available hours (subject to organizational/GM discretion).

Example: #82Caff is an under-aged hacker, and managed to get herself put in homeschooling (20 hrs a week negotiable, 10 BP) which also allows her to take care of her brain-damaged father (a former runner, 10 BP Dependent who requires limited assistance and supervision). Her crew, formerly her father's, is understanding and works with her limitations (they even forged her a fake SIN so she could look after herself). The footwork for their upcoming run has been pretty demanding through Wednesday, and her homeschool study proofs are due Friday. The run is on Saturday and her father has a check-up on Thursday. Caff is going to have to lean heavily on the Cram to finish everything on her plate, but figures Sunday is supposed to be the day of rest anyways, right? Meanwhile, their street sam is running late to the Community Council meeting for his 'burb. He's been getting there late the past few weeks, leading some to wonder what he does with his time that's distracting him. He's a "good boy," though, so some think that assigning shifts of Community Watch for him might put some positive influence in his life. Whatever the case, if he keeps missing meetings, they'll have to help get rid of the bad influences in his life, or else remove him from the community.

Thoughts?

It is my understanding that Astral Perception is a psychic sense that doesn't use sight at all. You have a dicepool penalty for acting against mundane targets while astrally perceiving anyway, so I'd be fine with a blind mystic character who sees through astral sight only to act in the physical world.

I can't comment on the other stuff because I'm an eejit.

Astral perception has nothing at all to do with sight. Being blind or deaf or whatever has no bearing on astral perception. As far as explanations, perhaps visual imagery wouldn't be something a blind person would use. "He smells trustworthy". "This area screams from the pain of some kind of tragedy". etc, etc.

I'd allow UWB. Seems to make sense and be within the normal rules, and it fulfills the rule of cool


I like the idea. The only thing I would want to make sure is that the time obligation is not easy to get out of without repurcussions. Day Job, if the PC doesn't show up for work or whatever, they might lose the job, wouldn't get the nuyen. Tight Schedule, you'd definitely want to have codified repurcussions for not showing up.

I did codify this. It results in either a loss of loyalty, or in the obligation becoming an increasing liability (i.e. loss of lifestyle when you're kicked out of your community, investigations into your "other activities," owing twice the time later due to PTAs/upset parents/upset roommates/upset friends, etc.) Maybe, like #82CAFF, your underaged runner convinced the school system that she was her own Aunt, and switched herself to homeschooling, but if she misses her assignments and periodic assessments, the school system will start demanding PTA meetings or sending CPS to investigate her circumstances. Similarly, if her father missed a medical appointment (Dependent negative quality), his condition might deteriorate or he might lose his Social Security stipend (part of her Trust Fund income), at GM discretion. Either way, between her father being disabled AND coursework for homeschooling, she has a lot on her plate before she even heads out for a run.

Side note, if anybody can figure out what her name obliquely references, you win 100 internets. I'll give a hint: it's a shade of red.

If you think this is sufficient codification, that's cool I just personally feel like leaving things "up to the GM's discretion" can lead to trouble, and if it's possible it's better to put things more into actual rules so that the player doesn't feel like maybe the GM is dicking them over. Maybe throw your ideas about loss of loyalty/investigations stuff into a random table? (yeah, I don't like that idea that much either )

Actually, #82caff is a shade of blue.

Yes, but not what it REFERENCES.

Agreed. It's not like the character wouldn't be able to perceive at all, just maybe not in a way that other characters would be used to. Which really just means roleplaying opportunities.

As for Tight Schedule, I like the concept of a character having to choose where to spend their time, but it might work better if there were direct links between that drawback and a particular Quality or Contact. Using your soup kitchen Contact as an example, say his Loyalty drops by 1 for every week that you don't make your required five hours. Likewise, maybe Caff has a Black Market Pipeline Quality that comes from one of her dad's old teammates, but the teammate's condition is "I'll only help you move gear if you stay in school" - meaning she'd have to make sure she spent the right number of hours on her home-schooling to be able to benefit from that Quality. IMHO, the requirement for a Drawback is that there's actually a consequence if you ignore the fact that you have it (like not getting paid if you have Day Job and don't show up). I could see something like those two examples working, but I have a hard time believing that anyone's going to care much about someone not showing up to a Sperethiel class. (That might be my nitpicky side coming out, though, so YMMV. See what your GM thinks.)

e: Whoops, you already answered part of this. In terms of codifying the consequences... yeah, say Caff DOES end up owing more homeschooling time or something, but do we really care about that? Realistically it's going to happen off-screen anyway, and if her schedule is flexible it's not really an issue for her to make that up. (Now, if a KE cop showed up in the middle of a run to haul her in for being truant, THAT would be a great complication - but doesn't really fit with home-schooling.) My point is, as long as there are consequences for not living up to her obligations that can't be handwaved away, you should be good to go. That's specifically for Tight Schedule, btw, I know Dependant has its own set of rules attached to it.

True, and any rough idea needs to be properly fleshed out like this. However, if you stop showing up to your Sperethiel class, you lose whatever "tutoring" bonus you might get for increasing the skill, and definitely lose out on your tuition. If somebody in that group was particularly attached to your presence there (not necessarily mutual, i.e. secret admirer or potential stalker), it could lead to somebody just happening to ask inconvenient questions that complicate your "professional" activities (say, an abnormally good roll on the "suspicion" roll).

So, best to link it to either a Positive Quality, Contact Loyalty, Lifestyle, or invoking an appropriate flaw of equal cost (i.e. Debt for not fulfilling Scholarship Requirements, Enemy for spurring the interest of a would-be stalker, stepping down a Lifestyle Grade because you were kicked out of your community, etc.)?

As for the home-schooling example, the additional time isn't an "any time you want to do it," it would be a pre-scheduled, un-missable, inconvenient Parent-Teacher conference with "Aunt Peggy," or, if she had a functioning parent, one that she'd be forced to tag along on. Skipping out on it would lead to MORE severe consequences (more dice being rolled and success accumulated) with more severe penalties, such as CPS being called in to investigate her circumstances. A Knight Errant officer in person would likely find it more suspicious if the truant kid never showed up alongside Aunt Peggy. Some paper-pusher across the matrix, on the other hand, may be far too busy to worry about some case where the work is being done, and district supervisors MIGHT be understanding that Aunt Peggy shows up virtually (Cold Sim, of course) to the district's PTA meeting so she can continue monitoring her "punished niece" through a separate feed (pre-recorded and edited in case they want to see).

I like this approach! It gives freedom for the player and GM to come up with something unique (because there's no way the rules can be written down to handle every Tight Schedule a player might want), and since the benefits and drawbacks are decided upon before the game starts, there's less of a need for GM discretion.

If I can play devil's advocate a little, you don't actually need to take a Sperethiel class (and thus the Tight Schedule Drawback) to get the mentor bonus; you would have to make some sort of in-character time arrangement with a teacher, yes, but by attaching the Drawback to it you're pretty well getting free extra BP for something you would've done anyway. In terms of people asking around, it might happen, but unless your character's living in a corp community I don't know that people would get too nosy about it. (I know the Sixth World can be pretty weird, but I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that EVERYTHING a character could do in their off-hours is filled with potential stalkers and busybodies.)



Yes, specifically in one of two ways. In the case of linking it to any kind of benefit for your character, the idea would be "you get the positive quality as long as you keep doing your obligation". If it's linked to an equal-cost flaw, it would be more along the lines of suffering that flaw without compensation until the character makes up the time like you suggested (or something equivalent).

Actually, now that I think about it, you wouldn't necessarily have to make it equal-cost. As long as your GM's okay with it you could just make up the difference in BP/Karma/whatever if the benefit costs more than what you get from Tight Schedule.

@phlapjack: Thanks! It's borrowed from another RPG, where a character could take a Geas and tie it to either a Merit or a Flaw. Depending on which one it was, if you broke the Geas you'd either lose the associated Merit or gain the associated Flaw.

He's dead wrong. Astral Perception doesn't rely on eyeballs.

Point him at Ghouls, who are blind but also dual-natured ... which means: even if they don't take steps to correct their blindness, they still astrally perceive. 24/7, in fact. Granted, theirs is not a neurological blindness, but nonetheless "they are blind but still Astrally perceive".

Ghouls can cure this with cybereyes, if they can find anybody to even install them (not many are willing to work on Ghouls, due to the risk of infection and cost of post-facto sterilization of equipment).

Check out SR4A, p 191 Last paragraph:

Astral perception is a psychic sense that is not linked to the
character’s physical sight. A blind magician can still magically perceive
the astral plane and the creatures and auras within. Likewise,
deaf magicians can “hear” in astral space.

If the GM says that the rules only apply to Magicians, point out that Magicians automatically get Astral Perception, but an Adept has to buy it for 1 PP. "Adepts with this power follow all the normal rules for Astral Perception" meaning they can see astrally when blind or hear astrally when deaf.

Honestly though, being deaf and able to hear the toxic spirit laughing as he devours the people around you probably isn't a blessing.

The idea was more along the lines of the "Blind Martial Artist" trope, that in using a higher form of perception, they're able to act beyond their limitations. The fact that they're blind meaning only that they cannot see the physical, not that they cannot "see" the ephemeral.

Not only is this idea totally legal within the SR4 rules, it's also a pretty well-established trope. Even Neuromancer has a blind martial artist who is still a bad-ass. So that GM has no leg to stand on whatsoever in trying to deny the blind martial artist who uses astral perception.

Glad to see I'm not alone on this one. And considering we've gone a while without anybody figuring out #82CAFF's oblique reference, I thought I'd toss out another, more obvious (gawd I love relative statments ) hint. Her father's runner name, that she's inherited and uses on occasion, is "Sky=#0000FF".

So your two hints as to the reference are:
----- A shade of red
----- Sky=#0000FF
Let the good times roll. The internets at stake has been reduced to 50.

Or, if they had Cybereyes before becoming a Ghoul (Ghouls' blindness is due to developing massive cataracts).