Some Qualities are no-brainers. They are either so cheap or so good that most, if not all characters that can are going to take them.

I have a couple:
Quick healing. 3 points for +2 dice when being healed or healing? Every character can benefit from this.
Mentor spirit. For awakened characters, Mentor spirits are very good value for points and an easy way to add something unique to the character.

What are yours?

I find myself taking Natural Athlete a lot. Lots of uses for Gymnastics and Running.

None stand out. Character concept comes before points-mongering for me, so qualities tend to reflect the character's theme.

+1

agreed

Grumbles at the girl that gets the 500 pt quality "GM's Girlfriend"

Honestly, I hear lots of people talk about this all the time and I have yet to ever see it in action, despite playing with several couples over the years. The more common qualities that people take for favoritism is, "play the archetype the GM likes" or "be a disagreeable asshole that will make the game miserable for everyone else if you don't get your way".

I feel like the more common quality that girls take is, "be hit on awkwardly by sexist jerks" or "assume that because they are a girl any success they have is because the GM's being nice to them and no because of their own ability".

GMPC: Mary Sue. How many points is that worth?

it costs a negative value of course (and can be chosen multiple times and can exceed the cap on quality karma). gotta make room for all the other good stuff, right?

Its somewhat in jest. I've only seen in 3 different times with different GM/Girlfriend sets. There was never any blatant "here's 500 extra karma or equivalent" for non SR games, but yeah more the favoritism and magic items and stuff that happened to show up between off-times. We've also seen the "Huh, despite being a plausible threat character, that char is the last one targeted." stuff. After awhile you also tend to notice that the GM dice rolls seem to heavily favor the (favored player, can be girlfriend, or whatever) especially if behind a gm screen.

its also more common in "dating" couples than the more typical "already seasoned & lightly burned" couples that have been together for a bit.

While no two characters are the same and qualities tend to match up with certain different types of characters, there are a few that I see crop up often as a GM:

Criminal SIN - Well, duh. It makes sense. Most player characters ARE shadowrunners and therefore are criminals that have a criminal background at some point.

Allergy - Let's face it it. Low end allergies, especially to rare substances, are cheap and easy bonus points. I don't mind it too much in general, because as a GM it's an easy tool for me to toss in to complicate something for the PC's seemingly out of nowhere.

Addiction - Similar to allergies. As a GM they are fine but I am going to insist it actually affects your character.

Sensitive System - I would say a third of all mages/adepts suffer from this. You know what... I do not mind at all. It's some nice points to use to flesh out your character, it tends to keep the mages and adepts on a certain path and it's a nice gamble that nothing bad is gonna happen to your guy along the way or you are gonna really be in trouble. And it makes sense to me. Magic and tech IMO Do Not Mix Well. It's a part of the world. Why should we be surprised a magically awakened character is gonna have problems with foreign matter in their organic natural systems? It's like being surprised that an overweight person is more likely to be diabetic or have a heart condition. Doesn't have to be but is sure more likely.

Ambidextrous - pops up a lot however really few characters/players really manage to make very much out of it.

Vlad

Indeed...
Gain an Internet Cookie.

Both your examples are way more true than just about anything else. Do stuff the GM likes (can be more than just archetype, add race, religion, political views etc. can help too)


To OP, Quick Healer is silly good and a de facto must have. Everyone gets wounded and +2 (do you get +4 if both healer and healee have the quality?) for 3 karma is too good to pass.

The reason I personally don't remedy it or try to fix it is the much higher damage on weapons that makes my players' characters need all healing they can get to avoid spending most time face down. A more reasonable price for the quality would be 10 karma or so.

The only Shadowrunners with Criminal SINs are those who have, at some point, been dumb enough to get caught.

I like the quality, "Guy that gives GM pizza" positive quality, tho with some negatives.

that's under common sense.

Does +2 to Healing Tests made on/for/by a character apply if the healer has this quality?

It is a balance. While optimisation of the build is not as important as the core theme of the character, it is an important and crucial part. If you want to create a technomancer (despite all its inadequacies) then you need the quality for that. If you say to drop the quality, then you are not building a technomancer. But if your character theme is to build a PC that is useful on the Matrix, then the thrust of the build becomes significantly different.

I guess the edition wasn't specified, but I was assuming 5E for some reason. They did away with "character defining" qualities this go around. With that said, I do think there are some no-brainers for certain concepts. Playing a straight decker? I'd be surprised if space in the build for Codeslinger wasn't found.

See, this is where I disagree. Optimization is only a crucial part of character design if it is necessary in self-defense against other powergamers at your table. Otherwise, you're looking for effective, not optimized building, which is much easier to put several ranks of 'Troll Punk Bands' into just because.

Yup. And your point is?

Everyone learns from their mistakes. Shadowrunners are not hatched fully formed. Experience is a bitch sometimes... but she can be an educational bitch. Character-wise it can also explain a contact or two on your sheet as well as being a wonderful hook for the PC when things go sideways and the law is breathing down your neck. As often as things go wrong in SR runs, I guarantee you will pay for those 10 points down the road.

Vlad

no, optimization is necessary in game design so that you can play what you want without being punished.

that is, you need to design the game such that someone who wants to play a certain character (within reason) can play that character and not be punished for it. otherwise you end up with stuff like the 5th edition technomancer, where choosing to be a technomancer instead of a decker tends to leave you with lower dice pools, less versatility, and your only advantages come with drawbacks that make them hard to use.

Point is that it's hardly a universal Shadowrunner trait. A lot of folks don't come to the shadows from a criminal background at all. Well, at least not any more criminal than day-to-day life in the 6th world requires of them. Heck, most of the Archtypes presented in the book aren't jumped-up criminals.



Personal opinions aside, what's stopping you from playing that technomancer? Having less dice than a Decker would doesn't in any way make the character less playable, so long as he is able to hit the targets of the challenge level the GM is throwing at him.

You have to remember, characters don't exist in a vacuum. Higher dice pool does not equal better than unless there is a use for that dice pool. In fact, in many cases, that sort of optimization hurts games because it prevents players from making enjoyable characters due to needing to meet the level of difficulty necessary to challenge the mono-focused dicebot.

I heard that that the errata is going to lower that to 50 Karma.

Optimisation is a crucial part of the character design if the character concept is to be the best. If you are looking at second stringers or characters that in some way not meant for the long term, then such "effective" builds are for you.

Self defense from them? They help keep me alive. I need optimization as self defense against powerful opposition chosen by the GM.

My GM believes that anybody making a shadowrun character needs to take one skill point and put it in hardware, then spend the karma to take Juryrigger. He is completely confused by the fact that my TM took a couple points in hardware* but opted out of this "essential" quality.

*With those few points and the help of a machine sprite he can reliably fix most of the gear that he can't protect, but it is far from his focus.

Personally, my go-to Qualities are Mystic Adept and In Debt.

I wondered how long it would be until someone made a magic-run joke (i.e. the must have qualities are adept, magician, or mystic adept).

I'm impressed that we made it to the second page.

You seem to be missing what I said (and what a few others are saying as well about other qualities.) I am not claiming that it's a universal Runner trait. I stated that, as a GM, I see my players frequently choose that Quality. I simply stated that it made sense (both for the game and for their character backgrounds) that a Runner may have that trait. I also stated that I enjoy that particular Quality in my game because it's something I can work with to provide personalized plot and that I enjoy it because it's a negative Quality that lends itself to natural negative repercussions for the players that choose it but isn't crippling. And , unlike some of the Qualities, it think it is priced fairly appropriately for game balance.

Vlad

you can play any character you want. that doesn't mean you deserve to be less good at doing something for no good reason for choosing the "wrong" archetype.

if you want to play someone who can be good at matrix tasks, the choice should come down to "which do i want to play". "which one is better at doing the exact same job assuming i invest the same amount into doing that job" means that one person is being punished for their choice of archetype by being less effective.

it's fine when a player decides that they want to have knowledge skills in jazz music or that they really feel like they need artisan to fit their character. it's another thing entirely if we can build two characters who have the same focus, invest the same amount, and then have one of them be sustantially superior in just about every aspect. there needs to be some trade-off, otherwise you are punishing someone for choosing to play a certain type of character, and that should never be the case; if that type of character shouldn't be played, it shouldn't be an option. if you're making it an option, it shouldn't be an option that punishes you for choosing it.

as an example of why this is bad, suppose we have two players in a group that both want to be specialized in matrix activities - as the book calls it, they both want to be hackers. one player decides to be a decker, the other makes a technomancer. both invest similar amounts into being good at what they do, but suddenly you've created a situation where the technomancer is largely redundant - almost everything the technomancer can do, the hacker can do better.

in short, it creates situations where equally min-maxed characters cannot comfortably be played side-by-side; you commented that you felt you only need to optimize if you're trying to match someone else who has optimized. in this case, unless you optimize your technomancer, you're going to be worse than the hacker at doing the same things... and even if you *did* optimize your technomancer, you may still be quite a bit behind if the hacker also did some optimizing (and he doesn't even have to optimize as much to be better than you at almost everything, in this case), especially as the game progresses and the decker can advance with nuyen and karma while the technomancer stuck advancing with karma and having little to no use for nuyen. and perhaps the decker even reaches the point where in addition to being a better hacker, he's also better in just about every other area, too - not because he's min/maxing, but simply because he wanted to be a decker instead of a technomancer.

now, i've used deckers and technomancers in this specific example, but it should apply in general; aspected magicians shouldn't be always a worse choice than full magicians or mystic adepts, mystic adepts shouldn't be better than everything else, etc. *that* is why you need to have some balance in character archetypes. it doesn't have to be perfect, but they should be reasonably close.

If you're basing your choice of 'which to play' on which archetype has better bonuses on paper rather than which style you're more interested in and which sounds more fun, you've already lost.

One of the basic design points where Shadowrun is concerned is that, frankly, archetypes are not balanced against each other. Certain ones get inherently unfair bonuses, comparatively. This is how it is.

Technomancers, dice wise, are likely going to throw less dice on any given test compared to a decker. On the other hand, they don't have several hundred thousand nuyen invested in a cyberdeck that can be lost or stolen, and must be smuggled into an infiltration if the decker wants to be able to do any matrix work once past security.

You're aiming for the wrong point of balance entirely. Technomancers and deckers have skill overlap, and can do many of the same things, but they are not a 1:1 mirror. Same goes for many of the other archetypes. None of them have unique skills that aren't shared with other archetypes.

you yourself *said* that optimization becomes necessary to compete with other players in the same group, did you not?

if two people want to play similar concepts, and one of them is definitively worse at doing the job than the other, how is that not creating the incentive to optimize that you yourself insisted was such an awful thing that should never be necessary?

it doesn't matter if it's technomancer vs decker or aspected magician vs full magician vs mystic adept, the simple fact is that if you have two things that have the same function, and one of them is definitively better by a large margin, you are encouraging min/maxing by the simple fact of their existence.

if you really truly dislike min/maxing, then you should be in favour of balanced game design. having one character be perpetually overshadowed by another because of mechanical reasons very quickly leads to the one being overshadowed wanting to min/max hard enough to reach the point where they are at *least* equal in function.

also, if you've got a GM that routinely makes taking away the decker's equipment a regular event, it's time to find a new group. the GM's ability to make anyone suck no matter what they do by taking away their ability to perform even the most basic functions of their role is *not* a useful balance point. having someone be ridiculously awesome most of the time and an absolutely worthless pile of crap the rest of the time is even dumber game design than making classes not balanced in the first place, because it means that the concept is NEVER a reasonable one - it's either a worthless pile of crap or an overpowered pile of crap, and neither state is desirable.

taking away the decker's capabilities entirely is merely going to lead to a situation where the decker has no value, which is not any better than the technomancer having no value. both situations suck, neither is desirable, and if your GM thinks that it's fun to take away a player's fun by denying them the ability to function as a character, it is time to leave, and never look back.

games should not be balanced on the basis that your GM is a complete and utter jackass any more than they should be balanced on the basis that one person should be worse at performing their basic function purely because they decided to play something you presented as an equivalently valuable option. if you're going to make something definitively worse than something else, it should not have the same cost unless it is not intended to be played at the same level (that is, it's fine if everyone is playing street level characters, and it's fine if everyone is playing prime runners, but you shouldn't have one person in a group of prime runners be only as effective as a street level character).

(also, if getting cyberdecks past security is a problem, how do you imagine anyone is going to be able to get weapons, armour, or cyberware past security? if dealing with security is beyond the capabilities of your so-called shadowrunner team, then maybe they should consider a different line of employment than, say.... being a professional in the field of getting past security measures, because apparently they are utterly incompetent at their chosen vocation).

I'm going to take this concept by concept, because I want to disagree with you in detail.

It isn't creating the incentive to optimize because you're creating a false dilemma. Technomancers and Deckers aren't meant to shine in the exact same circumstances, hence why they have different mechanical functions that just happen to share a common arena, the Matrix. I don't know how many more ways I can lay this out to you without creating a flowchart here. A != B. Deckers and Technomancers are cosmetically similar, and can fill many of the same roles on a team, but they do so in very different ways.




Honestly, as a GM, if my players do something so utterly dumb as to put their characters in a position to lose their gear? Tough shit. It's a game, actions have consequences, and anything short of character death is just part of that character's ongoing story. Part of the game balance for characters who need gear to do their stuff is that gear is frangible. It breaks, it is expended, and it is sometimes a pain in the ass to make sure you have it on hand. Refusing to use that against the players is a worse balance problem than using it against them, because it removes any effective opposition.



Getting anything past security is a problem. That is the Entire Point of having security in the first place. It is a complication in the run, and a challenge to overcome. One that characters who don't need highly illegal devices to function have an easier time with. Hence why PhysAds and Technomancers are stronger on infiltration missions into heavily secured areas.

just a quick note: as has been mentioned to me before, there is nothing inherently illegal about a cyberdeck, there is no reason in general security would prevent or even blink at someone carrying a Cyberdeck, a best they may ask you to disable the wireless function until you are off the grounds, but again in general, there is nothing illegal about a cyberdeck.

Yup. You just need a license.
Heck, if you've got the cash bottom of the line Cyberdecks are actually EASIER to get than guns. In America.

Edit: IDEA! Cyberdeck with integrated laser pistol. And extending sword blade. That straps onto the forearm. Because.

yup, a license, which is likely a forgery, but unless the security is a makeshift police force, they really have no reason to ask for your license for your Cyberdeck. That would be like going to a fancy party & being told you must leave your commlink at the door.

Have you looked at the actual availability on decks? It's 3 x rating{R}, meaning that anyone carrying a decent deck is going to be very likely to be spotted and checked by anyone running a secure area, and that licenses are non-trivial to get.

Fake licenses are (Rating x 3)(F), so good luck on finding a contact who can hit on a 6(F) to get you a fake license for that Rating 2 cyberdeck, much less anything higher. Oh, and remember, nothing higher than Availability 6 at character creation.

Edit : Also, I cannot overstate how annoying it is to actually cross reference this stuff in the SR5 pdf. Even with search, the explanation of availability codes is well after things with them are mentioned, if just before the gear chapter, and is -still- vague. Heck, the section on legal licenses for stuff is stated to be 'Hey GM, make this up!'.


I really miss the older convention of availability being linked to the relevant legal code and consequences for being caught with contraband. Much easier to parse and explain.

I...I don't even know how to respond to this, fairly certain its a huge joke.

It is, but not the funny kind.

starting availability at game start is 12, not 6

Either that or obvious troll is obvious.
Nah, it has to be a joke.

It is. I swapped rating and availability there by accident, mostly because this book is laid out with its pants on its head as far as finding things quickly. Mea culpa.

that is what had me doing a double take, Availability at 6 would be impossible.

....

fake licenses are priced according to the rating of the license, not the rating of the gear you're getting a license for.

you don't need a rating 18 license for a rating 6 cyberdeck (not that either are available at chargen). in fact, rating 18 fake licenses probably don't exist.

the rating of the license is merely a reflection of how good of a fake it is, how well it holds up to scrutiny.

that said, just because it's "only" restricted, that doesn't mean the security of any extraterritorial place is going to let you bring one in. just because something is legal to own, doesn't mean that a private individual or corporation cannot refuse to allow that device onto their private property. most any security-conscious corporation is going to want a damned good reason before they let you bring a cyberdeck in...

anyways, that's beside the point.

if the players put themselves in a position to lose all of their equipment, they've also put themselves into a position to be dead. in the case of a decker it still isn't a real weakness, because you either *have* to let them replace it somehow, or else they need a new character anyways and who cares what their old character no longer has, because that character just went into forced retirement unless they're sitting on half a million nuyen. that isn't balance, that's just killing off the character, only with a slightly different flavour.

furthermore, it is nonsense to claim that deckers and technomancers are supposed to do things differently. they're even grouped into the same function by the rulebook itself; they're both considered "hackers" by the official rules of the game. complex forms are a freaking joke, there's no way you can reliably get significant things done with them without halfway killing yourself, and sprites have a bunch of restrictions on using them (seriously, asking them to go take a break in the resonance realms costs a task, among various other things) and as a rule, most of them aren't very good at hacking either (even the ones that are, well, their dicepools tend to also not be particularly good anyways, so you're right back to square one).

technomancers don't just function differently, they just don't function well. if they're being presented as an equal option to something else, they need to be equally capable as that other option, particularly when the costs for those options are the same and the area of specialization is the same.

it is hard to decide whether a 14 dice pool with pistols is more or less powerful than a stealth rating of 6. it is not hard to figure out whether a 14 dice pool with pistols is more or less powerful than a 10 dice pool with pistols, and if choosing a certain archetype means that you do everything at a worse skill level than another archetype that can do essentially all the exact same things, you have a problem.

'So once I write off most of what the archtype can do, technomancers totally suck!'

Yeah, still not buying it.

So what exactly can technomancer do? Not the specifics of how the archetype does the job but what can the archetype accomplish.

Say I want to kill someone at range, street sam does it one way, the mage does it another. But at the end of the day, both archetypes can be lethal at range. So say I want the technomancer to do something (what exactly I am willing to leave to you to decide) in the Matrix successfully. What can a technomancer do?

Can a technomancer accomplish the above task more successfully than an equivalently experienced (and similar as optimised) decker?

There are a few things...

A technomancer able to push his dice pool for fading resist to ludicrous levels can do something a hacker can't, spoof commands without marks through "Puppeteer".
The obvious target are airburst grenades.
Airburst grenades can be popular because they provide a way to murder something without allowing the target any defence whatsoever and no amount of wearable armour can resist 18P. ( even 8 body + 12 armor jacket + another 5-6 from cyber + 6 or so more from +Armor items to get 30-40 dice on damage resist gets 5 or so boxes of stun from those and end up face down in 2 hits). To detonate those prematurely without bothering with marking targets can be fun.

But F+4 fading makes Puppeteer near impossible to use.


Insanely creative players could probably do stuff with Resonance Veil too, since illusions of stuff can make people act strange but aside from one trick pony with puppeteer I still Jaid (And Toturi) makes the most valid points about general game/Class/Stuff balance and why it matters and is important that I've read in a long time. (Do you have formal education in game theory?)

Seconded.

As for qualities, for any mage or technomancer, Focused Concentration. Up to F6, one spell/complex form, no sustaining penalty.