Hi all having played shadowrun for a number of years once or twice I've wondered about this paticular instance regarding trolls and charisma (I know that in the rulebook it specifically says you can place between 1 and 6 points into your attributes) sometimes when making a troll street sammy I want to maximize points and decide to cheap out charisma and only put one point in it .Heres the thing though does 1 charisma cost 3 points (most expensive 1 charisma I've ever seen if true.)so that I don't get a negative value or could I put 1 point in there and then just ignore the negative modifier as no stat can have a value less than one?It doesn't really matter to me either way I'm just curious if it's ever stated concretely anywhere in the books.Thanks for your time....

You have to pay the three points.

cool it's what I always thought good to know though. guess you gotta pay to be almost twice as strong as a regular human after all lol.

SR3 p. 55, Attributes. These rules state that no attribute may be given more than 6 points and no fewer than 1 point during character creation. It then goes on to state (and pay heed to the wording here) that no attribute may be higher than 6 before racial modifications are applied, and no attribute may be lower than 1. Note that the second statement doesn't have the same condition applied to it.

So although the context heavily implies otherwise, an exact reading of the text suggests that while you can't assign more than 6 points to an attribute, you can assign a 1 to an attribute even if racial modifiers would lower it below 1. Since 1 is the lowest value allowed, those negatives won't have any impact on the character.

But again, the context is fairly clear even if (as is often the case) the exact wording isn't.

1 isn't the lowest value allowed. In Decrease Attribute it is stated that if a mental attribute drops below 1, the character becomes comatose.

So yes, I'd allow you to do it. Make sure to buy plenty of Hospitalized lifestyle.

~J