never had a problem with understanding the rigger rules (outside of the vehicle design system that is), or the decker rules for that matter. so i dont see the problem of having the person that made the rigger rules working on SR4...

Because that would make the whole augmentation issue irrelevant? Also, yes, a face character sucks in a fight. A Decker usually does too. A Sam sucks in the matrix, or with negotiations. It's not like all characters have to be jacks-of-all-trades!

It's up to the GM to take care all characters get their spotlight. Negotiations for the face, car chases or drone recon for the rigger, matrix tuns for the decker (if there is one), fights for the fighters, and astral action/magical threats for the mage (though a mage can handle fighting well, too, most of the time).

Goodbye...

you're in the vast, vast minority. most people don't even include deckers in their game, and only rarely include riggers--and even then, it's to a much more limited degree than riggers are capable of.

You'd be looking at it the wrong way. As I already posted but apparently was not read very comprehensively, I would not expect mundane Edge-characters to be routinely going up against the cybered and magically-talented and succeeding. It wouldn't be wise. Edge is a limited factor and a random factor. Cyberware and magical talent are not.

Now, that said, Edge is a factor which will give these mundane characters something fun to do in many situations, so they aren't the wallflower on the team. It works similarly to karma pool, but isn't a mechanic that requires a lot of prior play to have built up. And there's a reason for that.

It broadens the selection of characters at the start of the game that are viable. In many ways, that harkens back to the original Shadowrun, when many of those archetypes were presented, but before they had realized that their rules system had made them obsolete. Besides, how realistic is it that every starting shadowrunner (which is what the PCs are at creation) is well-cybered or magically talented? Why are these people on the streets again, working in semi-legal employment? A Ganger probably is not a long-term career path for a shadowrunner, but it's a totally valid place to start out. And in the meantime, that character needs a way to survive until he can invest in other avenues. By requiring that characters come, right out of the box, cybered up or magicked up not only makes little sense, but narrows the field of ideas also. Maybe one guy in the group is an ex-military washout who managed to vanish off the radar with sixty-grand in cyber improvements, but that only goes so far when half the group requires lots of cyberware starting out to survive and the other half are magically awakened people, y'know, that really rare fraction of society?

Now one of the characters might be a Ganger when he starts shadowrunning. Two years down the line, he might be cybered up because the pressures of keeping up in the job require it, but he doesn't need to start the game at that level.

Yes we understand...edge = karma. Random? In what way? You don't decide how/when to use it? It just happens? Either in your favor or not? Doesn't that already happen in the course of normal gaming? Murphy's law.

Yeah, extra dice or rerolls or what have you might not always work in your favor. The important addition to that is it's limited. Now, yes, maybe a piece of cyberware gives some extra dice too, and those extra dice may not always help, but they are always there. Edge, like karma pool, can be spent up, and certainly isn't available on every action.

Maybe you need to wield your mooks with more finesse? I've played in and GMed lots of games where the average karma pool was over 10, and it worked just fine. If you forget that the players can reroll a few times, then maybe things won't go as you planned. Other than that, I see neither insanity nor unwieldyness. Important rolls take longer to resolve, but that's okay--important rolls are worth taking time for, especially if they mean the life of a character that someone has spent five hundred hours playing. It doesn't present a barrier for entry into the game, because new players aren't going to have such characters. And if players don't like playing long-term characters, the group can decide not to and make new characters. And there can be big drawbacks to overzealous use of your pool-granted capabilites.

For example, if you repeatedly decide to mow down a bunch of mooks with your 500-karma combat god, and you manage to pull it off, you will probably have just gained the Hunted flaw at -6. It was nice knowing you....

Also, in SR3, runners are not all that unusual. They are a cut above average, but they're not world-class starting out, typically. (At least, the advancement system strongly indicates that people ought to be able to advance significantly beyond an average runner.) If the "Magic points for everyone!" people get their way, then either the magic level of the setting is going to be much, much higher in SR4, or for some inexplicable reason, all people with magical talent will be Shadowrunners. They'll not be just above average any more, they'll be Chosen. They'll be Adventurers.

I think this is a really bad idea. There are already way too many magician characters relative to the stated fraction of the population who is awakened magically. If magic is made even easier to get, this will just get harder and harder to believe. Of course, one could respond that

But this is another key feature of SR--you can play a pretty realistic game with SR. Suspension of disbelief is costly in a game set in a near-future world. When playing a game, the last thing you want is to be continually reminded, "Hey, this is a game. A GAME, get it? See, GAME!" You want to play the game, not have it pounded into your head over and over that the game is a game. You know the game's a game. If you keep having to suspend disbelief ("Whoa, that's impossi...wait, it's a GAME!"), it really spoils the immersiveness.

So even in a game, it's a bad idea to make things blatantly contradictory unless you have a very good reason, and even with that very good reason, you should explain it so it fits as part of a coherent picture of this imaginary world.

Similarly, with the "but Mundanes should be a viable character too!" sentiments--no, they shouldn't, not unless you want Mundane as a character class (as compared with Cybersamuri, Hacker, Wizard, Paladin, and Thief).

If you play someone who is not cybered, y'know what? You chose not to be cybered. But other people chose differently. Maybe it was so they could spend a lot of money on something that was a maintenance problem and made them look weird, without helping them out? I don't think so.

No, people wouldn't get cybered if it didn't give them an advantage. So if you've chosen not to have that advantage for some reason, boo-hoo. You don't have it. There's no reason to give special perks to people who don't get cyber just to make them competitive. If you don't want cyber to do much, then don't make cyber do much to begin with, and forget the extra "I'm the Mundane Character Class!" rules.

Likewise, with magic, unless SR4 is dropping the whole "Magic is Power" idea that they've reiterated IC for the past three versions.

Anyway, in SR3, non-cybered mundanes work just fine. They don't act first, but they can put a target down. They're not the stars of combat, but presumably they are the stars of something else, and that's why they didn't feel a need to get cybered to the gills. If that other thing that they star in isn't part of the run, then the character shouldn't be going on the run IC.

(I hate to use analogies from movies and anime, but look at Togusa in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. He's one of the most memorable characters in Section 9, is always involved in important plots, and he's a complete wuss when it comes to combat when compared to the Major and Batou.)

I did indeed comprehend what you wrote. I just disagree with this line of thinking. Mundanes already get the advantage of more skill and/or attribute points over the augmented at chargen. That is their advantage! I just don't see the need for another one, no matter how insignificant you try to make it appear. If it were truly as insignificant as you are making it out to be, then why make things more complex by including it in the first place?

And you can still make a mundane character whose advantage is his skills or attributes. And chances are, he won't be able to afford much Edge. But what about a mundane concept that really shouldn't be terribly skilled and shouldn't have all great attributes either? Take your Ganger. There's no reason why a Ganger should have a vast skillset. He's grown up on the street, he dropped out at grade school, and his library card doesn't get much use. Some skills make sense for him to pick up, but where's he going to learn Rotorcraft Repair or how to use high-grade military weapons? He's not. And while some attributes make sense for him to have a a good level, it doesn't make sense that they all are. He's no super-genius. He's not a very persuasive guy (unless you consider knuckles applied to one's face persuasive). Somehow, though, he's managed to survive the streets. He's one lucky son of a bitch. Now he's a shadowrunner. Will that luck serve him through his entire shadowrunning career? Probably not, unless it's a short career. But he has his start.

This isn't a new mechanic, it's a revised mechanic. It's karma pool. But karma pool worked only one way, you built up to it over time. Now it's karma pool that can be invested in at start, to give some character archetypes a chance out of the starting gate, instead of sweeping them under the rug, which has typically happened in SR3. Since Edge is an attribute, it stands to reason it can be augmented during play like an attribute. Meaning your cybered-up sam might want to invest in it sometime, if he feels so inclined. Maybe after a few runs, he's pumping his Edge up while the Ganger is under the knife getting some cyberware. It basically accomplishes what karma pool accomplishes, while also allowing for an expansion of viable concepts at character creation, concepts that were once considered core to the game of Shadowrun anyway.

One of the things that has always been a problem since 1e and certainly 3e is that taking attributes and skills as your top priority has always been a relatively poor deal balance wise.

While it might fit a character design to be an unaugmented mundane it's almost always a much better deal to use the points that you spent on skills and attributes and buy cybered version thereof. Even under the point system it was preferable to go whole hog and get 1,000,000 nuyen in cyberware instead of being unaugmented as attribute augment cyberware almost always ended up being a fraction of the cost of buying the same stat via points.

While this migh not seem like a big deal balance at character generation it is a big deal to most designers. Yes a unaugmented mundane might rock in some select situations it's a lot smaller percentage of the time than the combat monkey or the mage etc. Most game designers do tend to want each archetype to be roughly equivalent in utility and more importantly time wise.

Before people chime in with but if you have face characters a good GM should design plots that highlight those skills it's generally better to incorporate a mechanic than to rely on good GMing. So the good GMs can still incorporate cool plots and let the unaugmented mundanes occasionally shine at times.

The real problem is that 95% of campaigns, evidenced by the "retirement age" threads, in terms of sessions before a new campaign/character is started, or total karma before the character reaches "retirement", don't last two years.

And it personally makes no sense to me that the norm of starting out a shadowrunner in SR3 pretty much required magical talent or a lot of cyberware. Sounds more like the realm of special forces than SINless street operatives. I can understand shadowrunners getting that way, but starting that way? No.

A year after starting in the shadows, Mr. not-so-special Ganger isn't Mr. not-so-special Ganger anymore. He's learned a few tricks since then, he's gone under the knife and gotten himself some cyberware. But he had to start somewhere, and for him, that somewhere was from the streets.

To me, sweeping these concepts under the rug is a crime against Shadowrun. These are the people who become the great shadowrunners in time: the gangers, faces, detectives, rockers, hookers with a heart of gold, and any other of the many cyberpunk staples. Someday they will be badasses, but right there is the root of shadowrunning, right on the street, dirty as it is.

No, he's almost always dead. Players are free to replicate that all they want without a balancing factor.

~J

I think at least some people here feel like the SR1 rulebook was if not a level 1 mook at least a game in which unaugmented mundanes had as much of a place in the game as ex special forces types.

While later versions of the game made ganger campaigns start at 85 character points with resource restriction it always seemed like that was just a bone to throw to people who like more street level campaigns rather than being the baseline.

I think what the new edition will allow people to do is to establish the baseline characters as street level where as people who want to get simulate experienced shadowrunners can do so through an additive process.

Using movies as an example it seems like DE and the other designers want to go with more of a Sin City type movie rather than an Arnold Schwarzennegger summer blockbuster. I think the idea is that Shadowrunners will build up to the summer blockbuster level eventually but the core concept will be sinless scum struggling against a dystopian corporate ruled universe.

I'm arguing that there's something special involved in surviving as a Shadowrunner. Maybe it's a half-mil of 'ware. Maybe it's magic. Maybe it's the skills, the raw physical and mental ability, and a good dose of gusto. If it isn't any of the above, it should be in my opinion luck. The kind of luck that's involved when you pick up a bunch of dice.

~J

that's, uh... so, okay, i draw up a character named Lucky, and i give him average or slightly above-average stats and skills and little to no cyber. and then, the first time he blows a dodge test, i get out a fresh charsheet because the character wasn't lucky enough?

I think that suggesting that all starting characters are either magically active or cybered within an inch of their lives isn't accurate. However, there's no denying that people have to justify why, if a character has cyberware, they have somehow acquired upwards of a hundred thousand nuyen to get their augmentations. That's one of the problems with existing Shadowrun cyberware. It's not even the cutting-edge stuff that you suppose only professional assassins formerly bankrolled by a megacorp or national military, mysteriously intact after breaking with that organization.

The gritty ganger, with cybereyes, cyberspurs, boosted reflexes, and minor muscle replacement, all of whom are depicted often enough in cyberpunk style fiction, has, even with relatively minor "street-level" bodymods, invested enough cash into cyberware to keep him in booze and flophouses for a decade. Look at boosted reflexes, supposedly the ganger's choice for an edge in a street fight. They cost 15,000 nuyen for the lowest level. Or that cyberarm that a guy got after his real one got ripped off by a troll in a rival gang? Better have saved up enough to buy a sports car. Those hand razors, like a switchblade they can't take away from you? You could support a low lifestyle for a year.

Simply put, they either need to stop portraying any cyberware at all as something accessible to the gritty cyberpunk street-dwelling survivor... an option that just reduces fun factor and would require a lot of historical revisionism, or cyberware like limb and organ replacements, basic physical mods, and cyberweapons, at the very least, need to be reduced in cost so that they're available to those who supposedly employ them a lot, in fiction.

Technically, Bad Karma is a Flaw, which should have (and does) have a penalty. Humans have an advantage when accumulating Karma Pool. That is part and parcel of their (pretty much only) racial bonus.

Other than those, Karma is accumulated equally. An Ork mage, a Dwarf sammy, and an Elf mundane will both improve their Karma Pool by 1 for every 20 Good Karma earned.

that's exactly what i'm talking about. mechanics exist, in SR3 for player control of the rate their characters acquire karma pool. those mechanics are muddled and are hidden behind layers of other mechanics, but they're there. Edge places those mechanics more firmly in player's hands.

So, by that thinking, most characters should not be able to start out with augmentations, because it isn't 'street' enough for Shadowrun?

There are a lot of different character concepts available. Players are free to choose to have augmented charaters at the start of the game, or not as the case may be. If they choose to go the unaugmented route, why does that almost guarantee that they are 'luckier' or 'more experienced' than the ex-military concept, or the ex-wage mage concept, or whatever other augmented concept that people enjoy playing?

No, they can't. Making Edge purchasable means that 'luck' or 'experience' is traded of in exchange for augmentation of some form. It doesn't make sense that the mundane ganger is almost automatically either luckier or more experienced than the other archetypes I listed above

Y'know, technically, probably not. Afterall, why should a SINless criminal have expensive cyberware, a nice deck, or extremely valuable magical skills? It certainly makes sense for them to acquire them, but not as much so for them to have them when they are nobodies doing their first runs.

But, characters don't grow up in a vacuum in Shadowrun. They are products of their environment. Some acquired cyberware along the way. Maybe as washed up soldiers. Maybe as former company men. Some were born with magic but ended up on the streets. Maybe they didn't want to be in the corporate life, maybe they ran away from home. Maybe they don't have all their marbles. And maybe some grew up tough, without all these nice toys, but survived anyway. On a combination of luck and street smarts, because this dirty, gritty, cruel world is what they know. By the time they start entering the real leagues of shadowrunning, they know more about the lifestyle than any former company man, even if he's toting sixty grand in cyberware.