What and derail a bunch of people making sense?

I just use the assorted attribute edges. My GM is happy to allow a PC to stack bonuses so long as they're not used for munchkiny purposes. (A charisma of 7 after plastic surgery is pretty unusualy on a troll, you have to admit that much.) Sure, he's better looking than almost anyone, but, like most shadowrunners, he's the exception to the rules.
One of my favorite characters (courtesy of Blackjack, if I recall) is a troll named Frou-Frou, a go-go dancer. (As in "little bunny frou frou....") However, unlike most go-go dancers, frou-frou is a very large and scary feminist troll who had spent most of her life before getting a job working in a club in the orc underground "bopping people on the head." She's essentially the opposite of most dancers; unlike your stereotypical ditz with great looks, no mind to speak of, and a tendency to make squeaky noises when scared, Frou-Frou is a willful, intelligent troll with a left hook that will leave even the toughest of sprawl gangers out cold.
So, in short, the stats reflect the rule, to which there are exceptions. Dogs tend to be less smart than dolphins, but there are obvious exceptions to this rule. Autistic people tend to have trouble in social situations, but a good friend of mine had little trouble making friends with anyone he met, despite the fact that he was autistic. (He was also the best D&D player I've yet to meet.)

EDIT:
Considering that only non-munchies actually put any points into charisma anyway, Elves are pretty reasonably priced. I'm playing one simply because I want to have a PC who fits the mould of a "spaghetti western"-style hero; he's dashing and debonair, but a little bit different from the average Joe or Jane in many ways, and, to most folks, pretty scary. (He's also fond of old-west style shootouts.)

What's your point here? Just trying to be annoying?

Won't work. I just hate the best brownies ever. Nothing will annoy me for the next two hours.

lol nature vs nurture!!!!!11one



edit: internets!!11eleven

Wow. I didn't think this was such a sore topic. I don't remember who said it, but the Exceptional Attribute edge is exactly what I needed for my troll, but unfortunately, I created him way before such things were around (he started as a 1st ed.) Thank you all for your inputs for and against.

Eh? Troll starting RML: 4, Exceptional Ability makes that 5, 5*1.5 rounded up is 8. What am I missing?

~J

Otaku

edit: And bioware.

Bioware can't exceed the racial max. Good call on Otaku, though.

~J

You know, I knew that. I really did.

Here's a thought:
When you raise an attribute, the price goes up for the next highest level, right?
Why not remove the restriction to maximums in the mental categories, but change the karmic modifier for different races.

That way, elves aren't actually more charismatic than a human (the baseline creature) they simply have a natural aptitude to develop those traits (hence a reduced cost for improving that attribute). A troll or ork have more difficulty inschool due to predjudice, socially and economically, so they have to work harder on their own to achieve the development that the other students are being bolstered for by the teacher.
In the end, a troll could be as smart as the smartest human, they just gotta work harder to get there.

I too have been trying to figure out what the missing point was in all of this, outside of it being that most everyone in this thread doesn't get it.

Ok, i've been away from SR for a couple years, since i joined the military. (I have alot of the older books,you know the ones with the bad drawings on the covers and alot of the new books, i also read them all the time) But there are ways to show the benefits and detractors for each race.

INT - General- This is the era of Trideo, Simsense, and BTL. Not the age of the graphic Novel. (EX- Ask your mother the last book she read, and how long ago that was). And this is the age of the TV. Most people even nowadays don't utilize the internet and its information and its at our fingertips. (Your reading SR stuff, this is the reason why we dont have cold fusion)

Magic - Its everywhere, it helped change the human race, and everything else. Im sure there was atleast one scientist with an INT 6, that got dropped to INT 4 (Troll) when the "Goblinization" hit. Why not? Its SR, theres a "Hand of God". Why might he have changed? Maybe his synapses fired slower, maybe it takes more coordination and uses a different part of his brain or more brain to do the simple things, we take for granted.

Trolls- -2 INT - Harsh yes. Your still the 1% of the population. Things just don't go your way. WoW! awesome your trolls in school! Find a Desk that fits you! They got one?! Great. Now tell the coach you don't wanna play on their team. Im not saying Jocks are dumb, but if you have natural talent to crush people on the field, homework is a far second. Got a "turtle" with a huge keyboard or a datajack? Good, you educated yourself off the internet, your book smart. But all that studying left you no time for practical application. And Prac App, by far is the best education you can get. EX- Study Martial Arts from the Internet, then go try to beat up Ken Shamrock, even though hes kinda past his prime, your toast. (Maybe Trolls "devolved" into a more primal being)

Orks - 1 INT. Could be worse. Orks Deviated from humans, but not as drastically as Trolls did. Slightly taller, Tusks, hardier and stronger. "Easier" to intermingle. School is possible, well besides racism. Same things can pretty much be applied to the Ork as the Troll. Synapses, lack of grey matter, etc.

For what its worth thats my take on things. Flame all you want but thats how i've seen it and thats how i've played it.

Me, ill take humans anyday. You might get the advantage now, but later on Karma is a runners best friend. And Humans get the best of it.


Im also new here so i hope you enjoy my post

I was going to suggest changing attribute modifiers during character generation to limit modifiers... so your starting troll could buy a Body of 11 but only an Intelligence of 4... but then I suppose that doesn't really help matters, does it?

The main problem I have with the stat modifiers is tie up with the granularity of the SR stats.

Assuming humans intelligence is distributed as follows:

1 5 %
2 15 %
3 30 %
4 30 %
5 15 %
6 5 %

avg int 3.5

Then the distribution for trolls looks like:

1 50 %
2 30 %
3 15 %
4 5 %

avg int 1.75

Using these numbers, 50% of trolls are doing good to just walk and chew gum at the same time.

I wish the stat spread was larger so normal distributions would apply to any of the races...

Errr... can you explain why 50% of trolls assigned 3 to their Intelligence? Why can't it be:

1 15%
2 35%
3 35%
4 15%

I think that was because 50% of the hypothetical humans put 3 or less points into intelligence.