While I understand that the cost and maintenance of a critter tied to lifestyle costs makes sense, it will present a number of problems
firstly, what happens with shared households where the lifestyle cost is shared by guests, is it added to the total or the individual?
I'd imagine so. Maybe not in the case of cats or dogs (who probably wouldn't have an additional cost) but if you need a Combat Giraffe pen that needs regular maintenance and cleaning, it probably would.
Secondarily, alot of similarities can be seen between maintenance of critters and maintenance of other gear; while yes the cost of cleaning a gun or armor (Bullet holes in the berwick suit may be expensive though) is negligible; what about maintenance of cars or drones. I would imagine a high tech combat drone would need just as much maintenance as a combat critter (after all the high cost of things like helicopters and jets is the maintenance). from my quick flick through, it seems critters can be an alternative to drones for riggers (which is a cool idea) but may become prohibitively expensive if tied to lifestyle; alternatively it can be quite cheap, if the character lives in a lower lifestyle, after all the critters should provide a excellent form of defense.
I would liken it to buying a garage. If you have a VTOL you need a large garage/hangar to keep it. If shared, everyone has to pay for that (since its part of the lifestyle cost). It would be the same thing.
Of course, if three people are sharing a house and one guy goes out and buys a Battle Beaver and the other two think he is a fucktard, they can just say "We're not paying for that." Then it would be up to the pet's owner to cover the additional charges when it damages the property or keeps turning their chairs into nunchaku.
So, where is the person who wrote this book?
Can someone message them and notify them towards this thread so we can discuss things please.
On another note
A number of critters have a dash for certain characteristics, does this mean they don't have those attributes or is that meant to read as 0
Dash
typically means "null" which means they cannot make rolls connected to that stat, rather than 0 which just means their dice pool.