Indeed. Or those characters who have a certain stock placed in their appearance, either as part of their personality, or because they're the Face. While it might sound great as a DM, trying to craft a certain view of the world, it is the Shadowrun equivalent of using Baleful Polymorph or Mordekainen's Disjunction or Save-or-Die effects on your players in D&D. Sure, when you're at a certain level, you should be wary of such things. But it still doesn't change the fact that it is a major gut-punch when it happens to you.
Think of it from another perspective. There's a mob boss who is pissed at the party, maybe because they did a run against him, or maybe because they failed a run for him. So he gives them a choice. Send one of the PCs to enjoy 'special time' with him and his guards for a week, and the hit gets called off. Or maybe they can pay their 'debt' off working as bunrakus. Or they go on an obvious suicide run, where even if they survive, they're going to have someone else hunting them. Sure, there are ways to try and get out of it besides agreeing to those terms, but that means taking on the entire mob, which isn't something they'll walk away from clean. Completely fitting with the setting, but it is likely to get your players very upset with you, right? Especially if it happens more than once in a very blue moon.
Ya I donno, we're under the impression that the Shadows are a nice place. Characters die, feelings about missing an arm or something is sorely placed if it's on appearance, face or not as far as I'm aware there are no rules for removing cha or skills for damage. I'm use to playing RPGs where you can die in any single adventure and having someone missing a limb is the LEAST worry. I extremely do not think it's anything like WHORING your character out. Who would agree to your goofy synopsis anyway? That's not willfully being a dick thats just being retarded at that point. Your talking about a character who is almost dead, and the rules
ALREADY include extreme measures during critical glitching, such as spontaneous
death and/or directly affecting your party in an extremely negative way whatever that might be. However it's agreed it is funner if you have a character to play. We're talking about a situation that is so severe that the game rules dictate that not using edge to get out of the sudden situation or resulting situation is grounds for a point of karma.
I donno the point is, it seems so quaint I know we live in the land of Happy Meals and such but it seems to me a couple of blood splotches on your shirt after an intense battle (not common or per minute event) is kind of strange. Apply trauma patch, cast heal and move on. If at minimum I would maybe not commit permenant damage. Prehaps broken bones(no longer able to walk composure to crawl your agility in distants), damage cyber limbs, swollen face (penalties to vision). If your under the impression that everytime you roll a critical glitch trying to work your comm unit your head magically blows up....no that's not what I'm talking about at all. I donno I really like the system from Dark Heresy personally.
For instance:
Structure: Ballistic Critical Effects - Body
1: The shot grazes the target's chest, causing him to bite down in pain. He can only take a half action on his next turn.
2: The attack hits the target's abdomen with force. Although missing any organs, he gasps as the pain sears through his body, causing 1 level of fatigue. If he has no body armor on this location, he is also stunned one round as the bullet exits the body.
3: The target's ribcage is hit, shattering ribs and lodging projectiles deep within him. He suffers 2 levels of fatigue and is also stunned for 1 round.
4. Spots of blood appears as major blood vessels are ruptured by the attack. The target suffers 1d5 fatigue from blood loss but is otherwise still standing.
5: A projectile damages the targets spine, causing an immediate collapse of the body. The target is stunned for 2 rounds and takes 1d5 levels of fatigue as he struggles to regain his footing.
6:The attack ruptures the targets guts causing significant Blood Loss as the stomach acids mix with the numerous blood vessels. In addition to the normal chance to bleed to death, a target must succeed a WP test to remain fighting unless Fearless, on combat drugs or otherwise unaware of his impending doom.
7: The attack ruptures several internal organs. Effects are as above, and in addition any physical activity on the targets part will cause him to bleed to death on a failed toughness test (made each round in addition to Blood Loss).
8: The target's heart is hit, disrupting the flow of blood to the brain. On a successful Toughness the test that target can function for 1d5 rounds before the brain succumbs to the lack of oxygen, causing immedeate death.
9: The attack severs the spinal cords destroying the central nervous system. The heart stops beating and the body crumbles to the ground instantly. The target is no more.
10+: The target is shred to pieces by a hailstrom of bullets. fragmens of bone, muscles and organs are splattered behind him, causing anyone within 5 meters behind the direction of the attack to be covered in blood and gore, blinding them until a half action is spent wiping it away.
The point isn't how horrible that method of gaming is, it's what is in your mind for a reasonable table or situation to warrant advanced damage. Such as losing an arm, for instance:
You and your buddy are moving away from the nightclub into an alley where you parked after your long intensive discussion on the proper handling of high tech research items in your raid last night. Though Mr. Johnson forked over the 50k of nuyen he was not pleased by the condition he received the item in. Despite this you can't help but to have a grin the size of an aligator, with potentially an equal amount of teeth flashing in what little light there is. Considering the cake walk that run was, you couldn't be happier. Roll perception.Only two characters were in the meeting with the Johnson everyone else is back at the safe house. Both of them fail the roll. A disgrunted rival Shadowrunner who failed in his mission to also obtain the high tech devices is above them on the roof right above their vehicle. He's preparing to drop a grenade.
Just now you notice a shadow one second to late as you crane your neck up to see what's causing the moving shadow. It's the other runner you got the best of, his face still shows it. In your momentary judgement of what the shadow's cause was a grenade has already landed at your feet.So now we got a situation based on the rules this is a surprised based on chunky salsa rules they are already dead. Correct? So as a GM I can uphold the Joss Whelton rule, or not. So at this point as in many points in my games cinematics plays out above rules as should be the case in any good GMs game.
Your wired reflexes are already jacking up to hyper mode, you got one chance and only one chance. Can you do it? Roll throw grenade.Of course now here I'm calling a threshold test for this. Unfortunately he's pulling out a critical glitch...
It's a save in a bizzare sense of the word. You've managed to throw the grenade up enough to catch that drek directly in his face. Unfortantly for you you've also ate enough shrapnal to make a nice grenade salad. As you're dazed on the ground your head is pounding and ears are ringing. You attempt to place your hand on your face to see what this wet feeling is out of instinct, but it's not quite reaching your face. You keep trying but nothings happening. Johnny (his buddy) with some minor cuts on his face is standing over you with a stare that you imagine aliens would receive. That is when it hits you as you lean up enough to see the issue. Your arm, most of it is missing!That is my example. They had a situation in which they could have lost both of their characters and would have had to start from scratch but these kind of situations should have some form of out. They received two outs. One was preceiving the attack before it ever happened. The second was what should have been an automatic win (threshold of 2, runners get the right to feel awesome well unless critical gitch) for the PCs as they tossed the grenade up on to the roof. Turns into a major failure but rather than allowing them both to die I do the lesser of two evils, take his arm. Additionally if a single one of them would have used edge, or if the character with the missing arm would have burned an edge the arm would have been saved. So in tally the PCs (the other guys Preception would have helped) had SEVEN chances to have prevented this out come. Two chances with the preception an additional 2 if they would have rerolled or pushed. The grenade toss, plus another reroll, then a chance to burn an edge. This is not counting the fact that maybe the van should have been parked in a better location along with someone waiting in the van in case something went down in the club. They could have killed that other shadowrunner, instead of turning his head into a plum. Tons of alternatives could be had but instead they got themselves into a pickle jar with a grenade.
Also in that example I could have picked Johnny instead (the groups mage), but I picked the guy who's already mostly cybered up. I could have also mostly stuck directly to the rules in which case they are both dead.
To me that is reasonable, but maybe not to everyone else?
