Legendary for PCs is described as 500 karma. Legendary for NPCs isn't, it's just described as "being in this book," basically. The movers and shakers in Shadowrun, the folks with the high rep? Some of them are Lofwyr, or Lugh Surehand, or Martin DeVries. Some of them are powerhouses, and their stats reflect that.
well well, this contradicts the golden rule "same set of rules for PCs and PCs. What I throw at the GM, he can throw at me and vice versa"
One of them (that is hung on NPCs) affects entire campaigns. It is there, tied to the cinematic campaign rules (from the core book), as a suggestion of a way to temporarily make a campaign more over-the-top and action-packed, playing
RED instead of
The Bourne Identity, but suddenly cranking an entire campaign up to 11.
The rule exists in order to give the PCs a boost, because the PCs are the heart and soul of any campaign, and as such the entire game of Shadowrun.The other version, which a PC can buy, affects just that one PC. It is there to let a single PC suddenly turn himself into a too-cool-for-school powerhouse, who makes his way through life succeeding where others might fail. He is no longer merely a 500-karma badass, he now has
it. He is Achilles, not Hector. He does not merely accomplish the incredible, he does so while making it look easy.
This rule exists in order to give PCs a boost, because PCs are the heart and soul of any campaign, and as such the entire game of Shadowrun.Do you see what the two rules have in common? They are being introduced in the Big Fat Book of Awesome NPCs, but they are not
only for those NPCs. We wanted a way to show that some of these NPCs are tremendously badass, but to also have that tremendous badassery -- and the importance to the metaplot, and the glamour of fame or infamy -- rub off on PCs. Rather than
only give NPCs a power boost (letting them ignore core rules like skill caps or stat caps, letting
them and only them hit on a 4+ instead of a 5+, giving
them and only them permanent exploding 6's, and several other ideas that were initially bandied about), we decided on these sets of rules. These sets of optional rules, that are clearly stated as being such.
On the one hand, the first rule lets some of these over-the-top NPCs come off as over-the-top. But on the other -- and this is the important bit, to me -- it does the same for your PCs. The second rule is a way for a PC to hit "epic level" or whatever you want to call it, as a means of standardizing a karmic requirement and offering a concrete way to make someone that's probably so badass they should be retired, but who is so badass he won't let retirement take him out of the game; for GMs and players that are interested in that sort of top-tier, high powered, campaign, now they've got a rule that lets them do it.
So, in my opinion, this doesn't break that "golden" rule of yours. It provides two separate rules; one that affects entire campaigns (and as such NPCs and PCs alike), and one that's aimed primarily at PCs (but which an enterprising GM could purchase for an NPC, if he really wanted to, and if he was keeping track of karma, etc, while powering up and building that NPC).
Not everyone is going to be crazy about these rules, and that's totally fine. That's why they're both optional. But I like them -- I kind of have to, since they were largely my idea -- because it's a way to give these "legends" something (besides just high stats or lots of gear or whatever) that can explain how they do some of the difficult things they do,
and it's a way to give the same benefit to PCs, because fuck NPCs anyways the PCs are the ones that make Shadowrun a game.