Qualities/Better Than Bad

Hair Trigger

Better Than Bad, p. 160

Prerequisite

Technomancer

Cost

2 Karma

You are the jump-first type in every area of your life. But when it’s time to jump back into the Matrix, a place where you have power unlike your normal life, your excitement can’t be contained. With anticipation, your mind is already making the switch.

With this quality, you can enter hot-sim as a Free Action (or cold-sim, with the appropriate Echo). If you have a control rig, either implant or Echo, you may choose to jump into a drone as with a Simple Action, as if you were already in VR.

Hi-Rez

Better Than Bad, p. 160

Prerequisite

Technomancer

Cost

4 Karma

Your life hasn’t been kind. As a result, the Matrix is far more real to you than meatspace. In the real world, you see your surroundings through a haze of fear, boredom, and apathy. In the Matrix, however, you are eagle-eyed. You perceive further, quicker, and sharper than everyone else.

Your technomancer bonus to Matrix Perception is increased from +2 to +4. You may also make a Matrix Perception test to detect hidden icons as a Free Action once per Combat Turn.

Instinctive Hack

Better Than Bad, p. 160

Cost

2 Karma

You haven’t lived this long by treating hacking as a luxury. You use it to survive. When you see life going lopsided, your gut reaction is to hack for your life. Most of the time, you don’t even need to think about it.

Unless surprised, you can make one of the following actions before Initiative is rolled for the first time in a combat (Physical or Matrix): Brute Force, Data Spike, Hack on the Fly, or Matrix Perception. If two or more characters have this quality, use Eric (Edge, Reaction, Intuition, Coin toss) to decide who goes first.

Prototype Materials

Better Than Bad, p. 160

Prerequisites

Mundane and Gamemaster approval

Cost

5 Karma

It wasn’t easy getting cutting-edge prototypes from that corporate facility, but you managed it somehow. Furthermore, you had the free imagination and resourcefulness to upgrade your trusty weapon with those parts. This quality allows the player to take another rating of the Special Modifications quality, even if they already had reached the max rating of 2. Gamemasters may allow a player to take this quality after finding data or prototypes in a research lab, as alternative payment for a run, or for similar reasons.

Rabble Rouser

Better Than Bad, p. 161

Cost

6 Karma

The main difference between leading a march and going out for a walk is the number of people behind you. Fortunately, you’ve never had a problem wrangling followers to your cause. You have always been able to influence others, but when you get in front of a crowd, you shine. This quality gives the character a +2 bonus to skill tests using social skills when attempting to influence a crowd of ten or more people. Normal social modifiers still apply.

Shoot First, Don’t Ask Questions

Better Than Bad, p. 161

Cost

2 Karma

Your lifestyle doesn’t always afford you the luxury of checking all the facts before diving right in. As a result, you’ve honed your reflexes in order to survive and no longer allow yourself to think before you shoot; you just go for the kill.

Whenever you succeed at a Surprise test, increase your initiative score by the number of total hits rolled on the test. This bonus only applies to the first turn of combat. If additional Surprise tests occur later in combat, the bonus will trigger based on this new Surprise test, on the next turn after that Surprise test. This quality also reduces the threshold for quick drawing a weapon by 1.

Special Modifications

Better Than Bad, p. 161

Prerequisite

Mundane

Cost

5 Karma per rating (max rank 2)

It may not be the shiniest gun around, but it is yours, and you’ve put a lot of street R&D into it. Awakened folks spend time increasing their knowledge or connection to magic, but you only have your gear to rely on, and you spend your time and money making it count. Whether it was through engineering genius or illicit acquisition of bleeding-edge tech, you have turned your favorite weapon into the best jury-rigged version around. For each rating of Special Modifications, you can add either +1 damage† to the weapon, or choose two of the following (may be chosen more than once): an additional −1 to Armor Penetration, an additional +1 Accuracy, an additional 1 point of Recoil Compensation, ammo capacity increased by half the weapon’s original capacity, −1 Concealability modifier, or increase the weapon’s Reach by 1. Special modifications cannot add attributes to a weapon that it does not already possess. Due to the idiosyncratic nature of the modifications, any special modifications to a weapon can only be used by its owner (the one who paid the Karma for the Special Modification quality). If a weapon with Special Modifications is lost or destroyed, Ranks in this quality are not lost, but it requires 1 Lifestyle payment cycle to replicate the modifications on a new version of the same weapon.

Alternatively, the player may choose to alter not the numerical attributes of the weapon, but its characteristics instead. For example, a player may wish to jury-rig his flamethrower to throw “cold” instead. As long as the base statistics are the same, thematic, elemental, or other characteristic changes like this could be fun.

†If damage is Strength-based, you may add or subtract 1 from base damage per rank. If there is no damage attribute, either choose another attribute to shift, or with the gamemaster’s permission, add 1 to the damage.

Elemental Attunement

Better Than Bad, p. 161

Prerequisites

Adept Powers: Killing Hands, Elemental Strike, and Elemental Body

Cost

5 Karma

Dedicating yourself to channeling the raw forces of nature through your body, you have become one with the world’s primal forces. Change the drain from Elemental Body to function as follows: At the start of the Combat Turn after this power is activated, suffer 1 unresisted box of Drain. The adept may choose Physical or Stun each time they suffer this damage.

Resonant Discordance

Better Than Bad, p. 161

Prerequisite

Submersion grade 1

Cost

13 Karma

Being emergent in the Sixth World is dangerous. Outside the Matrix, there isn’t anything you can do about that. Inside the Matrix, however, practice and dedication have given you the ability to protect yourself from the worst of the Matrix by creating a discordant partition in your mind.

You may now enter cold-sim.

Due to the closeness of your being with the matrix itself you retain the +2 dice pool bonus to matrix actions. If you choose to use hot-sim, you receive +2 bonus to the following Resonance skill rolls: Compiling, Decompiling, and Threading complex forms.

Dead SIN

Better Than Bad, p. 162

Bonus

20 Karma

Dead men tell no tales. But in the Sixth World, cheating death has become an art. Whether you faked your own death or miraculously recovered from something that should have killed you, everyone thinks you’ve passed on. Being “dead” may have advantages, but it has problems as well.

Add a Rating 3 Fake SIN to your inventory, with four Rating 3 fake licenses. The SIN and licenses aren’t fake because they aren’t you, they’re fake because you are supposed to be dead. If this SIN is ever flagged as fake, you must immediately buy off this quality, spending any Karma you have available first, then going into Karmic debt if you don’t have enough. In addition, a SIN scanner will report this SIN as fake on a tied roll vs. the threshold of the SIN.

Hard Luck

Better Than Bad, p. 162

Bonus

5 Karma

No matter what you do, you can’t get ahead. Life never treats you fairly, and you seem destined to live in poverty and destitution. This character suffers from chronic hardship. As a result, they must pay lifestyle costs 1 level above the one they have chosen to reflect those unforeseen costs that plague the character throughout their life.