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[6e] Quality costs are all fragged up

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Hobbes

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« Reply #30 on: <02-24-20/1033:49> »
What about Impaired Attribute (you are bound to have dump stats. The point system forces you to min max). Or Analytical Mind which gives you one logic outside of limit for 3 karma :) For 11 karma you sneeze when you eat something common. For 12 karma you have to drug yourself every 6 hours :P The whole section is bonkers...

Yep that's the one I think is most broken.  For 30, 40, hell 70 bonus karma you can forfeit hypothetical maximums you don't ever plan to reach anyway?

Rather bad design imo.  It effectively just makes the game "build your character with as much starting karma as you want".

Still limited to 6 total Qualities and a net of 20 Karma gained from Qualities.  It's not like a Troll Decker could walk out of there with an extra 150 Karma to spend on Skills and Nuyen. 

Impaired Attribute is an incredibly obvious "Best Negative Quality" for all the reasons mentioned.  Nerf it, something else takes its place.  At this point in time it basically lets you squeeze in one, maybe two, extra positive qualities while still hitting the 20 Karma gained maximum.  And lets face it the "best" Positive quality is Analytical Mind and nobody was having trouble coming up with the 3 Karma to fit that in.

Future sourcebooks could of course print something godawful (and probably will).  But I don't think picking up a couple levels of Built Tough is going to unbalance anything.

Or to put it another way, yes Impaired Attribute and Analytical Mind both perform far better than other Qualities from a cost/benefit analysis.  But its in a category that has multiple hard limits on it and overall has the least impact to your character build.  And these only stick out now because we just have the CRB.  Once a few Splatbooks come out, they'll have company on the "Most broken" list.

(Also having a super cheesy negative quality lets players grab less mechanically "good" qualities for RP reasons and still hit the 20 extra Karma for Skills, Stats, Nuyen).