[Davidvs]

You could have the player roll 1d6, if it is a 1 he crit glitches otherwise it is a plain failure. Rolling a 5 or 6 gives no benefit.

If the GM rolled for the player then the player wouldn't know if they glitched. Overall, I agree/like some kind of house rule on this. Maybe a zero skill should be a glitch on a 1, or even a 1 and a 2 since that would be worse than a 1 skill.

[firebug]

You're pretty spot on, SunRunner.  Since I'm doing a one-off, I have no problem demonstrating to him how min-maxing like that doesn't fly in Shadowrun.  He's also rather Strength and Melee focused; he's a badly made character.  I could have said "make a different character" but since he had the audacity to make such a min-maxed character (1 in all mentals but WIL, which is 3) when he's played other RPGs and should have known better...  I'm just gonna be pretty ruthless on him.  Everyone else is decent, and only a little min-maxy...  Which I attribute to one particular player in my group.  But they are at least reasonable and have a concept beyond their archetypes.

Regardless, while 1 INT is bad enough, I'd ask people to stop focusing on it.  What about 1s in other things?

[Dangersaurus]

1's in anything is an excuse to not feel bad about giving NPCs the Decrease (Dumpstat) spell.

[Glyph]

A 1 in Intuition is just plain dumb.  It is not just perception and initiative - it is also one of the two Attributes used for passive defense.  It is an extremely important Attribute!

Also, keep in mind modifiers, where positive ones come up less than negative ones.  Someone with a dice pool of 1 is also likely to run into situations where they don't get to roll fairly often.

I wouldn't worry too much about them not getting critical glitches - constant failure is enough of a drawback.

[Xenon]

I don't really see the issue here tbh....

Having a base dice pool size of 1 dice is not the same as always having a dice pool of 1 dice after positive and negative dice pool modifications.

If you only have a dice pool of 1 dice after positive and negative modifications then maybe you should consider not taking the test at all, but at least you do have a [small] chance of getting a hit (and there is always edge if you get a glitch). If you have a dice pool of 0 dice after positive and negative modifications then any and all attempts to take the test will always automatically fail.

[Top Dog]

I don't see why a GM would be unable to say (within the rules) that, of your zero dice, more than half of them (51% or more of zero) came up 1's. That's the only relevant point for judging whether a glitch happens. Successes matter in number, 1's matter in percentage.

If more than half the dice you rolled show a one, then you’ve got problems. This is called a glitch.

There may be circumstances where a player rolls a glitch and also does not achieve a single hit. This is called a critical glitch, and this is where the drek hits the fan.

Then again, I'm not exactly math-focused.

The problem here is that 0 is a weird and special number. In most cases, if you have 51% (or any percentage over 50%) of the dice coming up 1, that's "over half" of the dice. So if you had 0 dice, then 51% would be 0, so it'd be "over half" for that reasoning. But the 51% rule is a shortcut, and doesn't apply in the case of 0. After all, what percentage of dice came up 1? You have 0 1's and 0 total dice, so the percentage is 0/0 (*100%). 0/0 is indeterminate; 51% is "correct", but so is 12%, or 4242%. Because 4242% of 0 is also 0. And, crucially, 50% - half - is also possible. Since 0 is half of 0, 0 isn't over half of 0 (even if 51% of 0 is also 0), so it's not enough. So you can't use this line of reasoning for 0, because 0 is weird.

You can, however, work reversely from the other side. The rule states that "over half" of the dice needs to be one. So whatever number of dice is half, you need to have a number that is bigger then that. Since dice come in whole units, you need the first whole number that isn't half the dice pool itself.
50% of 0 is 0, so you need one more dice then that, so you'd need at least 1.


Of course, that's the mathy, strictly rules-wise interpretation; I already stated that I wouldn't mind a houserule like that. But within the rules, as you stated, your reasoning isn't correct.

[SunRunner]

Intuition is just too important to be a 1, quit frankly its a suicidal decision and will self correct if you run the game even close to the way it should be run.

But if you look at most stats having a 1 in it is a serious draw back in its own right. Dump stated charisma is a popular choice for uniformed street sams. But the reality is they have no chance to talk their way past a KE/corp patrol, no chance to get past the bouncers at the nova hot club other then coughing up alot of yen. Now they build this way because they assume the team face is going to do all the talking for them and for alot of the time they will be right, but lets face it eventually the face wont be around. This means that he pays alot more for info or work from his contacts because well they always beat the pants off him in the negotiation rolls. He has problems fencing his loot because again they know hes a sucker and the take him for a ride every chance they can. Its a principle I learned playing in the HERO system if a PC takes a disadvantage its your job as the GM to make sure that disadvantage comes up, and the bigger the disad the more often it needs to come up. He also has a logic of one, quite frankly this means alot of everyday tasks that just get glossed over are now challenges to him. Logic 1 and no computer skills means even basic GOOGLE searches fail for him.., Let that sink in for a minuet. He has built in effect a moron, or a low functioning autistic character. Hes Blaster from Mad Max thunder dome. He literally has to have some one hold his hand most of the day because he CANT figure any thing out, He CANT get directions to the club the team has a meet with a johnson at. He fails that check, its that simple, So unless the team wrights down directions for him. Hell arguably he cant even check his email or answer his comlink to talk to people. You dont need to add some mystical magical glitch roll to your game to punish this min maxing, just taking the rules as is will do it just fine for him.

I normally would not enforce rules to this level most of the time but if some one is silly enough to build a character with 1 intuition, 1 logic, and 1 charisma well then they deserve anything they get.

[Xenon]

You can come a long way with a big edge pool

[Namikaze]

Of course, that's the mathy, strictly rules-wise interpretation; I already stated that I wouldn't mind a houserule like that. But within the rules, as you stated, your reasoning isn't correct.

I had a player argue a similar issue with me until we were both figuratively blue in the face.  He argued that if he rolled only 1 die, and got a one that it shouldn't be a critical glitch.  I argued that when you're only rolling 1 die, you're taking a big chance of not just failing but uber-failing.  This went back and forth for months, as the topic didn't come up too often.  In the end, the interpretation of the rules is up to the GM, and the players should respect that.

At my table, if you're rolling 0 dice, you have a 0% chance of succeeding.  But you also have a 0% chance of getting a glitch or critical glitch.  Instead, you have a 100% chance of failure.

[Tarislar]

While I believe that the idea of Intuition-1 is a "Self Correcting Problem" the second the bullets start to fly. 

If you really wanted to be mean & show that low skills should never be a "positive" then yes, do a roll of 1 die & on a 1 it causes a Critical Glitch.

All the more reason to always have at least 1 Skill Rank in most anything you might ever needs, because even 2 dice means you have to roll Snake Eyes (1/36) to get a Critical Glitch.