The Gaming Den

I can't speak for Hiro Protagonist, but Case explicitly possesses skills that Molly does not, so that she gains something by bringing him on the team. Togusa appears to fail to meet that standard unless you want people to spend skill points on having a perspective the Major wouldn't consider.

If you're willing to accept people who just feel a bit sad about their pile of unused currency, you could easily design a game such that certain skill sets simply did not gain much from either overt or covert augs such that you at least are not actively punished for forgetting to spend your cyberware allowance as Case.

Otherwise there has to be some active reward that can only be got by refusing to max your meta-currency, even if it amounts to "things you can spend augmentation points on that the flavour text does not consider to be augmentations".

Somewhat serious idea: Make Contacts, Legwork and Caches cost Stress to have and maintain. Being a military cyborg with a gun arm really crimps your social life, and the mystic trances required to maintain attunement to the Shakti tend to eat into the downtime hours required to do gun maintenance and stakeouts.

hyzmarca wrote:Point of Order, Ma-Ti is an absurdly overpowered beastmaster/emotion controller who only appears weak because he's a good kid who isn't cynical enough to exploit his power to the fullest. In the alternate reality where is is cynical enough to exploit his power to the fullest, he solves all of his problems through cynical emotion control that is strong enough to basically be mind control. When he doesn't have enough money, he just makes a random guy want to give him all of his money so strongly that he can't resist doing it.

Hmm.

https://www.thecut.com/2018/05/how-anna ... -york.html