Using edge

EDGE EFFECTS
Edge can affect your character’s world in a lot of ways. When you want one of these effects to happen, you must spend a point of Edge. A character can only spend Edge points on her own actions; she cannot spend it on behalf of others. No more than 1 point of Edge can be spent on any specific test or action at one time. If you spent a point of Edge for extra dice and rolled a critical glitch anyway, for example, you cannot use Edge to negate that critical glitch since you have already applied Edge to that test. The uses of Edge are:


 * Push the Limit: Add your Edge rating to your test, either before or after the roll. This can allow you to take tests that might otherwise have a dice pool of zero or less thanks to various modifiers in play. Using Edge in this way makes the Rule of Six come into play: for every 6 you roll, count it as a hit and then re-roll that die, adding any additional hits from the re-roll to your total. If you decide to use this function after your initial roll, only your Edge dice use the Rule of Six. This use of Edge also allows you to ignore any limit on your test.
 * Second Chance: Re-roll all dice that did not score a hit on a test roll. Second Chance cannot be used to negate a glitch or critical glitch, it does not use the Rule of Six, and it has no effect on limits.
 * Seize the Initiative: Move to the top of the initiative order, regardless of your Initiative Score. If multiple characters spend Edge to go first in the same Combat Turn, those characters go before everybody else, in order of their Initiative Scores; subsequently, the other players and NPCs take their actions according to their Initiative Scores. This move to the top of the order lasts for the entire Combat Turn (meaning multiple Initiative Passes); you return to your normal place in Initiative order at the start of the following Combat Turn.
 * Blitz: Roll the maximum of five Initiative Dice for a single Combat Turn.
 * Close Call: Either negate the effects of one glitch or turn a critical glitch into a glitch.
 * Dead Man’s Trigger: When your character is about to fall unconscious or die, you can spend a point of Edge to make a Body + Willpower (3) test. If you succeed, you may spend any remaining actions you have on a single action before your character blacks out.

REGAINING EDGE
Your character gets one point of Edge back after a fulfilling meal and a good night’s sleep (at least eight hours); additionally, the gamemaster can reward players by refreshing a single point of Edge in exchange for inventive or entertaining actions in the course of a gaming session. Incidentally, that’s refreshed Edge points, not free Edge points—you can’t go higher than your maximum Edge. Luck only counts if you use it.


 * Good roleplaying.
 * Heroic acts of self-sacrifice.
 * Achievement of important personal goals.
 * Enduring a critical glitch without using a Close Call (you get a point of Edge back to balance the scales a bit; this should be used judiciously, though, so as not to always let the players off the hook when they roll a critical glitch).
 * Succeeding in an important objective.
 * Being particularly brave or smart.
 * Pushing the storyline forward.
 * Having the right skills in the right place at the right time.
 * Impressing the group with humor or drama.

BURNING EDGE
Sometimes it’s not enough just to spend a point of Edge and hope for the best. Sometimes you need guaranteed results—or a miracle. In those circumstances, you can choose to burn a point of Edge, meaning it is gone and will not be recovered through the normal means (though in the future you can spend Karma to move your Edge up again). Burning a point of Edge has two potential uses:


 * Smackdown: Automatically succeed in an action with four net hits. This has to be an action the character is capable of performing—he cannot, for example, score a success in a skill like Automotive Mechanic if he does not have ranks in that skill. Limits have no effect on this—the character gets four net hits regardless of the applicable limit.
 * Not Dead Yet: There are circumstances—a bullet to the brain, a live grenade in the pants—that by all rights should result in a shadowrunner’s inevitable death. In these cases, a player may elect to burn a point of Edge in order to keep her character alive, against all odds. Note that this does not mean she entirely avoids the effects of the potentially fatal action. The bullet still hits their head, and the grenade still goes off. Instead of dying, though, the character manages to keep breathing somehow and maintain a thin thread of a pulse, giving others a chance to stabilize her and hopefully provide some quick healing. The gamemaster should devise the exact circumstances that lead to the character surviving the current threat.