Is it possible to have a useful and reasonably combat capable character in SR4A with no magic (inc resonance) and no augmentations? I get the feeling it probably is - using very high edge, maybe drugs to boost combat, and spend all your cash and the best gear/equipment...? What do folks think? If anyone has played such a character I'd love to hear how it went.

A lot of stuff useful in combat can be worn as gear rather than installed internally, so mostly yes.

The killer is going to be IP - an expensive drug habit may be in order...

For some reason, this archetype appeals to me immensely, although I don't think I've ever sat down and made a serious attempt at building him. You need to define "reasonably combat-capable," though. With drugs and the right gear, you could have a decent second-line shooter. Melee effectiveness, outside of an ambush with a stun baton, is probably out of reach, and any decently augmented samurai will put the Badass Normal down like Old Yeller. You'll want to use the points saved to round out with one or two secondary skillsets: B&E, stealth, face, rigger, hacker, etc.

Yeah, I guess by "reasonably capable" in combat I mean able to deal with average threats - gangers, security guards, or actually I suppose pretty much anything except the "big bad guys" that tend to show up at the end of a module... At which point it's over to the combat experts to get the team through. But I'd like the character to be able to be fairly "bad ass" for most run of the mill combat scenarios.

I think you can still get pretty good dice pools, they'll just be harder to improve. Automatics 6 (Machine Pistols) + Agility 6 + Smartlink + Tacsoft 4 = 20 dice as an unaugmented human. Getting your AGI that high will cost you, though.

Yeah, usually starting with agi 5 is best. Taking sensitive system is a very good way to get more points for character stuff. You can also buy more contacts, be the team's fixer and face. Being totally mundane also means you can walk through any scanner without any hitches unless you forget to leave your guns at home. You can also utilize the services of a normal hospital without worrying whether that nurse will report that you have unregistered restricted genetic/biological modification.

You should be able to build a GuardXL with 400 BP. Make that an Ork, or maybe a Fomori for anti-magic goodness. Is SURGE acceptable?

Building a normal char without augmentation won´t yield you any BP/karma if you try to have reasonable stats anyway. So suck it up and don´t try that. Spend your points on friends and gear to obtain the "useful" trait. Solid base for augmenting later. You could start from the Enforcer archtype without ware.

Long term, if the rest of your team makes full use of their potential, you will eventually be called a non-combatant if you don´t get ware.

I don't know if this counts, but what about the possibility of making someone who primarily uses one or more critters for combat? I suppose if you have awakened or augmented animals, that kind of breaks your rules though.

He could also be a non-rigging rigger.

There are lots of ways to do a mundane, most people just choose not to do so as it's an uphill struggle being the only guy without superpowers. I've tried it. And it did not go well, but he is my favourite character.

For reference, I went melee combat with a focus in damage avoidance, as well as outdoors skills. Since most people tend to not take the outdoors group, it made me fairly useful when it did come up. I also spent some points in demolitions (grenade traps)...

Quick stab for a starting point:
http://fairlygoodpractices.com/shadowrun/mundane.htm

Notes:
1) No disadvantages, so if we need to boost a skill up or acquire something, there's points technically available.
2) No skills > 4 yet, again, room to grow.
3) Is the plan to make the character a Cram/Jazz addict? I hate to say this, but you basically have a choice between magic, augmentation, drugs, or nothing. I'm not sure that it was your intent to have a walking pharmacy and I haven't done that with this starting point, but you need to decide if that's the direction you want to go in.
4) I gave him Astral Sight and Assensing 1, Astral Combat 1. I'm not sure that was within your vision.

Creating a character good enough shouldn't be a problem. But I have doubts about his evolution. Most character evolve with karma and money (witch are what character generaly have at the end of a party). With such a character, the money will have a lower influence.

TBH it seems to me that you may as well set those points on fire as take Astral Sight and associated skills.



Yeah, it's suboptimal to go without any implants at all, but at least as a rigger you can have things to spend nuyen on and generally it's better to be rich than to be good in Shadowrun. I'm afraid as a physical combatant or a character who otherwise relies on their own attributes, however, you're stealing money, and I don't mean from the corps. It can work, but only because the game is a cooperative one at heart. So if you really must go the mundo route and don't want to be a tech boy I'd recommend an emphasis on social skills, edge and contacts. Having Erased and Trust Fund helps too; you can more or less serve as the group's secondary fixer and having rainy day money can be pretty nice if you're not afraid to bribe people.

drones or sensor pack carrying squirrels for your personal Tacnet.
Milspecarmor with Upgrades for compensating cyber.
Edge for awesomeness.
Drugs and Edge for extra IP.

While I don't disagree, not taking magic/augmentation is basically setting points on fire anyway. One can spend 25 points taking agility 5 to agility 6 or restricted gear and 32,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) (12 points, .8 essence, 3000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) left over) to take agility 5 to agility 9. I was hoping via my notes to get some more guidelines as to the intent from the OP since it feels (to me anyway) that a Shadowrun character without ware or magic is like a businessman without a smartphone. Why are they without ware of magic? Are they from some rural area, allergic to implants and not blessed by mana, a metahuman from Boys Town who intended on getting into pro sports and still hopes to so they're staying away from drugs and ware?

Trode Net + Commlink + Drone = Capable. Toss in Remote Control for the drone and a good Command program and you're there, although you'd need to figure out how to squeeze out those IPs. A hot-sim'd comm with a Simsense Booster (or Accelerator... whichever is the comm mod) gets you to 4 IP with no augmentations.

I understand--I virtually always hit the 50 gear point cap-- but that doesn't mean you should throw good bp after bad. Basically, the more sub-optimal the character concept, the more conservative I am about choosing only strong picks within the parameters of that concept. That you're already kind of weak is just all the more reason to top off one of your bread and butter skills and buy a decent contact rather than chase another theme. Other good alternatives would be asking your GM if they're comfortable with you getting creative and sinking the points into broad skills like Hardware and Chemistry.

Much of the answer boils down to the definition of "combat capable". If fight by proxy is acceptable, by all means play a rigger. We tend to judge that trait by personal capability; mages and riggers are usually non-combatants for us - without any disrespect, quite the opposite in fact. The willingness to play cooperative is welcomed.

Why play as a non-augmented normal?

I mean why not one piece of 'Ware: Synaptic Booster 2. I mean just having that piece of gear turns you from "So So" to something nice. Yes, it's expensive, but honestly why not?

I went the other way: I have a combat mage who has two points of 'Ware. Yea... his magic kinda sucks now, but I have enough advantages to survive to get a higher magic.

There's nothing wrong at all with wanting to play an unaugmented mundane character. The challenge of making one that can hold his own is rewarding in and of itself.

Other people have hit the main points. The best way to do it and remain competitive is to go with either a concept that doesn't need much outside help, like a Face, or one that boosts your combat abilities from outside sources, like a Rigger or Hacker. Other concepts are certainly possible, but you'll have to accept that other characters will likely outperform you in nearly every way.

The problem is that gaining magical abilities or getting augmented isn't that much of a BP sinkhole during character creation. If you really specialize and go crazy with it, yeah, it can cost a lot of resources, but, say, a basic street mage can be done on the cheap. And what you can do with those points as a normal person isn't going to really shine. And anything you can do, an augmented/magical character can do with nearly the same level of ease, too. Including the use of tactical networks, drones, Empathy software, drugs, and so on and so forth.

But if you're okay with the possibility of being outperformed, can manage to find a niche that you really like, and have a GM who really likes the idea and will work with it, go for it! It can be a lot of fun.

I tried something similar once but the game only lasted two sessions, so I didn't get to see how it really played out. I went with a completely burnt-out warrior adept with a drug problem, and due to having Sensitive System due to his former magical abilities coupled with his personal philosophy, he was reluctant and unwilling to go under the knife. He was sort of like a RIFTS Juicer instead. Had a lot of auto-injectors in his clothing and armor for select combat and awakened drugs, and a biomonitor with a custom agent program to monitor his system and apply the drugs as needed or as commanded. I had fun when I did get to play him, but the drug addictions and other side effects never got a chance to come into play.

easy answer: only 1% are awakened. that's why he is without magic.
for the no ware part I suggest getting the Sensitive System flaw and in addition my custom flaw at level 4

Explaining "no magic" isn't the problem; you just weren't in the "lucky 1%". But why don't you have any 'ware? I mean, from a player perspective, playing a "pure" character is an interesting challenge, but what's the IC reason? Because passing up that much easy power needs an explanation.

I think you should try to turn the mundane-ness into a strength somehow; play up on how no amount of detector work is going to show you up to be a threat, because there's no cyberware weapons or magical potential to detect. You don't look like a criminal to most security people, because criminals tend to carry combat-enhancing 'ware.

The tricky part is bioware: there should probably have been bioware scanners, but they fell through the cracks between Arsenal and Augmentation development, so by chance it's very hard to detect bioware. Which means that nobody can see that you don't have it, which kind of spoils the above setup.

I think you should consider finding an unusual niche. The bland-looking face that can easily infiltrate high-level corporate offices because he really looks like a suit, with no piercings, tusks or implants. Maybe with martial arts, plastic-bullet & holdout guns or even a syringe with poison - get close to people because you don't look like the enemy they're guarding against.

Not everyone is keen on the idea of having their body slaughtered and replaced by machinery. Especially in the 2070s were you can duplicate many of the more useful things without implants, such as with trodes and contact lenses.

The topic of this thread mentioned "A realistic char", and for my nuyen, a shadowrunner with no augmentation and no magic who is trying to be effective in combat is not a realistic character. Shadowrun is a brutal, uncaring, and above all unfair setting, and the rules for the most part support this. Your opponents will include people with superhuman abilities, who have traded some of their humanity for power(or were lucky enough to just be born better than you), and your high essence score isn't going to save you when some troll gets 4 IP to beat down on you with a pair magic katana.

Edge is useful, but only temporary, and drugs can help, but addiction is nasty thing that will eventually kill your essence anyways.

Playing an unaugmented, unawakened character who is designed to engage in physical combat is just unrealistic in shadowrun.

With 400 build points, you can certainly build a character capable of dealing with comparatively weak enemies like gangers and security guards, but it will be more expensive.

Mundane, augmented characters will be weaker out of the gate, and slower to advance. They can still take on a variety of roles, from combat, to covert ops, to face, to hacking or rigging. But in every case, the character will not be as good as he could have been, with magic or augmentation.

It's certainly doable, but playing such a character will be a challenge from a power perspective. Shadowrun is a very tactical game, with a lot of situations where you can completely negate another character's overwhelming superiority with proper planning. But you will be more dependent on this, and there will be times when your inspiration runs dry.

The really impressive stuff though, you can't do external. The cerebral booster, synaptic booster, muscle toner - all are extremely efficient ways to become a lot better than the opposition. 20K turns you from average to genius; that's more cost-effective than any school.

SR is about people who basically do insane jobs. Huge risks for (hopefully huge) rewards. Breaking the law, breaking all manner of ethical boundaries. I really think that the people who avoid augmentation are a fringe minority among shadowrunners.