The natural caps, maybe. But the augmented caps can be hit quite easily, especially by sammies. Getting that Quickness of 9 is a trivial matter, even with a natural Quickness of 5.

I integrated a houserule specifically to help this(the skill cap, anyway) out. It involves doing away with Aptitiude as it stands; instead, it just grants +1 die to one skill, kind of like the old one. It's really not that unbalanced in the grand scheme of things, at 10 BPs.

Anyone can branch over 6. Not at chargen; but eventually. It utilizes a rising cost for each skill.

Thus, going to 6 in game, would cost 12 Karma. 7 costs 21 karma. 8 costs 32 karma. 9 costs 45 karma. And so on.

It allows someone who REALLY wants to branch out, to be able to. It also makes those big movers and shakers like the old time, bigwig runners that much scarier, having had so much experience. But stuff is still pretty much in check; for the cost of reaching a 9(21+32+45=98 karma), that person could have raised a boatload of skills instead.

Still, i like to have the option there. I like options, and i like opening up options. I admit, i was in the boat of not liking hard caps on skills. Again, ive always had that sort of ''Don't tell me i can't...tell me i can, but just make it difficult'' frame of mind.

Not if you use the errata that says reaction enhancers are not compatible with initiative enhancers. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense to me, either. But apparently you can either have a high reaction OR more than one pass...and what sammy would skip the extra passes?

In SR4 getting a Quickness of 9 is strictly impossible at Chargen... and can't be achieved with karma/cyber/spells/powers either.
Actually even getting a Quickness of 1 is impossible, since there is no Quickness attribute.

Ah, minor details. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif) HAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

Thank you so much for that! Totally made my day.

I do miss Quickness though, the days when elves were accurate AND fast. When we had more combat pool and were on the top of the heap, (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smokin.gif)

Those days are gone though, and Orcs have taken the Samurai throne. Not necessarily a bad thing. Poor trogs need something to look forward too in their pathetically short life. We elves are near immortal, ageless, second most magically potent, and sexy in all ways. When we were quicker, no one stood a chance. We might be back on top when our nocturnal brethren reappear. But even then, 30BP!

OOC, I must say that SR4 is the Shadowrun we always dreamed of but may not have known. I see no way someone can go back to SR3 after having acclimated to SR4. Sure, there are a LOT of holes, but the rules are SOOOOOOO much more obvious and simple, that it is really easy to tweak and balance. It is very important though to change your frame of mind when approaching SR4, because thing are definitely different.

I believe it is the SR4 FAQ (I could find nothing on the subject in the Errata), and it doesn't even say that! It only specifically prohibits Wired Reflexes to be used in conjunction with Reaction Enhancers. Which is still dumb!

I wasn't talking about Reaction, I was talking about Quickness.


Don't have my books handy, but Muscle Replacement 4 + Natural Quickness 5 is, IIRC, a perfectly valid tactic.

wasn't quickness split into agility and reaction?
you'd get an AGILITY of 9 with those mods, but no Reaction of 9 . . and no Quickness either *g*

Muscle Replacement is rating x5 availability, so level 4 is off limits at CG.
Besides, burning 4 points of essence seems even less sensible than pumping all those precious BP into Exeptional Attribute just to start the game with maxed-out Agility... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Well, since you hate and despise SR4, yeah, you can be forgiven for forgetting that that there is no more Quickness attribute. Period, zero, zilch. Thus, since there is no such attribute, it is impossible to get a Quickness of even 0(since a zero rating implies it exists)

Heh - I kept autotranslating quickness into reaction since it's the most similar current term, and that before the errata you could easily cap reaction at chargen with a natural stat of...3 I believe.

Muscle Replacement and its Bioware equivalent Muscle Toner have an Availability of Rating*5, so 2 is maximum for starting characters.

Aaaand I am just Too Damn Slow. Stupid Troll racial mali, grmph. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

no mali in SR4 either, just lowered maximum, the mali are in SR3 sadly *grumbles* <.<
ok, i will stop and go to bed now <.< . .

And you still can. As I said above (you may have missed it), there is nothing in the Errata about this at all. The FAQ however, stupidly forbids Reaction Enhancers being used with Wired Reflexes (only!). No mention of Synaptic Enhancers anywhere, which means they are still compatible with Reaction Enhancers.

Hmm... Reaction Enhancers (2) + Synaptic Watchamajiggs (2), at a natural REA of 3 gives you 7. How do you get the last two to hit the cap? And, after spending 180k (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) upwards on trying to prove a point, how many BP are left to purchase something useful?

Exactly my sentiment. Not that I minded the rules complexity before, but discussions about rules have become MUCH shorter.

You just buy 5 reaction as per normal, Naysayer. It's really not that hard to afford and still have decent attributes; you still have 70,000 nuyen to play with if you take the full 50 bps of resources, so you could still take Muscle Toners & Augmentation or Muscle Replacements and Synthacardium and have enough cash for other toys as well as the points laying around to be a pretty decent samurai, especially if you're an ork. I mean, I'll grant you it's hard to make such a character into much else but a samurai, but what else would you try taking THAT level of jacked up Initiative for anyway?

Yeah, I kinda figured that too, but since there was talk of hitting the cap with a REA of 3 I was wondering whether I had overlooked some other REA-boosts.
And, yes, going for the maxed Reaction may not totally gimp your build, but it definitely does narrow down other options. And 70k isn't that much when you try to get some guns, a doss, one or two decent IDs and maybe a vehicle...
I just don't think that it's worth it, but then, I never much saw a point in optimizing/min-maxing in a halfway functional group. (Plus, am a pretty pathetic at it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) )

It's actually not that hard at all to get most of your living and firearm expenses handled with under 30k worth of gear, actually, provided you stick within your specialty, don't buy more than three or four guns and are willing to live with a motorcycle instead of a car, low lifestyle instead of middle or high and are OK with giving up a die or two here and there from specialized gear. I just live with it by accepting that I'd rather live with goggles at first and buy cybereyes a few runs in rather than try to save up for Synaptic 2 once on the streets, basically. I've got an Ork Samurai build with 2.45 essence left, 14 initiative, 15 dice in automatics, has 9 reaction, 14-15 dice in the Athletics group, 11 dice & 6 base damage with his spur, 7-9 dice in the Stealth group, 10 points worth of contacts and no negative qualities. He's a good combat monkey, but he is somewhat one dimensional although his only real glaring weakness is that he's somewhat dumb and a somewhat crappy conversationalist; he's only got 2 logic, 2 charisma and only 1 level of the Influence group, so he's about as dull to chat with as the average joe off the street. Luckily he could take on an allergy and an addiction or something and shore that up a bit fairly easily without doing anything overtly cheesey. So, yeah, there is a bit of traction to the idea that a character can be extremely good in a few areas straight out of the box if they fiddle with the numbers a bit. Whether that's a problem or not is in the eye of the beholder though, especially since such a character could simply choose to expand his skillset rather than hone his specialties much further.

Well, being a somewhat dumb, crappy conversationalist, in exchange for unleashing a dicefest of epic proportions in the sneaking and flipping out department could reasonably be described as "narrowing down other options", though, couldn't it?
And I'm not criticizing that. I simply prefer lower-key chars for regular play.
I actually somewhat envy competent min-maxers. As I said, I suck at it.

Pretty much, but epic dicefests hit me as more useful than "Whoa... I got a whole 6 dice in conversations! I'm now twice the crappy conversationalist," and then just get shunted aside by the Face anyway. Really though, once you decide to back down from the 9 Reaction plateau and stick with plain ol' regular Wired 2, you actually can become something of a Samurai-Face and other such hybrid builds without too much trouble. These days, I try to min-max my mundane characters for good rather than evil; I'm more likely to build a character that's really great at something that's almost profoundly useless while still being competent in other areas now, although usually I just say screw it and build a mage.

No, it was pointlessly renamed into agility; reaction was simply made into a purchasable attribute. (Which, incidentally, I think was a very good idea.) Since I don't buy into hype, I'm going to call a duck a duck here, and use the proper name: "Quickness". I think everyone here is smart enough to follow the meaning.


So start with Q:6, buy Muscle Replacement/Toner 2, and gene watchamacallit, then buy your Quickness up one more. Quickness = 9.


It costs 36 pts to have 180k to spend, so you have 14 BP left for buying stuff, or 70,000. More than enough for guns, gear, and lifestyles, plus some other choice bits of cyber. Add to that the 40 BP required for a Reaction of 5, you've only spent 76 BP out of 400, leaving you a whole passel to buy more stuff with.

Cain--I would question whether or not renaming an attribute to more aptly describe its purpose can be called "pointless," but as you continue to disparage a system for all of the differences between it and its predecessors, I'm not sure that I should expect better.

Genetic Optimization specifically states that the attribute can be bought up with karma to the new max, suggesting therefore that BPs cannot be used. This would remove Genetic Optimization from any plans to reach a maximum Agility at Character Generation. We can ignore that problem for a moment though.

The route of Agility 6, Toner 2, Genetic Optimization costs 102 BPs
(40 BP for 2-5, 25 BP for 6, 3 BP for Muscle Toner 2, 9 BP for Genetic Opt, 25 BP for 7 (9))

Tracking out the Reaction boost as requested Reaction 3, React. Enh 2, Synaptic Booster 2 costs 56 BPs
(20 BP for 2-3, 4 BP for Reaction enhancers 2, 32 BP for Synaptic Booster 2) Yields Reaction 3 (7)

With these purchases, the character has already spent 239,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) That leaves 11,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) to buy a gun, ammo, armor, a place to live, a fake SIN, etc which I don't think is really enough.

Ares Predator 350 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)
1 clip of Regular Ammo 30 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)
Lined Coat 700 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)
Rating 1 Fake SIN 1,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

Already at more than 2,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

You've now spent almost half your points, and have not purchased any other Attributes or Skills. So where are we going with the rest of this?

The same is true of the renaming of deckers and otaku. *shrug* There were no actual mechanical changes involved in this switch; they all do what they did before. If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck...

As for the rest of your question: You can get away with a very small amount of points spent in Skills, by carefully selecting them and buying up Specialties; you only have to select one skill to max out. That leaves quite a bit left for Attributes, and the leftovers can be spent on Contacts plus whatever extras you want. And don't forget about 35 points of freebie Flaws for more BP to play with.

Don't forget, I did this with Mr. Lucky (whose e-sheet was lost to a hard drive crash); I think he spent less than 60 pts on extraneous skills, minus his ungodly Pistols skill. He also didn't spend the max on attributes or on gear. He just has an Edge of 8, a Quickness of 5( 8 ), and Pistols of 7 (+2); which when totaled up with other gear, gives him 19-20 dice for Pistols and 8 Edge dice usable anytime he feels like it. Everything else is average to above-average; not spectacular, but not helpless, either.

Like Whipstich pointed out, it's not difficult to build a hyperspecialist who's competent in many other areas. And it takes effort to gimp such a character, by making their hyperspecialization into something profoundly useless. It's easier to build a character that simply trashes generalists and ordinary specialists in the main areas, and isn't noticeably any worse than them in other areas.