I think most of us here have played enough to see the usual characters. Gunslinger adepts, basic hackers/riggers, pure combat monsters, occult investigators, and their type but what I would like to know is what are the lesser played builds. Whether is it because they are not "optimal" enough or would only work in niche campaign types what are the characters that come to your mind?

For me it would have to be the mundane banisher. Whether he is a religious figure fighting against hostile spirits and their summoners or a street sam who got a little magic savvy and decided while APDS and Stick n Shock were good enough to take down the summoner maybe he needed to learn a few tricks to deal with their pets. Another would probably be a Technomancer mix build. When you make a mage you can make them a Combat Mage, a Face Mage, an Info Mage, etc. but when you make a TM who is vert similar in mechanics you can't mix at all without taking a big hit to your abilities as a hacker/rigger. I know a few house rules that make the matrix must faster paced and with these rules it would be possible to make a TechSam who can hack peoples gear fast enough that it actually matters in combat (think ghost in the shell style hacking) but without such house rules I see it being very difficult without extra points when starting your character.

So I would like to know other odd characters and why they aren't used much if at all.

Gah. Cyberware hacking makes baby Jesus angry. Leave Ghost in the Shell to Ghost in the Shell.

I'd say the most underused character is the classic no-cyber Private Investigator. I'm not sure if I have seen one outside the book in the twenty years Shadowrun has existed.

I have never actually seen someone play an occult investigator before... I know it is a sample character in the core book, but I don't think I've ever seen someone build one...

You don't tend to see a lot of overwatch sniper characters ( or at least I don't)
I had one character who was basically a super sniper and was amazing at infiltration and disguise. Basically, he would go to a building or something and watch as the other team did the job. If an enemy needed taking care of: BAM!
He was one of my favorite characters for two reasons, one: he was a badass sniper and could shoot an apple off of your a mile away and two: none of the other runners had ever met him face to face, he only ever contacted them via alternate comms, so it had some cool roleplaying scenes...

Don't know if anyone else has ever used a build like that, but it has pretty much been the only one I have seen myself...

I don't know if he qualifies as "no cyberware," but I'm playing an AI PI in a game coming up soon. I've also had the super-sniper mundane played in a game of mine before. He was totally cool but really took the steam out of my engine, what with his "I shoot-ed it dead" responses.

One archetype I haven't seen is a mage that doesn't have any summoning at all and only uses the Calling rules. I think it'd be really fun to play and RP.

Another is a TechnoSammy: a technomancer who blitzes for Biowire and Acceleration as opposed to actual hacking skills.

Easiest way to stymie a super sniper if he's overpowered is to mess with his LOS. A sniper is awesome, provided he has a good hide with a large observable area. Otherwise he's just a lump. If you have NPCs you don't want him to kill, don't let him see them.

Besides, the likelihood of uninterrupted line of sight in any kind of urban battlefield is about a bajillion to one. Sniping is about one hundred and seventeen times* more complicated than the average player realizes. They do look cool in movies though, heh.






*Kresslein & Sharpe, University of Michigan 1983

It doesn't help when he has a TacNet setup and Called Shot/Long Shot's people through buildings with a 7 Edge either...

Agreed, although one of my players has a sniper/rigger that has had great success. With a handful of small flying drones letting her have a wide field of vision, and a larger flying stealth drone letting her quickly change positions, she is quite the force to be reckoned with^^

I had one. Mystic Adept with a Intuition tradition and a decent dice pool in spells thanks to a good power foci and his adept powers gave a good bonus to all the needed skills. For data mining I used a team of pimped out agents so I could focus on the meat and astral.



I have made a sorta Technosammy. I had him in a huge drone with skinlink so the physical stats used were the drones instead so I guess he was a weird TechnoRiggerSammy mix.




I meant hacking in general not just cyberware hacking. The rules made it quicker so a hacker could attack an enemies comlink and get access to all is networked stuff before the fight was over and actually make a difference. I've played a hacker before and it got boring fast just putting suppressive fire down every round because I didn't have the 15+ dice needed in shooting to take down the opponents we were fighting.

I liked hacking enemies PANs and having their smartguns eject their clips.

Oh that was a favorite lol. Even better was causing their arms shut down due to an unexpected diagnostics test to make sure it would work when they needed it too. So much for that. In my original post I mentioned the mundane banisher and I was actually thinking of whipping that up. I was thinking Dwarf, soft maxed willpower, and Martial Arts 3 to get that +3 DV to attack of will. Anything else I should remember?

I had a lot of fun with a combat mage who only knew one combat spell, which he had a million and one restrictions, game and otherwise, on using. The rest of his magic was just devoted to making him as unstoppable and ready for any condition as possible. Now I think about it, he was probably about as close to the Terminator as you can get without creating an e-ghost in a drone body.

The Focus Maneuver thingie: +2 to Willpower Tests until your next turn or something like that.

Don't forget that Stick and Shock is just as useful against the spirit as the summoner also.

Snipers are in an especially dangerous circumstance in SR world. I'm probably not alone in this, but one of the first things I'll do with drones on my character is have them keep a 'gods-eye' view on potential sniper spots. Now, me as a player doesn't know much about that, but me as a player character does, and usually so do my drones. I imagine any passable security minded group would do the same, pc or npc. Combine the drone sensor arrays with ultrasound and thermal, and you can probably get most snipers. At least in an urban setting.

As forleast used nowdays? Id go with oldschool Rocker. Mundane human. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I think the mage who only uses conjuring, and the technomancer/something else builds, illustrate the flaws of overspecializing, and overgeneralizing. Builds like that are rare among more experienced gamers, because it is boring to have a character who can either only do one limited function well, or who can do many things, but not be effective at any of them.

Some concepts are flat out difficult to pull off by the rules. And that's the problem with doing the character background first, if you are not that familiar with the rules. Mundane characters tend to be difficult to pull off, since augmentation gives so many bonuses, and awakening gives so many cool abilities. You can still do them - they can walk past both cyberware scanners and assensing security mages. They can use high-tech gear and combat drugs to keep up in combat. They can be snipers, hackers, or techies. But they are not as good at front-line fighting, and they require more planning and cunning to be effective.

Face works fine aswell. Max Edge is must. I have one, but i admit he lost about 1.4 points of essence to some bioware (needed to avert Jazz/Cram addiction, that synaptic booster works fine)

You can get pretty nice social dice pools by going high charisma dryad and with a charisma stream that means you also have pretty nice fading resistance pool.
And if your generally speaking the face of the team and not the main hacker, you can consentrate on the more intresting aspects of being a TM.
But even as a main hacker that build should do just fine, even if she maybe a tad more dependent on sprites and threading.


I'm actually just building a character combining these two thinks, he's an occult investigator heavily inspired by Harry Dresden(with a little bit of John Constantine thrown into the mix)
Calling rules just seem to match much more with what Harry does in the books then summoning.

Edit: To preface that TM/face comment, i only use karmagen, which migh heavily impact what i concider to be a viable concept.

Anyone feel like building some of these concept characters and filling this thread with these almost never used builds? I'm already working on my mundane banisher. Some of these concepts you would need a bit of extra karma to make so if you do need it remember to list how much you used and for what just to make it easier on the rest of us (ie me.)

for an Investigator, I'd like to play a Rorschach-inspired Character at some point. Focused on melee combat and maxed Intimidation for social interactions. maybe even incompetent (etiquette). I'm not sure if he'd be mundance, cybered or adept, that's for the player to chose. He needs loads of street cred, so everyone will fearfully duck when he enters a bar to legwork

Here's a quick and rough build of TM/Face

Dryad

B 3
A 3
R 3
S 2
C 6
I 4
L 5
W 4

E 3

R 6

Cracking (Group) 4
Tasking (Group) 4
Electronics (Group) 3
Influence (Group) 3
Athletics (Group) 1
Pistols (Tasers) 2(+2)

Positive Qualities:
Technomancer (Stream Techno Shaman)

Negative Qualities:
In Debt (30000)
Allergy (Uncommon, Mild)

Complex Forms:
Analyze 3
Browse 4
Edit 4
Scan 3
Armor 4
Attack 3
Descrypt 3
Exploit 3
Stealth 4
Track 3


30k (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) to buy gear with
59 karma to buy contacts and knowledge skills(if you GM is adamant that karmagen characters dont get any free knowledge point, which IMO is the only thrawback in karmagen)

Build with the errated karmagen, 750 karma.

Huh, a dryad TM. I can say I have never seen that online or in RL. I don't have my copy of RC with me but are dryads linked to a location in SR like they are in some other games?

I had an idea I've thought about using for this with just a slight modification from RAW to enable it.

Using the Arsenal martial arts rule, I wanted to make a martial artist using Tai Chi or whatever the equivalent one was that gave you a bonus to Attacks of Will. If the GM is willing to let me take Banishing as a mundane for the sole purpose of Attacks of Will, (which you don't have to be magical to do anyways, but Banishing stacks for those attacks, making them more viable), then I just get 20 BP in Tai Chi for + to attacks of will. Maybe use the mundane martial arts to branch out into close combat stuff, but mostly, it'd be a character focused on punching spirits away.

I could just do this as an adept build to get Banishing in a more legitimate way, but I feel like that would be a copout, because then you might as well just go the Astral Perception route and be done with it, you know? And it's not like Banishing is exactly game-breaking even if I wasn't just using it for AoW, so I could see a GM agreeing to this.

Rocker. For fun, mix it up and make sure they're Awakened.
(Labels won't touch them, but it's fun to try and get to the top anyway)

-Tir.

Here. No calling though.

We have a "Lucky Eddie" character. An unaugmented, mundane human with 8 Edge and a wide base of skills. He ends up being the jack of all trades guy that can do anything at least a few times each run (by throwing edge into the roll).

When I first read the biowire stuff. I really wanted to make a street samurai with no implants, and just using straght up technomancer foo. But then i realized that the extra ip's only worked in vr, and i was a sad player.

Couple of ideas I had
Sniper/Rigger
Demolitions/rigger
StreetDoc

I had an idea for a very specialized investigator
Math SPU, Attention Co-processor, Assensing, Arcana.

But no spells, and no summoning.