A little something extra, "bonus" for the starting characters Options

[phydaux]

I'm making a bunch of characters for a Shadowrun 3rd Ed. demo I'll be running at my local FLAGS. All of the characters will be 100% 3rd Ed. rulebook - No gear from ANY of the other 3rd Ed. sources.

These are the characters I'll be making:

Human Hermetic
Human Shaman (undecided on the totum, leaning either Rat or Dog)
Elf Phys Adept
Troll Bodyguard
Human Street Sam
Dwarf Merc

While these will all be starting characters, I want to give each of them a little something "extra" to make them each a bit more special and flesh them out a little.

I'm thinking the Hermetic will get a Spell Focus, the Shaman a Spirit Focus and the Adapt a Weapon Focus.

That was the easy part. I'm a little stumped about what to do for the mundanes.

I could simply up their primary abilities a little (Unarmed Combat for the Troll, Stealth/Athletics for the Sam and Shotguns for the Dwarf) but that seems like the easy way out.

Do any of you have any ideas on what to give some starting mundanes to make them a little more three dimentional?

[Critias]

You might want to set up two or three little packages for each character. Like let the Sam pick from +1 to smg's and a customized Ingram Smartgun or +1 to pistols and a fancy hand-cannon, or +1 to edged weapons an a dikoted combat knife, +1 to rifles and a Ranger Arms.

It'd be something cool but not necessarily game breaking, that would (a) let them customize their character a little bit so they feel important, and (b) give them a karma and nuyen boost, which is what all the already-bonded foci are.

I mean, you'd be fudging it with numbers a little, of course, depending on what skills they've got the official karma cost of that little "+1" could vary wildly (so you'd have to look at the sheets you have prepared thus far, and maybe take their final modified skill level into account when spending the cash on their extra prize).... but for a one-shot demo game, a little oversimplification isn't necessarily a bad thing.

[Fortune]

You could always give some Beta Cyberware or Cultured Bioware to the mundanes.

[hyzmarca]

Troll Bodyguard. I have an image of a Troll MIB standing at attention and looking all stoic. Then, a punk teenager steps just a little too close and the bodyguard extends a previously well concealed retractable batton with a simle on his face.
Body guards and retractable battons just go together. Boddyguards and smacking down harmless punks who get too close go together, as well.

[phydaux]

The Troll has STR 10, Titanium Bone Lacing and Unarmed Combat with the specialization "The Pimp Hand."

Anyone gets too close and SMACK goes the bitch slap, right across the face.

[Grinder]

A weapon focus for the adept is imo a little too much, considering the nuyen cost for it. But guess in the bbb is nothing else for an adept iirc, so it's ok.

[kevyn668]

[Rieal82]

[SpasticTeapot]

Better, get an Elf physad and give him Killing Hands. KH-Serious plus improved reflexes II plus 6 extra dice in unarmed combat(all geasa'd in some way or another) will let you bitch-slap a troll into last week. It also shows how a physad works; you're not as fast, or as powerful, as your chromed counterpart, but you're able to obtain a boatload of extra dice and can do amazing things with your bare hands that street samurai can only dream of.
I, personally, would make the troll the mercenary, and make the bodyguard an elf. Trolls are prone to making people feel uncomfortable, wheras elves tend to do well in social situations. (They're also much faster on the draw.) Give the troll a heavy weapon of some sort, and let him (her?) tear loose with heavy damage. Smartlinks, bone plating, and cybereyes would be the only cyberware.
The dwarf, in my opinion, should be a weapons specialist. Give him cybereyes with high-power magnification, and a smartlink-II setup, and boosted reflexes if you feel appropriate. Give him skills in assault rifles, pistols, shotguns, and SMG's, and give him a plethora of weapons to choose from. This character could function as a sniper, as well; even an assault rifle is pretty effective at sniping with level-III vision magnification.
Make the elf a speed demon with high charisma and plenty of points in pistols and SMGs. Boosted reflexes III or wired reflexes 1 would leave the character fast enough for bodyguard work, and leave enough essence for a headware radio, smartlinks, and a set of cybereyes wih low-light, thermal, and ultrasound. A few points in driving ability would not only be appropriate, but give the characters the ever-useful ability to get around town without needing to hail a taxi.
Give the human street samurai move-by-wire or the ever-popular boosted reflexes/bioware combo and bone plating, skills in SMGs, assault rifles, and edged weapons. He shoulld have a low willpower and an intelligence of 3 or so, with almost no contacts and a predisposition to twitchiness. Make roleplaying this character annoying until combat ocurs, in which case he can ventilate enimies with startling accuracy and speed.
I, personally, would use Bear as the shaman's totem. Bear's predisposition to go berserk differentiates him from the mage, who at first glance seem identical. Also, I would make the shaman an Ork; it would allow the group to have at least one member of each race.

[Critias]

Yeah. Just remake everyone, dude. Nevermind your actual question, or anything.

[Eyeless Blond]

A troll bodyguard, a human sam, and a dwarf merc, eh? And you're giving the elf at least a Force 1 weapon focus, so the "something special" should be worth about 100,000 nuyen, give or take? The key here is figuring out how you plan on differentiating between the three aerchtypes, and play to that. What sets the bodyguard aerchtype apart from the merc aerchtype, or from the sam?

The dwarf merc, for instance, you could give a half-dozen or more extra level 2 contacts. These would represent buddies from his old platoon back in whatever war he came out of, before they all got discharged and went to work for themselves. They'll all work in different industries that happen to support each other well: one would be a medic-type running a street clinic; two would be weapons dealers, decently overlapping professions but with specializations: one dealing primarily with melee and concealable weapons/special order ammunition, while the other deals mainly in heavier ordinance, grenades, rocket launchers, crowd-pleasing sorts of things. :) Another might be a rigger, and get you guys transport to/from runs; another a decker, etc. Give him a decent Cha and Ettiquite(Mercenary) skill, keep his cyber fairly light (Essence ~3) and his skills high, and he'll be the "supply-guy" for your team, which I note lacks a good Face character to do that sort of role. He could also go out drinking with them fairly often, which is a decent way to play up the fun "dwarves love their ale" stereotype. :D

The bodyguard, hmm. Let's make him big on the covert ops and surveilance deal. Give him a good selection of tools for surveilance and B&E, like a good maglock passkey, as much Sensorware as you can reasonably pack on, maybe an alpha VCR1 and an RC deck in a cyberlimb, a few Condor blimp drones w/ high Sig and Sensor packages for that "Eye in the Sky" deal, etc. Focus his skills on the same: Electronics, Stealth(Awareness), etc. Basically make this guy the kind of bodyguard who protects people by knowing everything that's going on around him and planning accordingly. If a fly sneezes seven blocks away he hears about it and has contingency plan in case that fly has a microbomb implanted on it. :)

If you *really* want to make the sam unique, you give him 100,000 nuyen worth of bioware from M&M. Reflex recorders, a mnemonic enhancer, enhanced artwinkulation, etc etc. Explain it ass "unique" bleeding-edge 'ware, which he gets from his L2 bioware researcher buddy. He'll have the lowest Essence of the group, but that's okay because when he gets into combat he'll be twitch-killing an army before they can blink, especially if the dwarf merc gets him the proper tools to do his job. :)