Gillette-Sammy became obsolete? (long) Options

[Inncubi]

From a different topic I posted an opinion that, after some time, became quite constant in my group: They don't want/need a sammy as part of their team. First, I'll deffine roughly what do I mean by a Street Samurai. Second I'll post the reasons for the argument. I'd like to hear from you on this topic.

A disclaimer:
I'm not saying that samurais aren't powerful characters. They are: they roll huge buckets of dice for shooting, punching and slashing. Second, this doesn't involve so much character concept, as much usefulness of the archetype, because, damn, a Sammy can be cool. In this sense some builds may vary, a hacking sammy that can do other stuff in a proficient way may break the argument I'm doing here, so I'll try to stick to the classic role in the party for these characters. That role being muscle.

Many of these arguments can /also/ be extrapolated to the Physads. This is true, however I decided to keep them still since their initiation and ability to perceive in astral, and the possibility to build wards sets them apart, for now. If you ask me I'd rather have mystic adepts than full blown physads in a team.

A) The Deffinition of Street Samurai:
These are characters that use cyberware or bioware as primary for their combat skills. They are the riflemen in a group, the demolitions experts and martial artists. They are part tank and part damage dealer in MMORPG terminology. They can stop a Panther Assault Cannon round with their chest and come out of it alive thanks to armour layering, dermal sheaths, bone lacings, etc. These characters are a classic in the Cyperpunk theme, and may very well be the roughest, toughest, meanest killing machine on the streets.

Now, the question of a million (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) : Are they still needed as much as your hacker, rigger or mage in a group?
My argument will try to deny this.

B) Sammy Skillset (SR4):
A proficient sammy knows: Firearms (or subsets), Close Combat (when was the last time you saw a sammy take: Incompetent Unarmed Combat, or Blades for that matter?), Stealth, Etiquette and Athletics. That's a minimum to consider one viable to be added to a team. Demolition guys, medics and tech-savvy ones may be a bonus, but not the rule.

C) Why we don't want a player to roll a Sammy (from a team efficiency point of view)?:
The past subset of skills can easily be covered in other ways by other characters who have additional talents. This is the main argument.
Let's start with the obvious one: firearms and Close-Combat.

C.1) Rifleman and Knife-man:
Sammies shoot very nicely, so you want one on your team. They also take damage, instead of squishy mage. Drones can do this, and even more efficiently. They don't need patching up, can be reapired if the team has someone with mechanics and can be optimised much cheaper than the cyberware a Street Sam carries. For sensors you can add and mix and share information from lots of little robots. On the other hand if your Steel Lynx is shot beyond repairs you don't go al guilt ridden for stripping it of base components and sell them to a junkyard. A Sammy is a pal, an alive team member who also needs to be taken care of -like squishy mage-. In a pinch I'd rather have the dornes do more shooting instead of the Sammy if just to make sure my friend doens't get hurt.

Close combat is a tricky one, but a summoned spirit can usually do the trick. Also an Adept or mystic adept, that can initiate and get nifty powers during play, can replace the sammy. Yes, they will not have all the dice the sammy has, and they may, at the start, be less powerful than him. But each can outgrow by far the sammy for practical reasons. The adept can support astrally with perception and a weapon focus, and can also carve enemy martial artists. For a gunbunny adept there is pure win, since they can combine magic and shooting for huge exploding dice. The mystic adept has some minor sorcery and conjuring to aid in his "Close Combatiness", and after a while, with functional spells this guy supports a lot the group (he has utility spells like analyze device, detect enemies, Detect RFID tag and Wreck RFID tag, for a magical tag eraser which does take care of stealth and reinforced RFID's). He can also initiate, and get nifty metamagic.

The Combat Hacker does a lot the sammy can do, add some skillwires and he's also incredibly versatile. Just see how the Lieutenants on mook groups are hackers /and/ warriors (SR4, BBB, pp.275 and 276). Same, and even better, is the combat technomancer, who uses agents and sprites to support the other team members, has a nigh unhackable brain -except by other virtuakinetics- and can go through submersion.

The Rigger -or Drone and vehicle hacker- can do a lot of the aforementioned, plus scouting, driving, all of this keeping at a safe distance form harm. He's an artillerist, air support and get-away pal rolled into one. Again, his drones make the need for a Sammy pretty much a thing of the past.

C.2) The Stealth Issue:
Now, you need to get inside a facility, with narrow corridors and do a classic extraction scenario. You can't send with waves of drones, armies of spirits or hack-and-slash your way inside. You need a Samurai to support you once inside, if the going gets tough. I say wrong, with a caveat: I have to accept this is one of the scenarios where having one wouldn't hurt. However, the Combat Hacker, and you want him inside in many cases so he takes care of maglocks and maintains the team's node going, can stealth himself inside as well. Just get him the skill or the Skillsoft for it.

Now, suppose the extraction team is composed with one mage and one Combat hacker. Outside there's teh rest of the team: another hacker/technomancer and the rigger. Such a team can hit nodes stealthily and open doors, cancel alarms and have the building work for the pc's instead of against them. Mage has drones, spirits and watchers. They do scouting. And yes, mage has drones: He relies on Pilot agents and good matrix security measures, this relieves the team's rigger's commlink on less critical drones -sensor pods, easy to maneuver fly-spies, repeater drones, etc-. He also has tons of sensors on his person that feed him intel on surroundings. They can bypass almost any barrier: both can shoot, one can deal with astral badies and the other matrix threats.

C.3) Etiquette and Athletics.
This is the easy part as rarely the Samurai is also the face of the group. He needs so much in physical attributes that charisma is his -usually- dumpstat. Athletics are almost a moot point, since either it can be covered with magic (levitate instead of climb), and even if you have tons of it you'll need to help the team members that don't have it.

As an ending paragraph I'd like to say that a team of 'runners is best covered when you make slightly redundant, heavily supported characters. Don't be master of one, jack-of none. Generalists, when supported by another character who can do similar thing -maybe with abit less expertise than you-, can go over the specialised and in more situations (E.g: Mages with a bt of infiltration, athletics and computer. Also some driving skill could be nice, or easily covered with Pilot agents) . They can tackle variability and adapt easier, this kind of team build focuses on specially talented team members (technomancers, mages, adepts) and highly technological users (Hackers, Riggers). These guys, with the resources a sammy spends on his body, can easily overcome huge threats.
As a side note, software and computer skills would be a must for this runner team. As well as technical and programming skills: the team will eventually want tobe able to produce items, software and other goodies -desktop forges, programming suites, forgery for some extra cash, etc-. The sammy takes the place of a valuable team member and doesn't offer much.

[Machiavelli]

I remember one sentence from an old weapons book. I think it was in version 2 where somebody said to an all-purpose-HMG that he didn´t knew something like that could have more purposes than killing people. That is exactly what the sammy is for, and if you have one, it is never a loss. Like every other character-type, if you have one: good. If not, it could work with additional abilities of comrades in the team. But not as good as with the sammy. I like my sams around me, they do their job great and for all the other stuff, we have other character-types. The more skills you buy out of your speciality, the more you suck in your field of work. Its a walk on a thin line. I would keep the old order.^^

[counterveil]

For me it's almost mostly a flavor thing. We're playing in 2052 using SR4 rules, so magic is rare®, to my understanding. To that end I *requested* that we only have 1 or 2 magic-capable characters in a group of 6. We ended up with 2 mages, 1 adept and 3 varied sammy-like characters...go figure. As it turned out, the 2 mages never come to game, so it's mostly a gunbunny-style group. Due to the way I run the game (varied scenarios and no power creep on NPCs), our gunbunnies have opted to spread their skillset instead of specializing so much since they can easily get away with medium-to-high skill levels.

Are they still sammies? Sure - but the operating realities dictated to them by my GMing style have pushed them more towards generalization and redundancy and less towards the classic specialization of the rocked-out, hardcore, eat-my-fist Street Samurai of classic Shadowrun. Well, except for the full-limb-torso-head replacement tank, but he's just fun as hell. So we end up with a pistol-adept moving towards face skills, a heavy-weapons samurai moving towards piloting and demolitions, and a combat-hacker-medic improving his weapons skills.

From a numbers and purely analytical perspective? Sure, I'll concede on most of your points, but everyone has a different style of play and each GM has different ways of running their campaign. For me, there will always be room for the "Samurai" in my games.

[Inncubi]

Shortly after I posted I kept thinking that where Sammies really shone were as independent, individual runners. The others need a team to shine, and have it become more than the sum of its parts -basically my argument in the above post-. A sammie is one of the characters with the highest chances to survive and thrive on his own on the streets, for the exact same reasons as before: Sure a drone can shoot, but the sammie doesn't need the tech to do so. He is, by himself a weapon, and there's a market for that in the shadows.

So, I'd say that sammies are still there only working as independent agents more than part of a team, in, obviously, the contracts that they are good at. Possibly not going to bust any wards at the magic research facility, but they can hunt a missing corp child and bring him back.

Oh and yep, the Stoner-Ares 107 HMG from the Street Sammie Catalog, the swiss army knife of killing people.

[Screaming Eagle]

The team I am currently running has a near totally combat dedicated Phy-ad - a Sammi for most purposes. Killing hands, mystic armor, critical strike, some more mystic armor, some more critical strike and berserk. He would have been more effective, points and raw damage wise, had he gone straight cyberware so I think he's relevant to your argument.

I, as the poor GM, don't get notice till last minute if this machine of pain is avalaible so I typically scale the opposition for his presence/ believablity, I scale it rough, they've got good guns, decent skill and are oft trigger happy. When he doesn't show the team cannot "kick in the door", an option he not only opens for the team but activly endorses where it is not obviously stupid. Most of them have some compotency at combat, but not enough to go toe to toe with any decently sized slice of security onsite for any but the "easiest" of runs. So they have to be extra careful - a margin of error has been removed. They can typically get away with setting the alarms off once they are most of the way out, but if they set them off on the way in its bust without the meat-shield berserker. Can they do the run without him? Heck yes. Then again they usually manage without needing the medics skills and "can do the run without him". Missing out on the mage one week was a real blow but they managed.

[Larme]

C.1) Rifleman and Knife-man:
Sammies shoot very nicely, so you want one on your team. They also take damage, instead of squishy mage. Drones can do this, and even more efficiently. They don't need patching up, can be reapired if the team has someone with mechanics and can be optimised much cheaper than the cyberware a Street Sam carries. For sensors you can add and mix and share information from lots of little robots. On the other hand if your Steel Lynx is shot beyond repairs you don't go al guilt ridden for stripping it of base components and sell them to a junkyard. A Sammy is a pal, an alive team member who also needs to be taken care of -like squishy mage-. In a pinch I'd rather have the dornes do more shooting instead of the Sammy if just to make sure my friend doens't get hurt.

A steel lynx is a lot more limited than a street samurai in combat. It can't take cover in most places, it can't navigate all types of terrain, it can't jump, can't squeeze through narrow spaces... It also is going to have a much worse defense pool. A drone is going to me limited to Response + Dodge with a jumped in pilot, and Response caps at 6. A samurai, on the other hand, has Reaction that caps at 9, plus a possible 6 gymnastics, + 3 synthacardium, + 1 enhanced articulation, + 1 reflex recorder, + 2 Reakt... Under extreme duress, in other words, your shooter goes down if it's a drone, but is less likely to go down if it's a streetsam.

Close combat is a tricky one, but a summoned spirit can usually do the trick. Also an Adept or mystic adept, that can initiate and get nifty powers during play, can replace the sammy. Yes, they will not have all the dice the sammy has, and they may, at the start, be less powerful than him. But each can outgrow by far the sammy for practical reasons. The adept can support astrally with perception and a weapon focus, and can also carve enemy martial artists. For a gunbunny adept there is pure win, since they can combine magic and shooting for huge exploding dice. The mystic adept has some minor sorcery and conjuring to aid in his "Close Combatiness", and after a while, with functional spells this guy supports a lot the group (he has utility spells like analyze device, detect enemies, Detect RFID tag and Wreck RFID tag, for a magical tag eraser which does take care of stealth and reinforced RFID's). He can also initiate, and get nifty metamagic.

Adepts are impractical as a concept without cyberware. Some day, maybe after a year of game play, an uncybered adept can exceed a starting streetsam. But as far as I'm concerned, combat adepts are just a subset of street samurai because they have some cool abilities, but need at least some cyber to start out decently. Yeah, it's true that the Adept will some day be better, but not to such a degree that it matters IMO. The streetsam can start out so close to the top of her game that she'll never become obsolete, even after years of gameplay. And after years of gameplay, the Adept might have exceeded the streetsam at her one or two focused skills, while the streetsam will have every skill you'd ever need. You can't discount the usefulness of versatility.

I'm not sure what you mean about Adepts being able to carve enemy martial artists. Why is that good? Carving in general is highly inefficient. You want to shoot/blow up enemy martial artists. Guns give you multiple attacks per round at high DV with good AP, rolling skill + attribute against enemy Reaction. Martial arts give you just one attack per round, with skill + attribute vs. skill + attribute. Close combat is never efficient except when you're using it on Surprise as a silent takedown -- the counter to martial arts is guns.

The Combat Hacker does a lot the sammy can do, add some skillwires and he's also incredibly versatile. Just see how the Lieutenants on mook groups are hackers /and/ warriors (SR4, BBB, pp.275 and 276). Same, and even better, is the combat technomancer, who uses agents and sprites to support the other team members, has a nigh unhackable brain -except by other virtuakinetics- and can go through submersion.

You're forgetting SR4A's change -- skillsofts cost rating x 10000. You might as well cross them off the list, they're ok to have, but generally too expensive to be practical.

Combat technomancer? What are you smoking? Yeah, technomancers can become hacking gods, but that costs them ALL their BP and ALL their karma. You're never going to see a combat technomancer unless you play the same character for years.

And it's true that combat hackers are sweet, they'll just never have the combat versatility that a streetsam has, because so much of their resources goes into hacking and not combat. In a truly heavy combat situation, the hacker folds, but the streetsam is in her element.

The Rigger -or Drone and vehicle hacker- can do a lot of the aforementioned, plus scouting, driving, all of this keeping at a safe distance form harm. He's an artillerist, air support and get-away pal rolled into one. Again, his drones make the need for a Sammy pretty much a thing of the past.

Drones can't get anywhere near the dice pool of a streetsam. And no, riggers do not combine stealth and combat. Streetsams do -- they can fight like devils while also being sneaky. For riggers, it's either or -- either you send the tiny, worthless drone that's quiet, or you send the big bad drone that can't be damaged, but also sets off every alarm from here to Albuquerque. There's no such thing as a well armed and armored drone that's also quiet. If you send any drone with less than 20 damage resistance dice, you're going to lose it in any kind of dangerous situation.

C.2) The Stealth Issue:
Now, you need to get inside a facility, with narrow corridors and do a classic extraction scenario. You can't send with waves of drones, armies of spirits or hack-and-slash your way inside. You need a Samurai to support you once inside, if the going gets tough. I say wrong, with a caveat: I have to accept this is one of the scenarios where having one wouldn't hurt. However, the Combat Hacker, and you want him inside in many cases so he takes care of maglocks and maintains the team's node going, can stealth himself inside as well. Just get him the skill or the Skillsoft for it.

I think you're overestimating the combat hacker, or thinking about some pretty soft facilities. I made a pretty badass combat hacker, but the only way to do it was to make huge sacrifices. She can stealth and hack and fight, but to do that she had to take Logic 1 and no Hardware skill. Combat hackers can be powerful and versatile, but they cannot be universal. At least, not with the SR4A cost increase in skillsofts. In previous errata versions you might be right, but not anymore.

Now, suppose the extraction team is composed with one mage and one Combat hacker. Outside there's teh rest of the team: another hacker/technomancer and the rigger. Such a team can hit nodes stealthily and open doors, cancel alarms and have the building work for the pc's instead of against them. Mage has drones, spirits and watchers. They do scouting. And yes, mage has drones: He relies on Pilot agents and good matrix security measures, this relieves the team's rigger's commlink on less critical drones -sensor pods, easy to maneuver fly-spies, repeater drones, etc-. He also has tons of sensors on his person that feed him intel on surroundings. They can bypass almost any barrier: both can shoot, one can deal with astral badies and the other matrix threats.

I don't know why everyone thinks watchers are so great. Something's just attractive about the word "watcher," I guess. But with all around 1's, they don't even have the Perception to notice anything beyond the obvious.

Mage has drones? Lol. I've never seen nor heard of a mage who can afford drones, let alone drones with souped up Pilots, and Agents to deal with the hacking. That's just impossible. Maybe some day after years of running, if instead of buying foci to become a good mage, you buy programs to become a shitty hacker and rigger. Not an efficient use of resources though, IMO.

Again, you're overselling both the combat mage and the combat hacker. Neither is bad, but neither is as all-powerful as you claim, especially not starting out of chargen. The streetsam can deal with spirits just fine as long as he brings stick-n-shock, WP grenades, zapper rockets, or any number of things. The hacker is always good, but the mage is optional -- only once in a blue moon will you encounter a magical threat that a street samurai truly cannot handle. Against spirits, it's halve the armor and shock them to hell, and against enemy mages, it's go first and geek them.

Your argument is not based on realstic assessments of other build types. You're combining an overstatement of mages and hackers with a critique of the limitations in a samurai's build. You're also making an artificial distinction between combat adepts and sammies, even though the sammy starts out a lot better and the two fulfill nearly the same role. You're also making riggers into gods by pretending that a whole army of really limited drones (i.e. small ones that can sneak and big ones that can fight) somehow creates a cohesive whole that's better than a streetsam (who can bring drones of his own, mind you, if he feels like it). And finally, you're creating a false choice between a samurai and some other more versatile builds. What if your team has a hacker, a mage, and a rigger? Would you prefer another hacker, another mage, or another rigger?

Finally, the worst fallacy of your argument is that you're defining street samurai narrowly, as characters that only have a narrow set of abilities. And then you're defining every other build as broadly as possible -- the hacker is also a combat expert, the mage is also a hacker and a rigger (lol)... Shadowrun is a classless system, no matter your archetype. Samurai can be just as versatile as anyone else. To the extent your critique has any meaning at all, it is to point out that single-focus characters are generally less useful than versatile ones. Duh. Next please.

[Adarael]

Disclaimer: this is my personal take.

The Street Samurai is the consummate Runner. Shadowrunning, black ops, terrorism and counter-terrorism are his profession. He is the swiss army knife of any team. While others are specialists in roles the ronin dabbles in, the ronin is generally not a master of any one field. The ronin's mastery lies in his adaptability. Is a door locked that the hacker is too busy to open? The ronin can crack it, or force it open with enhanced muscles, or blow it down with a charge. Is there an enemy security team? The ronin can shoot them, or use his implants, or beat them to death with his hands. The ronin can hear and see better, can react as fast or faster, and can infiltrate in ways inconvenient for most others. Are you being jammed? A ronin can use electronics warfare suites to counteract it on the fly, if the hacker is engaged in a node... or he can go into autistic mode, and approach undetected. Is someone lacking a skill that's needed? That's ok; the ronin has a chip for that and the skillwires to run it. And at the end of the day, if you need someone who can wade into a cloud of chlorine gas, bullets, and hatchet-wielding maniacs, the ronin has the chops to do it, survive, and absorb all the hits.

The ronin isn't a specialist - most of the time - but he can do almost any job.

[Inncubi]

A steel lynx is a lot more limited than a street samurai in combat. It can't take cover in most places, it can't navigate all types of terrain, it can't jump, can't squeeze through narrow spaces... It also is going to have a much worse defense pool. A drone is going to me limited to Response + Dodge with a jumped in pilot, and Response caps at 6. A samurai, on the other hand, has Reaction that caps at 9, plus a possible 6 gymnastics, + 3 synthacardium, + 1 enhanced articulation, + 1 reflex recorder, + 2 Reakt... Under extreme duress, in other words, your shooter goes down if it's a drone, but is less likely to go down if it's a streetsam.

A steel lynx doesn't bleed, a steel lynx can be bought and sold, a steel lynx can be four steel lynxes. They, with walker mods, can take cover pretty much as good as any characterand are shorter. Better than a character stat-wise? Certainly not, that wasn't my argument in any case. Can they take teh role of main shooter. Yes, and that was my argument. You don't /need/ all those augmentations to get the job done. You help, but can be done without in a very efficient way, enough that the role can be taken.

Adepts are impractical as a concept without cyberware. Some day, maybe after a year of game play, an uncybered adept can exceed a starting streetsam. But as far as I'm concerned, combat adepts are just a subset of street samurai because they have some cool abilities, but need at least some cyber to start out decently. Yeah, it's true that the Adept will some day be better, but not to such a degree that it matters IMO. The streetsam can start out so close to the top of her game that she'll never become obsolete, even after years of gameplay. And after years of gameplay, the Adept might have exceeded the streetsam at her one or two focused skills, while the streetsam will have every skill you'd ever need. You can't discount the usefulness of versatility.

I'm not sure what you mean about Adepts being able to carve enemy martial artists. Why is that good? Carving in general is highly inefficient. You want to shoot/blow up enemy martial artists. Guns give you multiple attacks per round at high DV with good AP, rolling skill + attribute against enemy Reaction. Martial arts give you just one attack per round, with skill + attribute vs. skill + attribute. Close combat is never efficient except when you're using it on Surprise as a silent takedown -- the counter to martial arts is guns.

I know that to start "decently" is to have godloads of dice to roll. Specially on optimized builds that are specialized. Street Samurais shine on this as they can take huge ammounts of goodies towards this end. Beyond that they don't provide for extra nifty goodies (like warding). The Adept doesn't need to surpass the Samurai in every skill, he should be able to just perform effciently. As for they being something like a street samurai, I said on my disclaimer that many of these arguments stand, in fact, also regarding adepts. Take that to almost every combat-focused build, in deterrence to have a versatile ammount of abilities. I never took away the usefulness of versatility. The contrary is true, I think a team that is composed of versatile runners has no need for the sammy, in its tradiitonal combat monster role.

So as to close-combat efficiency, it depends on the situation as someitmes you don't want to shoot anyone. But I agree with you that its not the best way to "deal" with opposition. However when it becomes crucial the adept can do it adequately, taking over the sammy's role.

You're forgetting SR4A's change -- skillsofts cost rating x 10000. You might as well cross them off the list, they're ok to have, but generally too expensive to be practical.

That, I am. I don't have SR4A. I mean from a SR4 point of view. Point is yours.

Combat technomancer? What are you smoking? Yeah, technomancers can become hacking gods, but that costs them ALL their BP and ALL their karma. You're never going to see a combat technomancer unless you play the same character for years.

And it's true that combat hackers are sweet, they'll just never have the combat versatility that a streetsam has, because so much of their resources goes into hacking and not combat. In a truly heavy combat situation, the hacker folds, but the streetsam is in her element.

Combat technomancers don't need to roll as many dice as the sammy, they will start weak but can be built into a nice addition to the party. Yes they have to be built though and go through submersion once or twice before being able to stand up to heavy fire. Now the technomancer, with decent dodge, say 3, and automatics at 3 plus specialization can survive enough to become a pain in the ass.

However given your arguments I just have to grant this pint as well. A Combat technomancer is not as good a fighter as a samurai. He can, though, get the submersion thing about skillwires and wired reflexes eventually too.

Drones can't get anywhere near the dice pool of a streetsam. And no, riggers do not combine stealth and combat. Streetsams do -- they can fight like devils while also being sneaky. For riggers, it's either or -- either you send the tiny, worthless drone that's quiet, or you send the big bad drone that can't be damaged, but also sets off every alarm from here to Albuquerque. There's no such thing as a well armed and armored drone that's also quiet. If you send any drone with less than 20 damage resistance dice, you're going to lose it in any kind of dangerous situation.

For riggers its either, or? I don't agree, many mods on drones makes them viable stealthers. True you can't be an artillerist /and/ a ninja. Neither can teh sammi: He doesn't shoot his assault rifle as silently as he does his silenced Predator. But Riggers /can/ survey the nodes, serve as backup hacker, command agents and check the sensors. And they can have the lynxes shoot when drek hits the fan -and they don't suffer from recoil, without having to pimp their guns-.

I think you're overestimating the combat hacker, or thinking about some pretty soft facilities. I made a pretty badass combat hacker, but the only way to do it was to make huge sacrifices. She can stealth and hack and fight, but to do that she had to take Logic 1 and no Hardware skill. Combat hackers can be powerful and versatile, but they cannot be universal. At least, not with the SR4A cost increase in skillsofts. In previous errata versions you might be right, but not anymore.

I never asked for universal, just versatile. And I'm sure you can make a decent combat hacker with logic 3 or 4. Just get agility, strength and reaciton into the 3-4 range. On the other hand, I know how your "optimized builds" look. he probably was scary. As hell. I say, you don't to be /that/ scary to get the job done, and enjoy the beenfits of more things to do as a team asset besides shooting.

I don't know why everyone thinks watchers are so great. Something's just attractive about the word "watcher," I guess. But with all around 1's, they don't even have the Perception to notice anything beyond the obvious.

Useful, minor intel gatherers and watchdogs. Not universal machines of über destruction.

[Inncubi]

Mage has drones? Lol. I've never seen nor heard of a mage who can afford drones, let alone drones with souped up Pilots, and Agents to deal with the hacking. That's just impossible. Maybe some day after years of running, if instead of buying foci to become a good mage, you buy programs to become a shitty hacker and rigger. Not an efficient use of resources though, IMO.

The souped up come from the teams hacker and technomancer, and rigger. My point about this is to establish a strong team sinergy. A mage can command drones to go on autopilot and act, gather information and, again, shoot. they don't jump in. You are underselling the ability of autosofts a a decent, read 4, Pilot.

Again, you're overselling both the combat mage and the combat hacker. Neither is bad, but neither is as all-powerful as you claim, especially not starting out of chargen. The streetsam can deal with spirits just fine as long as he brings stick-n-shock, WP grenades, zapper rockets, or any number of things.The hacker is always good, but the mage is optional -- only once in a blue moon will you encounter a magical threat that a street samurai truly cannot handle. Against spirits, it's halve the armor and shock them to hell, and against enemy mages, it's go first and geek them.

Then stealth is out, specially with the zapper rockets. Banish, stunbolt or your friendly physad does the job just fine, and with less noise.
The mage has utility spells, like analyze device cst as a service form one his spirits and turn the hacker into a great hacking machine. The sam doesn't.

Your argument is not based on realstic assessments of other build types. You're combining an overstatement of mages and hackers with a critique of the limitations in a samurai's build. You're also making an artificial distinction between combat adepts and sammies, even though the sammy starts out a lot better and the two fulfill nearly the same role. You're also making riggers into gods by pretending that a whole army of really limited drones (i.e. small ones that can sneak and big ones that can fight) somehow creates a cohesive whole that's better than a streetsam (who can bring drones of his own, mind you, if he feels like it). And finally, you're creating a false choice between a samurai and some other more versatile builds. What if your team has a hacker, a mage, and a rigger? Would you prefer another hacker, another mage, or another rigger?

My argument is not about build types, and I said so at the start of the thread. Its about a character's role in a team. About adepts and sammies, read above, I already answered the issue. True about the sammie bringing drones, hopefully he will. And in that team you are proposing I'd say a second mage, a technomancer or a mystic adept, thank you very much. And from the three choices you give, mage, hands down.

Finally, the worst fallacy of your argument is that you're defining street samurai narrowly, as characters that only have a narrow set of abilities. And then you're defining every other build as broadly as possible -- the hacker is also a combat expert, the mage is also a hacker and a rigger (lol)...

Alright, this is your best argument. i think I may have commited the mistake of defining the samurai to narrowly, regarding the other characters. My bad. True. In any case I still think that for a team its better to have more mages, more hackers or a technomancer on a team with those roles already filled in -again for the sinergy it creates- than a samurai. What's more, since every character in Sahdowrun -or the huge, vast majority- will have some decent, passable combat skills, you don't need the samurai for the basic role he's supposed to fulfill. you can have other characters that can fight well enough that the team beats the opposition, and still do a myriad other things.

Shadowrun is a classless system, no matter your archetype. Samurai can be just as versatile as anyone else. To the extent your critique has any meaning at all, it is to point out that single-focus characters are generally less useful than versatile ones. Duh. Next please.

I agree, and yes you got my point. Except for the "Duh. Next please." No need to get high and mighty. But also one thing you missed: the samurai can be versatile, but other characters exploit much better that versatility than the sammy. Mage and hacker mainly, as they can serve as face (elven face shaman, anyone?) buff the teams defenses, program software and/or sumon spirits.

In any case I really liked Adarael's post.

[Mäx]

you can have other characters that can fight well enough that the team beats the opposition, and still do a myriad other things.

Except when they don't and your whole team is dead, just becouse you decided that "No, we don't really need a combat specialist, we rather have a second hacker".

[The Jake]

This same argument could be mounted for armed conflicts and the use of soldiers. "Why not use spirits or drones?"

Bottom line: there will always be a need for a man on the ground skilled in guns, stealth, combat. His skills/trappings/role and responsibilities may change but he will always exist.

- J.

[Larme]

A steel lynx doesn't bleed, a steel lynx can be bought and sold, a steel lynx can be four steel lynxes. They, with walker mods, can take cover pretty much as good as any characterand are shorter. Better than a character stat-wise? Certainly not, that wasn't my argument in any case. Can they take teh role of main shooter. Yes, and that was my argument. You don't /need/ all those augmentations to get the job done. You help, but can be done without in a very efficient way, enough that the role can be taken.

Four steel lynxes? Sure, but you'll need four vans to transport them, and probably divine intervention to survive the FRT coming down on you like a ton of bricks.

But your main point, that sammies don't need all those dice, that depends on the power level of the run. It might be true in the Shadowrun that you play, or even the Shadowrun that most people play. But I'd question why a streetsam who's overmodified for combat would be sent on jobs that can't challenge him? For killing rentacops, you can use anything, they suck. If your opponents are Red Samurai or worse, however, those extra dice might become exceedingly important, and the ability to sneak, hide, and be mobile might become a lot more valuable than the ability to be made of metal and expendable.

I know that to start "decently" is to have godloads of dice to roll. Specially on optimized builds that are specialized. Street Samurais shine on this as they can take huge ammounts of goodies towards this end. Beyond that they don't provide for extra nifty goodies (like warding). The Adept doesn't need to surpass the Samurai in every skill, he should be able to just perform effciently. As for they being something like a street samurai, I said on my disclaimer that many of these arguments stand, in fact, also regarding adepts. Take that to almost every combat-focused build, in deterrence to have a versatile ammount of abilities. I never took away the usefulness of versatility. The contrary is true, I think a team that is composed of versatile runners has no need for the sammy, in its tradiitonal combat monster role.

So as to close-combat efficiency, it depends on the situation as someitmes you don't want to shoot anyone. But I agree with you that its not the best way to "deal" with opposition. However when it becomes crucial the adept can do it adequately, taking over the sammy's role.

Because of all the points Adepts spend on magic, they are of necessity less versatile than even a samurai. This efficiency you speak of is out of their reach. A combat adept is less, not more vesatile than a sammy, because the sammy doesn't have to spend 50+ points on magic and the Adept quality.

Combat technomancers don't need to roll as many dice as the sammy, they will start weak but can be built into a nice addition to the party. Yes they have to be built though and go through submersion once or twice before being able to stand up to heavy fire. Now the technomancer, with decent dodge, say 3, and automatics at 3 plus specialization can survive enough to become a pain in the ass.

However given your arguments I just have to grant this pint as well. A Combat technomancer is not as good a fighter as a samurai. He can, though, get the submersion thing about skillwires and wired reflexes eventually too.

That is not a combat technomancer. That is an "omygodpleasedontkillme" technomancer. 3 dodge is not enough to avoid a shot by triad thugs, even. All technomancers are matrix based, their physical abilities of necessity are next to useless because technomancy costs so many BP. In other words, there is no such thing as a combat technomancer. You cannot, ever, in any way, replace a samurai's combat abilities with a technomancer's. A combat hacker, maybe, but never a technomancer. Not one who's any good at hacking, anyway.

For riggers its either, or? I don't agree, many mods on drones makes them viable stealthers. True you can't be an artillerist /and/ a ninja. Neither can teh sammi: He doesn't shoot his assault rifle as silently as he does his silenced Predator. But Riggers /can/ survey the nodes, serve as backup hacker, command agents and check the sensors. And they can have the lynxes shoot when drek hits the fan -and they don't suffer from recoil, without having to pimp their guns-.

Steel lynx is the minimum size of drone that can engage in combat without getting blown up near-instantly, anything smaller lacks the armor to survive a powerful shot. It can never be stealthy in any meaningful way. It's big, it's nasty, unmaneuverable, and unquiet.

I never asked for universal, just versatile. And I'm sure you can make a decent combat hacker with logic 3 or 4. Just get agility, strength and reaciton into the 3-4 range. On the other hand, I know how your "optimized builds" look. he probably was scary. As hell. I say, you don't to be /that/ scary to get the job done, and enjoy the beenfits of more things to do as a team asset besides shooting.

Again, it all depends on what power level you're playing at. What is "the job?" If the job is not that hard, then sure a combat hacker can do it. My own combat hacker has 16 dice for pistols, and 19 dice for ranged dodge. But she still has glaring holes which means she couldn't go through what a sammy could -- he body isn't great, she has no athletics skills, and she only knows one category of gun with any real skill. She can substitute for a samurai on a milk run, or even a relatively tough run, but not in a real hardcore situation. What you're saying is that you don't need samurai because you don't need anyone who's capable of fending off military grade threats. My response is: how do you know?

[Larme]

The souped up come from the teams hacker and technomancer, and rigger. My point about this is to establish a strong team sinergy. A mage can command drones to go on autopilot and act, gather information and, again, shoot. they don't jump in. You are underselling the ability of autosofts a a decent, read 4, Pilot.

Right, but a mage can't afford a drone with souped up stats and autosofts. They need 100% of their chargen resources to start out as good mages, and 100% of their post-chargen resources to become better mages. Anyone can have a drone on their team, but where does it come from, the drone fairy? If anyone has enough money to bring drones with them, it's probably the samurai, not the mage.

Then stealth is out, specially with the zapper rockets. Banish, stunbolt or your friendly physad does the job just fine, and with less noise.
The mage has utility spells, like analyze device cst as a service form one his spirits and turn the hacker into a great hacking machine. The sam doesn't.

Sure, mages are the best anti-magic. That doesn't mean that a samurai can't fight magic, and it doesn't mean that you'd always rather have a mage than a samurai. Given the option, every team would like to have a mage. But guess what the best anti-mage is? That's right, a samurai. Samurai goes first, shoots mage, spirit departs. Even the twinkiest combat mages I've built would not survive a face-to-face with a streetsam. Not that they always fight face to face, but my point is, each one counters the other. Neither is unecessary. The only way to protect a sammy from being geeked by magic is to bring a mage, and the only way to protect a mage from being geeked by a samurai is to bring a samurai. You need both to have a complete team, not one or the other.

Alright, this is your best argument. i think I may have commited the mistake of defining the samurai to narrowly, regarding the other characters. My bad. True. In any case I still think that for a team its better to have more mages, more hackers or a technomancer on a team with those roles already filled in -again for the sinergy it creates- than a samurai. What's more, since every character in Sahdowrun -or the huge, vast majority- will have some decent, passable combat skills, you don't need the samurai for the basic role he's supposed to fulfill. you can have other characters that can fight well enough that the team beats the opposition, and still do a myriad other things.

More than one mage is largely surplusage, and more than one hacker is almost certainly. The samurai does have a basic niche that nobody, except a combat adept (who's just another kind of samurai) can fill. The most important thing a sammy does, IMO, is protect the team from other sammies. The rest of the team might be able to handle themselves against grunts, but if a Prime Runner assassin shows up, you'd better have that muscle on your side or you're all dead. Your post assumes that the runs are going to have a consistent, not-too-oppressive difficulty level. I don't think there's any reason to expect that in a given game of Shadowrun, unless you already know what your GM likes to run, or unless you have a pre-game understanding about the maximum power level.

I agree, and yes you got my point. Except for the "Duh. Next please." No need to get high and mighty. But also one thing you missed: the samurai can be versatile, but other characters exploit much better that versatility than the sammy. Mage and hacker mainly, as they can serve as face (elven face shaman, anyone?) buff the teams defenses, program software and/or sumon spirits.

In any case I really liked Adarael's post.

Again, mages are the *least* versatile archetype because they literally have 0% left over resources to spend on other stuff at chargen. And if they spend their post-chargen resources on becoming versatile, they'll soon be outstripped by other mages. You don't design your team just so it can defeat rentacops, you have to imagine the chance that a Prime Runner or a team of them would show up. What would you do then? If everyone was half-this-half-that, if your combat was from a combat hacker and your rigging was fron a mage, you'd be fucked. You're right about efficiency, in an easy game setting. But you're wrong about efficiency in Shadowrun as a whole, because it is a quasi-realistic game world, containing not just rentacops, but threats that scale all the way up to the epic.

[Dikotana]

You're missing an interesting problem with the steel lynx. If it gets shot up, it's shot up. You pay to repair it. If it's shot up badly enough, you scrap it and buy another. Given the fact that no one will have any qualms killing drones and the fact that if you're packing steel lynxes security will come in with assault cannons I think this is likely to be a huge money sink.

Street samurai are tough if they're built right, but of course they'll get shot up too. But when they're injured, they'll very frequently fix their own problems with a (cheap) medkit and a few days' rest. Only when runs go direly wrong will they end up spending serious cash in a hospital.

And, well, what others said. A hacker can fill in for the lack of a street sam, sort of, but by the same reasoning a group without a hacker can have its hacker bone up on necessary skills and buy a decent commlink with the necessary programs. As good as a hacker? No, of course not, but probably enough to get some jobs done.

Finally, I wouldn't underestimate the benefits of a real human behind the eyes of the shooter. A drone's pilot just isn't as good as a person. A combat hacker can do the job himself, but even then his steel lynx isn't as mobile or as quick as the street sam.

Oh, and this is Shadowrun. If you don't have a samurai, you're doing it wrong.

[Malachi]

*shrug*

Shadowrun has no classes. Calling your character a "Street Sam" doesn't mean that you can only take shooting things and punching things skills. If your argument is that a character that can only shoot things and/or punch things is not needed that's fine. A good Street Sam build shouldn't be that narrow, anyway. However, it is also about play style. Some groups play SR with combat, a lot of combat. I prefer more stealth-based with sporadic, brief combat engagements, but YMMV. Play the game whatever style suits your fun-factor.

[hobgoblin]

This same argument could be mounted for armed conflicts and the use of soldiers. "Why not use spirits or drones?"

Bottom line: there will always be a need for a man on the ground skilled in guns, stealth, combat. His skills/trappings/role and responsibilities may change but he will always exist.

- J.

unless your looking at a squad of AI's in anthroforms. But then i guess they can be comparable to a squad of men in heavy combat armor, or the equivalent with full cyberlimb replacement as a suite...

[The Jake]

unless your looking at a squad of AI's in anthroforms. But then i guess they can be comparable to a squad of men in heavy combat armor, or the equivalent with full cyberlimb replacement as a suite...

You're not thinking laterally enough.

I am saying there will always be a need for a human with those skills. As I said, his role may change. You wouldn't send a soft/squishy human into those situations obviously. That's retarded.

But you will send him into situations where you need someone to slip past check points, drive down the street in a car without attracting the attention of law enforcement, pass through airport security, etc. Which I thought was the purpose of shadowrun.

Those items are very fixed in purpose and will never be as useful as a street samurai (or any suitable representation of an augmented combat wombat).

- J.

[Jaid]

i'm gonna have to agree with the opinion that you've defined street samurai too narrowly. a good street samurai is not just good at shooting things, stabbing things, and dodging various objects (pointy or not, high velocity or not) that would hurt them. a street samurai also has B&E/covert ops built-in, plus some face (not as much as the face of course, but at least decent con/etiquette). demolitions, the actual full stealth group (shadowing, disguise, and palming), athletics (climbing, running, and jumping especially) and other similar skills that most of the group won't have room for. even the less BP-intensive archetypes still won't have room for all of those *plus* combat.

sure, the samurai may not have those at incredibly high levels, but should still be able to perform a broad cross-section of skills that other people simply won't. a good street samurai should open up options other than just combat.

[BlueMax]

*shrug*

Shadowrun has no classes. Calling your character a "Street Sam" doesn't mean that you can only take shooting things and punching things skills. If your argument is that a character that can only shoot things and/or punch things is not needed that's fine. A good Street Sam build shouldn't be that narrow, anyway. However, it is also about play style. Some groups play SR with combat, a lot of combat. I prefer more stealth-based with sporadic, brief combat engagements, but YMMV. Play the game whatever style suits your fun-factor.

I disagree. Shadowrun has three classes

Technomancer
Magical
Mundane
One cannot be a Magical TM. Mundane is a subclass, everyone else already has the benefits.

Most "Samurai" fall into Mundane with Cyberware, Heavy Cyberware.

The rest I agree with, even the description of preferred game.

BlueMad

[The Jake]

This is why I missed the old Merc archtypes. Former soldiers didn't have much 'ware but they were loaded to the eyeballs with skills making them a very flexible, highly coveted team asset.

SR4 has made the technology so ubiquitous that not going for cyber is gimping yourself severely.

Not that this is a bad thing necessarily, its clearly the logical progression from SR1. But it is a definite consequence that clearly emerges at character creation. It makes it obvious that a street samurai is now a much more flexible (and durable) concept than the older, grizzled but skilled merc veteran.

- J.

[hobgoblin]

glasses/googles and ear plugs loaded to max with sensory gear, comlink with tac soft and some extra external sensors, and use hit and fade tactics, as the wired party will win in a stand a slug it out confrontation...

[The Jake]

glasses/googles and ear plugs loaded to max with sensory gear, comlink with tac soft and some extra external sensors, and use hit and fade tactics, as the wired party will win in a stand a slug it out confrontation...

In theory, sure.

In practise however, given how cheap basic, shitty Wired Reflexes are, it makes no sense for the military not to kit out even basic groundpounders with a minimum level of cyber. Unfortunately, using standard chargen rules, to create your typical SpecOps/Green Beret kind of guy, it simply isn't possible to give them justice.

- J.

[CodeBreaker]

I personally like the Role layout Runners Companion uses. Different roles, with different approaches to each of those roles. So I would consider a Street-Sam to be a Physical based Close Combat Specialist with some Fire Support and Infiltrator thrown in.

Sure, the Close Combat Specialist role can be filled with a Technological approach (Drones loaded with Armour and some really heavy modding), but the Street-Sam is probably more flexible and can fit the other two roles at the same time.

[Meatbag]

Just a little note? Getting all four IPs is expensive, either in (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) , Essence or both. It limits your choices rather severely, and most people that aren't dedicated Street Sams (I include Adepts here) won't go for them.

So yes, unless you're taking drugs or eating Edge on a regular basis, there's still a use for a highly dedicated killing machine.

[BlueMax]

Just a little note? Getting all four IPs is expensive, either in (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) , Essence or both. It limits your choices rather severely, and most people that aren't dedicated Street Sams (I include Adepts here) won't go for them.

So yes, unless you're taking drugs or eating Edge on a regular basis, there's still a use for a highly dedicated killing machine.

Two things, don't forget spells and foci. Sometimes the extra init passes are that useful. Like when you had to bring in limited gear.

BlueMax