No augmentation, no magic - a realistic char? Options

[LurkerOutThere]

@vladski

If we take your character propostion, he might be (at the beginning) around as good in sneaking around as the sam. (Maybe his skill is 4 instead of the sam having 1-2, therefore the sam has two or even 4 points more agility. But one infilitration skill is linked to intuition so you are better there)
But at some point the sam will increase the skillgroup. This is 10-15 Karma for him, but for you to be equally good again, you need to spend 25 Karma. (Or increase agility, which would be 30 Karma)

Errr just thought I'd come in and stomp on this, infiltration is agility, so any passing cybered character coud do it better then a non cybered one easily and cheaply getting a 3-5 dice boost on the actual infiltration skill. You might have an edge on the actual disguising people portion of disguise, but that's questionable as a sam will also likely at least spare some points for intuition as it contributes to initiative.

Glyph has the right of it, pound for pound ware gives you a better dice pool advantage then what you loose on it in points, that's why you take it, that's why it works.

[Midas]

Except you're leaving out the implications of Initiative, defense and soak pools, which is why people were talking about mundanes being OK snipers earlier but not good front liners. It's a simple matter of costs: the more things you need to be good at a role, the farther behind you fall-- the much maligned script kiddie hacker is a good fit for mundos precisely because you don't need to spend much of anything on attributes. By contrast the give and take of combat brings into play multiple attributes as well as things like gene tweaks, Reaction Enhancers, armor implants, the possibility of a Pain Editor, platelet factories/, Gymnastics aug stacks, Reflex Recorders and the option of taking a tweaked cyberarm w/ gyromount, armor & nanohive in lieu of Restricted Gear and Muscle Toner 4. You won't have every possible good mod on your sheet, obviously, but you can definitely bring enough advantages into play that you can curb stomp Captain Normal and the mook squad without too much trouble.

Based on my above example, the augmented sammie has +2 Initiative and DP bonus of 2 on his defence test compared to his unaugmented counterpart. His soak pool will be the same unless he gets Bone Density Augmentation/Bone Lacing/Cyberparts at an additional drain to his rapidly dwindling resources and essence.

I agree with you that unaugmented mundanes are better as hackers/riggers where resources are needed for hacking gear and/or vehicles/drones. I also admit that I would find it hard to pass up on essence-friendly attribute boosting bioware for any character myself. However, the point I was trying to make, namely that while sub-optimal an unaugmented mundane sammie ain't streets behind his cybered counterpart, I believe stands.

[Juno]

My problem is most people I know don't necessarily want to play high level commando teams but do want to play something better than a bunch of rookie essence virgins-- hell, if they didn't, we'd probably be playing another system entirely. Ultimately, my barometer of what is a "good" character or not is if it does what the player believes it can do without requiring me to sandbag more than usual or otherwise tailor everything to keep the character involved with the rest of the table. Thus my least favorite character concepts as a GM are the mundos and martial artists--and most especially mundane martial artists-- since that's where the gap between the game mechanics and what starry eyed newbs hope the mechanics are is often the widest. They look at their sheet and see Bruce Lee. I look at the sheet and see a guy who'd just get maimed by the first Steel Lynx I introduce.

(emphasis mine)

As a starry eyed newb, I'd agree with this sentence completely. I play a hacker, and have little-or-no experience with any other role - including no experience GMing. I'd started experimenting with making builds to try to learn a little more, and thought there must be something I was overlooking when I was trying my hand at an effective Bruce Lee.

Really, it just became like I was trying to build a mundane adept though, so I've shelved it in an unfinished state, an accepted I'd learned a couple things from it, but accepted the likeliness that "it'll never be a goer".

I suppose if an experienced player who is a hell of a strategist, with an approving GM and a cooperative team could make it work but... well, its an action build, and one that's not very versatile. I can't see anyone who'd enjoys action in the game enjoy playing such a narrow role, short of a purpose written, one off campaign (requiring a good sense of humour from all involved). Otherwise it feels like bringing a knife to a gun fight, except you arrive at the fight and realise you've forgotten the knife.

On the broader picture of playing a mundane, I think the idea of playing a mundane face or troded rigger is appealing in a few ways. And as for featuring mundanes as enemies the runners may encounter I think a monastery packed full of hostile mundane monks could make for a nice reversal of TVs idea that its always the sqeeky clean good guy martial artist is the hero and the drugged up cyber/magic/hacker gun nuts are the corporate backed villains.

I wonder how many mundane monks it would take to bring down one cybered up troll runner in with a smartlinked minigun? Or is that a bit too Cambodian midget fighting league versus lion?

[Ascalaphus]

I wonder how many mundane monks it would take to bring down one cybered up troll runner in with a smartlinked minigun? Or is that a bit too Cambodian midget fighting league versus lion?

That is disturbing, and funny... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif)

[TheOOB]

I get the feeling a few people still are not convinced that an augmented character is directly better than an unaugmented mundane, when there are, in fact, directly better. Augmented characters have access to all the same things unaugmented characters have, plus they get many things for cheaper BP wise, can use their BP to get higher numbers if they desire, or even use their BP to get things that are completely impossible for unaugmented characters to have. During play they improve with karma and nuyen, whereas unaugmented characters get limited benefit from large sums of nuyen.

In any case, virtually every argument that needs to be made has been made. An augmented character is better that an unaugmented character, especially in direct combat scenarios. It is a reasonable assumption that in Shadowrun the players will be participating on runs and that combat will break out on a fairly regular bases, it's kinda part of the setting, and the reason as much of the book is devoted to combat as there is. I understand some games are very combat light, or the GM never throws the real kind combat threats that exist in the 6th world in some games, and thats fine, but that is a non-standard example and irrelevant for a a forum thread which is more universal than your non-standard campaign.

[Ol' Scratch]

I get the feeling a few people still are not convinced that an augmented character is directly better than an unaugmented mundane, when there are, in fact, directly better.

Where on earth are you guys seeing that in this conversation? Seriously, where? It's been said, exhaustively and directly, on all sides of the discussion, that augmented characters are going to be more powerful. That's never once, not even a little, been up for debate.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Where on earth are you guys seeing that in this conversation? Seriously, where? It's been said, exhaustively and directly, on all sides of the discussion, that augmented characters are going to be more powerful. That's never once, not even a little, been up for debate.

Amazing, Isn't it? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[LurkerOutThere]

So then i guess the question is : No augmenation no magic - a realistic character? No

You want to be a street bum or low wage corp slave with no magic and sensative system/religious bias sure.

You want to be a shadowrunner that actually has a chance of being kept on by a team or taken serious by a fixer/J, you need an edge. One consensus leads to the other outside anything but story fiat.

[Critias]

You want to be a shadowrunner that actually has a chance of being kept on by a team or taken serious by a fixer/J, you need an edge. One consensus leads to the other outside anything but story fiat.

Having "an edge" can come in more ways than just augmentation, though. Just because a character isn't optimized doesn't mean that character is worthless. No one's disputing that augmentations make it much easier to be a worthwhile and effective shadowrunner...only that, depending upon the power level of the game, they might not be absolutely necessary. A character with less than DS-ideal die pools can certainly still contribute to a campaign, to the fun of everyone at the table, and to the effectiveness of a shadowrunner team.

The (true) statement "augmented characters are better" need not necessarily also mean "so unaugmented characters are absolutely worthless."

[LurkerOutThere]

See what I get from that is the sense that If the game world is drug down to captain worthless level and stays their permanently he or she can be the special little snowflake, which goes back to story fiat. It's one thing to say characters/players are not going to minmax, it's another thing to pass up good solid options for most of the shadowrunning populations and still expect to play at the big kids table without the GM rigging the table to support the sparkleness.

[Ol' Scratch]

I'm beginning to think that unaugmented mundane characters somehow raped Lurker's childhood.

[Whipstitch]

To be fair, the worst people I know are all unaugmented. Oh, wait.

[Critias]

See what I get from that is the sense that If the game world is drug down to captain worthless level and stays their permanently he or she can be the special little snowflake, which goes back to story fiat. It's one thing to say characters/players are not going to minmax, it's another thing to pass up good solid options for most of the shadowrunning populations and still expect to play at the big kids table without the GM rigging the table to support the sparkleness.

The game world doesn't need to be dragged down anywhere. There are canon adventures, canon NPCs, canon situations that an unaugmented character is perfectly capable of handling. It's all about the level of the game table in general, and the level that the game table wants.

You seem to have some sort of chip on your shoulder against anyone who's not diving headlong into optimization and augmentation ("captain worthless," "special little snowflake," "sparkleness"), which is a little counterproductive to the current conversation. I'm sorry if a disruptive player you've had experience with was also unaugmented, or if some unaugmented character you're familiar with had a disruptive streak, or whatever...but it's not like the two necessarily go hand in hand.

Any character's die pools can be improved -- and as such, their effectiveness in-game -- with some form of magical or technological augmentation, yes. But lacking that augmentation does not mean any given character is objectively without worth. It's not a black and white, yes no, optimized or junk switch that just gets flipped, on or off. Every character is somewhere on a sliding scale of optimization. They might be more towards the "not optimized" side of that scale than you like, but that does not mean they're absolutely no good.

[Psikerlord]

Hey all just thought I'd chime back in and say thanks for the discussion on this topic. I had in the back of my mind that playing the no aug, no magic guy would be an interesting twist in a team, provided you could find a proper niche (just like any char) - most likely the face or rigger/hacker. The other important thing though that someone mentioned is that I can always give him aug's once the game starts if it turns out they're too tempting (and lets face it... they will be!). Which should be pretty cool RPing wise. Cheers.

[Ascalaphus]

I get the feeling a few people still are not convinced that an augmented character is directly better than an unaugmented mundane, when there are, in fact, directly better. Augmented characters have access to all the same things unaugmented characters have, plus they get many things for cheaper BP wise, can use their BP to get higher numbers if they desire, or even use their BP to get things that are completely impossible for unaugmented characters to have. During play they improve with karma and nuyen, whereas unaugmented characters get limited benefit from large sums of nuyen.

Everything a mundane can do, magic augmentation users can do better. In fact, the name of the game is MagicAugmentationRun. (couldn't resist)

Anyway, is an unaugmented character playable?

YES, IF:

1) There's nobody in the party doing your special thing, who is using augmentation to be better at it.
AND
2) You don't mind being sub-par powered in combat.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

I'm beginning to think that unaugmented mundane characters somehow raped Lurker's childhood.

Me too... Sheesh... *Shakes Head*

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Everything a mundane can do, magic augmentation users can do better. In fact, the name of the game is MagicAugmentationRun. (couldn't resist)

Anyway, is an unaugmented character playable?

YES, IF:

1) There's nobody in the party doing your special thing, who is using augmentation to be better at it.
AND
2) You don't mind being sub-par powered in combat.

Define Subpar...
If you refer to JUST IP's, then I have to disagree with you.
I have seen unaugmented Characters with DP's of about 14 in Combat (As someone else demonstrated, they can get to 20 DP without any augmentation whatsoever), and Decent Reaction and Initiative. Where they tend to be lacking, combat wise, is in the IP Department, and that can ALWAYS be corrected with Drugs.

[TheOOB]

Define Subpar...
If you refer to JUST IP's, then I have to disagree with you.
I have seen unaugmented Characters with DP's of about 14 in Combat (As someone else demonstrated, they can get to 20 DP without any augmentation whatsoever), and Decent Reaction and Initiative. Where they tend to be lacking, combat wise, is in the IP Department, and that can ALWAYS be corrected with Drugs.

Subpar(krah-pee)
adj.

1) Unable to meet expected values, underperforming
2) A character who can only act once for every two to four times their opponents acts in a system where it usually takes 2 to 3 attacks to kill someone.
3) Someone who cannot hope to win opposed die rolls in a combat situation, which means they have no real ability to resist taking significant damage, and limited ability to deal damage.

And once again, drugs do not solve the IP issues, they have horrible side effects and will eventually kill your essence anyways, who in their right mind things injesting mind altering chemicals that screw with your body chemistry is better than an extra organ that increases your response time?

[Yerameyahu]

I dunno, TJ. That's kind of the thing: that character will get ganked more often. The OP specified it was a combat character, which is what really threw me. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Without that stipulation, the answer to the OP is an obvious 'yes'. If he's a 'combat character', though, he's tangling with other combat characters… and he won't beat those odds forever, as everyone has explained in detail. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif) So if that's what 'realistic' means, maybe not. Still 'viable', though, if you don't mind being a lot more careful (=not being a 'combat character'), and/or dying (all part of the job).

[Psikerlord]

hey on a related note - where are the drug costs - eg for cram and so forth? My SR4 book doesn't actually seem to list prices, availability, etc?

[TheOOB]

They're all in arsenal, they range from 10 nuyen a dose to quite a bit. Cram, the cheapest one that grants IP, is basically cocaine, so addition tests should be called often(Body+Willpower(2) test), plus it lasts for hours when you'll be obviously high, and that 6S damage at the end can be very dangerous.

Jet is 75, lasts much less time(but long enough for a combat), and the drop isn't as nasty, and since it was designed as a combat drug for cops it won't need addition tests as often...but there is still the problem that it needs to be taken before combat to be effective.

[Irion]

It still depends on the world you are playing in.

If you play in a world where Batman and the hulk are going to grab a beer after works but the tactics of security could have been developed by King Arthur, than yes a unaugmented (or even lightly augmented char) is unable to make a stand.

If in every classier restaurant are several layers of cyberware scanners, cameras, etc. than yes the unaugmented (or lightly augmented) char might even get along better than the 0.001 essence guy.
It is like driving around in a tank. You do not need to fear to be robbed or a car accident. Your main problem is, you are driving around in a tank.

[Ascalaphus]

It still depends on the world you are playing in.

If you play in a world where Batman and the hulk are going to grab a beer after works but the tactics of security could have been developed by King Arthur, than yes a unaugmented (or even lightly augmented char) is unable to make a stand.

If in every classier restaurant are several layers of cyberware scanners, cameras, etc. than yes the unaugmented (or lightly augmented) char might even get along better than the 0.001 essence guy.
It is like driving around in a tank. You do not need to fear to be robbed or a car accident. Your main problem is, you are driving around in a tank.

However, the real comparison isn't virgin vs. cyberzombie, it's virgin vs. lightly augmented with choice bioware and some completely legit and socially accepted cyberware.

[Mardrax]

I dunno, TJ. That's kind of the thing: that character will get ganked more often. The OP specified it was a combat character, which is what really threw me. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Without that stipulation, the answer to the OP is an obvious 'yes'. If he's a 'combat character', though, he's tangling with other combat characters… and he won't beat those odds forever, as everyone has explained in detail. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif) So if that's what 'realistic' means, maybe not. Still 'viable', though, if you don't mind being a lot more careful (=not being a 'combat character'), and/or dying (all part of the job).

That is, they won't stand up against the runner-level augmented and twinked opposition. They could however work plenty well against most of the stuff in SR4A. Just don't get shot is even more a creed than it normally is.

[Ryu]

Except that you are leaving out that a normal can have a 12 Initiative (Mine Does), Base Ranged Defense of 8, Attack Dice Pools of 12 (Firearms) before Tacnets, so give it a 14 w/Tacnet (And reduces Range bands by One Category), Melee Dice Poools of ~10, And ~15 Dice to soak (10-11 Armor and a Body of 4). Oh, and he always can go first in the first pass of combat. These are useable stats. The ONLY thing that is lacking is multiple IP's, and these are cheaply provided through Drugs (Drugs with minor side effects/drawbacks at that). So, WHY is this character useless?

Oh yeah,
~14 Skills at 10+ Dice
~17 Skills at 6-9 Dice
Currently and Edge of 2. And Human. The Build has a few points remaining to spend, so the Edge will likely go up at least one point, if not two.

That sounds pretty good for an unaugmented build - is it hidden somewhere in this thread? I´d like to see it. Ini 12 is actually impressive.

Regarding the ONLY lacking thing being IPs I´ll just have to disagree. A proper samurai should buy WR2 instead of SB2, as some of the money should go to boosting Athletics and Perception to super-human levels. AGI 9 will help with infiltration, where you want a substantial dp advantage over guards with contact lenses and ear plugs.

A Melee pool of 10 is only worth it as backup if you have Strength 5(++). A soak pool of 15 is just enough against heavy pistols. Trauma Dampeners are great, and Body could easily be 7 on an Orc.