[X] My Assistant

[Glyph]

Here is a thread with some examples of mundane builds. Overall, you can make playable mundane characters, it's simply that adding augmentation or magic would make the character better. Which is fine, since the themes of the game are selling bits and pieces of your humanity for that all-important edge over the opposition, and magic making you a special snowflake that all of the mundanes hate/fear/idolize. I've used the example before, but - Deckard in Blade Runner, constantly using his resourcefulness, ruthlessness, and sometimes pure luck, against the replicants who are all stronger, tougher, and faster than him.

[suoq]

You might have missed the "with one shot" bit, implying that he had no augmentation whatsoever. Because he doesn't need it. Snipers are one of those few roles (like the others mentioned) where personal initiative passes aren't a necessity to get the job done.

In my experience, there's more than one target.

And no, he wouldn't get three more dice, because the dice pool is maxed out at 20.

House rule I don't know the OP is using.

Also, why are you personally dropping his TacNet to 2 to prove your point?

Because in my experience, Tacnet 2 is easy to get. Tacnet 4 is much more difficult depending on the tables rules for sensors and participants. I don't know that the OP's table will support a Tacnet 4.

As for the ending statements, I'll pass because I don't see how replying to them can possibly be productive.

[Whipstitch]

You'd think so, but in practice the "best" augs and spells make everyone look about the same. They certainly carry the same general gear load. Trying to be effective without that stuff should, in theory, force you into some unconventional builds.

That is highly subjective and has never been my experience given that typically 2/3rds of a character's points are going to go to some combination of Skills, Attributes and Metatype cost whereas without qualities 'ware is capped at taking up a highly varied 1/8th of your bp. Yes, there's benchmark and iconic augmentations like Wired 2 that will pop up on sheets time and time again, particularly on heavily optimized sheets. You can admittedly often spot what a character sheet is about by skimming their augs. But they're still less deterministic than skills, which cost more die for die and don't include oddball stuff like gastric stimulators, false front, bioware echolocation, mnemonic enhancers and smart articulation. Even admittedly straightforward and banal augmentations Synthacardium or Muscle Toners can help you avoid being a complete physical liability while still having points left over to pursue oddball skills like Chemistry, Artisan or Forgery. I hate to be so blunt about it, but usually when someone brings an unaugmented sheet to my table it's usually just a standard generalist samurai load out except they've traded away all their bad ass for the Stealth or Influence group. It's unconventional, but only in the sense that they do less than the other guys.

[Ol' Scratch]

Or 40 BP worth of other gear.

[Ascalaphus]

Drugs vs. Implants: I'm having a hard time believing arguments along the line of "cybernetics eat your soul, but drug addiction is just fine". It sounds inconsistent. Either your body is a temple or it's a brothel; make up your mind.



"Sub-optimal vs. hyper-optimized": that's a straw man argument. Having some implants that make you good at your job isn't munchkinry, it's playing a character clued in to the idea of the game. It's not about "vs. hyper-optimized", it's about getting the stuff that just makes sense for someone in a dangerous profession. You don't tell firemen that protective gear is "hyper-optimized".



Snipers: we've had a lot of threads about how problematic snipers are. (Not always necessary since a lot of missions take place indoors, any other real Sam can also snipe, you wouldn't want the GM to start using real snipers with tactics against the party...) They're not ideal characters.



AR and trodes: AR is pointless if you don't use IP boosters, because IC gets 3 IPs. And trodes + (hot) sim module allow VR without implants. Get your rules straight.

That said, riggers and hackers without implants can actually work. It's possible that a lot of the hacking difficulties are more balanced for unaugmented hackers, actually.



Faces without implants or magic are quite okay. You can't hide tailored pheromones from serious security procedures, which would mean you'd lose access to some important people, which is bad for a Face. So it's not a disaster you can't have TPs. You'll probably be a human (Edge, normal looking) or elf (Charisma), and you'll have the kind of social dice pools the game system was balanced for, rather than pornomancer stats.

---

Of course, for both hackers, riggers and faces, you still need a reason why you don't augment, because they can all profit from it. But they don't absolutely need it to have a chance at survival, it just makes them a lot better.

[Whipstitch]

40 bp of other gear (like perhaps a few quirky vehicle and exotic chems) often hits me as the best case scenario, tbh, but then we're typically into tech boy territory again, and usually those guys are willing to blow the 2 bp on a Control Rig or Cerebral Boosters because seriously, why the hell not?

[UmaroVI]

The character also has more build points and cash to invest in these things. While your augmented guy is blowing 200,000 nuyen on implants, he's blowing 200,000 nuyen on all these other toys. And in the end, he still does his job well. Could augmentation give him other benefits? Aside from extra passes, which he doesn't really "need," not really. The sniper is getting everything he needs from skill and equipment alone.

This part of your argument is completely terrible.

You had 6 agility. Drop 2 agility (35 bp). Pay a whopping 4 bp to afford Muscle Toner 2. Now you are back at 6 agility and you have 31 bp to spend on other stuff.

Your sole argument is "you can be good enough at a role where being mediocre cuts the mustard."

[Udoshi]

A lot of stuff useful in combat can be worn as gear rather than installed internally, so mostly yes.

The killer is going to be IP - an expensive drug habit may be in order...

Drugs can be an incredibly viable way of gaining passes and other bonuses.

Second-hand Chemical Glands are amazing essence/cost for 3-pass drugs, hook it to a cyber drug gland/autoinjector so you can control when it takes effect. The Natural Immunity quality will let you safely take a dose of a certain drug every so often, so its possible to set your body in such a zone to get optimal High Time and No Downside time in order to constantly get the bonus.
Not to mention drugs don't have no-stacking clauses(affects attributes mainly), and often help with non-fighty things, like Perception(betel) or social situations/charisma.

For example, a basic grade internal release Dopadrine chemical gland is 32500 and 0.3 essence. Second hand its 15750(3bp) and .36 essence.
A basic grade k-10 chemical gland comes out to 121000 (and 5bp for restricted gear, because its 16F). Second hand makes it 60500 and .36 essence.
In total, 76250 nuyen and .72 essence. This comes out to slightly over 21BP.

+3 body, +3 agility, +6 strength, +1 willpower, +3 IP, High Pain Tolerance 3, -1 physical actions, Cancels Berserk. The k-10 permanent berserk test never happens, because only berserk characters make that test, AND it never wears off because its a chemical gland(so no worry ing about 18stun either)
That's the kind of power you can get by going the path of the juicer. All for less points than hardcapping one attribute.

[Irion]

It is possible to start like that and not be a dead weight.

You will have less dices, but probably more skills. Instead of muscle toner, Wired reflexes, dermal plating etc. you just have Biotechnology 4 or something like that.
Yes, you will have probably 5 dice less in a firefight.

It only gets ugly if the rest is starting to buy additional ware, while you don't
Agility 5 is not that bad compared to agility 7. But compared to agility 9 or even 10 it tends to be "bad".

@Udoshi
At some point you start to beg the GM to mercykill you. (Rulewise this means enforcing addiction tests...)

[Ol' Scratch]

This part of your argument is completely terrible.

Not really, you just clearly have an inability to see the bigger picture.

You had 6 agility. Drop 2 agility (35 bp). Pay a whopping 4 bp to afford Muscle Toner 2. Now you are back at 6 agility and you have 31 bp to spend on other stuff.

Blah blah blah. The point, which clearly went over your head, is that Mr. Augment is blowing his cash on augments. Cash is a limited resource during character creation. While Mr. Augment is spending ~200,000 nuyen on implants, Mr. Normal is spending it on the really nice gear, of which Mr. Augment can only afford a tiny fraction thereof. Or boosting other aspects of his character. Whatever he wants, because he has that freedom by not needing to invest in augmentation.

Your sole argument is "you can be good enough at a role where being mediocre cuts the mustard."

No, my argument is "making such a character is possible."

No one is saying such a character will wtfpwn an augmented or magical character. Absolutely no one. We're saying that it's possible to make a perfectly acceptable and capable character who can hold his own, particularly in certain fields. And yes, OH NO!!!, his dice pool may be 3-5 points smaller in certain situations. Stop the presses! The sky is falling! What a horrible thing! He's down one, maybe two, hits on average. The horror. How is that any different than, say, a Troll Face vs. a Dryad Face who have similar differences? Why is it only a terrible injustice when it's a normal guy?

[Glyph]

Mundane builds can certainly be viable. But having less points spent on 'ware or Magic doesn't always translate into more versatility, because that 'ware or Magic can give you cheap skill and Attribute increases, and other dice pool boosts, to the point that you can often have higher dice pools and be more versatile than the uncybered mundane.

Other than the dubious benefit of being able to get past nearly any scanner (which bioware can usually do, too), there really isn't anything mundanes do better than magical or augmented characters. They are like elven pit fighters, troll hackers, and suchlike - not optimal, but still doable. The biggest problem I see is that it is often the newer players who will gravitate to such builds. They don't realize that they are picking something that will put them at a disadvantage, and be more difficult to effectively play.

[UmaroVI]

Blah blah blah. The point, which clearly went over your head, is that Mr. Augment is blowing his cash on augments. Cash is a limited resource during character creation. While Mr. Augment is spending ~200,000 nuyen on implants, Mr. Normal is spending it on the really nice gear, of which Mr. Augment can only afford a tiny fraction thereof. Or boosting other aspects of his character. Whatever he wants, because he has that freedom by not needing to invest in augmentation.

If you really are hitting the cash cap, you could spend an extra 10 points on Born Rich and still come out with an extra 21 bp, leaving you with your choice of more versatility or being better at your specialized task.

[HunterHerne]

Other than the dubious benefit of being able to get past nearly any scanner (which bioware can usually do, too), there really isn't anything mundanes do better than magical or augmented characters. They are like elven pit fighters, troll hackers, and suchlike - not optimal, but still doable. The biggest problem I see is that it is often the newer players who will gravitate to such builds. They don't realize that they are picking something that will put them at a disadvantage, and be more difficult to effectively play.

That may be so, but if my playing is any indication, they are also the most fun characters to play.

[suoq]

This is going to an area where I always have difficulty. Most of my characters' "personality" is in no way reflected by their points. Maybe it's supposed to be, but often the disadvantages I play the most aren't point based disadvantages, they're simply the character's personality.

I don't see why a character has to be suboptimal to have a personality. In all honesty, I see no connection between a character's effectiveness and his personality whatsoever. The only connection I'm aware of with effectiveness is how strong the GM makes the competition.

Now if the team wants to play suboptimal characters, I'm fine with that. But to me it doesn't mean they have any more or any less personality. It's simply that they're facing different challenges than more optimal characters.

[Ol' Scratch]

If you really are hitting the cash cap, you could spend an extra 10 points on Born Rich...

And so can the normal human. He'll always have more cash at his disposal if he chooses. Always. That's probably the strongest aspect about the concept.

And for Pete's sake, Suoq, how are you getting "you have to make a sucky character to give him personality" from anything anyone is saying? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/question.gif)

[KarmaInferno]

I dunno about "hyperoptimized characters are all the same and boring".

I've pretty much made my entire RPG play history nothing but hyperoptimized characters that most folks have never seen before.

I'd like to think they're interesting.

Then again, I'm told that I minmax... differently.




-k

[HunterHerne]

I dunno about "hyperoptimized characters are all the same and boring".

I've pretty much made my entire RPG play history nothing but hyperoptimized characters that most folks have never seen before.

I'd like to think they're interesting.

Then again, I'm told that I minmax... differently.




-k

Agreed. I'm the kind of guy who makes suboptmal choices for flavour, then optimizes to a point. As a GM, I have a Troll Face lined up as a johnson, and he is one of the most optimized characters I've created, able to blend into many business-like situations, whether they be a casual retreat, a sport hunt, or a big-name party.

[Udoshi]

Reformed Powergamers optimize for flavor, but eat Crunch for breakfast so they don't lose their touch.

[Saint Hallow]

Another good example is the bodyguard type character. In another novel, written by Mel Odom, using Argent... a contact/friend he used was a female bodyguard character. She had no 'ware as she excelled in public engagement/special attire work. Her clients didn't want cybered up razor boys or girls as protection as it looked gaudy at black tie affairs and other events. That character was all natural.

[Mayhem_2006]

Another good example is the bodyguard type character. In another novel, written by Mel Odom, using Argent... a contact/friend he used was a female bodyguard character. She had no 'ware as she excelled in public engagement/special attire work. Her clients didn't want cybered up razor boys or girls as protection as it looked gaudy at black tie affairs and other events. That character was all natural.

Though to play devils advocate, you can slide in a heck of a lot of ware that is totally invisible so provides the discrete non-obvious razorgirl effect.

[Whipstitch]

Yeah, I ran a former corp bodyguard and spider before as well who was built to be discrete but even he didn't go completely with without 'ware; it just all happened to be perfectly legal sensory and interface 'ware cyberware (Control rig, Cybereyes, Cyberears, Attention coprocessor, etc.) as well as some light bioware like muscle toners and a sleep regulator. He wasn't anything to really write home about in a stand up fight but between that stuff and some microdrones odds are he'd at least see you coming.

[Cain]

First of all, y'all are making a silly assumption. Namely, that a hyeprspecialist has to sacrifice anything, especially things that a mundane no-ware character can get just as easily. That's just not the case: given a 400 BP character, both can spend only 200 points on attributes, period. No matter how many extra points to spend the mundane character has, he actually cannot have higher attributes.

Now, for Edge. Edge is indeed quite powerful, but the high Edge is most useful in the hands of those who don't need it. If you're relying on Edge for extra IP's, you'll burn through it too quickly, and won't have it when you really need it.

[Saint Hallow]

Some triple AAA rated areas & parties can/will have astral security & bioware can be seen with astral perception (assensing test with 4 hits).

[Faraday]

4 hits on an assensing test is a lot. For a checkpoint or random search, typically an assensor would just buy hits. It'd take 16 dice just to pick up bioware that way.

[Whipstitch]

Given the oft-repeated ubiquity of headware in corporate circles I doubt a bodyguard is going to have a hard time finding work just because they've got an attention coprocessor in their cortex and a sleep regulator snuggling up to their hypothalamus.