Im having problems making a decent street samurai. The problem is that several party members tend to make "munchkin" types, and know the rules inside out. Normally this is not a problem at all, as im quite happy playing someone for roleplaying reasons and not to do with stats. Anyway this time i would like to play someone who is powerful enough to compete on a physical level with the other players. So my question is..... do any of you guys have any ideas for good cyber/bio ware for the 250k available at char gen?

Wired Reflexes are a must-buy. Or Synaptic Accelerator, if you tend more towards bioware.
As it is impossible to get more then one Initiative Pass without cyber/bio/magid (unlike in older editions) a sammy needs a reflexboosting 'ware even more then in SRold.

thx grinder, my basic build was based around wired2 as its cheap and effective... its where i go from there, there seem to be so many bio/cyber possibilites from that point, and not matter how hard i try the power player types are one step ahead.

You can try to be very versatile when it comes to skills (a good sammy has a long list of skills imo) or to become a one-trick-pony like most adepts.

Maybe it's easier to start with the background of your char and then decide which cyber/bio would fit? I.e. if your sammy is an ex-heavy weapons specialist, he's likely to have muscle augmentation, while a close combat expert would tend more towards pain editor and similar stuff.

But these are just my opinions; the good thing about the sam is his versatility.

Well, I haven't looked into all the cyber/bio yet, but when you get your stuff make sure it's all Skinlinked instead of wireless. I don't know why you'd want a dozen implants transmitting radio signals and giving you cancer, but I sure wouldn't! (There's also the side benefit of being a shadowrunner instead of a walking radio tower )

Don't get cyberlimbs unless your GM has heavily, heavily houseruled them. Per canon they're more like a Flaw that you have to pay resources for.

Oh, and I've been hearing bad things about the adrenal pump. Don't get that.

aye grinder you are right, im just tired of playing characters who are supposed to be good or at least solid in combat, and then find the rules specialists are faster do more damage and roll more dice. i dont want to be a one shot pony at all, but it is a little depressing to play someone who has skills, yet is beaten on most areas by the rules "expert" players

There will always be someone whos better in a particular skill (hell, most adepts are), but the strength of a sammy is his versatility. Maybe your team-adept is a killer when it comes to knife fighting or stealth or whatever. But does he have decent skills in throwing weapons, heavy weapons and longarms? Propbably not - but the ususal sammy has.

I play an ex-SAS-sammie, who has an assload of skills most people would consider worthless, like navigations, tracking, underwater combat or even parachuting. But the few times when i can use those skills, he saves the day, as noone else i able to do this tasks. (Cost me nearly ~300 karma to develop the char the way i want him, but it was worth the effort).

So take a look at your team mates and which one trick everyone of them is good in and then try to fill the holes. That's the way i would do it in your situation.

And never forget: rocking is enjoying life

original concept was full cyber limbs and torso.... left me a load of skill points for which i chose mechanic/cybertech and electronic skills,but when it came down to it the face and smuggler type are far more effective in combat than i am in terms of doing damage and dodging/soaking it.

Faces and smugglers usually aren't the best combat types, only in hadns of powergamers.

Maybe ask one of your powergaming buddies to build you a sammie?

Your concepts sounds nice. Take some combat skills like heavy weapons and put the rest of your skill points in supproting skills like electronics, computer etc.

The problem (har har, one of em really) with cyber limbs is that it dosen't allow you to get a lot of the cooler 'ware.

I say ditch the limbs, if you want to play a tough character, got full bonedensity and platelete factorys (these are a must in my opinion anyway). Ortho-skin is good also, or if you want to "look" like a classic sammy, go dermal plating...

One thing sammys have that adepts don't have, reflex recorders for skill groups. You can get a +1 across the board to any skill in the group (and in my opinion, you don't have to have the group, you can have single skills if you like, up to interpretation though).

It depends on what your going for. I could give you a list if you told us what sort of skills you were going for, and what the characters weapon choices were...

np squinky. He wants to be solid in combat... either that or fast, to be honest either will do. The full cyber limb was based on a megacorp doing him over (he was a driver for a corp and was nearly killed in an inter corp dispute protecting his boss... was a bomb)
This was just before the crash, so now he is sinnless and has a grudge against the corps who betrayed him. what i really want is someone solid in a firefight, but has a few skills to spare ( spent time working on infiltration, demolitions, electronics warfare)
So far ive decided that maybe lower arm/leg replacements mat give me a better option in terms of points to spare whilst still giving me the option of cyber holsters and gyro stabalisers etc.


(as far as weapons go.. a heavy pistol in a cyberholster, and a CMDT when i need to proper go to town.... heavy weapons isnt an issue, he is fine with just the firearms skill group and a demolitions skill)

Okay, heres how I would do it I think:

Race: Human (you didn't specify, but I would go ork personally)
B:4 (+4 dmg resistance)
A:5(7)
R:5(7)
S:3 (5)
C:2 ( I like playing slightly "different" characters)
I:3
L:3
W:3

Phys Dmg boxes: 12 (2 from cyber-limbs)
Stun Dmg boxes: 10
+2/2 armor from D plating
Unarmed Dv: 7s (str/2+4 from Bone density)

Skills:
Dodge: 3 (specialize in something)5
Unarmed combat: 2 (specialize in some cheesy Martial art)4
Infiltration:2 (urban)4
Demolitions:3 (some cool explosive you like)5
Etiquette:2 (something relevent to your character)4
Pilot Ground craft:2 (car or something)4
Firearms group:4 (5 from reflex recorder, not to damn bad)

Qualities:
Ambidextrous

Spend 50 bp on gear and you get:

2 smartlinked Ruger warhawks (so you can shoot both in their own simple action and not take the normal shooting two weapons penalty.)
Cyber:
Wired Reflexes II
Lower Leg, Obvious - Capacity 12
+ Cyber Holster [7]
Hand/Foot, Obvious - Capacity 4
+ Cyberarm Gyromount [4]
Dermal Plating II
Bio:
Bone Density Augmentation IV
Muscle Augmentation II
Muscle Toner II
Platelet Factories
Reflex Recorder, Skill Group (Firearms)

5.9 essence used and 24k left

My armor choice would be the urban explorer and an armor jacket on top. Not to cumbersome, and for normal defense you will have 8/6, and if they shoot anywhere else but your head, you will have the urban explorer to fill the gaps and give 6/6 (plus your dermal rating)

I have 37 build points left to fill in the gaps....

Orking him out would make him pretty damn tough, along with the coolness of natural low-light. But I really like orks anyway....

Edit---Just got to thinking you might want 2 cyber holsters, and I only put one cyber leg....woops

I think the gyromount is the only real "good" reaon for a cyber limb, unless you want spurs...then it is actaully cheaper essence wise to get a hand to put it in. You should be able to fit both in a lower arm if you wanted, but sine I put in the bone density, he would do the same dmg with his unarmed anyway.

I think the dermal plating and low charisma would represent being rebuilt after a terrible explosion....

As written, Wired Reflexes are a joke and noone wants them. Wired Reflexes are more than twice the Essence cost of Synaptic Boosters and more than 1/10th the price in meaning that they are a waste of your god damned time.

So unless your gamemaster is willing to do something sane like make Wired Reflexes cost 11k, 1 Essence, and 6 Availability per rating point, there is no reason to have them ever. As a street sam you really need that third initiative pass, so the only decent option by the book is Synaptic Booster 2.

---

Anyway, you're never going to have astoundingly impressive physical abilities as a street sam. Mages, Adepts, Riggers and Hackers all roll more dice than you do on their primary schtick, and that means that you're always going to be the second banana. Your advantage is untraceability. As a street sam you don't leave any astral traces and don't have to leave any matrix traces if you don't want to. Essentially, you can walk down the street as a civilian, and bust out 12+ die attack rolls with no possible warning. Remember, it's 1 hit on an assensing test to recognize that an adept is armed - it's 4 hits on an assensing test to recognize that you have neural enhancement bioware (and even that is no proof that you have speed enhancement).

Your weapon of choice should be the monowhip, because its concealability is essentially perfect. Fallback weapons should be things like the Raecor Sting, which are likewise a virtually assured thing.

250K can get you:
Synaptic Booster 2 (160K)
Muscle Toner 2 (16K)
Eyes Rating 4: (1.5K)
Flare Comp (750Y)
Low Light (1K)
Smart Link (1K)
Thermographic Vision (1K)
Vision Enhancment 3 (4.5K)
Vision Mag (1K)
(You have 3 capacity left, you may be able to convince your gamemaster to allow you to fit in a Laser Mic and a Cyberware Scanner, the rules are unclear as to whether you can do that or not).
Ears Rating 3: (1K)
Damper (750Y)
Enhancement 3 (4.5K)
Select Sound Filter 2 (2K)
Spatial Recognizer (750Y)
Ultrasound (6K)
Olfactory Booster 3 (3K)
Taste Booster 3 (4.5 K)


The Last Armor you will ever need:
Urban Explorer gear with thermoptic shielding.
Urban Explorer Jumpsuit, Chameleon Suit, Chemprotection 6, Fire Resistance 6, Insulation 6, Non-conductivity 6, Thermal Damping 6 - 7/8 armor at 15,900

And you'll need weapons. Legal or concealable weapons:
Monowhip (3K)
Smartlinked Raecor Sting (700Y)
Smartlinked Supersquirt (1K)
Lots of Narcoject! (1K)

And you'll need a big gun to pull out when the big guns happen:

Walther Sniper Rifle (5K)
Some Ammunitition (300Y)

And you'll need some crowd control, legal crowd control:
CS Gas Grenades (500Y)

You'll need some wheels:
Suzuki Mirage (6.5K)

You'll want a Commlink:
Hermes Ikon (3K)
W/ HAL (3K)

And some B&E and Spy gear:
Lockpicks
Directional Jammer
White Noise Generator
Microtranceiver
Some plastic restraints
Wire Clippers
Miniwelder
Microline and a grapple gun.

Low Lifestyle.

That is stylin right there. Pimping it all out with 4.05 Essence left, which means that you only suffer a -1 penalty when being magically healed. You can go anywhere, and carry an 8P, -4 AP weapon with you while doing it.

-Frank

In my opinion Cyber-eyes and ears are a waste and a liability. They can easily and very in-expensively bought in external forms and they can be hacked and used against you. I see no reason to waste essence on tehm either....

Wire reflexes could be better, but I think most folks play a shadowrun 4 game where you can later remove and upgrade cyber. If that is the case, get wired 2 out the door, reap the benefits for a while, then uprade to boosters when you can....there is a big diff between 32k and 160k....you can do so much with that money

I agree on the urban explorer and the mods, but why not put a jacket on over it? Thats a +2 ballistic! can't knock that....on runs you should get a helmet too, not the urban explorer one, the better one. (Get eye and ear mods in there if you want)

And most of your weapon choices require specific skills just to use them....Thats not really saving points...

One thing I forgot to add in my last post was to get him shock gloves...and a colt l36 with stickn'shock as a concealable back-up weapon...

No, eyes and ears are awesome in SR4 because they are internal, which means that you can bring them in to places. The museum can't and most importantly won't stop you from bringing your camera in. External devices can be compromised and lost, headware won't be. And as to hacking it, good luck with that - a hacker has to be within range of your monowhip before they can even try. Remember that you use the lower of the signal ratings to determine hacking range, and the eyes have a very low signal rating indeed (and with a skin link, the range can be set to zero).

As to multiple different skills, why not? Exotic Melee and Unarmed are the only skills you need. That's cheaper than getting the whole close combat group. Exotic Ranged Weapons, Pistols, and Longarms is more expensive than getting Firearms as a group, but the points you saved from skimping on Close Combat roll over to cover that one for one.

Other than that, you only want or need a Throwing of 1, because mostly you are just concerned about tossing CS grenades, which don't do anything special if they "hit".

-Frank

By "turn off cameras" I meant turning off any recording functions. Of course the image capturing would have to stay on, but it's only allowed to feed into the user's optic nerve / visual cortex, but not into any data storage medium.

Hence the requirement to load their little spyware applet into any commlinks they know you have.

Invasion of a handicapped person's privacy? Perhaps, but the cybereyes themselves are potentially an invasion of everyone else's privacy, so the blade cuts both ways.

In SR4, your eyes are a data storage unit. So is your phone, your gun, your jacket and everything else.

There's no way to prevent people from having their eyes record data. They have a DNI that controls them and can potentially be skinlinked to any number of devices on or inside the person. You can save that data on your autoinjector. Short of shooting the man in the head, there's no possible way to keep him from recording that information. Welcome to the wireless world.

-Frank

Save that data on your...autoinjector?

-Siege

Again, it's just a matter of making sure that the cybereye is routing its video feed only to the users brain, and not to the eyes' onboard memory, clothing's onboard memory, some online account, or the onboard memory of the user's left cybernut.

There are places that do not want images to be taken, and they will take steps to keep it from happening. Whether it's insisting that someone with cybereyes load a spyware program that'll analyze where the image data is going, or as you put earlier, telling the handicapped to frag off, it is going to happen, in my games at least.

Thx Squinky and Frank, that helped a lot. In the end i kind of used both your ideas, and finally came up with this

B: 5 (+2 dam resistance dice)
A: 4 (6)
R: 5 (8 )
S: 3 (5)
C: 2
I: 3
L: 3
W: 3

Phys box: 12
Stun: 10
+2/2 derm plate
+1 Ali bone lacing
Unarmed 5P

Cyber
ali bone lacing
Lower leg cyber limb with cyberholster and hidden smuggling compartment (for explasives/grenades)
Reaction enhancer 2
Dermal plate 2
(still got money and ess for eyes and ears if i choose to- not decided yet)

Bioware
Synaptic booster 1
Muscle aug2
Musc toner 2
Platlet factory
Reflex recorder firearms group

Skills
Firearm grp 4 (5)
Demolitions- plastics 3 (5)
Pilot GV-cars 2 (4)
Ettiquette 2
Infiltration-urban 3 (5)
Percept 3
Unarmed- Tae kwon do 3 (5)
Automotive mechanic 3
Dodge 3

still got a few points to play around with, but thats the basic idea.
I kind of like the way it makes him competant with weapons, but his best features are when shot at his reaction makes him harder to hit, and when he is hit, the added armour/damage resistance dice/platlet factory make him pretty tough.

Making him a metahuman type would make him a lot tougher, but i really want this guy to be human.

As said before, the Sammie seems to fill the role of "swiss army knife" -- a well rounded character that can do a little bit of everything.

Invariably, though, this means I'm rolling few dice at some crazy task that needs doing ("disarm the bomb over the stadium full of people -- you've got demolitions 2." or "we need someone to jump from the plane, land in the lake, swim through the underground sewer, and disable the perimeter scanners -- Sammie, you've got those skills, right? 'cause the mage sure doesn't." These are both situations i've found myself in as the sam. The former, under 3rd edition, I actually had to permanently burn karma to pull off.)

Thus, to me, the most important Street Sam attribute is Edge. Learn when to use it too, it might just let you survive whatever harebrained scheme the team has put you up to this time. This is a good place to put all those BP you have left because you didn't have to buy up a "special" attribute.

Skillwires are good for picking up all those misc. skills Sams need -- just be careful, because you don't want to find yourself in a bad situation that depends on the skillwires -- no edge allowed on skillwire tests.

Thats loads better Gothic Rose, thx for the info, and ill get rid of those specialisations while im at it.

Edit: I dont like dermal plating much either, but as you say it is dirt cheap, and with the amount of money our GM gives out on runs it will be a long time before i can afford any upgades. If i ever get the cash ill rip them out and replace them with orthoskin.

hey im just saying that this char needs as much improvement/muscle for the 250k at the start... im not bothered how efficient or essence friendly it is... as i say im not going to be in a position to upgrade it for a long time..... power vs ratio is what im after, and Rose has the set that appeals to me most.

Edit: hes not designed to be the best in combat... i know an adept can throw the most dice... i just want a sammy who can hold his own and if needed stand up and be counted in a firefight

You might want to seriously consider a Reaction Enhancer rating 2. If you want to be brutal in combat, maxing out your augmented reaction is pretty easy (start with a natural stat of 5 +2 wired reflexes and +2 reaction enhancer = you're there). That adept may throw a lot of dice, but you should be really hard to hit and really hard to hurt!

You'll also want to max out points from those Qualities! High pain threshhold is a must. So is damage resistance. Just pick negative qualities you don't mind roleplaying - or rather that you want to roleplay.

Synaptic Booster is uber expensive yes, but for essense sensative characters, it just can't be beat. For adepts, it's just about the most efficient way to get more initiative passes. (.5 essence per level. It might be expensive, but with initiation, it's better in the long term)

As far as the sammy character is concerned, unless you're married to the idea of the holster in the leg or you think you might need the capacity later, put a gun slide in the arm instead. With the leg, you need to spend a simple action and roll to quickdraw, with the slide, just spend a free action and it's in your hand. It also has the same threshold to detect. Much more efficient if you have enough capacity.

And with the holster in the leg, you either need an open pocket in some pretty baggy trousers, or some other way to get to the holster. That can be an issue, depending on the circumstances your character ends up in.

Though you could always just walk around wearing hawaiian shirts and bermuda shorts in hideously loud, clashing colours...

Well todays the first meeting, so really am just posting to let all of you have helped me out what i decided.

Tell us how it works out.

-Frank

DNI & SkinLink: Keeping your cyberass unhacked since 2067.

Cyberarms with gyromounts are funny. Just get rid of you arms and install cyber ones. Pick up two Ingram Smartguns and you'll fire 10 rounds without any recoil modification. - That's the real Argent style.

rule #1 of implanted commlinks- Firewall 6, and a decent stealth program.

Rule #2, then, becomes having a second commlink in passive, to act as a decoy. if they see the decoy, they wont look for the hidden.

look at matrix perception. they have an opposed test vs firewall+stealth (or hacking +stealth, but firewall is cheaper) to detect you. they must find you before they can hack you.

If anything, SR4 makes it more important for the non-deckers to have an understanding of how the matrix rules work.

Um... you're cheating though. Level 2 Improved Reflexes costs 3 Magic Points, so it costs 35, not 25 BP to get the Adept Speed.

More importantly though, the character with the synaptic Booster can have 2 more total power points, because she only spent 1 Magic instead of 3. Which means that she can have one more point of powers and still not have to spend 25 BP on a final Magic Point while the character with the Improved Reflexes is stuck with the expensive point for less total Adept Powers.

So the real cost for Improved Reflexes is:

Adept - 5 BP
2 Magic Points at normal price - 20 BP
1 Magic Point at crazytastic price - 25 BP

Total: 50 BP.

So the character with the Synaptic Booster spends less BP, has more room for growth (since his Magic Attribute is only 3, and his max is five), and even has the option of having more additional abilities.

The savings isn't huge - getting the Synaptic Booster only saves 3 BP - but that's plenty to make the concept of not getting the Booster a humorous one. For Adepts. Samurai get the Booster for 10BP less.

-Frank

A big part of that Swiss Army Knife flexibility is having Skillwires. Also, even if you're not a specialist, don't be afraid to use drones. Having a bug drone or that rolling ball drone to scope out the area around you is a definite must.

I should also add that nearly every kill thus far inflicted in my campaign has been from a grenade launcher. The PCs have mostly been fighting in and around the front lines in Cambodia, so being subtle hasn't been a huge priority.