Sam Heart, former Lonestar cop. Good in combat, decent social skills, never misses anything. Kind of a leader type guy.
I put the number of dice I actually roll in (), to save time during play.

Body - 3/4
Agility - 5/6
Reaction - 4/7
Strength - 3/4
Charisma - 3
Intuition - 4
Logic - 3
Willpower - 3
Edge - 6

Init 8/11
Passes 3

Skills: rating(# of dice)
ACTIVE:
Dodge 3 (11)
Longarms 3 (10/12 with smartlink)
Pistol/Semiauto 5/7 (15/17 w smartlink)
Unarmed Combat/JuJitsu 3/5 (10/12)
Influence skill group:
Con, Etiquette, Leadership, Negotiation 3 (6)
Pilot Ground Craft/car 1/3 (9/11)
Infiltration 3 (10)
Perception 3 (7 +2 vision/+6 scent)
Shadowing 1 (5)
Swimming 1 (6)
Computer 1 (4)
KNOWLEDGE:
Seattle AK 3 (7)
Underworld Politics 3 (7)
Vory Controlled Establishments 3(7)
Law 3 (6)
Law Enforcement Procedures 3 (6)
Chess 3 (6)
LANGUAGE:
English - Native
Russian - 3 (7)

NEGATIVE QUALITIES
SINner, Standard -5
Addiction, Mild (smoking) -5
Allergy, Uncommon/Moderate (gold) -10

CONTACTS
Alexi Leonov, Street Doc 2,2
Sean Bean, Lone Star Detective 2,2
Lucy Chen, Fixer 2,2
Yuri Volkov, Vory Soldier 2,2

CYBERWARE
Wired Reflexes II
Olfactory Booster VI
Cybereyes III - Capacity 12
+ Flare Compensation [1]
+ Low-Light Vision [2]
+ Smartlink [3]
+ Thermographic Vision [2]
+ Vision Enhancement II [2]
+ Vision Magnification [2]
BIOWARE
Enhanced Articulation
Suprathyroid Gland
Reflex Recorder, Pistols

Unless you are using different availability rules, you can't have the suprathyroid. And I don't think you can take an addiction to smoking, weird as that is...

One cool thing you might try doing is to slap a cyberware scanner in your eyes, they can detect weaponry too. Thought it might fit the cop concept...

superthyroid had availability of 20, you can't start with it.

it looks like you are adding a die from Enhanced Articulation to your long arms, it's 1 die to high
you pistols, 5 skill +7 agility, +1 from reflex recorer = 13, not 15. even +1 from EA isn't enough

why no addiction to smoking?

It states that nicotine, caffiene, and sugar do not count....I didn't make it up, heh...

hm

luckily, you can still do alcohol

Pistols/semi-auto
5/7 (I didn't make up the specialization, blame the book)
+6 for agility (which I'll lose one of because of the supra-thyroyd).
+2 for smartlink
+1 for reflex recorder
+1 for enhanced articulation
----
15/17 right?

Enhanced Articulation dosen't add dice to combat abilitys anymore. Bummer, I know.
It adds to physical skills like gymnastics, climbing and whatnot.

Why should there be?

Physical Skills are a specific subset of Active Skills.

I know it is confusing and a mistake everybody makes, but thats the way it is. Transferring over from Sr3 makes it easy to do.

OIC

in any case, w/out the super tyroid and EA it's 13/15

C'mon guys, the math is right, except for the stupid mistake with enhanced articulation. I'll drop that and add muscle aug/muscle toner/bone density I and level 1 reaction enhancer, which ends up costing exactly as much

Enchanced articulation boosts all physical skills linked to physical stats.
Pistols is a physical skill linked to a physical stat.

Look at the table of contents

Combat Active skills is where Pistols, long armes, etc are.

Physical Active skills are climbing, escape artist, navigation, etc. Navigation, being linked to a non-physical stat, doens't get the bonus.

EA adds to climbing, swimming, etc., not wpn skills

So you guys are saying that where the entry says "physical skill" they mean physical ACTIVE skill, right?
That isn't what they say. They just say "physical skill linked to physical attributes."

You may be right, but that's not what the book says. I just copy and pasted from my .pdf.

"Enhanced articulation provides its user with a +1 dice pool modifier on any test involving Physical skills that are linked to Physical attributes."

"Enhanced articulation provides its user with a +1 dice pool modifier on any test involving Physical skills that are linked to Physical attributes."

Like.. running or swimming.

The Pistol skill a Combat Skill linked to a Physical attribute.

IN the end, it's up to your GM.

but the general option is that Physical skills = Physical Active skills, not physicall skills

otherwise, why would they have said, "linked to physical attribures"? if it was any phyusical skill, they probalby would have said, "any skill liked to a physical stats". but under Physical Active, there are a couple of skills like navigation which are linked to mental stats.

and when I check my table, I see no mention of "Physical Skills". There are no "physical skills". There are skills linked to physical stats, and there are "Physical Active Skills". I think they meant "all skills that are linked to physical attributes".
We are both assuming something, and until I see an official call, I'm going with my assumption, which is the way it worked in all previous editions.

Other than this very nit-picky (I agree that my side is pretty thin) argument, are there any other comments?

PS, can we start another thread for this discussion, and for the reflex recorder which uses similar wording?

I would put down by each skill if it's supposed to be a street skill, or professional skill, or etc.

for example, Chess is, I assume an INterest, which is linked to Intuition, so it should be 3(7). (you linked it to logic, which does make more sense)

most of our sams also get the cyber ears

OK, there is no category of "physical skills" other than the "physical active skills" presented on page 113.

However, since you want people to pick on your character, why the heck would you invest actual character points ino Dodge after you already bought unarmed combat?

When attacked in melee, you add your highest of Dodge and Unarmed Combat to your defense pool.

When you take a full defense action and want to defend against melee and ranged attacks, you add your highest of Dodge and Gymnastics.

So... any points you spend on Dodge are a waste of time since you have Unarmed Combat and could just buy Gymnastics instead. The fact that you have Enhanced Articulation, which adds to Gymnastics but not to Dodge just makes it even more obvious of a choice.

-Frank

But I don't think he agrees/understands yet that enhanced articulation simply does not add to combat skills...

No, I'm with you.
I don't like it, but I'll go along.

Anyway, about the dodge, I'm dropping enhanced articulation, but I guess if gymnastics and dodge are the same thing, it would be silly to take dodge. Must re-read section.

There are only two types of skills in SR4 (maybe three) -- Active Skills and Knowledge Skills (possibly language skills as a third category, as the book is a bit vague on where they fit in.)

Within Active Skills are several Subsets, such as: Combat, Magic, Physical, etc.

However, for whatever stupid reason, the book uses the fully qualified name in the section headings: Physical Active Skill. This is just for clarification, it is not a separate category. There is absolutely NO mention of a "physical skill" group that would include firearms. There is the overarching "Active Skills" grouping, then there is "Physical Skills" underneath that. It's pretty clear to which enhanced articulation provides modifiers.

Now, I'll attempt to confuse things with an analogy:

There are three groups of cars -- compact cars, mid-sized sedans, and luxury cars. One of the mid-sized sedans is a Ford Taurus. If I listed colors of Ford Taurus's, I could do so under a heading like this:

Ford Taurus Mid-Sized Sedan:
metallic Pink
metallic Green
Flat Grey

Now, if I sold a product that stopped Ford's cheap-ass paint from falling off of the taurus after a year like it has on every one I've ever seen, and I said it worked on "All Ford Taurus's with metallic paints", which of these would you assume ("you" in the general sense, not "you" as in bearclaw, who agrees with the interpretation):

1) The product works on metallic Pink Ford Taurus's and metallic Green Ford Taurus's.

2) The product works on metallic Pink Honda Accords, because "Mid-Sized Sedan" appears in my heading as it does for the heading of Honda Accords (even though my product never mentions mid-sized sedans.)

This is the logical parallel to applying enhanced articulation to "combat active skills" based on the fact that the section heading reads "physical active skills."

-- back on topic --
Asside from the addiction and super thyroid, it looks good. You can't have addiction to smoking because no shadowrunner ever dies of cancer

So you missed the part about please moving the discussion, right?
I guess it doesn't matter. I've made changes, and I'll repost the whole thing.

As a former smoker, I know exactly how much of a pain in the butt nicotine addiciton can be, but I can take a generic "stimulants" addiction instead.

As much as a pain that smoking/caffiene is(im a smoker/caffiene addict myself), I think they don't allow it as an addiction(for points) anymore(they used to i believe, becase i remember a character with a severe smoking addiction i made, and had to change in the SR4 conversion), because you could technically just slap 'the patch' or something on, taking away the disadvantage of having to 'light up' in the middle of a run. Same with caffiene, which is highly addictive but too easy to get around. It's much easier to slap a patch on if you fail the roll mid run than it is to slot elf porn BTL and go to town.


As for the character, I think he's cool. Good all around, but not too overpowered or anything. Not a one trick pony either. and the thyroid wouldn't bother us in our campaigns, as we ignore starting Availability rules anyway. (Before jumping on us, we do so because we counted so little pieces of equipment that have too high availability anyway, we didn't think it was such a big deal. And the fact that a couple archetypes are 'illegal' under these rules anyway. And of course, we play with the 'if you can get it, so can they' mentality, along with 'take the panther cannon, but it's on you if you carry the damn thing down the street.')