Hello, new person here. I've played a few RPGs in the past, but I've been interested in Shadowrun for quite a while and with the new edition I figured it would be as good a time as any to jump in.

While reading through the rulebook a couple character ideas immediately sprang to mind, and I set off to see about making them. While doing so, however, I came up with a few questions I wasn't sure about and I figured it'd be best to ask. I have some questions for each of them, so I suppose it's best to talk about each idea separately.

My first character is actually a remake of one of my favorite RPG characters in the past, a demolitions expert who's deathly afraid of heights.

The first main question I have is how exactly would I implement his fear as a character quality? I was thinking something along the lines of using the Allergy rules, since he would be negatively affected whenever in a situation where he'd be up high without some sort of support. Based on that, I was thinking Uncommon/Moderate would be about where he falls in terms of how he reacts (unless of course handing off ledges is common enough in Shadowrun that it would be a common occurence). Of course, those rules leave no room for a willpower check or anything, so I don't know if it would be an exact fit.

Another question when I was looking through the gear choices for him, I was looking at the cyberware, and I see that there's a difference in cost/essence between basic and alphaware. My question here is, is it possible to purchase one level of cyberware, and later upgrade it (basic to alpha, for example)? If so, how does that affect essence? It seems like tracking essence loss like that would probably be too tricky, so I assume that whatever loss you took to start with is what you're stuck with.

And lastly with this character, I have a decent chunk of leftover BP from character creation (though I think I screwed up a bit with the skill costs, so I need to double check). What happens to any unused BP once the character is made? Is it just lost? If so, then it seems like if you have anything left over you should just buy up as much junk and skills as possible, since you can always sell stuff later.

My second character has quite a few more questions pertaining to his creation. I thought it would be cool to make a Spirit Hunter, a mage dedicated to tracking down and banishing (or just outright killing) spirits. As such, he has the full range of conjuring powers and related spells.

One idea I quite liked was the Magic Fingers spell. Since it explicitly stated that it can be used for combat, I liked the idea of it being his primary method of attack (against ordinary people, at least). As such, I'd like for him to have a combat skill for it. Would it use the Unarmed Combat skill, or would it be more appropriate to take an Exotic Weapon skill (since it's decidedly different from normal punching)? Also, could you use touch spells through it?

My other questions deal with Spirits and stuff. Since the rulebook seems to encourage making your own magical tradition (since there don't seem to be massive gameplay changes due to it), I came up with a modified one for my Hunter. My first question about that: it says that a magician can master 5 types of spirits. Is it absolutely necessary to pick 5 for the tradition, or could I use one or two for all of them? All it seems like the spirit assignment thing affects is using bound spirits for sorcery/dispelling. Does it do anything other than than and add RP flavor? And why does it matter that you pick 5 anyway, since there are only 6 total?

And lastly, in trying to come up with some way of tracking down spirits and stuff, I've picked the Assensing skill as well as the Detect Magic spell. It seems like in the manner in which I'd want to use them, there's be a bit of an overlap in their abilities, so which would be more appropriate to have, if they're not both useful. This guy's kind of scraping the bottom of the BP barrel, so if these overlap enough and I could get by with dumping one, that would help.

Anyway, that's probably more than enough questions for someone starting out, so I think I'll leave it at this.

ok, I'll try and do as best as i can.

point 1, in regards to the fear of heights. Making the Allergy table be a phobia table is one commonly made houserule for SR4 it seems. You can also modify it, by giving each level of severity a threshold to over come the fear, so a Mild would have a threshold of say 2, moderate 3, and severe 4, and whenever you succeed, the next combat turn you'll be free of the fear (to prevent munchinism of taking a mild phobia, and triggering it just to have a highenough willpower to shrug it off that combat turn. You'd have to talk to your. GM to determine how common it would be, i think, in most cases, they'd say it was common, because you dont go in the front door of most places on a Run.

(speaking from sr3, i havent read up on cyber in 4 yet) You can replace cyber with a higher grade, what that does is leave a "hole" in your essence, that gets filled first, whenever you put more ware in you. So, lets say you install 1 essence worth of ware, and have it ripped out. You then have a 1 essence point "hole" that gets filled up first... like a gift card at a store if you return something without the receipt. until you use up that "money" (essence) you dont need to use any more of what you have left.

Yes, BP gets lost at the end of character creation, and from what i've seen, if you have ALOT left over, you prolly messed up math somewhere, so double check your numbers, and then stock up on something, either more skills, attributes, or, if really necessary, gear.

Remember though, skills and attributes are generally more expensive once you get on the street (and so is gear). But i was working on my first Sr4 character a few days ago, had my attributes where i wanted, had the skills i wanted, had one flaw to balance something out, and realized i was OUT of BP's before i even started buying gear heh...

On the magic side of stuff, this is all sort of opinion, mostly from what i've gathered from vigilently reading the boards and again, my own, opinion. While reading this, though, remember, everyone who has an opinion, also has an asshole

I think the magic fingers spell would require an exotic weapons skill to use it as an offensive skill. Nothing to really back it up, but you arent using your own muscles in close combat, so i dont think it should be "unarmed" combat skill.

As far as spirits, i dont think there's anything that "requires" you to take the 5, you could just take 1, i suppose, but i would suspect that "Street Magic" will be bringing out more spirit types, soe you'll have more choices other than "exclude one"

The rest, eh, i dont even know enough to guesstimate an opinon for.

In the Shadowrun Companion (the one for 3rd edition), they have a phobia table which is laid out pretty much the same way as the allergy table (as far as point values and categories). The mechanics used in 3rd edition would need to be tweaked ad 3rd edition uses a variable target number. I would probably set it up as follows... for someone who has minor phobia of heights, they lose 2 dice from their dice pool for any test made while up high. For moderate I would up it to 4 dice, and for severe I would first require a will test to even go to a high place (maybe a a straight attribute test Will(6) allowing them to try once every 5 minutes), and then if they managed to make it up that high the die pool penalty would be 6. Start with a something like this, and modify it as you play to get the desired effect you are looking for.
As for your essence question, this came up alot in 2nd and 3rd edition as well. I do not know if their is any official ruling on this or not, but the way I always handled it was you do not re-gain any essence. However, the difference between the 2 was simply calculated into the next implant. Say you get a base line implant that costs 2 essence. Later you get a delta grade of the same implant. Your essence would still remain at 4, but you are only using 1 essence point for implants. Later still you get another peice of cyber that costs 2 essence points. Your essence would only drop to 3 instead of 2 since you have 1 point of "floating essence" left over from the delta upgrade.
Yes, build points not used are lost.
As for the rest of your questions I do not have my book with me, and can not remember the wording of the rules. Hope this helps some.

Thanks, that information helped. Some of that stuff (like the cyber essence question) was just for curiosity's sake, but the rest helped finish the character ideas I had.

With the BP, my math was ok, and I only had about 8 or 9 left over. I was just curious since that could buy a LOT of stuff or squeeze a few more points into skills.

both are good choices, it depends on what the character is more like, arxhetype, that sorta stuff. I'm likely to have to prune back on some skills with my character i'm working on because he's going to be a tech guy (decking, electronics, and a mechanic) I'm not entirely sure how i'm going to fold it into an actual person yet, but i'll get there.