I mentioned this to my GM the other day.

I said "What if I was to make a normal guy. I mean, as far as enhancements go. For instance, no magic and no cyberware of any kind."

He said he'd look into bending a few rules for it if it was needed to balance him out with the rest of the guys but he thought it would add some flavor to the party considering everyone else is min-maxed to some degree and some form of exotic made-to-be-different-yet-still-an-archetype characters.

I've noticed in games I've played both the GM and myself have the most fun with a character like this because there is room for growth. Its more like a novel. He starts as little more then something and turns into a badass by the end of the book.

The problem is, how do I keep him alive that long in a world of devistating magic and hardcore technology?

I'm looking at putting him together as human, getting him some very good stats and maybe maxing one. Or a broad number (3/4/5/4/3/3/3/3)

I'm most interested in playing a melee combat type who doesn't get hit (kinda a dodge monkey) and whose maxed up or as close to it in his weapon skill of choice and various other useful skills (such as shadowing, infiltration, demolitions, ect) and some face skills. His focus will most likely be his skills and mods to those along the lines of posative qualities.

Kinda like the hero in Ninja scroll. Just an ordinary swordsman, sorta or gunman.

He'd have no magic and very little to no cyberware (might need a skill booster or something but hes far from a street sam) I was actually considering making him technologically retarded to a vast degree.

My questions are if I max magic resistance, will that help him? I'm not looking to make him immune to everything or remotely so as I know its not possible but I do want him to be able to survive. So any ideas to make him valuable to the group?

There's also the question of should I try to max out as many skills as possible and leave the attributes fairly plain across the board (4s all around and a few 3s) or max out as much attributes as I can (might allow 210 for attributes as oposed to 200) and dump the rest of my BP elsewhere?

Somewhat new to 4th edition. I played 2nd as a youngster and just found a group playing fourth in my area so I thought I'd get back into it. Any advice on this would be great.
Thanks,
Normal

Depends on what you are going for.

A young 'normal' of exceptional abilities go for pure stats and some reasonable (3) skills.

The 'star' collage athlete/scholar. with little training.

Perfect for the 18 year old that is now trying to make a name for himself.


You could also go with the 'well trained' but (cheap) ex-corp/government/etc worker. perhaps some cyber (cheap and cost-effective) but more well-trained. GOOD but not exceptional attributes and very good skills.


NOTE: When I GM I am very open to ignoring 'build' rules. If your story fits the build, I generally will allow it. You want to spend 300 points into stats... if it aint just a min/max gimik but you are playing the 'exceptional' person I generally will allow it.

Now unknown to you I might very well have (evil) reasons to help explain it, especially if totally bending the rules.

But especially if willing to bend the rules alittle on attribute/skill maxxes and pure skill 'normal' is possible and functional.

Now one side warning... IF rules were broken on building a 'normal' character dont expect an easy time getting cyber ware to make an 'uber' character in game.

Don't expect to get 6 physical stats for being the normal and then after a run or two order large amounts of cyberware to ugrade and become the total maxxed sammy easily....


Though one suggestion I would have................

Take the magic blooded? (what ever the possiblity to become a magically active is)....

Good way to explain WHY you instively avoided the cyber and have focused on developing 'yourself' ..... leaves it open to develop (like in the books) but is 'balanced' by the game master chosing HOW (and when) you develop.

If you look at the Weapon Specalist in the book (last archtype) that's exactly what she is.

No Cyber/Bioware, no Magic.
She's a Elf, but that's it for the funky stuff.

Stats 3/4 across the board.
Two combat skill groups and a mix of related skills.
130,000 nuyen in resources.
Some decent contacts.

Stephen

Don't skimp on the Edge. From all I've heard, part of the reason it exists is to try and make a guy like this viable -- so you might as well stock up.

I'd sink as much into stats as you can, then focus on some skill groups (I really dig them, they're probably my favorite thing in SR4 actually) and pump them up as high as you can. Round out skills a little after that, buy some decent gear (a lot of the glasses/contacts/earbuds/etc make some cyberwear pretty obsolete, actually, so you're not at as big a disadvantage as you might think)...

*shrugs* Sounds doable to me. Maybe not so much with that melee expert idea (melee combat seems to really be where augmentations will make or break you), but as an all-around combatant, sure. I could see it. Especially if you were willing to dabble in combat drugs.

High Edge is a must for a completely mundane character who is combat-oriented. Other than that, a starting ranged combat skill of 6 (7 if you take the aptitude quality) with a specialization, some good supporting skills and secondary combat skills, and a decent dodge, and you're set. For a mundane human, you can spend 200 on Attributes, 40 to start with an Edge of 6, probably only 15 or so on resources and contacts (for a "poor foreigner" concept), and maybe 15 net points spent on qualiities. That leaves a good 130 to spend on skills (and if you take even less contacts/resources, or spend less/gain more on qualities, that goes up even higher - and 130 is already pretty good for a character who is not a specialized type like a hacker).


A mundane character is certainly more viable than it was in third edition, as far as actually being able to accomplish something in combat. Don't expect to be in the same league as a sammie or adept, though. They will have more agility and reaction dice, other bonus dice, extra initiative passes, higher initiative, more damage resistance, and so on. And their attributes (even Edge) can be comparable to yours - they will tend to be less well-rounded, skill-wise, but will still have the "essential" combat skills.

On the other hand, that assumes the sammies and adepts will be equally tweaked. A properly tweaked mundane could hang with an awakened or cybered character that is not as min-maxed.

Three rules for the uncybered mundane in SR4:

First, Be a rigger. You can rig huge drone armies from captain's chair mode using only trodes and a few daisy-chained comlinks. You only need the VCR if you want to jump in and that only give you 2 bonus dice. Honestly, there is no excuse for any SR character not to have a few basic drones.

Second, since you have the equipment, you might as well be a decker, too.

Third, learn how to blow stuff up, sneak, sweet talk, and/or pretend to be other people.

Fourth, Buy a crapload of edge.


Magic resistence is a mixed bag. It is helpful if you go up against a lot of mages. It is terrible if you are supported by a mage. Never again will you benefit from healing spells and you'll end up giving your resistance dice to anyone trying to see you if you should have a need to be magically invisible.

Since you don't want 1 or 2 focus on 3 and 4. In a firefight or a swordfight you will lose to minmaxed characters. If you try to be a doger then here is what will happen: Mr. Street Sam will go first. He will shoot a burst at you with his smartlinked assualt rifle. You may dodge. If you do he will shoot at you 5 times more. This repeats over and over again untill you go down or someone else kills the samurai because you can't do diddly squat except spend your actions on full defense. The former is more likely than the latter since an uncybered character can have a maximum of 13 dodge dice before edge and Mur Street Sam can throw around 22 firearms dice if he is minmaxed (24 for elves).

Attacking first is far more important than dodging for the mundane and the samurai alike. You'd mant to avoid combat untill a clear opertunity to shoot the guy in the back presents itself. Full frontal confrontations are not the forte of the uncybered mundane. Indirect conflict is. This may include sending drones after him, blowing his ass up, setting up a cruise missile's laser designator at him, or etc. It doesn't include shootouts. Even with maxed out edge you'd be able to use it, at most, 8 times between refresh terms. If combat is rare in your games this may be enough but if you rely on edge to dodge you may find yourself sending edge up to eight times per enemy combatant per combat turn. One sammie with wired 3 is enough to deplete your entire edge pool.

Mundane without implants? Done it and generally am having a blast.

I've been playing him about 9 months now, and am about 120 karma in. He is still wareless, but I'm on the cusp of buying Synaptic Boosters for him. Wanted to save up for level 2 because so far we are running on the ruling that you can't just add the second level on top of level 1 at a later date.

I'll add that at the end of last session he popped Kamikaze for the first time, but we didn't get into the killing part yet. It was fun playing up this guy that normally has the philosophy of avoiding killing anyone switching to a raving WWE kill-them-all loon. I'd not really gone out of my way to crutch on that, and I envisioned Slim being relatively drug clean inspite of his vice friendly life. But when we ended up in a rave type setting where that stuff was readily available I figured I'd have Slim snatch up a couple hits to try them out. Not sure how that is going to turn out, but I liked not using those drugs for a while at least.

My GM also OKed me spending 10 Karma for a non-canon post-chargen buy of Latent Awakening. This is a one-time deal and only because Street Magic wasn't out when the character was created. So I'm not sure where that is going to lead. Although at times I sort of feel I shouldn't have done it because it sort of feels wrong. Not that I took it post-chargen, but because it violates the feel of a total mundane clawing his way up the ladder. But then I'm a big fan of the Richard Villiers concept.

The Latent Awakening hasn't really come up in play yet, but it might shortly. See the obvious way for a mundane to have a gentler landing from Kamikaze is to toke up on Deepweed as the Deepweed counteracts the normal Kamikaze crash Willpower penalty. However this might become a trigger for having a freaky awakening. I'm not sure if the GM will handle it that way, I haven't talked to him about it at all.

This is most certainly the first edition of Shadowrun, where such a character is truely viable.

Sure, the cybered or magicked runner will have an edge, that's the whole point of that stuff, but it's not so bad, that one cannot add something useful as well. Even combat should be doable, the biggest downside there are Initiative Passes, and there are always combat drugs to take care of that.

High Edge is certainly a good start. And be sure to buy that Westwind, just because you can.

Bye
Thanee

For a combat oriented character, I'm going to recommend buying up Dodge, Infiltration and Perception, along with lots of Edge. Full Defense may seem useless, but if you read the rules and try to use a little imagination and tactics it's very nice.

See, Full Defense requires a Complex Action. Movement, however, does not. Even if you use Full Defense (either on your turn, or in advance of it) you can still maneuver. That means Mr. Cocky Street Samurai will try to light you up, then you run behind full cover. He now has to come out and get you (or throw a grenade), but on your next move you use that high Infiltration to sneak around him. For a build with no initiative enhancements, this is difficult stuff and you probably can't pull it off one on one. If you've got teammates it gets a lot easier - the Samurai is likely to focus in on the guys he can kill right now while missing the threat you pose. Even if he wants to hunt you down, the guy has to spend a Simple Action to Observe in Detail - that's three less bullets headed your way. If your buddies are keeping the lead flying, I imagine that guy's Perception test will be subject to a hefty penalty. That gives you a decent chance of getting a shot in unnoticed.

You'll also want to use a Big Gun and wear the best armor you can get, along with a helmet when possible.

All in all, it's a much more viable build if you want something else to be your focus: rigging, talking, sneaking, etc.

Thanee mentioned it...and I second it...for combat, you will need extra IPs. If you are alone, then you are likely going to have to go the route of combat drugs...maybe your GM can come up with something for you to use, who knows?

In a group, I would get buddy-buddy with a mage and see if he could hook you up with Increase Reflexes...

Otherwise, you are going to be limited in combat, and as others have mentioned, a run, hide, sneak then shoot strategy.

High edge muy importante, yeah. See if you can get your GM to relax the Qualities BP limit. Since he'll have fewer bonus dice than others, Exceptional Attr (Agility) and Aptitude in his focus skill(s) will be important for his development. Might not hurt to be Lucky, either.

Depending on your game's Edge refresh rate of course, you can make a splash in combat every once in a while using just Edge. Don't expect to dominate combat over the longterm, or be the workhouse of the team in combat. But I've saved my teammate's lives a couple of times with just prudent and timely spending of 2 or 3 points of Edge on acting first and an extra IP and for actions taken during those IP.

Our game refreshes Edge fully every session, each session running 5 to 6 hours. I found that 6 Edge got me through, I didn't increase to 7 Edge till a couple of months back and since then I've never actually used up all my Edge. How much combat your games have could have an impact on that need though.

I've got one of these characters sitting around and ready to go as soon as someone will run a game.

He was a young federal agent on a relatively soft solo mission that went horribly, horribly wrong when a drug cartel thought he was after them. he gets kidnapped and shipped to Aztlan right at Crash 2.0 so he's completely in the cold. He escapes but has to take a long, circuitious route back to "the World" via tramp freighters and the like. He hasn't yet decided if he wants to be legit or not.

Stats are good but not spectacular (he was much beefier but he was tortured for a while and then spent quite a lot of time without decent medical care), socially adept (he was trained for undercover) and decent combat skills. Lots of knowledge skills and languages. He's actually net-sensitive since his back story includes a "Beat a Fed for a Buck" VR gameshow the cartel ran.


He's a decent espionage character with a bent for surveilence that could be handy for many teams (RFID stealth & security tag sensors are expensive but good). His weapon skills are decent but not spectacular (~7 dice before gear) and he can do okay in a barfight. Pretty hefty amount of gear thanks to the supplies he managed to grab from the drug cartel and an undercover resupply drop he knew about that due to Crash 2.0 was never recovered by the feds.

Make him a detective type. Someone who is really good at doing legwork finding clues, have tons of connections your face type character, As for combat sure you could be good, but lets face it your physad, streetsam types will generally wipe the walls with you, but thats ok, If you get lucky you could get the drop on them sure. But with all that cyber and magical armor etc etc they will most likely be able to take alot. If you do want to mellee and get in the killing shot fast I would have to say get you a mono whip and specialize in it. That way when you do hit someone they will most likely drop. As someone posted earlier invest in Edge it will be your best friend. I would recommend playing a human as you get a bonus to edge that way.

Another tactic for the unarmed type is play a troll and specialize in unarmed grappling, then max out str.. there are not to many other races that will be able to break out of your death dealing holds, even if they are augmented. and even if they do have extra IPs they are not going to be able to do anything but squirm to try to get away from you.

and ya use drones as back up. click on the autopilot and have them take down anyone who wants to interfere. Mages generally hate drones by the way from what I have seen. Our mage doesnt even have an elemental spell he is pretty much handycap when he comes across a drone. Manaball my rosey red butt alot of good that does him against drones.

Don't focus on being a combat character because without extra IPs from cyber, you're going to suck. Focus on being a skillmonkey - know how to do everything so you can contribute to the group because you're not going to contribute much in combat. And to echo everyone else, buy up your edge really high if not maxed.

...another good character type would be a sniper (Human to get that extra point of edge). Specialisations in Urban Infiltration or Hiding, and Shadowing would of course be the most important next to Longarms skill (Spc. Sniper Rifles).

Since there are no outlays for implants, the character should have plenty of resources to buy a lot of really good useful toys

One armour modification that is indispensable in this occupation is Thermal Dampening.

All sight hearing & targeting enhancements can be purchased as external gear (one feature of SR4 that I do like).

Having an "eye in the sky" drone or two wouldn't be a bad idea either (particularly one to watch your back).

And yes, you can start at chargen with a sniper rifle (Walther 2100 - the downside is it doesn't disassemble). EXEX rounds to start, but you definitely want to find AP ammo after the character begins play.

Also a good set of contacts, at least one with a loyalty of 4 or 5 would not hurt.

And as many responses above have mentioned, load up on that Edge.

[damn, I'm going to have to make this character up myself.]

Select sound filter is available on earbuds, as is enhancement & spatial recognizer (BBB p325).

I can't believe that they didn't enable Dampers though. I have a pair of auto-dampening earmuffs now that I use at the gunrange. Sure, it's the cheap kind that simply disable the internal speaker when it detects a loud noise and not the uberspiffy noise-canceling models but jeez louise, it still works fine.

That's an immediate House Rule. (For some reason I heard Burt Reynolds and the "Man Law" crowd chant that in my head.)

Wow.

I have added dampers to every set of headphones I've bought, and no one has minded.

I believe the SR Chargen program I have allows it.

The fact that it's not in the rules is going firmly in the "oversight" category for me.

Mostly agreed on the "duh, dampers" stuff, but I don't like select sound filters in external gadgets. How are you isolating and filtering multiple soundtracks? I can imagine some sort of very clunky interface through a comlink, but I think that would be slow, clumsy, and require more than a free action and be semi obvious that you're fiddling with something.

preset for diffrent frequenzy ranges? with higher ratings having better and more predefined filter ranges? as in, you can isolate the range that covers most of human speech while removing those that go above or below that...

not as fancy as what you see on CSI, but workable...

Probably worth noting also that all smartlink systems/scopes/binoculars can also have the vision mods, just like contacts glasses and goggles.

Binoculars with high end vision enhancement for checking stuff out at a distance maybe? Unless you need to be more discrete where contacts or glasses would be better, but still. And either a scope for a sniper rifle or put a smartlink with vision mag would probably help, since you don't need that mod in your contacts or glasses again. Also maybe consider ultrasound on something, if only for the passive mode to detect sensors. You won't know if your GM was going to include ultrasound based devices or not originally, but your team probably won't think about that when you stop them from running through them.

My original Shadowrun character in the first game I ever played in was basically a totally "normal" character...Elf, no Magic, no cyber except a Smartlink. Lived and died by skills...even if he did always go bloody last in the Initiative passes and only went twice every blue moon.

Made up for it with an AK-97 that threw around a bajillionty dice and a penchant for shooting people in the head. That and the fact he was the only person in our party who COULD DRIVE A DAMNED VEHICLE. Except the Troll who could drive a motorbike.

I didn't show up on the first session, by the way...so this glaring discrepancy didn't arise during group-chargen, it seems...

My GM and I care trying to come up with a viable "juicer" character (like the one in the palladium system) by using a biomonitor and autoinjectors. Say a military experiment for non-cyber mundans.

Thanks guys, I thought of a few things I want to do with the character with the help you've given me.

I'm trying to figure this into the game but one of the things is I wanted him to be young, just beyond adolescence, maybe a retired runner's son breaking into the business riding on or steering away from dear old Dad's name but trained by him none the less.

Or something a bit more dramatic, but not knowing the game world so well, harder to pull off: He was a magically blooded child. Came from a bloodline of potency either by breed from government (with the idea that magic is genetic or can be "made" genetic) or just some well-to-do corporate and talented family who was in some kinda freak accident and the only survivor was this kid. So naturally the corporation takes the kid under their wing, wipes him of his SIN as if he never existed and molds him into one of their many play-things through his youth, except his magic never matures. It's still dormant inside his mind. They train him in all the other skills which were desirable but for his unawakened abilities he's practically useless to their goals. He's sent out on "errands" of a trying nature, for the corporation to use his skills in an effort to either scare his abilities to the surface in a time of need or liquidate a hopeless asset if he won't manifest.

Neither occurred and he actually succeeded in his missions. The corp had some hope for him yet but mid a special operations mission this small and somewhat inept corporation was subject to a hostile take-over by a much larger one after hearing they had stumbled over some incredible paranormal findings in Thaumatology in the past few years which were very underwraps and this young buck was forgotten in the field. Still SINless and now without a connection to anyone or anything and is still technically "under contract" today by a company which is basically non-existent anymore since all its juice was sucked out by the larger corporation and it was left by the waste-side.

This character may encounter some trouble once he awakens (if he does). He has some idea of what his purpose was to be considering the training he received it had something to do with being unnoticed.

I'll make him a distance sniper of sorts with face skills, stealth skills, demolitions and max capable edge, lots of attributes, skills, contacts and gear with very little cyber-wear (the appropriate jack and sense enhancers and anything to help his sniping as long as he doesn't go beyond 1 essence loss)

Any ideas on what corporations I could use for the above or any other examples of how something like this might play out would be great.

I could also use help with meshing this into the Shadowrun environment. I haven't played, as I said since II edition so I'm not sure if this backstory will work so any help with it would be great.


Norm

Well since you can get all vision enhancements on contacts/glasses/goggles now you can easily get away without cybereyes, and there's no disadvantage to trode nets so data jacks are not strictly needed. You can also get most hearing mods on earbuds, but most importantly they seem to have left out dampening for some reason.

There is only 1 stat that no amount of Magic or augmentation can increase and it is Edge. Suggest going the insane Edge route if you want a total mundane. Skills, Edge and gear.

trodes are nets of electrodes and can be ripped off your head. Have you seen Strange Days? They're squids.
In SR4 we've got nanopaste now so trodes can be painted on. I'd assume that means they can be smeared or washed off, but casual contact and smears wouldn't bother it.