I threw out the old Idea and brought this one up, since I can't protect the rest of the group if I'm the biggest scariest ugliest thing there, then perhaps I'll be targetted instead of the group?
Resisting damage with 37 dice, 5 to dodge (rarely if ever full combat dodge)
pretty good pool to attack? morale attraction of "shoot the big one first" should prtect the non combat people right?

(keeping the +20% for being a troll until I get an answer back from the GM about it being in chargen or not)

Bone Density and Bone Lacing are incompatable.

The Suprathyroid Gland has an Availabilty of 20.

I'm not quite sure, but it seems as if you are adding the bonus for Enhanced Articulation to your Combat Skills. EA only grants a bonus to Physical Skills (a specific category of Skills) linked to a Physical Attribute.

I had a similar idea, to build the biggest baddest damage soaker around.

Part of the problem, though, is that SR opponents don't respond well to Snap-aggro abilities. They tend to look at the party and go "Huge troll with armor, huge troll with armor, skinny elf, skinny human. I'll shoot at skinnies."

here's a hopefully fixed version
lemme know where I went wrong.

don't think you add the 20% cost at chargen to stuff made for dwarf or troll.

wired reflexes adds to reaction. therefore you have either reaction 4(6) or reaction 2(4), depending on if you added it in or not.

with uneducated in there, gunnery (which you have nothing to use with, only used for firing vehicle mounted weapons) seems weird. i assume it was supposed to be heavy weapons (which includes grenade launchers) which also seems weird with uneducated, though i suppose not impossible (after all, it doesn't take that much to learn the basics of using a gun).

perhaps you should reconsider uneducated as a flaw? in fact, as a general rule, whenever you see a flaw worth 20 points, sit down and really ask yourself: how badly do i really want my 20 points all in one shot, as opposed to splitting them up into smaller (5 and 10 point) flaws? because uneducated pretty much means you've never used a calculator, let alone a smartlink

anyways, as with before, you probably want something boosting your strength and agi, if you're going to be melee. i would drop that 10th point of body, and use the 25 BP elsewhere... like raising agility to 4, boosting one of your mental stats, or getting rid of uneducated.

...careful with that combination of Uneducated and Logic of 1.

KK4.3 has been wrestling with this all her career. She had to learn Computer skill (at twice the Karma cost) just so she could use her commlink effectively. In the old credstick days this wasn't much of an issue, but now so much of a character's day to day existence is dependent on his commlink (like going to the Stuffer Shack for grub, getting a beer at the bar, not getting arrested because it isn't turned on, etc.).

With her it does make for some humorous moments I will admit.

I would put the Image Link on the glasses with the Smart Link & then take the Skinlink modification so your GL cannot be easily hacked. Would be bad if you were in the midst of a fight & the clip suddenly dropped out.

Unless you are always going to shoot from a vehicle, Gunnery is a waste. For the GL you should take Heavy Weapons instead.

To make him a better damage soak, I would ditch the Toughness, and go with Increased Pain Tolerance III. This increases the breakpoint for negative modifiers from wound effect.

Since he has Running, Climbing, Swimming and Gymnastics all at 4 (total of 64BPs), you could save a lot by just taking the Athletics Skill Group at 4 for 40BPs With these extra points, he could take another weapons skill like Automatics (SMGs, Assault Rifles). THis could also be a good choice since the Ares Alpha has an integrated GL making it rather versatile

I also notice the character also has 6 more BPs worth of Knowledge skill than what his Logic + Intuition give him (should be 15BPs) . Were extra BPs applied above this total?

Keep in mind with the Uneducated Quality, Professional and Academic Knowledge skills are twice the BP/Karma cost.

One thing I will say, unless he gets hit first with a direct combat spell, he most certainly will geek the mage.

The point being that he wouldn't, as you said earlier, "have the same basic understanding everyone else does" concerning any kind of technical task.

Showing this guy how to use a comlink would be like showing my grandma how to use her email program well. He'd be writing down every step and be unsure about the whole process. After a couple months, he'd probably be just fine with sending and receiving email, but opening an attachment? Oh, that's a whole new problem.

on a side note, if he has heavy weapons, that means you could buy him an ingram white knight (recommended, imo) or a Stoner-Ares M202 and get some nice recoil compensation in there.

the white knight costs a bunch less, and needs less upgrading, so i'd probably go with that (specifically, you can fire two bursts without needing to even brace it on your shoulder). additionally, it can fire bursts instead of just full auto, and could theoretically take a sound suppressor. though i can't for the life of me imagine that making it *quiet* it should at least make it less loud. this also means you don't have to blow stuff up to kill people far away. furthermore, it's only 500 more than an M202 to get a white knight with a gyro-mount, which offers, between the integral gas vent, shockpad on the stock, and the theoretical gyro-mount 12 points of recoil comp... 6 of which can be applied to movement modifiers, if you so require.

additionally, i would, now i look at it, recommend a couple more types of grenades: gas grenades (if you're a cheapskate, pepper punch works just fine) and flashbangs (note the damage stays the same out to the full distance, which makes it handy for groups, and firing two flashbangs should be enough to KO most regular sec troops without killing).

Uneducated is definitely not like a high school graduate -- it's a person who never graduated from high school, let alone had any sort of formal schooling at all. Since you can't default and haven't spent any points on the Computer skill, you have no understanding of "computers and electronic devices, which in the 2070s is just about everything powered by electricity." Since you can't default, you have no Artisan skills -- you can't sing, dance or paint, at all. Since you haven't spent any skill points in Armorer and you can't default, you can't even swap out a barrel mount for some other piece of weaponry -- you have absolutely no idea how guns are put together. You don't know any First Aid, at all, or any medicine -- a bandage? Why use that when you can just piss in the dirt and pack the resulting mud on the wound to stop the blood loss? Bark from the willow tree to stop a headache? Nope, you haven't spend the skill points so you don't know anything about things like that.

Real quick here:

Depending on how your group rules on Cyberlimb armor, you can crank up your armor rating pretty quick with some lower legs both with +2 armor. That also depends on how your group rules on meta cyberlimbs though I guess.

And I see a massive issue with not having muscle toner and augmentation. It's a must.

as I said...we have differing views you all combine common sense into education, we don't. (example: common sense says urine and dirt is a bad Idea for first aide, education tells you what would be good Idea)
so once again can we put that aside?

I don't see an Increased Pain Tolerance. I see a High Pain Tolerance that allows him to ignore wound modifiers, but it's not compatible with any cyber/bioware. As the character progresses, wouldn't Toughness be better when paired with good cyber/bioware that allows him to ignore pain modifiers?

You're right Kyoto Kid. djinni, if you buy the Athletics (group) skill at 4, then buy Computers 1, you'll still have 16 BP to spend on other things. Athletics isn't a technical skill, so your character can buy that skill group.

Fair enough. Not how I'd run it, but it's cool. Thanks for the response, and I'll drop it now, as I promised.

I think the point was that he is more liable to draw fire because he can't use his commlink properly. Like not turning on his commlink or having it in Hidden when in a high sec area. Or having so much AR spam and not knowing how to deal with it.

OK. I get that you want to make a big bad troll that can take a great deal of physical abuse. I don't really understand why. Whether he is going to be targeted over the rest of the team will depend very much on the circumstances of the run.

If the NPCs he's up against decide he's the biggest threat the next question they're going to ask is "can we take him down?" If they decide the answer is yes you'd better hope they're poor judges. If they decide the answer is no then they'll pull back and call for back-up, if they're sensible.

All that aside, I'm curious as to how your troll got to be the troll he is. Why has he decided that running interference for the smart squishy runners and getting shot up is a good idea? I'm sure you can give me a reason, I'd just like to hear it.

Well, even if he wasn't much good outside of combat, I'd sure like him in my team of Shadowrunners. Just go invisible and let him deal with the guards.

Ok if he's going close combat he needs some agility boosting. The bioware muscle toner if rather usefull in this area.
When you swing and axe, throw a bunch or shoot a gun agility is the applied stat. Concidering the rather high number to rolls linked to agility you'll be making boost it is a very good idea.

I'd advice dropping the Bone Dense all together and getting muscle toner and muscle augmention rating 2. This will up both your strength and agility. (melee damage is strength divded by 2 round up + some number)

One tactic to concider is, boost both your agility and strength via bioware and use your fists for stuning guys down. Many runs require you bring back alive target or worse yet, a run that requries you not kill anybody. If your augmented strength is 11 you deal 10P plus hits with a combat axe. A sweet attack.

Some minor ware you might like
The internal air tank will give you a 2 hour air supply. Its cheep and has a low essence cost.
Perfect for gass attacks or if you happen to fall off a boat. (and being a troll with rating 4 bone dense your going to take some major swim penalties)

Making the wired reflexs alpha, will save you some essence for later.

And ultrasonic sensor can help you deal with those pesky invisible mages.

A Grenade is a grenade, they are one size fits all

I'm fairly sure you need the image link on the same device as the smartlink for the smartlink to work.


If your going for 1 charisma you could go the extra mile and take Uncloth.

The PC has no Social skills, please do not take Uncouth, unless you are planning(and your GM is allowing you) to act totally out of character.

Uncouth means as a troll with no Intimidate skill, a puny 1 Body human walks up to you and trash talks you, you roll over and cry,"Mommy," because you got absolutely no dice to roll. Please do not get Uncouth unless you plan on taking Social Skills (but if you are going to take Social wth are you doing with Uncouth anyway?)

Not at all. How difficult would it be to cover up a full body kevlar coat so that the coat looks "natural", like your real skin? Dermal plating consists of plastic or metal plates overlayed on your body. Plus (probably due to nutrient problems or just bonding with the plastic or metal in general), you can't have orthoskin laid down on top of dermal plates anyway.

I thought dermal was just under the skin?

I think you could get cosmetic surgery that didn't look like dermal armor.

It wouldn't look like natural skin, though. It would look like rhino plates, or wearing a monkey suit, or some such. Clearly not your natural skin, but also not necessarily dermal armor.

Trying to get realistic skin would look like wearing a skin suit, I think.

How much essence is your current cyber/bioware costing right now? Subtract how much you're spending on your wired reflexes. Is it less than 3 points? Because then you could drop the wired reflexes and buy the adept merit for 5BP and spend your three magic points on Increased Reflexes 2 (since you'd already have lost three magic points from the cyber/bioware). And that would give you a great deal more BP to spend on other stuff, instead of the nuyen cost of wired reflexes.

As to dermal plating:

Well, after you lose permanent points of Magic because of lost essence, funnily enough it suddenly becomes easier to buy new points of Magic, as the cost of raising an attribute is [new rating * 3]. If you can start with a low rating, then it doesn't cost very much to raise it back up. So you buy cyber/bioware, spending all the way up to six essence on it. Your Magic rating becomes zero.

For a mage to initiate five times and raise his magic by five points (from 6 to 11), it would cost 382 karma. For wired adept to initiate five times and raise his magic by five points (from 0 to 5), is only 93 karma.

Now, wired reflexes 2 already costs 3 essence. So, since you can't spend more than six essence anyway, that 3 essence that you would have spent on wired reflexes 2 allows you to buy the adept power Increased Reflexes 2, for three magic points. Then, you only need to initiate twice and buy two additional points of magic (going from 3 to 5) to get your adept Increased Reflexes up to level 3 (the max it can be) -- which would only be 18 karma. Compare 18 karma to the 70k that it'll cost just to buy the third level of wired reflexes, let alone paying someone to install it in you and also finding an additional two points of essence somewhere, which would likely require a higher grade of cyber/bioware anyway and you can see that it's prohibitively expensive to solely go cyber/bioware when you could combine the two and spend your karma on initiation and points of magic, wherever it makes the most sense and where you can get something for either a cheaper magic point cost or a cheaper essence cost.

Whoa whoa, Fortune, settle down. I was stating my understanding of how the book describes it. The "RAW". (god I hate that acronym)
Personally, I agree with you that it should be treated as 5(2), and if there's a book or FAQ quote that makes that explicit I'd like to see it.

So, I didn't believe you, and had to check with the man upstairs ...

This is the first time in SR I've said "I'm going to ignore the official clarification."

But jebus, that's a bad bad bad idea. Anything that sets up a routine where it's better to do things in a convoluted method (1->2, install 1 point of ware, 1->2, install 1 point of ware, etc) doesn't work for me.

I'd add some stuff to protect from gas attacks. Also armor mods to protect from shock weapons and chemical attacks.