I'm a long time Shadowrun fan, mostly because of the novels and Genesis game. I've never actually played the RPG, mostly due to bad luck every time I tried to find and/or start a game.

Well, my luck has changed. A friend is going to run an SR4 campaign, and I'm trying to put together a first character. The problem is that while I have a decent grasp of the rules, I don't know well things work in-game as opposed to in my head.

The character himself with be an Ork sam who has two loves in his life: Orkploitation and gun collecting. I'm picturing bad accents, worse music, and unnecessary large firearms.

There are really two things I'm wondering:

1) Where should my emphasis on cyber/bioware go? A smartgun implant is an obvious choice, but what else should a heavy gunslinger take? Or, more specifically, what should he take first?

2) I'm going to start with a broad arsenal that he can cherry pick from according to the run, but I don't want it to look like a typical Shadowrunner's collection. I'm really looking for things you could picture in a bad 70s cop movie. Style is more important than rules. For instance, he'll have a WarHawk instead of a Predator. Because his favourite movie is Dirty Hooglar, and Hooglar refused to use anything else. What do you folks suggest?

Good cyber for a GunSlinger sammy with normal creation rules would be Wired Reflexes 2 and a cyber hand with a gyro mount. I also digg Eye protectors with image enhancements.

Bio would be muscle toner, platelete factory, and a reflex recorder. Just off the top of my head.

Sport rifles, no one ever seems to use them.

Along the lines of the Warhawk, look at the PJSS Elephant gun - it's another big ass non-subtle weapon.

And shotguns.

I like this guy... but I wonder what's in that bag... Still, as a starting point, methinks he'll work quite well for your purposes...

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f23/bibl...slotsofguns.png

He's from the SR3 Cannon Companion, so most of the stuff in that chapter is no longer applicable--but I so like his guns.

Man, everyone's giving the advice I would have. Squinky got most of the cyber and bio essentials, actually. I would add an ultrasound sensor, for those pesky invisible mages. Note that smartlink is a cybereye modification now - I would get top of the line cybereyes with the works.

For the weapons, you have the Warhawk, the Elephant Gun, and a shotgun - I would get the Defiance T-250 to keep with the character's theme. So for your light pistol, I would get the Hammerli 620S - a target pistol is your coolest choice when you have to pack light. For automatics, the Ingram Smargun X is the likeliest to have been extensively used by orkish action heroes.

Never forget Muscle augmentation.

You mean Muscle Toner, don't you? That's what gives the Agility-boost that your gunslinger will so love.
In fourth ed., Augmentation only raises strength, and no one needs strength.
Especially not an ork...

Edit: You may want to throw in a couple of "flavor"-skills, not just gun-related knowledge-skills but maybe something like "Armorer", coz if he loves him his gunz, he sure don't likes it when someone else than daddy take them apart, huh!?

I understand muscle augmentation gives both strength and agility. It's only the bioware muscle enhancements that only give you one or the other (although you can shell out for both enhancements and still spend less essence than you would on cyber muscle augmentation).

The problem with the cyber version is that it is pretty expensive, Essense-wise. Plus, this character is likely to get wired reflexes rather than a synaptic accelerator, so his cyber side will already be taking a big hit.

Remember, Essense cost is halved for the cyberware or bioware which is the lower amount of the two, meaning that you can have 0.7 worth of cyberware and 0.6 worth of bioware for the same Essense cost of 1.0 worth of purely cyberware.

Yes, getting muscle augmentation and muscle toner together will cost 15,000 per point, compared to muscle replacement's 5,000. But the bioware will only cost 0.4 compared to 1.0 for the cyberware, even less if the bioware is the part of the Essense equation that gets halved.

Also, for a gunslinger, as opposed to a more general-duty street samurai, you might not even need muscle augmentation (especially an ork, who starts out with a base of 3 in Strength), so you can save even more Essense by picking up only the muscle toner.

Of course, a cybertorso and a cyberlimb will cost 2.5 essence, and you can get up to Strength 7 that way.

But, Glyph is right, for a ranged focused Sam, an ork with Str 3 (0BP) or Str 4 (10BP) should be fine. Focus on increased Agility.

Wow. You gents have provided a lot of options I hadn't even thought of. Good good.

One of my goals in choosing cyber/bio is to balance to two off to keep my overall Essence high. I don't want one lucky vampire to pick me off easily. So I was thinking of going with bone lacing for my big cyber hit, the first level of synaptic boosters (it's so hideously expensive but so essence light), and a pile of orthoskin and muscle toner. That said, that's a lot of nuyen spent on a starting character. Wired Reflexes scares me, for the Essence cost alone.

A reflex recorder, platelet factory, and gyro mount hadn't even occurred to me. The first two are really solid choices, but I'm not familiar with thy gyro. Does it add recoil compensation or something similar?

I'm also thinking of going with a smartgun and thermo vision without cybereyes right out the door, since I have low light naturally anyway. Down the road, I might shell out for some level 4 eyes and everything but ocular drone. I want to have some upgradeability for role playing purposes. I was really thinking about the ultrasound as well. Being able to see through thermographic smoke really appeals to me, particularly if I happen to carry a grenade of it for emergencies.

Lastly, I'm considering a cyber holdout pistol with stick and shock for emergencies. I suppose a machine pistol with stick and shock would be a little stompier, but I might save that for future upgrades.

The ultra sound is headware, not eyeware. so you would need a cyberskull (not available at creation) or just pay the essence.

A gyro harness is a big piece of equipment that provides 6 recoil compensation. A gyro mount in a cyberlimb is much smaller but only provides 3 RC.

You can get cyber eye enhancements on your regular eyes or you can get eye wear with enhancements. contacts with flare cmpensation, goggles/monocle/glasses/helmet with thermal, smartlink, magnificaion, enhancement, image link, whatever else I'm forgetting. Just remember the availablity modifiers. I figure most gms wont worry too much if you put it all in a pair of goggles, but by raw you can't do it at creation.

Cyber weapons might be a problem in certain situations. As standard ware (instead of expensive alpha/beta/delta) it would be easy to detect and might not let you in certain legitmate places.

If you're holding out on getting cybereyes, you might want to put the modifications on a pair of contacts or glasses. Getting them as eye modifications is more Essense-unfriendly than getting them installed in a cybereye. Plus, cybereyes are really not that expensive at all. Even the highest-rated ones, as alphaware, would only set you back 3,000.

Wired relflexes is a big Essense hit, at 2.4 if you get alphaware (which I recommend), but so worth it for the reaction bonus and the extra initiative passes. Any cybered character worth anything in combat will have a low Essense. I wouldn't worry so much about vampires - you need to be helpless in order to be drained, and if a vampire gets you helpless, you're pretty much dead anyways.

If you want a better Essense, though, you could always make him an adept (possibly with 1 Essense point's worth of optimal cyberware and bioware, such as muscle toner).

Bah, if they can fit Ultrasound Sensors into a pair of sunglasses or even into a pair of contact lens then there isn't any reason they can't also fit them into your Cybereyes. Besides I doubt that the Crash 2.0 suddenly made Cybertechs everywhere forget how to install Ultrasound into Cybereyes, after all before the Crash 2.0 they could install a Datajack if you wanted to for crying out loud! (My advise to DM and players everywhere is to ignore this silly part of RAW and just install whatever you want whever you want provided that it can pass the common sense sniff test.)

Because otherwise you have to figure that the designers meant for a pair of Rating 4 non-Drone Cybereyes to have 2 empty slots in them after squeezing everything else into them.

Besides, even the most anal reading of RAW states that headware can be installed into any Cyberlimb so just get a cyberhand and you're still good to go.