One of the things that I have noticed is that I have a different view of characters then some people when it comes to shadowrun. I think that each character type should be different from each other and that they shouldn't overlap much at all. Each pc should have a distinctive role and method if possible.

Other people seem to want the characters to overlap as much as possible. I think that this is mostly power gaming myself but what do you think?

Powergaming? What do you want? Classes? Hey, then each PC will have a distinctive role and method.

Shadowrun was the first RPG I encountered without a distinctive class (or level) system. I always liked it that way.

I'm of the opinion that characters (and thus players) should have primary and secondary roles, and it's perfectly fine for me to have any overlap in the secondary roles with each other or the secondary roles with primary roles. But each character's primary role should be a distinct and unique choice.

I like the overlap that Shadowrun has, but I don't like that overlap will ALWAYS be concentratd in certain key areas or that many of the roles are essentially the same with different fluff. The concept that everyone ends up with nearly the exact same abilities but has "different ways to get there" is just not enough differentiation in my opinion. The characters are still, essentially, interchangeable. And that, in my view, is a bad thing.

However, characters should never be so distinct that the party as a whole suffers without the inclusion of any single member. Hence, secondary roles should overlap to cover these areas in another character's absense.

I like the fact that you can choose to generalize or specialize. I think that those who choose to generalize shouldn't be as good as those who specialize, because thats the way of the world. I think that if someone pours every single point of karma they get into their chosen specialty, they will be appreciably better in their chosen field than someone who splits the karma evenly amongst two fields. That being said, I think that people should not be penalized for generalizing. They want to be decent at every single thing? Fine, but they're gonna be mediocre in every field there is. Thats the cost of being a "jack of all trades." The next part of the saying is, "master of none." Your average runner should be able to run a basic data search on his own, or maybe even help out the hacker. But if you want your street sam to crack into Aztechnlogy's super secret blood sacrifice data vault, you better be in a 1000 karma point game.

Every time I've encountered a power gamer the first thing they did was to create a character that could do as much as possible without the rest of the group. They tried to be really powerful in one area but still tried to negate as much of the rest of the group as they could. Then they sulked in the corner until they could dominate play. This is not one person but a string of them.

I have found it harder for them to do this if there was a good deal of difference between character types. I have also found that everyone acts more as a team when there is more differences. They have to work together to do something as complicated as a Shadowrun.

Your powergamers are min-maxers, but min-maxers are not powergamers per se. Powergamers want to be the center of attention as much as possible. It is fortunate then that SR4 chargen favors strength in an area or 2 as well as competence in a few others. Imagine if the powergamer wasn't even competent in an area, he would be trying to use his strength when it wasn't appropriate.

GM: You meet this guy...
Player 1: I talk to him.
Powergamer: Since I can't talk well but I can shoot well, I shoot him.

The way I see it:

A team of shadowrunners that only has one guy who can really drive, or really hack is just as bad off as a team that only has one guy who can really kill.

Having a decent second (or third) driver doesn't step on the Rigger's area. The rigger can go down just like anyone else can, and you'll need a backup. More importantly, you might need two or more vehicles. It's a 'Team Effort' game, not a 'bunch of Mini-games'.

Sure, the Hacker is going to be the guy you want running that hack on the triple-max datastore, but if he's busy with that, who's clearing out the less secure nodes of paydata? Who's keeping the camera's spoofed and the security hackers running around thinking the players are busy in the next lab over trying to steal the secret recipie for Tasty Wheat?

Having some overlap doesn't piss on the experts, it provides the team more options, as well as a little redundancy.

Greetings,

From my personal back ground of being in the military (Navy if you wanted to know, if not skip this part), I want team mates that are specialized with secondary skill sets that over lap. Why would I hire 3 hackers of various skill levels and not get a shaman? Shadowrunners are professionals, we should have a group of experts to choose from. The team makeup should be determined by what the mission is. Now in game terms since not everyone has 2 or 3 characters to choose from, missions should be slightly tailored to the players group makeup.

Best
Hagarzen

I belive everyone in a running team should have a specilization, something they do better then anyone else, and in general these specilizations should rarely overlap. For example while in rare circumstances two dedicated hackers can be useful, normally they just end up compeating for the spot light.

However, it can be extreamly useful to have people who can back up the specilists. For example, in a runner team I ran with I was playing an assassin, I could get into anywhere, and take out just about anyone in close combat before they knew I was even there. Our teams street samurai also was pretty good in stealth though, and while he didn't always sneak up to the target with me, oftentimes he'd infiltrait a nearby area to give me cover or make a diversion should something go wrong, much like how I used my melee combat skills in battle to help his guns when the time came.

I guess it's where the class system in RPGs came from. I think people should make the sorts of characters they want to play, and I also think that as many essential skills need to be fully covered by the party as possible. A balance needs to be struck. The difference is between viable characters and an effective team of shadowrunners. If you're lucky, the players can do both. Most of the time, I've found people are willing and flexible enough to build a character that also fits into an effective team.

Dread Polack

The reason you need overlap is because your runner team isn't going to be together 24/7 (unless you are all bathroom buddies or something). There will be times when the face isn't there and you need to talk someone into doing something and there will be times when someone needs to be killed and the sam isn't available.

I always advise my new players to take some athletics, stealth, and social skills, and strongly recommend at least one form of combat skill. There's nothing worse than a SHADOWRUNNER who can't RUN or hide in the SHADOWS.

Having one thing that you do better than everyone else is how you get hired. Being able to do other stuff is how you survive.

A team should be like a tank crew. Each member has a specialist taks but the others are cross trained to be able to do the jobs of the other crewmen, just not as well. The Samurai should be the shooting specialist, but everyone else should be able to hold their own or better too. The Rigger is your driver, but at least one other character should be able to drive well too. Hackers are, well hackers, but at least one other character should have some computer skill and electronics to help get around security meaures.

Mages don't quite fit the mold, however, because you either are one or you aren't. Still, a mage could learn to shoot without costing them too much in a karma department.

Also, all characters need stealth and perception skills. Those are very important on a run. If you can't sneak past security or spot those cameras, your run is going to be over in a hurry.

Overlapping is desirable, consider there's always that lucky bullet that takes out your specialist. You'll wish you had another mage/decker/rigger/whoever who could pick up the ball then and there.

Also, everyone has to be able to cover some minimum basic areas, lest they become a liability and compromise the team with their flaws. I mean: every pro runner should have basic social skills, minimum stealth, some idea of what to do during combat, etc.

cheers,

max

Ups! Thane36425 beat me in the draw!

Kudos, mate

Max the dead cowboy

non-overlapping characters means, basically, using classes. classes aren't inherently bad, but i don't think they belong in SR, because SR has traditionally tended more towards realism (or at least the appearance of realism) than abastraction. i don't want to play a 5th-level street sam/2nd-level decker, i want to play a guy who's good with guns, cyberspurs, and a cyberdeck. that's not powergaming, that's a diverse character.

I don't mind a bit of overlap and I think that everyone should have their specialization. I tend to have problems with characters who are trying to out do other characters in their focused field. Having a few people with some hacking to help support a hacker is one thing. Having a character that is an expert sammie and is trying to out do the hacker is another.

I think that a team should have at least a combat wombat, an intrusion specialist (hacker), and a magic user. You can add alot more combat wombats and give everyone some combat skills. People can have some low level hacking, B&E skills as well. That won't cause problems.

Let me turn the question around. What combinations have people had problems with. I know that there are people out there who have had no problems anywhere ever. I am asking about the times there were problems.

I played an SR3 game where it was me (a covert ops specialist) and and Loki, the Ork Street Sam. He really wanted to get into combat a whole lot, which put me in a difficult position, even though I had Wired Reflexes 2 and a pistols of 6, I was still a bit nervous, so preferred stealth, electronics and computers as solutions. This put him in a pickle, because while he had a stealth of 3, he couldn't really engage in that kind of gaming.

Actually, this incompatibility led to some hilarious situations. One time we broke into a politico's house to torture him and convince him to drop out of an election. The infiltration went well. I snuck around the back through the trees and took out the perimiter guards and impersonated them on the radios saying that everything was ok. Loki walked up to the main guard post, lobbed a neuro-stun grenade in, donned his mask and finished them off with his twin gel-round smg's. Kick-arse.

Unfortunately, while I was tying up the guards and the family, Loki went upstairs to nab the politico. Unfortunately he had plenty of gun skills, a nice edged weapon skill, and even a cyber implant combat skill. Unfortunately, he had no regular unarmed combat skill. So when the politico hit him with a paperweight, he had some trouble defending. And then had to default to unarmed combat. after about 5 combat turns of him failing miserably to punch this guy out, I came upstairs to see what was going on. By this time, loki was pretty sick of failing to punch this guy, so he whipped out his spurs and decided to stab the guy. I shout "no!" and he persists anyway. I then have to attack Loki to stop him killing this guy. Yes. Both members of a two man shadowrunning team engaged in combat, trying to bash eachother up. Luckily, I was pretty skilled with my karate and inflicted a moderate stun wound, and he even managed to fluke a dice roll and tackle me into the bed.

Unfortunately (again), while we were having this punch up, the politico had ran out of the room and tried to climb out of a locked bathroom. Loki attempts to bash down the door while I run outside to intercept the guy. He's midway squeezing out the window when loki busts down the door and decides to headbutt the guy. This results in him falling out of the window and landing on my character, who takes a moderate wound.

The neighbours call and the Star arrive to check it out. I'm in the garage, loading the politicians Westwind with loot and paydata, Loki is trashing the house (we had to make it look like a gang attack) and spraypainting logos on everything (including the family dog). I radio Loki that the police are coming, and tell him to use the politician to tell them nothing is wrong. Loki opens the door and DECAPITATES a cop with his katana. The other two cops pull weapons, one starts firing into the house to kill the crazy fragging ork and the other runs to the car to radio for help. Loki wastes the first cop with his SMG and I throw a grenade underneath their cruiser.


So yeah. The combination of stealth character and overt combat monster? not so great.

That is an AWESOME story. We need more stories like this. Everything that can go wrong does, and its FUNNY!

Yeah, bummer the CLUE files kinda died.

Old CLUE stories never die, they simply fade into the background count until someone decides to pick up the duty of reporting new ones once more!

One of the worst things I saw was a combat mage that spell locked a increase reflexes spell on himself. Then he pulled out two guns and made the sammie pointless. The guy playing the sammie gave up. The mage did it again and again. He would also cast multiple spells that way.

That is the kind of thing that I'm talking about.

Well, shadowrunners tend to be violent people who do dangerous work for a living, so combat skills are where you will see the most overlap. That is, most shadowrunners will have some combat skill, and there are many varieties of specialists in this area (gunslinger adepts, street samurai, combat mages, enforcers, etc.).

But a mage shouldn't be able to make a sammie redundant in gun combat with a mere increase reflexes spell! The sammie should have a higher Body, more armor, a higher Reaction for dodging and initiative, more heavy ordinance such as LMGs and assault rifles, more close combat skills, and be throwing a heck of a lot more dice for those pistols tests.

I wish I could see the stats for both of those characters, because I suspect it might be poor character design (on the part of the sammie) that is the real culprit here.

our team was pretty overlapped, The street sam could drive and shoot, the mage could do electronic tech jobs, the electronic tech was a face as well and my phys adept bridged the gap between the street sam and the mage, we each also had our strengths where the planning was considered, the street sam, the mage and the face took the initial incurrsion, I (as the phys adept) usually made the "Oh frag me running" plan. We could all shoot, street sam and phys adept did demo, mage and phys adept did astral spotting,

And if your games still uses spell locks, I recall the standard tactic against this was enemy mages frying the Mage-Sam from the Astral, using the Spell lock to ground the spell.

But yeah, reflexes isn't the only difference between mage and gunbunny...

...overlap on secondary skills is not a bad thing. I agree anyone, (including mages) needs to have some degree of mundane combat and stealth oriented skill. (Invisibility spells do not mask sound).

@Toturi: It is not that the player of the sammy purposely designed a weak character, as the mage's player purposely set out to one-up his teammate because he wanted to hog the spotlight. I have run into this before and it is pretty discouraging. What should the sammy's player or I have done? Purposely go out and design a mage to outdo him?

That's kind of like the arms race of the old cold war where we built a bomb, the Russkies built a bigger one, so then we went out and built an even bigger one (and so on .. and so on...).

This is a more of a player issue that I believe the GM needs to deal with.

@Sir Psycho: Great story. Been on a few runs like that myself, the best (worst) of which was during "Wake of the Comet" where we had to negotiate a deal to get the satellite and none of us had much in the way of social skills. Think of it, a dwarf Ex Soviet Cosmonaut/Doctor and a human kid genius [decker]/B&E tech (...been playing to much SR4 lately) dealing with a commune of Elven "back to Earth" types.

Covert ops specialists are difficult to make because they require lots of skills. But mundane covert ops specialists can be pretty good. You have all of that senseware, things like shock hands or fingertip compartment monofilament whips when you need stealthy but effective weapons, muscle toner, synthcardium, tailored pheromes, etc.

It is possible to make a pretty darn effective mundane covert ops specialist. Actually, sammies edge adepts in this role, because they tend to be better at generalist roles at char-gen. And that's the thing - covert ops specialist is almost a misnomer, considering the wide range of skills that covet ops entails.



As far as min-maxed characters vs. less well-crafted ones, the GM should be offering newbies some assistance. But personally, I also think newbies should not expect to enter a game, and instantly be at the same level as people who have been playing it for awhile.

If the less min-maxed character did it for "roleplaying" reasons, then he shouldn't mind being less effective than the min-maxer. A lot of "roleplayers" seem to want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to make quirky characters that are far less than optimized, but then they complain when more competently crafted characters outshine them.

If the combat mage is breaking the game by making a character that doesn't fit, the GM should tell him so. But I don't like how so many people automatically assume, when there is a power imbalance, that the stronger character should be the one who is changed to resolve it.

Okay so you take away the thing that causes the problem, after the fact, and you end up with a very pissy player. Or you give more to the other player to balence them out and the first player calls unfair. Always a fun situation to deal with.

I have noticed that if you have specialized characters each with their own niche, and you have power gamers, then the power gamers don't cause problems. They are great at what they do and are happy. In fact I have noticed that you can make even more powerful characters and STILL not have balence problems if they are specialized well.

If your characters are overlapping their specializations then slight differences in power become detremental.

I thought mundane only meant no magic. Bioware and cyberware is mundane in my book. An unaugmented mundane means no bio or cyber.

Mundane usually means unawakened. If you are playing an uncybered mundane covert ops specialist, you should expect to come up second against people who have magic or 'ware to give themselves an edge. The only real advantage that Joe Average will have is about 40-50 more points in skills.

But that's how it should be. Uncybered mundanes are supposed to be fearful, envious, and alienated from the awakened, and constantly be tempted by the quick, easy boost of cyberware and bioware.