Pimp my CityMaster?

Fixer, no questions asked.

Organized Crime Boss

or

Elven Assassin

I see all the interest in playing a blackberry cat, and I realize they have a nice list of powers. But I tried running a game where players could play about anything they wanted. I got a bunch of furries and a blackberry cat submitted. I think the guy playing the blackberry cat found it less fun than it was built up to be.

Easy, i'd play an ork arms dealer for sure. Paranoia, Pistols, Panic, and Profit. What more do you need?

should work just fine with SR4, then. OH SNAP I DID NOT JUST GO THERE

Shadowland BBS.

All of it.

~J

Just a side note-once upon a time, way back when first edition was new and I started playing Shadowrun-I actually had to put a lot of thought into this question. On of the GM's I played with had this rule where everyone had to pick an archetype or contact out of one of the books and play that character as written up. When the original Sprawl Sites book came out, with the big list of contacts in the back, there was a dog fight over who got to play the Elven assassin, as he was pretty kick ass compared to the other contacts/archetypes (another rule, only one of each type).

AFE

I'm reasonably certain Riggers can build entire vehicles from 'scratch', it just requires a facility, and that's where the balance is struck. Shops and facilities can be expensive themselves, but more importantly they can take up lots of room, space that would logically need to be paid for and represents a constant drain on a players finance. Between this and material costs, it's quite easy to prevent players making huge profit and essentially make crafting more a method of getting unique custom weapons rather than a method of 'gold farming'. People could commision other PC's with the gear and skills to build them stuff, but the balance of benefits versus cost should keep both parties in check, as much as is possible in any game with a player based economy.

I think a bigger issue is time. Crafting takes time in SR, but what does the player actually do in this time? If you ignore the time factor, or even allow people to cue crafting for down time or it just happens while the player can go do otherstuff, then just about everyone will start crafting, but alternatively crafting could be really boring and I'm not sure you want that. Time scale deffinately seems an issue, even more common things like summoning elementals takes time.

Interesting. Does raise some issues as to what kind of equipment a vehicle shop and facility actually include, and what exactly they mean by 'automotive factory'.

A large Factory doesn't inlude equipment particularly advanced at bulding specific things, it includes equipment for making lots of them really quickly, and even then most auotmotive factories a little more than assembly lines for parts made by other factories. Then there are small factories that hand build only a small number of cars a year. I don't know how much their equipment is worth but it's certainly not as much as a factory built for mass production.

Look at a custom auto shop, they don't need anywhere near 200K worth of gear to do what they do (though the various materials they use could easily be worth that much) and people build Drag Racers in their backyards. I know of people who have built entire vehicles, and not just cars, that way. In all cases building the chassis/frame is the hardest part, but it's not impossible and advances in material technology would only make it easier.

I'm hardly an expert, but attaching a turret to a vehicle requires little more than a cutting tool and a welder, and to think that 200K worth of equipment still means you can't machine your own parts, especially if you assume you still need to buy specialised parts like shock absorbers, engines and brake pads, seems ludicrous.

Don't know if any of that is clear, and I now realise this it's mostly an issue with the rules themselves (Rigger3 has to be the worst supplement in SR3, IMHO) rather than your interpretation, which seems accurate, but I've typed it up already.

In anycase, I still think that the cost of shops facilty and the constant resource drain of a place to keep it would mean crafting has less of an impact on the economy and that time factors regarding crafting may even be more important than the economic factors.

Im going to disagree. At 200k its a bargin. A good CnC water table will set you back 50k alone. However, the restriction on not being able to scratch build something with one is kinda silly. So long as its not ultra complex (more advanced then say a good sports car, or a small plane {think piper cub}) I wouldn't see why not. The rules are as such to keep people from designing a crazy ass super A-Team van that has smart materials and can fly ( I should know, I did it once).

IMO, go watch something like American HotRod. Thats a facility.

I'd want to play a Street Doc or a BTL-pusher.

On the item question: I too think you could replace the soulbinding mechanism with permanent damage, and also police records - matrix personae, guns and foci tend to leave recordable traces.