Okay, everyone knows the usual character types people play in shadowrun. Hacker, Face, Adept fighter, Mage, Cybernut-with-a-cannon, Rigger, Ect.

But what about the ones that don't quite fit?

For instance, in my current SR4 game, there is a runner who doesn't quite fit any of the stereotypes. He's a little bit face, Intimidation in a can, a little bit of an accountant, a little bit artist, a little bit of a pugilist, and a little bit mafia. It's all in the way he's played.

I've since named him "Mr. Wolf", simply because that's the way he's played (by someone who has yet to see Pulp Fiction, I might add.) But there are more I can think of off the top of my head.

I just want to hear what non-typical player archtypes have you seen running in the shadows.

Illusionist.
Uncybered Mundane.
Mnemonic Courier?

Moon-hawk...nice reference, Johnny...

How about someone completely dependent on skillwires...a template, per se, that adjusts his skills based solely on the software loaded?

What would you call someone like that?

So you're looking for more types of archtypes? I sometimes refer to "the skill guy" who is someone who didn't put in for the heavy cyberware and piles of combat skills and stats but instead put points into a variety of skills allowing them to do a bunch of tasks. Often having a goodly number of knowledge skills too.

I find that "the skill guy" often is the sort to become an unofficial leader of the group. I don't know that the extra skills have anything to do with it, it just seems to come out that way. Kind of like how the cybered troll tends to be played by an idiot.

But many characters don't fit easily into one of the standard archtypes we use around here. Even the sample characters. For example the bounty hunter, the smuggler, and the sprawl ganger are all more "profession" concepts and it wouldn't really be accurate to call them a sammie. The smuggler comes close but none of them really qualify as a "skill guy" either.

Sometimes you just can't effectivly label a build.

*EDIT: If anyone is confused we're all posting at the same time.

Some others I kick around:

Counterspeller/Banisher
Electronic Countermeasures Specialist (jam signals and comms)
Grappler
Rodeo Clown (meaning the one that is able to draw everyone's fire, so he uses his IPs to make himself the target, allowing the rest of the team clear targets)

the tick cartoon?

The only (pg-rated) difference between that concept and a meat puppet is that the meat puppet is blacked out in addition to having the skillwires.

By the rules, though, it is extremely easy to make a hardcore specialist who is good at a handful of other areas. If you overgeneralize, you can swiftly reach the point of uselessness. With the limitations of 400-BP char-gen, it is usually better to be really good in at least one thing, and get additional skills during play. And specialists are also good because shadowrunners work in teams. Generalists would tend more towards solo play, and be on the lower echelons of 'running.


But you can mix and match your primary and secondary specialties from the "standard" ones. A sammie can be a close-quarters specialist who only uses a pistol, or he can be a heavy weapons grunt with little hand-to-hand skill but some drone piloting and electronics warfare. A hacker can also be good at infiltration, or fire combat. A hermetic mage can have healing skills to complement his healing spells. That's the beauty of an open build system.

EDITed out silly comment on glyphs post. It's fine, and he may just be using different phrasing.

Seriously though there is specializing and there is specializing. If you have 5 in a skill and 5 in the relevant stat you are good at something. You are not a specialist. When you're putting stats and skills at 6 or 7 and are pumping your gear and qualities and everything else into really doing something well, then you are a specialist.

So Spikes "shadowrunner" likely has some 5's, probably some cyber or something of the sort. It's just that none of it is specialized enough to really make them one of the steriotypes. Like he's got some combat ware, but then mixes in some phermones and some sensory stuff so that he really isn't a propper sammie.

SR4 rewards hyper-specialization, but it does not reward hard-maxing at char-gen, except for skills, so I guess I agree with Sunnyside, and am thinking something slightly different when I think of a "specialist"..

My notion of a typical specialist sammie might have Agility: 5, muscle toner: 2, a firearms skill of some sort at 6 with a specialization, a reflex recorder, and a smartlink. You can have that, and still be a well-rounded runner.

When you get into aptitudes, exceptional attributes, and hard-maxing, you wind up spending far too much for a few extra dice. I would only do that if I was intentionally making a limited character, someone obsessed about being the "best" at his niche and not as seasoned in other areas.

Edge does rule, but I would still only soft-max it (5 for a metahuman, 6 for a human) for most builds. I will only reluctantly do less than soft-maxing it, though. There used to be a lot more of those "help me tweak this character" threads here, and one of the common mistakes they made was trying to pimp everything else about the character, but having an Edge of only one or two.

I'd go for Edge of 3, 4 or 6(for Humans). 3 (on the average gets you 1 more hit), 4(you can buy that hit), 6(on average, 2 hits). So no, no Edge 1 or 2 PCs for me. 3 is the minimum.

Last game i had with some old buddies from the US, i had played a runner who...well, just wasn't a runner. Never went on a run in his life, in fact. He was a bouncer/roadie/security at some underground black metal club in Norway. Adept who followed the Black Magic path for flavor(and not the evil woogawooga black magic, simply more of hedonist type). Skills were basically pimped out for his job. High Perception with some increases(to notice things going on), high Intimidation with adept increases(hey, a long-black haired, tattooed, spikey norwegian guy just isnt scary enough on his own), a good Unarmed skill, and a smattering of Longarms(sometimes, just gotta keep that shotgun behind the counter...), Astral Perception(to try to notice those annoying mages trying to watch for free), with Astral Combat(to stop said pesky freeloaders ), and a few other odds and ends. Not to mention his English was rating 3 and it was fun when people in the US after they went there tried to explain really technical things.


No Stealth to speak of(he never needed it), and needless to say his first real ''run'', with others who werent so experienced(a thug/mage who was more a ganger and some summoner), was pretty comical. He's probably one of my favorite characters to date.

See my post in the Fleshing Out The Character thread for one atypical runner of mine.

Another being one of the 'whacked' group of characters we made up. Chaz was essentially a street samurai, but instead of cybering him out to be effective, he had a few basics, plus a really expensive cyberarm. The arm contained a 'really advanced' computer that was sufficient to resemble an AI. (No, not something that would actually pass a Turing Test, but if you spend 250,000 nuyen on it, you decide how good it might be.) It also had a speaker in the palm and a pair of miniature cyber eyes mounted in the crook of the index finger and thumb. Yes, it talked for itself. The whacked part was really that the character treated the hand as it's own person, even though it was a combination of the onboard computer and some subconscious decision-making on Chaz's part. Certifiable in many ways, but surprisingly useful after you got past the initial insanity of it.

Either through a mage with detection spells and divination, or a technomancer with the proper skills, drones and "info sortiliage", or just a dude with hella contacts, I'm a big fan of he "oracle" archetype, the dude who knows everything.

Similar is the detective. Though the gumshoe is a totally different flavor. The oracle knows everything before you do. The gumshoe will find whatever it is your hiding.

Edge is a pet peeve of mine, but I'll not turn this thread into another Edge v. karma / combat / etc. pools thread.

...

Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever had a typical runner PC.