Eh? How is a net total of 12 BP per point for 3 skills cheaper than 10 BP per point for 4 skills? Especially since Leadership is not useless, especially with Commanding Voice. Doubly so since splitting them up in the future costs a minimum of 2 Karma to give just one of them a specialization, granting another two free dice on the specialty you use the most often.

Because he obviously wanted an extra advantage to defend himself in unarmed combat, hence the Parry specialization. Those build points could be spent elsewhere, yes, but it appears to be an integral part of his concept for whatever reason.

Hardly. They add a ton of fun to the mix and I almost always get a rank or two whenever it fits my concepts. And it often does.

Sure it is. General knowledge on the topic, and that'll be reflected in the answers he (should) get from his GM.

That's why I recommended the monofilament whip. It fits his agility and low strength much better than unarmed combat.

Plus the Cherry Blossom only suffers recoil of -1 when firing a burst. It takes Insulation armor to make it any worse than a SMG and thanks the stick-n-shock ammo it goes against the target's Stun damage track so most street sams will go down from fewer boxes of damage since its easier to get a high body as a troll/ork than a 9-12 willpower.

All that for a 10R avail gun firing legal ammo and best of all... it has a terrific concealability!

Secondly, Edge allows you to truly overwealm a number of dice rolls equal to your edge rating. With an Edge of 6 you basically get to autowin 6 social tests. You'll be throwing so many dice with exploding sixes that for the 6 most important events in a module you'll succeed and in the case of things like using Negotiation to determine pay for the run the excess sixes may determine the amount of the increase in payout.

I'd drop magic to 5 and get edge purchased up to 5. For 18 karma you can get a six in either later.

If you are aided by an Increase [Charisma] spell from your mage the Elf becomes a TON better than a human. With a max 12 charisma instead of max 9 you get your cap 3 higher and can buy a 5 charisma yet start with a 7 after racial modifications. It takes the 30 point cost of being an elf and immediately gets you 20 points in charisma and 10 points in agility. It reduces Edge by 1, however for a net benefit of 20 points and increased Charisma cap.

For contacts its better to have a few big contacts than several nickle and dime contacts. My faves are arms dealers and Fixers that specialize in matrix ops or fencing of gear. Sure, Fixers dont have to specialize but when they do the GM is usually a little more giving in their field of specialization at the expense of generality.

Tailored Phermones are effective for non-matrix, non-astral meetings. I personally like to get a chemsniffer of some sort to detect others with Tailored Pheromones. Then I know who the face is and if your GM allows it you can treat it as a chemical attack and use an internal respirator or somesuch to bypass their Tailored Pheromones.

KINESICS IS KING. MAX IT UP TO YOUR MAGIC RATING. PERIOD. Its half the cost of Charisma and adds to both social defense and offense and truth detection. That last benefit is golden!

Blandness can not only make it harder to get tied to unfortunate runs later (by you not getting recognized) it also acts as -1 Notoriety. Its pretty darned good.

Oh... and consider the adept powers that allow you bonuses to Disguise and to change your skin pigment. Especially with Blandness it can make a face character able to social engineer into a lot of situations where it wont matter if cameras see him and the guards are all packing serious hardware.

If you decide to do social infiltration and have a Technomancer to aid your Face remember that a Latex disguise as well as nanopaste use computerized goop which as a computerized device can be subscribed to a commlink and aided by a Machine Sprites "Diagnostics" power to add a ton of dice to the Disguise roll.

To add more social dice you can also consider being a mystic adept for 5 more points and get a 5 point mentor spirit that adds two dice to a social skill. If you initiate later the mystic adept gets access to some metamagic techniques Adepts can't get. You can also get counterspelling, counterspelling foci, and bind sustaining foci. Most GMS deem it cheesy however if you dont sink a magic point into spellcasting/conjuring use and/or have spells and conjuring-based skills so YMMV.

Hope all that helps, chummer!

Gymnastics is good for a character with high Edge not planning on getting in HTH ever who isn't afraid to use Edge+Full Defense whenever forced into HTH.

A niche, I know, but valid for a Face character methinks.

That should only apply in situations where the 'target' is in a position to know about those negative qualities.

Besides, it's a really stupid rule!

The bonus dice from street cred is limited to equal to your skill. Not that the pace you get Street Cred (and thus Public Awareness) isn't silly.

1) Personally, I'd say it's too close to call. Too many GM-style variables. Talk to your GM about it.
2) Yes. Definitely.
3) Depends on your team, but I'd lean more towards pistols, 'cause if you're talking your way in somewhere it's a lot more reasonable that you'd have a light pistol or hold-out on you than an SMG. If you're in a major firefight with your team (which is when you're likely to have an SMG) they'll be backing you up anyway.
4) Mitigate weaknesses. You'll already be able to talk anyone into anything that the GM doesn't expressly forbid, so why bother getting better at it?

...wait, burst fire augments the DV of S&S rounds? I thought the DV for these was fixed and simply replaced the normal DV of the weapon (which is why they are best in a light pistol).

Narrow bursts now add only +2. My bad!
[scurries off to edit the post from 9S(e) to 8S(e)]