Hey all, this is Biggs, just your local pizza delivery boy. Yeah right...
Anyways, I'm a character over at ShadowRun Denver....a MUSH I play on. I play a Rigger/Adept, of which I think I am the only one on there. Could be wrong....
I saw a post on a decker/rigger, and I'm wondering, what are some other strange "multiclasses" as it were that you guys have seen and liked?
Let me know, and nice to be here...
Thanks!
Biggs

Seeing as there are no classes in Shadowrun, you can see damn near anything you can see in real life. The guy who casts spells is also good with a computer, the guy who shoots guns can drive really well, the person who can lie to anyone and make them believe it can also kick your ass with just her bare hands...hell, you could play a pizza delivery boy in a Nissan Jackrabbit if you want.

The Abstruse One

I was referring more to archetypes. I know shadowrun doesn't have many classes, but have you ever run into a character that you thought was "neat" per se, and probably against the norm. Say for instance, a brawler that happened to be a psionicist, or something like that. A sammie who refused to use cyber, etc etc.

Before fully understanding cyberware rules and such, I made a Troll who only used Bioware and threw EMP grenades. I thought I could shut down cybered guys.

Too bad it didn't work.

An archetype, by standard usage in Shadowrun, is an example of a character with a single focus. The ability to design characters with a dual focus, like the rigger/decker or rigger/adept, provides wonderful versatility to the players. Every such character design is in some ways "better" than the archetypes that come with the game simply because of their multiple talents.

Some multi-talented characters:
Face/Mage -- both gain benefits from high charisma
Covert Ops/Sniper -- Breaking and Entering helps just as much for getting into position.
Troll/Partial Cover -- what lets him keep standing in a fight is also useful for hiding behind.
Shapeshifter/Demolitions Expert -- Regen when things go horribly wrong.
Fighter/Cleric/Thief -- hmmm. Maybe I'm getting off track here.

Well, one time I tried to make a weapons specialist who was biorejective. Too bad his initiative would've been drek.

He would've had smartgoggles, and I figured that, as a house rule, if you ducttaped two clips together, you could pop in a new clip as a free action. That way he could reload as fast as a sammie could.

Just a quick comment: before asking any questionr elating to Great Dragons, dracoforms, Immortal Elves, the Crash of '29, Aritifical Intelligences, Sperethiel, and/or the Deep Resonance, please check here

Heya, Biggs. Welcome to DSF.

One of the more fun and successful characters I've created was a wujen magical adept / sammie / decker (used 150 Build Points, though, so not entirely legit as a starting character but was a PC in my campaign).

What about questions related to immortal orcs, old trog, and the Dissonance?

Go bug Adam. He looks bored.

Getting back to your question, Biggs, I think some combinations are more rare in shadowrun because they cripple each other - your rigger adept, for example, will either lose a lot of power points or have to take a lot of geasa, because riggers require such Essense-costly cyberware. Decker/adepts and decker/sorcerers, on the other hand, are a lot more common, because you can make a good decker with less than 1 point of Essense.

Still, the heavily-cybered awakened character who learned about his magic too late, or took a wrong path and is trying to embrace his Totem again, is actually fairly common among the players who prefer the angsty types who have to struggle to survive (at least, judging by the number of threads that I have seen with such characters).

I think there are three general categories that you can put "combo" characters in:

1) Not very compatible. This doesn't mean that you can't combine them, just that one aspect of the "multiclass" tends to mess up the other. Examples would be adept/rigger, sammie/mage, and so on.

2) Different, but compatible. The two "classes" don't share a lot of skills or required Attributes in common, but can still be combined fairly readily. You will (possibly) lose some depth in both "classes", but often the mix of abilities more than compensates for this. Examples would be decker/rigger, sammie/face, and so on.

3) Complementary. The two "classes" not only can be combined, but complement each other, and share similar Attribute needs and sometimes even skill sets. Examples would be shaman/face, adept/break-in specialist, and so on.


Remember, though, when you are making your own character from scratch, you aren't restricted to "classes", so even characters that seem to firmly fit within one occupation can have an unusual skill or so - maybe the decker has hung around so many chatrooms that he actually has a decent etiquette skill, or maybe the cerebral hermetic mage has studied fencing since he was very young, or maybe the rigger also has a high computer skill, even though he doesn't have a cyberdeck (yet). The possibilities are endless.

I'd just like to say that that Decker/Rigger is probably not going to work. It's possibleto mix quite a few of the archetypes but a good decker is hard to mix with anything else. (It takes pretty-much the full 1M nuyen resources, and a fair bit in the way of skills. You could probably mix it with limited combat ability, as-in the combat decker, but that's hardly reaching street-sam standards)

Decker/Riggers invariably are better at one than the other. However, it all depends on what you want to do with each side. If, for instance, you just want a few recon drones, you could make a competent rigger and a good decker with 1 million . If you want a combat rigger with lots of high dollar gear, you're going to be a moderate decker at best.

Then, it all comes down to what your GM wants in deckers. Some GMs will let you get past with 200k worth of decker gear and excel... some are more hard core.

The Decker/Rigger is a great combo, but your right in that it doesn't work well right out of character creation. It's a combo that really has to be developed 'in game,' but it's one that can really pay off in long run.

Of course, you can add th 'decker' archetype to just about anyone, if you have the time/patience/karma/nuyen for it

Oddly, deckers are the only major archtype that you can basicly just pick up with out a major investment. You get a data-jack and a deck and your all set. Everyone else is pretty much restricted by essance, for better or worse. Deckers need money, and other then a computer skill, little else.

Deckers need higher mental attributes, some good "decking" 'ware like a Math SPU and so forth, and lots, and lots of money.

And some karma to raise their Computer and Computer B/R skill.

However, being a rigger/decker is tough. You've constantly got to keep up with SOTA for both. So if you plan on being both, get the skills and attributes first, this way you can easily throw all your karma into lowering SOTA by one way or another.

Well: being a good decker costs around (=over) 800k nuyen for a good (MPCP8) deck, some good programs (ratings 4-6 in the most important fields), and some good implants (stuff out of an encephalon/cerebral booster/math SPU). Adding into that rigging gear and general equipment (around 100K for a baseline VCR, RCD, tools, guns, armor, lifestyle, kitchen sink), leaves 100K for vehicles. That's about enough for a good van (52k for the security GMC bulldog), and few drones (3k+9k+9k+25k).

It's doable but your vehicles won't be that hot, neither will your decking skills compared to someone who spent that last 200k on programs and deck mods. Of course you could take a worse deck in exchange for some better programs or more drones, it's all personal taste.

For what it's worth, in some games you won't be able to start with an MPCP-8 deck (some people consider it to be a "rating" and restrict it to 6). Which makes things a lot easier.

That's true. Although (depending on your definition of good decker) you'd probably end-up spending a fair bit more on programs (more 6es, probably some with stealth) if you still wanted to keep your decker a 'good decker'.

One of my favorite conceptual (fully made, I just played him once though) characters was a Street Sam/Combat mage... makes for a good advantage in a well run game, because no one expects the guy with the big obvious cyberarm to toss a fireball up their hoop....

In my current campaign I have a Decker/Ninja

Cov Ops / Decker. Why hack in when you can break in?