Just got Shadowrun 4th Edition for Christmas, and this is my first attempt at creating a character for the system (I'm familiar with Shadowrun, just new to 4th Edition).

The basic concept: I wanted this character to be similar to John Constantine - somebody that has regular contact with the darker side of magic, investigates (and sometimes helps combat) the worst of them, smart-ass personality, etc. At the same time, I wanted to give him a few quirks of my own (a love for video games, for one - I imagine a scene being roleplayed with this guy kind of similar to the scenes in "House" where House's team catches him playing a Nintendo DS in the middle of a serious case).

So anyways, here's the stats - opinions?

Race: Human
Gender: Male
BP: 400 (+35 from Negative Qualities)
Magical Tradition: Hermetic

Attributes
Agility: 4 (-30 BP)
Body: 2 (-10 BP)
Reaction: 2 (-10 BP)
Strength: 1
Charisma: 3 (-20 BP)
Intuition: 4 (-30 BP)
Logic: 4 (-30 BP)
Willpower: 5 (-40 BP)

Edge: 3 (-10 BP, half of the points from “Bad Luck�)
Essence: 6
Initiative: 6
Magic: 4 (-30 BP)

Total spent on Attributes: 210 BP

Skills
Active Skills
-Assensing: 3 (-12 BP)
-Astral Combat: 4 (-16 BP)
-Con: 4 (-16 BP)
-Conjuring (group): 3 (-30 BP)
--Banishing: 3
--Binding: 3
--Summoning: 3
-Dodge: 4 (-16 BP)
-Perception: 5 (-20 BP)
-Pistols: 4 (-16 BP)
-Spellcasting: 5 (-20 BP)

Total spent on Active Skills: 146 BP

Knowledge Skills (Free Points: 24)
-20th Century TV shows: 2
-Criminal Groups: 3 (-4 BP)
-Fringe Magical Groups: 5
-Hostile Spirits: 5
-Magical Theory: 4
-Online Games: 4
-Wizzer Gangs: 3

Total Spent on Knowledge Skills: 4 BP

Language Skills
English: N
Enochian: 4 (-8 BP)
Latin: 4 (-8 BP)
Or’zet: 2 (-4 BP)
Sperethiel: 3 (-6 BP)

Total Spent on Language Skills: 26 BP

Qualities
Addiction (Mild, cigarettes) (+5 BP)
Bad Luck (+20 BP) (“Can’t ANYTHING go according to plan?!�)
Magician (-15 BP)
Spirit Bane (+10) (tends to treat Spirits of Beasts like pets, i.e. rather condescendingly)

Total spent on Qualities: 15 BP

Magic:
-Control Thoughts
-Detect Individual
-Detect Magic
-Manabolt
-Physical Mask
-Trid Phantasm

Total spent on Magic: 18 BP

Gear: 40,000 nuyen
Weapons
-Ruger Super Warhawk (with holster, laser sight and 9 speed loaders with a total of 60 Regular rounds) (770 nuyen)
-Colt Manhunter (with integral laser sight; attached to Hidden Gun Arm Slide in right sleeve) (also has 5 spare clips, with a total of 96 rounds of Regular ammo) (875 nuyen)
Armor and Clothing
-Lined Coat (700 nuyen)
-20 sets of Clothing (1,000 nuyen)
Electronics
-Hermes Ikon Commlink (3,000 nuyen)
--Sim Modeul (100 nuyen)
--Novatech Navi OS (1,000 nuyen)
--Miracle Shooter (50 nuyen)
--Trodes (hidden under Mariners baseball cap) (50 nuyen)
-VR Games (10) (500 nuyen)
Magical Equipment
-Magical Lodge (Rating 5) (2,500 nuyen)
-Spirit Binding Materials (2, both at Rating 5) (5,000 nuyen)
Misc.
-Sunglasses (with low-light, thermographic and image link) (250 nuyen)
-DocWagon Contract (Basic) (5,000 nuyen)
-Fake License (Magical) (Rating 6) (600 nuyen)
-Fake License (Firearms) (Rating 6) (600 nuyen)
-Fake SIN (Rating 6) (6,000 nuyen)
-Lifestyle (Low) (5 months prepaid) (10,000 nuyen)

Total spent on Gear: 8 BP
Total nuyen spent: 37,995

Starting Cash: 1,650 nuyen

Contacts:
Fixer (5 BP)
Connections: 2
Loyalty: 3
Notes: Works as a kind of “secretary� in addition to normal fixer duties, passing along references for detective jobs to character

Occult Researcher (6 BP)
Connections: 4
Loyalty: 2

Total spent on Contacts: 11 BP

Looks cool, but I would make the suggestion of adding counterspelling, and perhaps giving him a bit more body, otherwise your going to find him dieing rather quickly.

-200bp limit for attributes does not include magic or edge or so I believe heh.
-Your fake license ratings exceed the books availability limit
-Im pretty against buying tons of prepaid houing. If a GM has guys show up there your going to lose all that money.
-I think you should always have 2 SIN's. One that you flash while commiting crimes and interacting with bad guys and one that is always off unless your not on a job that can be used to buy stuff, get an apartment, move around with when your other one turns to crap.

Otherwise looks decent..I personally dont see how a mage would be all gun happy, especially playing them online but whatever. Yourguy is hermetic and they are kind of dispassionate about magic, its more of a tool in their arsenal rather than their life. I'd like to see a lower pistol skill and more magic skills and switch the online game to something like world of warcraft where he can play a mage hehe.

Looks good. Would certainly be welcome in my game. I run a mid-power, intelligence-dependent game, he would be a little underpowered in a game where the players optimised more, not that I think that you should change this, mind you. I can tell it's a character built to a strong idea.

Banishing seldom gets used as it's easier to just blast spirits (ime), but you can't have John Constantine without the ability to do a good exorcism, so meh.

I might see if you could free up the build points for a sustaining focus. Also, if guns are his thing, I might pick up a specialisation in the Ruger or Manhunter - it's cheap and it lends itself to pulling off the great shot. If you could work Enhance Aim from Street Magic into your spell list, this would also fit with the concept, as pistols don't have great much range compared to most firearms. It doesn't do much good on yourself due to sustaining penalties, but is useful with a sustaining focus.

Your character is also quite vulnerable so if not at chargen, as a priority for your first few karma points, you're going to want some protective magic such as the Deflection spell and Combat Sense. As a gun fighter, despite the "cool" of having the last, perfect shot, you're going to want to get Increased Reflexes, too, I'm afraid.

But I like the character and I love that you spent points on learning Enochian. The character would fit fine in my campaign.

Thats a solid magic user you have going there. And one of the best backgrounds I´ve seen so far!

Some consolidation work is possible:

- you could have Criminal Groups 2 with a spec in Wizzer Gangs, saving 4 BP

- You are paying mayor BP for speaking all the old languages in addition to your cool knowledge skills. Consider moving the edge point over to lntuition to ease the pain.

- You have a good dodge skill, but it will do you no good. You have absolutely no business in non-astral combat with this char. You will be hit, and you will not soak the damage. Counterspelling 4 would fit the char better, plus you need it because spirits may have spells.

- you possess 10 units of binding materials, no need to divide those up beforehand

- you need a medkit if you are going to use banishing instead of manabolt. And this char likely should for RP reasons.

- smokeing does not count as addiction. Silly, but there you go.

Id also vote for dropping a little more into Body...bodies of under 3 i find being in deep trouble if something goes wrong. You have the conundrum of A. having a lower physical track, B. Can wear less armor without a penalty, and C. Having lower Body and Armor giving less dice to roll alltogether. Now, for a total bookworm character who doesn't plan on seeing alot of combat, a 2 might be ok, but since your character actively battles stuff...he's going to get hurt. Id try to dig up 10 NPs and nab a 3 Body if he's going to be combative.

And i second grabbing Counterspelling, at least a couple points in it, as it can be very useful.

Otherwise, looks quite ok, IMO!

One of the main functions of a mage is to provide counterspelling. You have to have counterspelling. You've spent 34!!! points on essentially useless languages and don't have counterspelling and have low body. Which means a force 5 powerbolt will kill you dead (on average) with your 2 dice to resist.

Cut out out the language skills. Banishing is of questionable use, as the ONLY thing that it is very good at is stealing other traditions spirits. If you you want to banish a spirit fast try manabolt. It's much more effective. 6 dice of counterspelling means you'll get 2+ success against a powerbolt vs none. Which means you can often use edge to make it fail.

Realizing this character is based on a concept, and not on maximizing potential, I love how it's set up. The "useless" stuff that others see, I see as roleplaying opportunities. I do agree a bit more body would be preferred. After all, John Constantine could take a few hits without being really screwed up. Granted, this is an idea based off that character, but I can see needing just a little more body, as a just in case. I'd move a point from Charisma, myself, as Constantine never struck me as charismatic. Hell, quite the opposite. He managed to piss off anyone he came into contact with half the time.

So yeah, this character would get my seal of approval in my book.

I have to agree with kzt on this one. Between counterspelling, summoning and spellcasting, believe it or not I give up spellcasting first if I can only afford to choose two. Spellcasting, of all the magical disciplines, is the most expensive due to having to purchase spells and the one that also suffers the most from having a middling Magic attribute.

Also, cigarettes are not considered a valid addiction because they don't have enough of an immediate detrimental effect to warrant the points. You have to pick something that could potentially impair you when you're either under the influence (like a btl or being drunk) or causes life to be difficult when you crash (Like Kamikaze or novacoke).

Perhaps cigs could be a proper addiction if you get 5 points for the 20 point level of it or something, basicly you need several cigs a day or you suffer penelties. This could cause real problems if he gets the urge to light up when he needs to remain unseen, not to mention it would make it easier to locate the person by smell as he would always reek of cig smoke.

You guys are being to anal with the cigarettes. Why cant they be designer cig's that have drugs inside them. They dont have to be made out of tobacco. Personally I hate characters who smoke and drink though =/ You think it makes you or your character look cool when it just helps company X go on vacation, buy a second house, have tons of prostitutes, live the life your wishing you had as you sit in the gutter lighting up another or taking another swig.

I'm not being too anal; it says right in the book that cigarettes do not count. If his GM doesn't have a problem with someone taking cigarettes as a negative quality then everything is all peaches and cream, but meanwhile the book says that you can't take cigarettes and the rationale behind that is the idea that a negative quality should have demonstrable negative effects when it comes into play. He may as well pick a back up smokeable addiction like mild deepweed as second choice now if it turns out his GM agrees with the book on this subject.

If you take Bad Luck, I would not put points into Edge.
I would also move one point from agility into Body, since as a Magician, guns are your "Oh ***t" option, and 10 health is better then 9, and you will, according to probability, usually soak at least 1 point of damage on you DR Tests.

Do a specialization to Criminal Groups for Wizzer Gangs, and that a) costs only 1 BP instead of 4, and b) gives you a +2 bonus dealing with Wizzer Gangs. Though, you could also put the specialization into Fringe Magical Groups. It is up to you..do you think a 5 or a 7 with regards to Wizzer Gangs would be better?
Doing this, you can use your now freed up 1 Knowledge skill on one of your languages, freeing up another 2 BP.

At this point, then, you have freed up 10 points from the Edge, 3 points from the specialization, and 2 points from your language skills, for a total of 15 build points gained. With this, you can give yourself 3 points in Counterspelling(12 BP), and give yourself an additional 3 BP Contact.

Admittedly, though, Enochian is not an actual language. It is a style of magic that, while it uses a set of specialized characters, it is not for communication. Thus, I would drop that from your skills, and give yourself Hebrew of 3, use 1 build point to specialize your magical theory into Enochian, and drop Latin by 2, specialize it into a specific lingo of latin(Church Latin, Romansch, etc), and use your 4 BP to
give yourself 2 points in Sanskrit.

Now, then, as for your addiction..Yeah, change it to something like deepweed, or say they ARE designer cigarettes with some degree of 'special ingredients', that are actually low-grade drugs. The game effects would be they remove 1 point from your damage caused dice penalties. But when they wear off, they double those penalties(this would explain why he had a tendency to light up just before a big fight).Price, I would say, would be about 50-100 per cigarette, making them affordable for someone who might casually buy them, and a financial pain for someone who is addicted to them.

BTW: Glad to see someone else handles clothes budgetting like I do.

And, not bad for your first SR4 Character. Wait until you get Street Magic and Augmentation, though..those have the FUN toys

Made a few adjustments:

-Took out the Addiction Flaw
-Changed Wizzer Gangs to a specialty of Criminal Groups
-Busted down the fake SIN and licenses to Rating 4
-Erased the Enochian Language Skill
-Added the "Guts" Quality

I like the concept, and I admire someone who can spend 30 build points on knowledge skills. But there seem to be two contradictory things you are doing - for the most part, he is an academic/detective type, but he has a few things like a high pistol skill that peturb me. Because Ryu is right - this character has no business getting into non-astral combat. He lacks the Reaction or Body scores to make such a proposition anything less than suicidal. I'm not saying make him a combat mage, but if you envision him as a tough and gritty guy with a pistol and manly stubble, you need at least one more point of Body and one more point of Reaction.

My defense is that he doesn't need to be a combat monster to have a high pistols skill - just somebody who wants to survive if he does get in trouble (which, while investigating the darkest corners of 6th World magic, can likely happen).

Oh, and I also took out Dodge and replaced it with Counterspelling.

I don't see it that way. Just because he can keep his cool in the face of scary shit doesn't mean he'll attack it head-on.

I would suggest not spending any BP on languages since you can just get the linguasofts for all of them. They also work as real-time translators.

There are a lot of good pieces of advice already listed here. Rather than focus on smaller details, I'm going to look at build efficiency. There are a few things we can do to get more out of your character for the same number of points.

The first thing is that your stats are three below your limit. In most cases, you're better off putting points into a stat than into skills. Not only do you usually get more for your BPs, but it makes buying up your skills cost a LOT less karma down the road. This isn't the best example since Magic doesn't apply to that limit, but another point of it by dropping your Conjuring by one gives you the same die pool for Conjuring skills, an extra die for Spellcasting, and a higher Force before you take physical drain. And I'm sure there are other things more Magic does for you that I've forgotten about. It's just worth it.

I'd also suggest a minimum Body of 3. It gets you an extra box of health and removes the -1 penalty to AGI and REA because your armour is too heavy. That's 10 points to get tougher, and it returns you 20 BPs of useable AGI and REA. You effectively get another 10 BPs for increasing your Body by one.

Lastly, I'd favour REA over AGI. AGI only helps you shoot things. REA comes into play every time you're attacked, so you'll be using it often regardless of what you're doing, and it ups the odds of you going first as well.

Overall, I really like this character, but there's a few things I'd tweak to either make him better for the points or get rid of some of those negative qualities.

What no real time edits?? HMHVV are you sure you meant to write agility 4, body 2 because thats in the wrong order for attributes and you put everything else in order.....

Maybe you meant body 4, agility 2 ??

We cant make any more suggestions if you dont change the character sheet to reflect the things you have changed ...

One option to make the build stronger without loosing much flavour would be finding 20 pts to make him an ork. Constantine wasn´t, but he could easily have been if the world even had orks. His gutter lifestyle certainly fits the image of orks.

10 BP can come from body if need be, it will be higher afterwards. You did not reduce edge (so far), so there you could have your 20 BP.

Effect: Body of 4 allows you to wear common armor, strength 3 and low-light vision are an added benefit. You loose two points of edge, but that investment is dicey for you anyway.


On the pistol skill I have to say that it will not save your ass. Your first action is always seeking cover, with "Break LOS Completely" being the prime directive. I would give him an Automatics(Autom. Pistols) skill at rating 2. Slight deviation from the original, but salve mode to play with.

Now you could have higher int (or, as non-orc, logic) because the higher amount of free knowledge skills saves 6 BP on your build. Any attribute point for a net 4 BP is a steal.

Come to think of it, i think Ryu is onto something. Orks do have a great gutterlike, rough and tough, feel to them that could bring alot to the character. A fella with his baseball cap, ciggarette hanging from his mouth, sitting in a battered recliner trying to get his next frag on Miracle Shooter with a cup of coffee next to him so strong the spoon stands up.

And Orks have a maximum 5 Charisma and Logic; so you wouldn't be going over the limit since you have 4's. I agree; nab 10 from Body(since Orks start at 4 anyway), 10 more from Edge(with Bad Luck you may not be relying on it as much), and there ya go. And i don't think it would change the character concept little, if at all. Ive actually flipped a race around when i found something fit a little bit better.

In fact, it would be best off to make him a troll. Points for BP-wise, trolls are an excellent bargain. You'd end up with a slightly higher Body than with the ork which wont do any harm. The logic cap can be worked around with a small investment in Cerebral Boosters and as you're spending the Essence point anyway, you might as well squeeze in the datajack so you can integrate the language chips plus cyber-eyes so you can avoid any vision penalties to spell casting due to darkness and smoke. And perhaps make the character follow the Islamic tradition - same drain stats, but you'll get Guardian spirits.

A Middle Eastern troll alchemist with Zeiss eyes fits the John Constantine concept really well. I can see it perfectly.

Oh, and Incompetent Pilot (Air Vehicles) would be a better negative quality. I don't remember Keanu flying anything in the film.

Taking all of those languages and so little social skills seems strange to me...

Well, constintine does seem like he would have made a good orc, but that is totally up to the OP. The issue of a 2 body being both poor for being in combat, and seeming unlikely for Constintine is still up though. In fact I wouldn't be supprised if he had a very high body, considering what all he survives/walks away from.

I thought you could only take incompetent in skills that can be used untrained, and exotic vehicles is definitely not one of those, nor is pilot aircraft.

Ground vehicle or unarmed combat can be used untrained, and therefore valid for incompetent.

The ability doesn't say anything about that, at least I didn't notice it when I read over it a bit ago. Also didn't think there where skills you couldn't default on, but maybe I'm just forgetting, haven't read the skills section any more then needed for a listing of the skills since I first got the book.

Well, according to the BBB, you can take Incompetence for any skill thats not a knowledge or language. So even trained ones are game. And a clever GM will find a use for Incompetence: Hot Air Balloon.


As for the 2 Body, ive used it a couple of times...but both instances, the characters stayed as far away from combat as possible, only getting involved if necessary, and then with heavy protection of sorts-a non combative more alchemist mage, for example, would make heavy use of that Armor spell when the guano hit the fan.

Otherwise, if a character is halfway involved, i tend to give 3 or more. However, if i had a concept for say, a softie that fashioned himself some sort of hero and cybered up his low physical stats(say, 2's down the line, but stacked with bone lacing, muscle augmentation, toner, and the like), it could make a decent concept. And im not talking from a twink sense even, im talking simple survival. a 2 body under old SR's was pretty harsh, but it didn't affect your armor(Quickness did), and everyone had the same damage track, and everyone could throw in as much combat pool as possible for defense(low Body characters, many times, had high mental stats...which gave them a higher combat pool,most times, than the combative characters, unless you are talking about the slew of genius sammies that ran around. That's another story, though. )

SR4 can get pretty scary sometimes. I recall one character(still alive and well), that was battling a pistols expert. The pistol expert was almost dead; the way the GM described, he was down to his last box or two. He, however, pulled the Final Shot thing off(forget the name, it involves edge and willpower rolls or something) and made it. My fellow had a level of Mystic Armor, a 4 body, an armored jacket, a 4 reaction, and i believe a Dodge point, rolled well...and STILL had three boxes of physical damage done. Ouch and double ouch.

Personally, I´m not against extending the idea beyond archtypes for core. There was already a call for the sample chars that were cut from Augmentation.

The eastern tradition sans guardian spirit can be used with core rules, so it would not make much of a difference in this case.

Coming in late, but I like your character. I second the bod 3 crowd, I would buy less edge and use points for influence group 1. I would also take pistols 3 (+2 semiauto) in order no to: roll more dice and b: appear somewhat less trained.

I am a GM in my group and I would allow the arm slide + manhunter thing, but it would be noticeable if not wearing a heavy coat or something. I did allow a character to take addiction to cigarretes, she ended having her lungs replaced after cancer. -So: serious addiction?

Good luck, the character is nice all in all. I would not make it an ork, I can't imagine an orc named Keanu...

Cheers!

Max