A potential new player in my campaign is brand new to SR4. She says she wants to make a "Jack of All Trades" character. I'd like to help her out, and I have no problem with that in concept, but I've never made anything but "specialty" characters before in Shadowrun. All my characters would always fit into a distinct category (Samurai, Mage, Adept, Hacker, Rigger, or Face).

I'm worried that making a true "Jack of All Trades" will severely gimp her character, but on the other hand I think it just might be possible with typical SR4 character creation rules (400 points and all the standard caps). But I personally have no idea where to begin. Could any of you kind folks give me a nudge in the right direction and perhaps a few tips? Thanks!

I have played a Jack-o-all-trades before, and they aren't easy. My character was basically Face-lite with a smattering of B&E skills with a sprinkle of random for good measure. The character was fun; however, more difficult to play (and GM) than the specialists.

What type of game are you playing? That would help focus the advice.

Sure. Make a Human with the Lucky quality and jack up their Edge to 8 at character generation.

Skillwires would be the de rigeur cyber of choice.

First, how many ppl are in the running group?

I would tell the person that you can be a jack of all trades, but you still need to emphasize something. Be it combat, face skills, magic, etc. So then you can work off that.

Second option, have that person to look through the sample characters, in the book and on the community projects thread, and have them look at what they might like.

Well...technically, it wouldn't be impossible. Assuming a general 3-4 spread in Attributes(maybe with a 2 and a 5 in there, if they have a heavier leaning, say Charisma, Logic, Agility...which would probably be the high scores of choice), it's 200 BP. Toss in another 10 for an Edge point(nice for the type), and maybe 20 for Resources and 10 for Contacts, and that's 240 BP. This leaves 160 for skills...possibly more if they take negative qualities.


Assume taking, for a balanced character...Firearms Group 4, Influence Group 4, Stealth Group 3, Electronics Group 3, and Close Combat group 2, that's 160 points. That nets you: Pistols, Automatics, Longarms, Con, Leadership, Etiquette, Negotiations, Palming, Infiltration, Shadowing, Disguise, Hardware, Software, Computer, Data Search, Clubs, Blades, and Unarmed Combat. That's alot of skills over alot of areas. Of course, the point values can be switched around a bit, or even trades(trading Close Combat for Biotech for a real range of abilities, for example).

However, they might also want Perception and Dodge, not in groups. So scraping some points out(maybe all groups at 3, or some negative qualities), and perhaps a vehicle skill. Or they could ditch the Edge or 10 points of an Attribute for 20 more points to divvy up. Resources could be used for Bioware to boost the most important attributes(Charisma, Logic, and Agility in the example above), and they could be pretty well off, rolling 8-10, maybe 12 with positive modifers, dice for a _lot_ of skills.

No, they won't be as good as a specialist, but i think that making a jack of all trades is possible. Just let them know they won't be flinging around huge buckets of dice like the pistol adept.

Alright, thanks guys. I linked her to this thread and she read everything over. We've decided to take a previous poster's advice and start with a Face concept and see how far we can branch out from there. Thanks!

A rigger is easy to add to anyone. Invest in pilot of 6 and maneuver 6. This is 30K = 6 BP, with is less than 30 BPs it takes to do it yourself. Then break the copy protection and use it everywhere. Now it drives itself better than you possibly could.

You can do a hacker/face without a lot of trouble. Take electronics + hacking and a point of EW.

You can do a street sam hacker too, using AR. Take electronics + hacking and a point of EW.

It's doable, but hard to do a JoT mage. The trade-offs hurt more.

You can do a mage accepting the loss of a point of essence to allows skillwires, which then allows the use of activesofts. This allows you to strart with a bunch of crappy cheap skills that get upgraded easily. A rating 4 activesofts can be purchased a lot easier than most people can get 20 points of karma in most games. This means you'll probably start with a magic of 4, which still means you can be an effective combat or support mage. Your average stunball will do 5-6 points of stun, ignoring armor and body roll, to everyone in a 40 foot diameter. To stop it the opponent needs a will + countermagic of >9, which is uncommon in starting games.

You can also have a minor mage that is gunbunny or heavy weapons guy. In that case you spend the point of essence on bioware so you have 3 IPs or you accept running around with a sustained spell. You really want to have magic 4 to be able to affect drones, but you could plan on that after you initiate if need be.

A rigger essentially is a hacker plus some skills and either a vehicle or drones. As being a hacker is pretty cheap, a dedicated hacker is pretty crazy. If they are supposed to drive a vehicle invest in pilot of 6 and maneuver 6. This is 30K = 6 BP, with is less than 30 BPs it takes to do it yourself. Then break the copy protection and use it everywhere.

If you use Franks house rules for character creation you can do a lot more. As the groups I have played with have always preferred more competent characters we have used Franks approach in most of the games we've played.

Honestly, I agree with Frank that skills tend to be the most overpriced thing in SR4. Skill monkeys tend to be weak - you are better off being good at one thing, and have a few skills in other areas, than trying to cover everything with a starting character.

Hmm, missed that. Still, it's a lot cheaper then buying the skill, and it's cheap to upgrade. Particularly as they don't seem to ever make the obvious point that maneuver and pilot for a HD scorpion, a fly-spy and a suborbital are not the same piece of software. I've never seen it except as a house rule.

In some ways, I feel that doing a jack-of-all-trades is actually easier in SR4 as opposed to the earlier editions. In particular, the more flexible magic rules make it less of an investment to create a part-time magician, so to speak. I've been working on creating a jack-of-all trades, and while I don't have my sheet in front of me, since it's on my home computer, and I'm not there at the moment, I can tell you that the easiest way I've seen is to not concentrate on broad skill groups, but rather specialize within that skill group and then use skillwires to make up the difference. For example, you might consider using pistols (automatics) for your firearms and then chip anything else you might need. This tends to create a flexible character without over-gimping them. My other suggestion, which may be shouted down, is to not specialize too much in any given direction at start, but rather see what way the campaign leads you. Do you need more firepower, more technical expertise, etc...? Then invest in those directions while still retaining some minor ability in other fields.

You have to go by dicepool size rather than skill.

You need: high Intuition, high Logic, high Agility. I strongly advice to play an orc for the cheap attribute boost and having a LOW edge for saving points (I prefer to buy that up ingame, like the karmapool used to increase in SR3). Favour mental stats.

Next, you buy cheap stat-enhancing ware. Bioware-muscles, cerebral booster... the goal is basically to have a working DP once skill is present. By now you only have spend 20+200+ est. 10 BP. 170 to go.

Influence 4, Athletics 1, Stealth 3 is a good basic selection. Weapon skills depend on character focus; pistols+automatics+unarmed is a good set. Buy high dodge and high perception (both at 5), and everything else is up to your taste. Consider a specialist role you want to grow into, Nomad is dead on.

Electronics is a good skill group to have, you could build up Cracking ingame while you aquire the gear. Do not ignore skill-enhancing ware, synthacardium is cheaper than athletics.

Better yet, go Voodoo tradition mystic adept with a good summoning skill, and use Task Spirits for skills (beats skill wires), and get the adept face talents. Possession gives a boost to stats for better dicepools, and you can pick up combat adept talents along the way, plus spellcasting and uber armor. Guardian Spirits for combat skills. Plus summon a Water Spirit and you get Weather Control, which no skill can duplicate. Added bonuses of Concealment, Movement, Accident, Divining, Magical Guard, Fear, Psychokinesis, Animal Control all available with a single Complex Action.

Works well for any of the possession trads, they all have task spirits. I think Traditional Witchcraft is my personal favorite for the blend of powers.

I think a jack of all trades is quite possable, though perhaps it will be a few less then all trades. I actually recently made someone who was a matrix speciallist, but also had tons of other skills, more for background reasons then anything else, but I still think it works out rather well. I'll do a bit of work on someone who is a bit more of a true generalist and see what I come up with.

Jack of All Trades is very possible with some emphasis on attribute boosting 'ware, Skillwires and Edge. Cerebral boosters plus a natural 4 or 5 logic and a whole mess of rating 1 or two 2 Skillsofts taken in skills that cannot otherwise be defaulted such as Medicine, Hardware, Mechanics and Electronic Warfare can be rather useful in downtime when a "merely" professional level dicepool of 8 isn't a liability and lets you contribute to a wide range of teamwork tests when the real specialists are working on something difficult that also needs to be done FAST (besides, beggars can't be choosers and sometimes the specialists become "unvailable"). Ryu already swiped most of my suggestions though; orks are awesome and a good Jack of All Trades doesn't do through skill and meat what he can do with 'ware and programs nor does he often purchase an entire firearm or close combat group; those skills simply overlap too much to really add the variety you're looking for.

Ok, here you go:



So, here are a few things about this build. First off, you'll notice all the skills at 1, this is so that you can at least make virtually any roll without a penelty. Second, with the Learning Stimulus you can raise a skill to 2 for a mere 1 karma each, which means you can get all your skills to 2 in two or three sessions. After that either start getting 3s in everything for 3 Karma each or specilize for 2 Karma each, or both for stuff you find you are using more often.

You also have a huge edge so that you can easily get a nice bonus to any skill you want.

So, lets take a look at the DP for some various skills:
Any skills based on logic have a DP of 12, with first aid being 18 with a standard rating 6 medkit. (Logic 7 + Skill 1 + PuSHeD 1 + Neocortical 3)
Firearms (Agility 7 + Skill 1 + smartlink 2) for a DP of 10, not too bad at all.
Many skills will benifit from Enhanced Articulation, Synthacardium gives +3 to your athletics group. Perception tests get a +3 on visual and audio from cybereyes and ears. Datajack allows for knowladge and linguasofts at start or in the future.

Future purchaces include skillwires and activesofts for it. Limbic (nanoware) would be good as well, just turn off the Learning Stimulus whenever you arn't using your karma, thus giving you a +3 to all intuition based skills. A better wired reflexes could also be a good investment.

As a nice bonus you can hold your breath for over 2.5 hours.

So, you can make adjustments as you'd like based on just how many trades you want to include in all. You can take out stuff like electronics and cracking maybe. Perhaps trading out Firearms for a spesific weapon skill. Overall with good pools in just about everything I don't think he is gimped at all. Sure, he can't quite match the huge dice pools of a true specilist, but that is kind of the point of a Jack of all Trades.

Anyway, enjoy.

if you want to do a JoaT including magic, do yourself a favor and take latent awakening... you're gonna need a good chunk of cyber early on, and you won't have the BPs to spend on magic early on, especially when you consider the fact you're gonna be spending BPs on magic rating lost to essence loss.

latent awakening means you can start buying up your magic stuff later. won't work too well if you suddenly become a full magician (that's a lot of karma to invest into becoming decent) but it could definitely work for an adept...

Here's a character I made a while back but havn't played since so has never been put into use. You should see that he covers about everything, including magic. The basic concept is that this character can do just about everything decent but nothing good. To make up for this he has an edge of 8, meaning 8 times a run he gets to do something pretty well. The consequence of this is that he is good during runs where you need two of one character type, for instance the main face has to be somewhere while you need someone else to fast talk another person elsewhere. Or you need some extra hacking power, ect...

I had a background story about how this guy jumped around all these skills and what not but I can't remember it right now. To add a little bit to the character I did give him an addiction to gambling, which seemed the most appropriate due to his maxed edge attribute.

Spoilers can be done thus ...