The challenge was issued in another thread...
So make this character who is at the top of his game...
Make the runner that has so few options for improvement is is pointless...

And just so you know:


I'm curious to see what people (including myself) think of it...
BTW: I actually loved Mr. Lucky, the only shadowrunner who can kill people by making things harder for himself...

The short answer is:

Create a character with a 9 in Quickness, and 7 in a firearms skill.

Buy the other firearms skills at 4.

Now, you have a character with a base 16 in whatever, and 13 in everything else.

We can then boost these things further with smartlinks, reflex recorders, and so on and so forth. But the net balance is that there'll be 3 dice difference between the skills. 3 dice = 1 success. That makes them so close, the difference is meaningless. There are so few options for improvement in his primary area-- not just primary skill, primary *area*-- that it's completely pointless.

Well, yes, he can shoot a rat at half a mile with any firearm, that, in my book, is not at the top of his game, unless he's just a contender in marksmanship contest and earns his money with those...
We are talking about shadowrunners...
and it is true that 1 success (on average) isn't that much, but it is a potential for 3 successes that makes the difference, IMHO...

so... your area of specialty is just shooting stuff?

i'm not sure i consider that someone who's really at the top of their game. i mean, that's not really a complete skill set. for example, a street samurai should also be quite stealthy, probably the expert at disguise, demolitions, close combat, tactics/planning, etc. so sure, he can use guns really well, but this isn't really someone with no room for advancement.

If the stated goal is to be a Marksman, the character is already at the top of his game.

It would be impossible for anyone to pass judgment on the concept of a Shadowrunning marksman. After all, shadowrunning is something anyone can do. This character would be the best marksman of all the shadowrunners.

He could use his Karma to "round out".
And Frankly, with the agility of 9... it won't be hard to round out most of combat. Not hard at all.

that's nice. how's he gonna get the gun to where it needs to be? he's gonna need palming, or disguise, or stealth/athletics, or magic, or hacking, or social skills, or *something* which is going to be just as much a part of the concept as shooting.

I don't know if you know this, but in-the-field marksmen need a lot more skills than just shootin' stuff...
Unless, as I said, you only do safe competitions where you shoot the bullseye for cash...
A dead gun fu master is still dead...

EDIT: Jaid we need to stop this...

Well, the thing is, Agility is linked to more skills than any other attribute and the majority of them can be defaulted. So having a 9 or so agility would in fact let you default to a dicepool of 8 for a ridiculous number of skills. On the other hand, a lot of those skills are somewhat redundant; once you can hit someone with a club it becomes a lot less important whether you can hit someone with a knife since you just drag along whatever you happen to be good at and do OK in most situations. As nice as it sounds, there's really only so many roles having a high agility opens up for you.

I completely agree...
But I wouldn't call someone who default on skills he needs for his job "at the top of his game"

no one is saying such a character would not be well-rounded, we're just saying that we don't consider just shooting stuff to be sufficient to define someone as being at the top of their game.

good enough for an olympic target shooter maybe, but we're not worried about that. we're worried about shadowrunners, who have to be good at an area of skills wider than just one highly limited field. he's not really "at the top of his game" until his entire skill set is there.

[edit] yes, we probably should ArkonC =P [/edit]

He wouldn't need to. He could have some of the other skills naturally, or on skillchip.

Cain,
Engage the challenge and make a full character and post it. I would like to see the full deal. If only for fun.

Others,
I don't want to be combative. Every character out there has holes. My interpretation of this challenge was to look for completion of one aspect. Poking at holes is easy. People could argue for days and days about ways to deal with the problem presented by every character's flaws.

Perhaps a more interesting challenge would be to see a starting character without a flaw.

I'd like to start this one with "there's no rush", but unless you show me a char straight out of bootcamp that has very little room for improvement I don't think I believe it's possible...
I know how to get a char at the top of his game, I just don't think 400 BP does it, unless you make the game really small...



Ah, I think you defined one aspect (or the game) very small, I don't consider shootin' like a motherfucker being good in one aspect because the first combat you get in to you'll probably get your ass kicked by that sneaky wolverine wannabe cyberninja...

Being complete at one aspect, to the point where further improvement is "pointless", is kind of subjective. Cain feels his example has reached that point, but other players might feel the other firearm skills need to be brought up to the same level.

I think I both agree and disagree with him. If I did such a character, I would probably be so secure in my firearms effectiveness that I would improve laterally at first - shoring up weak areas, gaining more skills, and so on. Getting more firearms ability would be pointless, in the sense that other improvements would have a priority. But I wouldn't consider that character the very best in the world at firearms. There would be room for improvement - specializing, getting the skills of 4 up to 6, reflex recorders, and so on. As the character started meeting tougher foes and other prime runners more often, an extra 3 dice would start to matter again.

I agree, BlueMax. The challenge, as I understood it, was the make a character at start where you would never need spend Karma to improve anything, attributes or skills. I personally feel that is impossible. I would like to see Cain's actual build of this perfect, non-houseruled(Meaning Reaction and Agility, not Quickness), and a complete totaling of how many BP are spent wear, so we can make sure he is not cheating to get his numbers.

We need Cain to specify what he means by one area. What is his area? One skill? A set of results, no matter the skill?

What Cain is proposing is not possible under RAW 400BP char gen, as either the availability cap or the prohibitive power point cost prevents any character from from maxing Agility (which Cain insists should still be called Quickness) at the beginning. The principal agility boosters are either limited to a 2 point boost or unavailable within a Availability 12 cap. In addition, the modified skill cap for any of the Firearms skills is also unachievable unless you are an Adept.

The best you can hope for is Muscle Replacement 2, Genetic Optimization (Agility) and Exceptional Attribute (Agility) to get a human to Agility 10 (still 2 short of their possible maximum, so room for growth there) and combine Reflex Recorders and Aptitude to get Pistols to 8 (also 2 short of their possible maximum, even in their best skill).

That combo will cost you 30BP out of your Qualities budget of 35BP and 13BP of your Resources budget.

You will also spend 85BP on Agility alone out of the 200BP Attributes budget (to get the rest of your Attributes to 2 is another 70BP, leaving only 40BP to shore up your other attributes - so you are either going to be slow or squishy or stupid - take your pick).

Finally you are looking at (even at the most cost effective and potentially munchkiny way of getting them) 40BP for Firearms group at 4, followed by an additional 16BP to get Pistols to 7 (8 with the Recorder) and 2BP more for a specialization. That is 58BP on skills so far.

So in total we have (assuming the full 200BP is spent on Attributes) used 301BP of our 400BP, and only have 5BP left for Qualities and 37BP left for Resources (or 185,000). Given we are going to need some sort of initiative booster (lets say Wired Reflexes 2, best bang for the nuyen) and Cybereyes with Smartlink (gotta shoot the best we can) that is another 7BP on Resources and we are pretty much out of Essence.

So our remaining 'well-rounded' skill set will have to be bought with our remaining 92BP, which admittedly is good for a few skills at 4 (Infiltration, Dodge, some Melee Combat skills incase we get stuck without a gun). Oh but wait, some more Edge might be useful (say increase it to 4, 20 more BP).

So we now have 72BP left for skills and remaining Resources - say Dodge 4 (16BP), Blades 4 (16BP), Infiltration 4 (16BP) and Athletics Skill Group at 2 (20BP). That leaves 4BP to spend other Resources (so 20,000 to buy armor, a gun etc and the ability to live on the street cause you can't afford any other lifestyle).

So we are left with the following character:

Gunbunny

Body - 3
Agility - 8 [10]
Reaction - 4 [6]
Strength - 2 [4]
Charisma - 2
Intuition - 3
Logic - 2
Willpower - 2
Edge - 4

Initiative - 7 [9, 3 passes]

Pistols (Semi-Automatics) - 7 [8] +2
A few other skills no more than 4 rating

Granted, a Pistol (Semi-Automatics) dice pool of 22 at Char Gen is pretty impressive, and an Infiltration dice pool of 14 will help get him into places to use that fantastic skill. But he only has a puny Body for damage resistance, and his Dodge dice pool is only 10 at the best of times. He is also not particularly quick on the draw.

To summarise, not only is he not at the top of his game in his primary specialization (he could increase his dice pool by a further 4 dice), but his secondary firearms skills are a minimum of 6 dice behind his pistol skill, and his remaining skills with the exception of the few Agility based ones are reasonable at best. In addition he can't avoid being hit very well and even with the best armor he can afford is likely to get squished easily. So he is certainly not 'unimprovable' by any standard Cain could set.

Feel free to critique/nitpick.

You forgot that he's also gonna need some contacts. Also that build doesn't even leave room for any social skills. With a charisma of 2 that means the character will be commandeered around by every enemy with a few dice on leadership.

Yup, he better have a good face in the party to give him instructions and a good mage in the party to stop other people from melting his brain. Admittedly his lack of melee ability is not that much of a handicap as long as he has his pistol available and isn't subdued. As Herr Starr from Preacher put it when asked how he intended to learn how to fight unarmed if he refused to attend training: "I never intend to be unarmed".

Well you could try with a maxing out the negative qualities budget but that's not gonna make the character more playable.

And, the FAQ says you should not break up skill groups in Chargen.

The simple fact is, though, that with an intuition of only 2, he will likely not catch the sniper in an urban ghille suit on a roof top overlooking his escape route, and, since he will be surprised, I do not believe he gets to defend against said sniper? He would also not be able to get very good on the Observe in Details checks when the high-threat response teams infiltrator circles arund behind the party. Basicly, yeah..such a character is TOAST trying to do a run without a strong team backing him up. SURE, he will hit and cap goons regularly, and maybe even sme prime runners, but....he would be the target right after the mage. And, I do not think an HTRT will be packing anything less then "stuff to kill runners DEADDEADDEAD", you know...EX-EX, APDS, poison gas..heck! Narcoject loaded with K10!

I did say the Firearms skill aquisition for this character was a bit munchkiny...

All doing it by the FAQ does is prove my point still further - the extra 8BP required mean he that his other Firearms group skills are now reduced to 3 rather than 4, or he has to lose some ratings from the limited other skills he has. Either way his is certainly not 'unable to improve'.

And the fact he has Intuition 3 still doesn't really impact any of the points you make above - he is dead meat for snipers or sneaky enemies, due to a lack of Perception skill.

I think that going without aptitude and exceptional attribute is still fair for the discussion at hand. Not that the points saved will do much.

Else the whole discussion is moot because one can only ever reach the limit in one skill.


The specialist that does not need to improve is not the same as the specialist that can´t do it. The first I think is quite possible to build, even if it gets hard at 400 BP. There is also this ugly tendency of many GMs to simply adjust the challenge level until there is need for improvement again. You know who you are.

Yeah, we could get him some Addictions and Allergies and then get 5BP of Krav Maga/Ares Firefight Martial Arts to enable him to reduce the penalty for shooting while in melee - that could mean we drop the Blades skill and get Perception 4 instead, help with avoiding the sneaky snipers...the 30 points left over from Negative Qualities could be pumped into Social skills and Contacts. However, we have just provided a further set of weaknesses for the the GM to gimp the player with.

So poor social skills, poor resistance to magic, average avoidance and resistance to damage and is a total BTL head who can't go out in sunlight - sounds like a perfectly playable well rounded character...

Now I'm just waiting for someone to come along and propose an alternative build that actually is 'impossible to improve upon'.

Ah, yes - the dreaded power creep. Once the runners reach double digit dice pools, suddenly, the average skill of security and cops and gangers goes up a notch too.

So your point is that within 400BP it is possible to build someone with a specialist dice pool of around 16-18 dice who is more than capable of meeting the most likely challenge levels within the game?

That I will not argue with, although I would still state that they will not be particularly well-rounded characters.

And regarding the point of GMs adjusting the challenge level to promote a need for improvement - isn't that the point? A good GM should provide challenges for all players that require them to stretch their abilities (and therefore have a desire to improve their abilities), otherwise there is no need to be giving out karma.

Note there is a distinction between challenging the character and promoting a need for advancement, and upping challenge levels to the point only specialists can survive - the former is 'be all you can be', the latter is limiting character choice and providing unfair obstacles.

I know how my GM does things: If the run is to the same building, the skills are about the same. If they go on a run to a lower security building, even with double digit dice pools, the skills are going to be lower then the high security buildings. Heck, the High Security buildings usually have rotating HTRT that are basicly Prime Runners, proportiona to the security level of the building. I have seen her Red Samurai for the Renraku Headquarters...they scare me. However, her "Red Samurai" for other facilities in Neotokyo range from the stats in the book, to littl emore then "Look! we are wearing red armour! We are red samurai! Really!" mooks.

I do not know what this PowerCreep you speak of is. Now, Public Awareness of teh teams tactics...that can influence things..

I don't see why being able to be the best in one area at chargen is a problem.

Not every GM suffers from it, but there's a notable tendency to "up the challenge" in some GMs, which results in a world where the average skill rating slowly slides up.

Not saying it is a problem - the point of this thread was to address Cain's statement that a character could be created at chargen who was not only the best at their specialized area, but was also well-rounded enough in other areas to not suffer any significant limitations operating in those areas.

I.e. the character would have little to no room for improvement once they were created.

Cain appears to be using this statement to prove that SR4 chargen is too powerful, and that the basic rules themselves are broken. Whilst he is obviously entitled to his opinion, the example character I posted above, whilst exceptional (but still not the best) at shooting pistols, seems to show that such a character is limited in a number of areas and not really a viable character without a number of other party members to fill in the deficiencies. They also have room for improvement within their speciality, let alone in other areas to make them just a well-rounded street sam.

I put the character up as a straw man to be critiqued or altered in order to fit into Cain's criteria - I have a feeling that will prove impossible.

I am still waiting for Cain to post his character. Since he says it can be done, that means he HAS done it. I want to see his stats, under the RAW, with point costs tallied. Admittedly, then, I would like to see his background for that character(given the high attribute and skills, I woudl expect at least a 2 page narrative background to justify not only his high stats, but hsi low ones as well, which we know should be easy for him given his self-promoted storytelling ability)

Yes, that is my point. Base agility 5, muscle toner 2, Firearms 4. With smartlink an easy 13 dice, and IMO no need to ever improve. Still, a far shot from not being able to improve. So we add a reflex recorder (I already would not, it is only one die and a precious 25k¥ out of the allocation limit). The make-or-break point of a char is secondary skills. You can for example buy Pistols(SA) 6(+2) and Ambidextrous for less points than Firearms 4. It is hardly believable that someone can aim with a pistol but not a rifle, but the char would be rules-legal.

As for appropiate challenges: the GM should change the challenges to fit the group. What I have seen a few to many times is a change within the usual challenges. The first ends in "cool, I can beat a Tir Ghost in hth", the latter in "I still can´t take on low-level sec guards in hth". It seems Fuchs, like me, has seen the ugly side of power creep. It takes the meaning out of specialist skills, justifies any kind of powergaming (rational planning for the future), forces everyone to focus karma into power rather than increased character maturity, and consequentially, after some time in the first campaign, everyone looses the ability to look at a standard DP of 8-10 and say "fine".

I'm curious to see Cain's character too, even without the backstory.

Exactly. If no matter what dice pool and gear he has, and no matter what location he is sneaking into, the stealth guy gets spotted 50% of the time anyway, just so the GM feels he challenged him, the game tends to take a turn for the worse. Not to mention that in combat that thinking leads to either half the team dieing, or everyone considering body/willpower 6 and combat skills in the 6s the minimum needed for non-combattants to survive.

On this we can agree - aside from the tactics discussion, and aside from the corp employing better guards, if you run against the same corp more than once the same threat level should apply. However, to Cardul's point, if the GM is getting you to run against corps with low-level security all the time they are not exactly challenging the characters - and if you are running against the same corp all the time then they are likely to take specific measures to combat you, including upping the quality of their defenses and staff.

The power creep you refer to appears to be poor GMing, rather than a consequence of a system that allows starting characters to be good at what they want to do.

Again agreed, although that is a GM problem again.

And I still say a good GM will provide challenges appropriate for the players. Frankly, would you pay good money to a top of his game 'runner to sneak past some low rent corp security my grandmother could sneak past? No, the kind of jobs available for the nuyen these characters are likely to need to stay at the top of their game will require challenges appropriate to their abilities.

My current group of runners does not get paid - they work so their debt at the Mob gets reduced .

One of my problems with SR4 chargen is how long it takes. My last character, a straightforward mage, took about two days to make. Since I have to work, it'll take me about 3-4 days to get what you want.

In the meanwhile, here's Mr. Lucky. I pulled him off a living character sheet, so a stat or two might need to be rolled back. We can fix that later. He's an example of the principle: you can have so much strength in one area, and be so well-rounded in others, there's not much point in karmic advancement.

Body: 5
Quickness: 5 (7)
Reaction: 4 (6)
Strength: 2 (4)
Charisma: 3
Intuition: 4
Logic: 3
Willpower: 3

Edge: 8
Initiative: 8 (10) IP: 2
Essence: 0.75

Skills
Pistols (Semi auto) 7
Gymnastics (Dodging) 2
Unarmed combat (martial arts) 2
Con (Fast talk) 1
infiltration (Urban) 2

Knowledge Skills (Your choice, but here are mine):
Farming: 3
Sports (Rodeos): 2 +2
BK: Firearms: 3
Safehouse Locations: 5
Denver Border Crossings (Shadow Crossings): 4 +2

Edges:
High Pain Tolerance (Or 5 pts, your choice)
Lucky
Apt: Pistols

Flaws:
35 points your choice

Cyberware

Skillwires (Rating 3)
Smartlink
Wired Reflexes (Rating 1)
Muscle Replacement (Rating 2)

Bioware

Enhanced Articulation
Reflex Recorder (Skill Group) (Firearms)

Gear and weapons: 59,000 nuyen.gif your choice
15 points contacts.

Just to be clear, I am presuming Mr. Lucky's shtick is to cover his deficiencies with Activesofts or judicious use of the 8 extra dice from spending Edge? With the presumption being that he has enough money to buy several R3 Activesofts at 9,000 per, and he won't be facing more than 8 must hit dice rolls per session?

I agree that 18 dice in Pistols combined with 7 - 10 dice in some of the main street sam oriented 'runner skills is good, but I wouldn't agree that this would be enough to cover all eventualities, such that you wouldn't need to improve in some areas.

High Edge, when not managed correctly, can be a game breaker, but that was the intent. It is designed to allow characters to live another day, or pull off outstanding feats. Using it as a crutch to cover up missing skills and claiming this means the character can't improve, or can beat specialists at their own game, is IMO a little disingenious.

I was not trying to turn this into a discussion of GMing problems. It just happens to be important for the objective at hand that in some groups, the point at which one can consider a certain skillset covered does not exist. In those, the only applicable border for judgeing a DP is the maximum size, ultimately. That demand alone makes Cain´s mission impossible. So I suggested to go for "no need to improve" builds.

One more: The BP allocation problem does not exist for the really broken chars, because they do usually only push one skill / group of skills connected to one attribute, ignoring the rest. Those are a FAIL from the get-go because integrity checking of new chars by the GM is a given.


Agility can be brought to 10+, thats a valuable base for many skills. Combat + Stealth is easy, you´d just need to cover Reaction, Body and Strength to some extend. Doable, but rarely broken. Agi 10+ and high Firearms skill is a usual min/max trick, but boring and rather not game-breaking. You hit well. Always. Just a more boring version of: You hit. Most times. This is basically the GM-problem again.

Logic is good, especially if you have a matrix with skill+program rating going, like us. "Game-breaking" for logic-based skills is only happening if you count part-time runners with better paying primary jobs.

Charisma is good. Its actually the easiest part of the game to break. Notice how everyone who is no face skimps on social skills? Those are about 50% of the potential social resistance pool. Easy, until everyone catches up. But you can build a char that usually has net hits on any social test. Game-breaking? Potentially. If you rule that there is no way someone would do what the face wants, there would be no test. Everything else, the face gets. Ignore the disconnect between wanting something and being allowed to roll, and the social system is breakable.

Surprise candidates: Reaction (and body/armor). Max reaction to 9, buy Athletics 4 - Gymnastics 6, buy synthacardium, Reflex Recorder(Athletics), and Reakt. Some 21 dice on full defense, and few will hit you without that. If you happen to be a troll, you can create DR pools of 30+, also not shabby. Game-breaking? Hardly, in my opinion. The player in question should not expect to be harmed most times, and therefore not expect to feel challenged by combat. I do not subscribe to the theory that any player has to be challenged in any situation. Let those who want it have the feeling that they are cool, challenge those who did not build up DR capacity. Let the players select the degree of challenge they want out of the game (Campaign development excepted to some degree).

Anything but the Pornomancer that is broken? Athletic builds can do rather impressive things, but that comes with being augmented.

You don't have Perception?

No skills at all to work a commlink?

Not even a token point in a pilot skill?

Wow.

With Pilot skills you could argue that the char's got a licence but no stunt driving experience. I usually don't bother with non-rigger characters either. What's bothering me more is the massive 6BP investment in social skills. If you're trying to cover so many fronts by using edge you're gonna be out quite early.

SKillsofts are wonderful things.

You don't need any skills to work a commlink, that's what Computer 0 is for. Unless he buys Incompetece: Computer, he can use a comm for everyday stuff without a problem. For slightly more intense matrix-y things, he owns an Agent with a few common use programs. Anything more serious is the province of the decker,

And advanced Pilot programs are very nice as well. Maybe they're not much in combat, but vehicle combat is the Rigger's job, anyway.

That translates into 6 dice for Fast Talk rolls, which is the most common roll. You can even use it to negotiate with. Not nearly face level, but certainly comparable to the BBB street sam.

Why would you need a point that's admittedly token? You don't need the pilot skill to drive and a wired Samurai defaulting to a 7 Reaction is as good if not better than Joe Taxi Driver thanks to sheer reaction time. Same thing with the logic 7 mage and the computer skill. He's a smart guy, he can figure it out.

I can't check the numbers here but I trust you.

As with all rating 8 Edge characters, his effectiveness will vary depending on the GM and how and when he decides to refresh Edge pools.
Other than that he's ok, definitely playable but nothing exceptional.

I think he does have room for improvements: a perception skill is almost necessary (perception checks tend to be frequent and it'd be too bad to have to use edge each and every time) and it wouldn't hurt to be more versatile.

Actually, you posted a Mr. Lucky Mage a while back which a friend of mine adapted for his character in a game I'm not involved in, and having been the GMs aid several times, the Mr. Lucky Mage seems thuroughly broken...

Mr. Lucky Huh? When I first got 4th Ed I made this character but his name was
Kirk

Its too bad I never get to play, only run the durn game.

Also, a character *requiring* skillsofts right out the gate is not a character that has no room for improvement. After all, if there was no room for improvement, they wouldn't need skillsofts, now would they?

I generally avoid Mr. Lucky debates, but this one is so civil and (relatively) productive that I think I'll weigh in.
I see Mr. Lucky as a good character. He's a specialist, and he has his weak areas, but he's not horribly broken deficient in any. He's not a very good Lone Wolf, but as part of a team he's a fine character concept. He's nice to have when the shooting starts, and between the skillwires and edge he can be useful in any plan, even one without shooting.
In terms of character advancement, sure, he's pretty much peaked at shooting stuff, but he's got lots of other areas to develop into. If you need your character to advance in his shtick to enjoy the game, then this is a bad character for you, but he's got all kinds of skills he could improve. Skillwires and edge are good and prevent any major weaknesses, but real skills are better. And the less times he has to use his edge to make up for a weak skill, the more times he can use it in other fun places. It's not like he's going to be stuck saying, "Man, I have too much edge. This sucks." All of that 'ware can be upgraded to make room for more. So he's got something to do with his money and something to do with his karma.
I'd approve a character like this, as long as he fit with the group and the campaign.

Now Mr. Lucky would be broken if everyone saw this character and realized that this approach was clearly the single most effective way to play the game, and abandoned all other approaches for this one. However, as I don't see that happening, I am forced to conclude that he is not broken.

I've seen two "Mr. Lucky"s played. Actually, they were both Miss Lucky. One of them was also a semi-specialist (face and throwing adept), the other was an extreme generalist (uncybered mundane, at least initially). Both were good characters, both worked well with each other and with a larger non-Lucky group, and neither broke the game.

Also, keep in mind that it's a bit ironic for Mr. Lucky to have skillwires:


So, if Mr. Lucky is depending upon his Perception skillsoft or his Pilot skillsoft, then he's not going to be able to use his central theme of Edge dice. That's also the reason to have a "token" point in a skill for this character theme.