Okay, so I was in another discussion where people were talking about uber-big fistfuls of dice for various skills. How is it done? In essence, how does someone in a game become "the best in the world" at something?

As an example.... Player A wants to be the Human Dirty Harry Physical Adept guy, and thus really really good with a revolver. As far as I can figure, his goal would be achieved with Max agility of 6, Aptitude for Pistols, Skill Rating 7 for Pistols, Specialization in Revolvers, Improved ability (3) with pistols, for a max of 18 dice, right? (6 + 7 + 2 + 3) Outside of increasing agility more, wouldn't that be the limit? Even with Agility 9, that would make it 21 dice total? (wow)

... and other builds of that nature would be interesting to see. This way, I'll know when someone's pushing the limits pretty hard, and give me a sense of scale from one end to the other.

Others on these boards here are far mor apt in the number-crunching, but as far as I know, you can still go for Exceptional Attribute (Agility) and Genetic Optimization, netting at least two more dice from the attribute side. I don't remember if a reflex recorder adds a bonus die or increases skill rating, if the former, there's another die for you. And I guess with a high edge you can spend some in combat to get exploding dice, reroll or somesuch, netting even more potential hits...

But yeah, if you go only by "raw skill", then once you got a 7 in pistols, there's not too much headroom. Of course, buying those 7 points also burns BPs like there's no tomorrow, usually leaving a character somewhat lacking in other areas, so I guess it kinda evens out...

does he really WANT TO BE HUMAN, or just not look like an elf?
i've seen elf cyber builts with 12 in agility, and that was before augmentation i think . .

Then there's smartlinking, recoil comp, and if you have a technomantic buddy, investing machine spirits in the smartlink... shades with all the camera toys, palmlink for the smartlink...

well, for starters, you can increase your natural maximum atleast 2 times above its normal.. so ...


Elf.. 20BP in qualities for agi 8, 45k and 0.2 essence for agi 9(gen tech) (gives agi 13 augmented but you will only reach agi 11 atm) with muscle toner 4 bioware (0.8 essence and 32k cash), then you raise pistols to 6, 7 with aptitude +specialication, 13+7+2=22 dice so far..

Then we get magic 4 (pay for 5) cause of -1 essence..)to start with.. 1.5 power points into Improved Pistols then you add smartlink to that.. and you got 27 dice (22+3+2).. And 2.5 PP left.. enough for 1 init pass extra and Quickdraw

Ofc I have not chosen any alpha ware etc.. but you can pretty easy get 27 dice to roll with your gun adept.. but then again.. you sure as hell wont be doing much else than shooting.. and you got 2 PP left for 1 extra init pass.. I would allmost drop 2 dice from that and get me 2 extra init passes instead of 2 more dice.. =)

85 BP for agil, 10 bp for cash, 30 BP for Aptitude and the agi quality 34 BP for Pistols 7+spec, and 40 BP for magic.. so all in all you spent about 198 BP out of 400 for 27 dice and 2 init passes and Draw and shoot in one simple action.


And thats just on top of my head.. (not any more.. checked all the stuff.. )


EDIT: added the cost for pistols, and added aptitude and spec to the first calc for 20 dice to 22..

Don't forget item attunement!

Don't forget the restricted gear quality. Suddenly we don't have to stop at muscle toner 2

Item attunement from wich book ??

I considered restricted gear but then we hit augmented maximum allready and we loose a whole magic point more meaning 10 BP more wasted.. its cheaper spending 1 PP for 1 agil (since you allready get 1 agil from 4 magic)..

A quick note on Dirty Harry, he wasn't god with a gun. Dirty Harry was a face heavily specialized in intimidation. Give him a high Char, Guts, intimidation, and pistols 5 and you should be pretty close.

Elf with Changeling Surge Class 2 for MEtagenic Improvement Agility, Exceptional Attribute agility, Genetic Optimization Agility for an agility of 10(15) plus 6 dice in pistols, + specialization + reflex recorder + 3 from Improved Ability = So, 27 dice off the top of my head. I'm sure there are other things.

Chris

I'm running a virus scan, so I'll see what I can do to simply make the maximum dice in agility that you can.

I'll see what I can do with chargen only, and then possible places for improvement.

Gonna go with karma, cause its just better.

Heres what I whipped up, and no, he isn't fully made, as its an intellectual exercise.



Basic dicepools are this:

Shooting with his revolver, 28 dice. And he can take aim for up to 3 simple actions and get 31 dice.

Attribute (14) + Skill (6) + Imp Ability (2) + Spec (2) + Smartlink (2) + Reflex Recorder (1) + Enhanced Twink (1) = 28. + Take Aim (3) = 31.

Areas for improvement: Upgrade either his muscle toner to level 3, or initiate twice and take another level in Imp Phys Agi to cap him out at 15. Initiate and spend 0.5pp on his last point of improved pistols. Depending on the GM, if he picked up the Aptitude quality he could squeeze raise pistols. Homeground could give a +2 bonus. Hawk eye for reducing range steps. So, with all of that... he'd absolutely cap out at:
Attributes (15) + Skill (7) + Imp Ability (3) + Spec (2) + Smartlink (2) + Reflex Recorder (1) + Enhanced Twink (1) + Home Ground (2) = for 33 dice total for regular shooting, and +3 for 36 dice when aimed. I think thats the absolute topout for this though.

Good catch on item atunement, that gives him a 1/2 initiate grade round up for his pistol.

Also, techno sprite diagnosticing the gun, and then some magic of analyze device for some more twinkage.

Still no answer from where atunement comes from, wich book ppl ? ?=)

Street Magic - it is a metamagic for adepts only.

Chris

Aaaah thanks man.. =)

Simply using the basic book, the optimal build would probably be Agility: 5 plus muscle toner: 2, Pistols: 6 with a specialization in Revolvers, the ambidexterity quality (not to fire both at once, but to fire one, then the other, to get around the Ruger Super Warhawk's single-shot rate of fire), a reflex recorder for pistols combined with improved ability/pistols: 2, and a smartlink. Since this adept has already lost a point of Essense, get some basic cybereyes and an ultrasound sensor for him. That's 20 dice, which is enough for most purposes while still leaving room for improvement and lots of build points to spend on other skills.

If you want to hard max, though, get aptitude/pistols and exceptional attribute/Agility, hard maxing Agility at 7 and raising pistols to a base skill of 7 as well. You now have 23 dice for pistols, although those last 3 points cost you 73 build points.

Augmentation introduces geneware that can increase your Agility maximum.

Street Magic introduces the attunement metamagic, which lets you bond with an item and treat it like an extension of your own body, giving you a dice pool bonus equal to half of your initiate grade. It doesn't work for items you are controlling through electronic interfaces, though, so you would probably not be able to use a smartlink with it.

Arsenal has lots of rules for modifying and designing guns.

Runner's Companion, I don't have yet, but they have a quality that lets you start out with higher-Availability gear (you could get muscle toner: 4 instead of muscle toner: 2).

And obviously you could get more dice if you decided to play something with better bonuses than a human, such as an elf or a changeling.

I kind of think the very first option would be best, though, if the player is really interested in playing Dirty Harry, rather than simply pumping up his pistols dice. Because Dirty Harry also had good unarmed combat, driving, and intimidation skills, as well as a high Edge, and other skills appropriate to a cop. So he would have more than the bare-bones skill allocation of a pistols hyper-specialist.

Holy crap...



I was just referring to the "most powerful handgun in the world" type, not the whole character... but thank you for taking that direction with it.




again... that's just sick... and here I was thinking the 10 + specialization was pretty over the top...

Thank you all for illuminating me on the sickness out there. Wow, that's crazy... I'm going to go count my blessings now that I've never had someone present me with a character like these...

you ain't seen nuthing yet bub!
there's builds out there where the character gets over 40 dice, and that is well within ALL the rules too O.o

For something like pistols? No, you're full of it. (I exclude concepts like possession & channeling for progressively more powerful spirits to possess you to get impossible physical stats due to having a force upteenthousand spirit in you. Likewise, I also ignore one shot cyberzombies that redline their Agi 15 limbs to Agi 30.)

no, for other things . . . climbing comes to mind, especially . . . 44 dice is with hardmaxing entirely possible, if i remember the ultimate mundane climber correctly, and if you softmax, it's still above 40 dice and you have some points left for other stuff still . . .
yeah, for shooting guns, you've pretty much hit the roof with 33 dice . .

I'll just leave this here...

Yeah, your biggest dice blocks are probably going to come from an ubertwinked social adept. You know, the whole nine with Charisma, Pheremones, Kinesics, etc.

Firearms is going to get the bigger bonus over melee, due to the extra dice one can get from machine sprites, smartlinks, etc. Weapon combat, if you utilize Reach and if I recall some kind of weapon customization, can get a bit more than Unarmed. Unarmed, if properly twinked, can still get up there through a similar way as Firearms(elf, crank Agility, Aptitude, etc.) Kick Attack can nail 1 more die for Reach, but basically you're sort of cut off there(though some martial arts give bonus dice for certain things-such as +1 die to Knockdown, etc.)

There was some weapon-based Parry monster around, as well-where instead of Agility, you utterly crank out Reaction(though giving plenty of Agility as well for attacking back), and with this and that they can roll sick amounts of dice to parry and then Riposte in return, getting a counterattack(counterstrike too can work here.) They might not roll as many on the counterattack as the offensive-based guy, but damned if you can ever hit them in melee.

On that note, I wonder what kind of Dodgemaster you could build. Again, go nuts on the Reaction, add the Reaction enhancers, etc, a suprathyroid, anything to get Reaction boosted up. Max out Gymnastics and get a Synthacardium 3-they're an Adept with some cyber, but still have around 4 magic points left to play with to get Improved Gymnastics, and then give them Satyr Legs for more Gymnastics boost, and in the end you basically have a bullet-dodging maniac.

Captain Perception can be rather interesting, as well. Through creative use of hard-maxing and twinking Intuition and all the other Aptitude stuff, Positive Qualities and Adept powers, there was a rather insane amount of dice thrown. Really, for just about any skill(especially non combat skills-they only cost Adepts .25 per die), you can get massive fistfuls of dice indeed.

Melee has its weaknesses (namely, that most people will just shoot you), but people who are good at it dominate people who aren't good at it more convincingly.

If the guy rolling 20 dice for pistols runs into 8 guys rolling 6 dice (including smartlinks) for pistols, he could probably kill two of them each initiative pass, but is more likely to spend an action using full dodge to get to cover, and will likelier than not come out of the encounter with a wound or two.

If the guy rolling 18 dice for unarmed combat runs into 8 guys rolling 6 dice (including reach) for their clubs, he is likely to completely dominate them and not get hit once.

As far as the parry monster, the biggest thing for this concept is the two-weapon fighting style maneuver (with ambidexterity or off-hand training). It lets you use full defense at no cost in actions. For a typical adept with maxed-out skill, that's 9 or 10 extra dice! The other component to the parry monster is plenty of combat sense and a level of counterstrike, along with the riposte and finishing move maneuvers.

It's a tradeoff - you can either get the insane damage codes that are possible for unarmed combat now, or you can go the two-weapon route and get that insane defensive ability.

Thanks, Glyph... I just found a use for Shiva Arms.


Oh, some of these concepts are positively *sane* in comparison to what you can do. You've probably heard of the pornomancer, the uber-twinked social adept with over 30 dice for Seduction attempts. And that's without some of the new social abilities; I think I could probably push it to 35 dice, and I'd believe it if someone claimed they could do 40.

Running a game for these guys is a bit challenging, but not impossible. You are going to have to accept a certain amount of power creep, but it can be held down. What causes a problem is when things go from power creep to an arms race between the players and GM. If you can avoid that, the game can be a lot of fun, even at the insane power levels.

I was actually toying with a concept, but have discarded it as too game-breaking. A social adept with Commanding voice, and huge bonuses to the Leadership skill. To oppose Commanding Voice, you have to make a Leadership check; since most people don't have the Leadership skill, they'd be rolling Willpower -1. That not only means you'll succeed; you're likely to score routine *critical* successes, which is enough to dictate the result. (Yes, I know the book says "GM discretion". The book also says critical successes get to make up their own results, and making people obey the command is within reason.)

I would never actually bring this character into a game, because he'd ruin combats by telling the other guys to throw away their weapons. When the enemies come to their senses, they're now unarmed and facing down armed opposition who's got them in their sights. It wouldn't be much fun for anyone else, because combat would only last until I used Commanding Voice.

Playing with a maxed-out character can be fun, but remember: Use your powers for good, and not evil!

*sigh* Again, I'm glad I don't have these players...




I also play Hero System, which also uses a lot of d6s... between the two games, I tend to have a few. =)

For all those who illuminated me on the social/pornomancer/skill ubers, I also thank you. This gives me perspective, and mostly tells me that our little bit of tweaking is nothing compared to the outer reaches, and that totally maxed out skills in these methods are just as sick and bring up some very odd possibilities. Frankly, most of the stuff you guys were doing made my eyes glaze over a bit, but I focused and understood what you were presenting. Thanks so much, everyone. It seems my power/min/max perspective is just completely not in this league. =)

As a whole, from what I've seen on how this is all done, I wouldn't allow most of the characters presented in most cases. Though, looking at those builds, I see where any decent GM could make any given uber-skill character suffer greatly. I'll present this information to my buddy. Its way out of our normal scope, so what we planned is surely not nearly as bad, and it seems that our thoughts are just fine compared to all that other tweaking.

Damn, I really need to get Runner's Companion. Stubbornly waiting for the hardcopy version, though.

The last incarnation of the pornomancer had 36 dice (although many of them were very conditional mods such as home ground, etc.), so adding empathy software: 6 would make it 42 dice, and SURGE can, I think, boost Charisma as well, without affecting the number of Qualities cap.

As for commanding voice, Hyzmarca actually put together a "leadermancer"-type character. As effective as the pornomancer, but less likely to get STD's! Watch out for catching the awakened version of laryngitis, though.

He wants to be human, use only magical augmentation, and play a rogue scholar sort. Its not a min/max thing, its just a "I want a big gun and be totally awesome with it" thing.



trying to avoid the cyberware, though the glasses and smart link might appeal to him. Technomantic machine spirits? Cripes, gonna have to read that section....

If you've played HERO, you've probably seen worse than this. I've personally witnessed someone rolling an entire 36 pack of d6's... and then reroll a bunch of them, because he didn't have enough dice to roll all them at once.

In defense of "these players", they tend to be a good thing in games, so long as they're not problem players. Min/maxing and problem players are two separate things. Obviously, people who can tweak 33 dice out of a character, have studied the rules extensively and can help you run the game, or at least provide page references when needed. Obviously, a problem player is always going to be a problem; but just because someone is a skilled min/maxer doesn't mean they're a problem player.

Oh, and do you want to hear one little thing, to really blow your mind? It's fairly *easy* to create a monster character with 20+ dice in one area, and a full range of skills elsewhere. He won't be as good as a specialist, but he'll have enough to get by, until the expert gets there. You can have a pornomancer as a viable character, and not just as a one-trick pony.

A machine sprite can use its diagnostics power to add dice to either using or repairing an electronic device. Some interpret this as meaning that they can give pistols bonuses if you have them use this power on the smartlink. Personally, I would rule that they give you bonus dice to use the smartlink itself, and as that normally doesn't require a test, their diagnostic power does absolutely nothing.

The analyze device spell is still cheesy when used on guns, but it only gives a bonus equal to the net hits after it beats the gun's object resistance, so barring an overcasting multiple initiate, it's usually not quite as bad.

Item attunement is also limited, in that you likely lose the use of your smartlink (since you can't use the device through an electronic interface - using it only for targetting, rather than the other smartlink tricks, might be allowable with a generous GM). Plus, it is for a specific item, and costs Karma.

You know, I never thought of that trick before. Here's a mindbender for you: since every item in SR4 has, by default, a Device Rating... could you get the sprite to possess the gun itself? And then give you the bonus dice to shooting the gun?

Adept shouldn't have any problem getting 40+ dice, i just made a "mundane" character with 35 dice for seduction(or any one specialisation of a sosial skill, execpt intimidation)

Surged Dryad with Charisma 11(Exceptional Attribute + Genetic optimization + Metagenetic Improvement), Con(Seduction) 7, Trustworthy quality, Tailored Pheromones 3, Enhanced Pheromone Receptors 3 and Empathy Software 6
3+11+9+1+3+2+6 = 35
and she can default a social skill with 24 dice, so you could actually take no social skills and still be very good face.

I'm what you might call a Herophile. The thing with Hero is that its a system that doesn't have a "balance" at character creation except that placed by the GM and other players. Its all about defining the range in which you're going to play. Depending on the game, throwing 40+ dice may be in context or not. If you're throwing 40+ dice in a street level game, something went wrong. If you're throwing 40+ dice in a galactic superhero game, it may be entirely within genre. Its a scaling system, so the amount isn't actually relevant so much as how much everyone else is able to throw around. If left completely alone to let someone do whatever they want, you can get ever so much sillier than you can in Shadowrun, since Shadowrun is meant to be played at a certain level. This is true, to some level, with any game (scale), but particularly of universal games.



I think that's probably true of any game and any system. It always comes down to the players and the GM. Everything else is relative. My friends and I tend to be rather conservative with rules tweaking and more concerned with a character concept than twisting the rules. Since we're all on the same page, when someone decides to do something like the methods described above, there is usually an accompanying reason and the player is, as you stated, going to be playing within the realm of the game and not breaking it. There is a purpose to it.



I think, at this point, I'm beyond the "mind-blowing" part. It has not been firmly established that Shadowrun is not quite as restricted as I thought. Overall, though, most of these are pretty "tweaky" builds. I know that's what I asked for, so its all good. It'd be interesting. I have been quite illuminated by what's gone on here.

I think that you might be underestimating Shadowrun just a bit. Like HERO, it's very easy to build characters with power levels way outside what the points suggest. It's also easy to build characters that are near-useless; for example, in both systems, having only one action means you're nearly useless in combat.

But the point is, if everyone is throwing dice pools of 20+ dice, Shadowrun can be just as fun as a cosmic super power game. But it is very much an "Everyone or no one" kind of thing. Just like in HERO; if you've got one guy throwing around 40 die RKA's, everyone else needs to be doing about the same. (And for the record, yes, that was me. It was my first time playing Hero, and I didn't know he wanted a street-level vigilante game. I just went with what sounded good; I stumbled on that combination by accident. If someone had told me to rein it in, I would have.)

Did you mean: "It has been firmly established", or "It has not been firmly established? Shadowrun is not very restrictive at all, especially 4th ed using BP or Karmagen. You can easily make extremely weak characters, and extremely powerful ones, all using the same starting point and rules. The goal, which I think you'll agree with, is not to force everyone onto some imaginary middle ground. It's to get everyone to the point where they're all more or less just as powerful as each other. As long as we're all on the same level, it doesn't matter what levels the game has to offer.

The description explicitly excludes weapons.
Using it on the smartlink is already an attempt to work around that restriction.



Wouldn't work.
Exceptional Attribute costs 20BP worth of qualities, getting con up to 7 another 10, so you've only got 5 left for SURGE, allowing only for class I, thereby making it impossible to choose Matagenetic Improvement.

As far as new boosts for social skills are concerned, with Runner's Companion we have reached the point where it gets hard to buy half of them, even with SURGE III dryads and leaving out all the stuff that raises your hardcaps.

Damm, i forget the cost for aptitude so thats -1 dice.
Well then i just have to take her a Reflex Recorder for social skill group and we're back to 35 dice.

Edit: Only works for compat and physical skill so can't take that, oh well 34 dice aint to bad and i'm still thinking about making this character without any social skills.She would still have 24 dice when defaulting to social skills.

Edit 2:A Vocal Range Enhancer gets her back to 35 dice or 25 when defaulting.

Edit 3:To bad only way to augmend charisma is magic or drugs and speedballing Ex,Novacoke and Red Mescaline for +3 to charisma isn't exactly a good idea.

Drug bonusses also don't stack, so stick to eX only.

I'd also ditch Metagenetic Improvement for Vomeronasal Organ.
It has its downsides, but that's one dice more for 10 points less (or, 20, counting in the attribute point).

He was pretty good at getting headshots though.

Says who?

You can go one even better. Put a rocket engine on your gun and have the machine sprite fly around like Megatron while shooting people.

She already has

So Metagenetic Improvent is actually better


Where's that from?
Oh well I wasn't actually gonna make her an addict for +1(or+3) dice anyway, she has enought of them.

Not in the English SR4 BBB. It states (pg 237): "The Diagonostics power allows the sprite to evaluate the inner workings of an electronic device. The sprite must be accessing the device in question. The sprite can then convey this information and assist someone using or repairing the device. Make a sprite x 2 test; each hit adds 1 die to the character's test to use or repair the item."

I believe I've heard the German edition excludes Weapons and Vehicles. However, following the rules for the English BBB, they would be allowed. In our game, the rule is that if it can be hacked, the Machine Sprite can use diagonistics on it. (ie, if I, as a TM/hacker, can hack a device then a machine sprite can go into said device and manipulate it as well)

And yes, the street sams have banned me from every playing a hacker again. They really like getting their + 4 - 6 dice from the level 6 machine sprites I can compile. And the rigger likes them too for those vehicle tests. As does the street doc with his medkit. And the thief with her autopicker and latex face masks & nanopaste disguises. And the...

Not again...damn, i'm actually thinking about buying the BBB again, in English, or at least the new version that will stick to the English rules (or at least only give changes as clearly marked optional rules).
I'm sick and tired of that crapfest of a translation.


@ Mäx : missed the receptors, sorry.
As far as the drugs are concerned, i'ts nowhere spelled out explicitly, though it was suggested (by AH, i guess) to not let them stack.
Forgot to mention that officially, it's not disallowed, but not explicitly allowed either.

Yes, I fell into that trap at least once. This is one of the German "specials". We´ll hopefully get rid of those with the first Pegasus-edition of the main book.

No problem and thanks for explaining as i thought i had missed something in the books.

I think if you can write English clearly enough to correctly use "crapfest" in a sentence, then you should just buy the English BBB. (errr... that's assuming English isn't your native language; but if it was, why would you buy the German translation instead of the English original? )

I might be underestimating it, its been made obvious that I don't really know the full scale of how things can be. And like you said, it is a matter of scaling. i thought I had said that, but apparently not clearly. I meant "HAS been" firmly established. Its been made obvious that I don't know jack about min/maxing in this game. =) And I agree, so long as everyone is in the same scale/power level, its all good.

english is the second language we learn in school . . ok, that's not really worth shit, but it's a good base to your own studies of the mix and match of words the rest of the world generously calls the english language . .

Well, it's only my second language, but i always bought a lot of English books for SR as many of them simply wheren't available in German.
Which is the reason why i can correctly use "crapfest" in a sentence today.
When i saw the SR4 BBB, i thought "this time, i'm gonna buy all the core rulebooks in the same language to avoid any confusion regarding rules terms".
No more "oh, Dexterity is Agility in the English version and Constitution is Body?"
So i got the German BBB, the German translation of Street Magic and then FanPro collapsed, there wasn't a new German license holder till last month and i bought Augmentation, Arsenal, Unwired and Runner's Companion in English and eventually found myself spending more time on DS than the German SR boards.

Now we have a new license holder (Pegasus Spiele, the German CoC publisher) and they will put additional weapons and vehicles and new artwork into Arsenal and include bonus material in the other books as well...damn.
It's complicated.

yes, the return of germany only cyberware in the form of rigging and eyeware, and the return of the urban series firearms . .
also: the german boards are kinda slow compared to DS . .

Actually (and I think you said something similar to this yourself), it only really matters if there are two people in the same role. If you have two combat munchkins both rolling 20+ dice for melee and/or ranged combat, and one face rolling 12 dice for social skills, then the face still won't feel outclassed, and the GM will have no problem scaling challenges suitable for both power levels. The only problem is when you have something like the 12-dice face in a group with a 20+ dice face, or in a group where one of the 20+ dice combat masters also rolls 15 dice for social skills.

But some of the onus should be on the weaker player, too. If they are a "roleplayer" and don't want to twink, then they shouldn't have a problem being weaker than the twink. And someone who is dead-set on a less-optimal combination should similarly be expected to suck it up and deal with someone else being better. Honestly, they don't have to be completely equal, just able to contribute something to the game.

It reminds me of a situation in this Ravenloft campaign I was in. I was frustrated with my character at first, because he was pretty useless. Later on, when he buffed up a bit, I was happier. Guess what, he still wasn't in the league of some of the other characters, but I was happy, because I was able to at least contribute to the game.

In an open-build system, there should be no useless characters. If you only roll 12 dice, boo-hoo, get over not being as good as the 20+ dice build. You can still shoot security guards with your 12 dice. If you don't have anything to do, then the problem isn't a weak build, it's either a GM who needs to work on his challenge levels, or another PC being a game hog.

Niche protection (preventing too many people in the same role) is IMO a very important principle, but I consider it to be outside the scope of basic GMing. Not everyone agrees on if it's important; and if so, how important it is.

Here's one thing to consider: people will notice if they're not as good in their role as the other guy is in theirs. If the combat guys are rolling critical success after critical success, even the face will notice. Because of the way the SR4 rules work, even a very good success (3 over what you needed) doesn't give you nearly the flair that a crit does. Because a crit allows the player to assume a brief amount of narrative control, everyone will notice when someone is rolling more criticals. They get more limelight time, and better quality time at that.

So, yes, niche protection is important. But so is the quality of spotlight time. If I'm working up to one huge move-- be it social, technical, or whatever-- and the GM handles it with almost no roleplay and the minimum of dice rolls, you're going to feel like crap even though you pulled off a major feat. As an example: in the last game I played, I had a magician who initiated. Now, the GM did the right thing, and roleplayed it out-- I ended up sitting underneath a waterfall for a couple of days, purifying myself. We agreed that this was just the Meditation Ordeal with some added flavor, so we made the rolls, both of us describing the bone-crushing chill and the fight to stay awake and aware enough to meditate. I really enjoyed that.

But what about a bad GM? One who doesn't assure equal quality spotlight time for his players? It would have sounded a bit like this:"You wanna initiate with Meditation? 'K. Roll Body + Willpower. OK, now roll Logic + Quickness. Congrats, you made it."

Now, I think it's safe to say we all want to be Gamemaster A and not Gamemaster B. But if we don't make sure our players have high quality spotlight time, this can happen. And power imbalances between players, even though they're in separate niches, can also cause a drop in quality.

Edit: BTW, there are several ways to create a hopeless character in an open build system. The second-easiest way is to pick a bunch of generalized skills, attributes, and gear that isn't complimentary. For example, you buy a lot of longarms, but don't raise your rifles skill, if you get it at all. This can happen for a number of reasons, but one very common way is to simply buy whatever looks cool, without thinking about the overall picture.

The easiest way is to hand the character to someone who doesn't properly understand it. It doesn't matter how good that otaku's stats and abilities are; if you hand it to the guy who's never played anything but super-chromed street sammies, he's not going to be able to use the character properly, if at all. The character is effectively hopeless.

As a subset to this, there's also a type of problem player, which we will now call "The Hopeless". The Hopeless player is the kind of person who never learns more rules than he has to. He (or she, I've met both) will complain the rules are too complex, and ask you for advice on every step. If you push the issue, they'll throw up their hands, and say: "I can't learn all this! It's hopeless!" Hand whatever character you like to this player, and that character has been completely nerfed.