The face she wore today was blond-haired, blue-eyed, and chipper to the point of being irritating. It mirrored the woman slumped unconscious against the far wall. Chickadee smiled, but her name wasn't Chickadee anymore. She walked over to the woman, snatching the ID card from her neck. Old tech. Looking it over, she saw in clear black letters her new name: Jessica Penn. She pronounced the name into her subvocal mic. She could almost hear Wick, miles away, flicking through various nodes searching for any data related to Miss Penn. "Get me a sound clip of her speaking", she whispered as she helped Morgan lift sleeping beauty into the nearest closet. They'd taken the woman down before she'd spoken, which was good for stealth, but terrible for Chickadee: she couldn't imitate a voice she hadn't heard.

Suddenly, the silence was broken by the muffled sound of footsteps. They were coming from behind the locked door, down the hallway 50 paces. She exchanged a look with Morgan, who proceeded to slide into the closet alongside the real Jennifer while closing the door silently behind him. "Sound clip, now!" She whispered urgently. She strode across the room to the lab station, putting on her new ID card and adjusting her stolen lab coat. The footsteps had stopped at the door, and the handle was turning. Sound clip or no, the game was on.

So, let me introduce you to Chun-Tao "Chickadee" Sing. I've had the character concept of her for a long time now, including a few drawings, but only recently have a group of friends discussed starting up a Shadowrun campaign again. Unfortunately, it seems I'm rather better at making character concepts than character builds. I'm currently running into a major problem of bp allocation for Chickadee. I keep on running out. That is, before she's a viable character. I'll be able to get a general build that has the right adept powers and skills, but then not have anything left over for contacts (which is important for Chickadee) and nuyen (which is also important for Chickadee). Perhaps I'm building her in the wrong order? Anyway, here's a bit of one of my failed builds for her. BP is currently at 391/400, and she still doesn't even have gear or resources.


Build Below:

Other notes: the emotitoys have been house-ruled out.

How can I make her able to stand on her own two feet in a combat situation (at range, with pistols)? Can I make a shifty social adept with respectable pistols skill and sufficient stealth, or am I spreading her too thin?

That's a pretty decent build, actually. It's one of those concepts that is doable, but spreads your points thin. My advice on the pistols is that 3 with a specialization is about right - it's enough to defend yourself, but not enough that you'll start thinking you're a sammie. Any character with only one initiative pass should be mainly concerned with seeking cover during a fight, and firing from behind cover afterwards.

The only change you really need to make is to add the Sensitive System negative quality, to get 15 more build points. That gives you 24 to spend, which should be plenty to get gear and shore up an area or two.

i disagree with sensitive system. two birds, one stone: get the in debt "negative" quality (if you can, obviously). i would say astral beacon doesn't really fit... consider a mild addiction to BTLs(personafixes, used to help get in character?) or the drug that suppresses allergies.

I'm the GM for this campaign. I'm allowing nearly anything out of any of the books, so long as their is sufficient reason for it. Emotitoys have been removed as all they would be is an escalation factor of everyone rolling an additional number of dice in every social situation. Other than that I have few house rules, and am trying to be active in the character creation process.

This is a personal thing of mine, but I'd drop a point of edge or two. That aside, you might want to drop an attribute point or two where you don't have skills that require it. Personally, I'd go with a point from Reaction and Logic. Also, there's no real reason for you to have a strength of two, especially seeing as you have no unarmed combat skill. If you want to use unarmed combat, I'd suggest dropping your strength to 1, buy a point or two of Unarmed. Your damage will be crap (but because melee damage is STR/2, either way you'll still have a DV of 1), but if you get a pair of shock gloves, you'll do 6S(e) damage, and you'll get a +2 DP mod for "touch attacks", giving you an ok dicepool, lower than ten, but higher than 6.

Go with Semi-Automatics for the pistol specialisation. I personally take a Ranged specialisation in all my dodge skills, so that I can squeeze a little more out of full dodge (which you'll be using to run for cover because three Body isn't going to help you soak much).

Are you willing to take any bioware? dropping a point of body and agility respectively and buying Muscle Toner and Muscle Augmentation at rating two should give you an extra 12 points to spend, and give you agility 6 and strength 3, rather that 5 and two. Actually, on second thought, don't get the muscle augmentation, and get a Synaptic Booster 1, because strength is effectively meaningless for your character, and +1 reaction and an extra IP will come in much handier too, and it'll only mean you lose one power point.

If you decide to go that route, I'd suggest dropping a level of Kinesics (.50 pp - you'll make up for it by getting a charisma of 7 [see below]), enhanced Perception (25 pp) and another 25 pp power. Take your pick of losing Nimble Fingers, Commanding Voice, or a level of Facial Sculpt. I'd suggest Nimble Fingers, as the muscle toner will give you the same effective +1 to palming (agility linked), and the other two seem essential for your character concept.

With all that point squeezing, you might want to throw another 10 points into getting charisma 7, as you want to take advantage of all those points you shelled out to be an elf.

When you buy gear, make sure you shell up for contact lenses and earbuds with Vision Enhancement/Hearing Enhancement at rating 3, if Perception is something you want as a strength. Also chuck in a smartlink on those lenses to get more out of your pistol skill.

Also, I can't really see Pilot Ground Craft being a necessary or worthwhile skill, as even without it, you can still drive a car or ride a bike, you'll only really need to roll in a high stress situation. Drop it.

Some, if not all all my suggestions will get you more bang for your build points, if you don't mind a little min-maxing to do so.

I'm the type that is against a 1 unless it's part of the character. A 2 is a good stat for a character who doesn't use something a lot, but isn't completely inept. A 1 to me is only for if you really see a character particularly gimped in an area-if you picture her as very frail, then a 1 might be appropriate. If you picture her as ''I just don't care about my muscles because I don't use them, but I have average activity for an adult, like walking'' I'd put that at a 2.

I think the build is good as it is, and think Glyph'a idea is a solid one. Sensitive System might come back to bite you in the butt later(i mean, it's a negative quality), but In Debt, as 'awesome' as it is, has the drawback of ''pray you get a good job in the first month.'' Though technically you only need to make the interest of payment every month, it starts to become like that really horrible credit card if you just keep paying the minimum-it gets worse and worse. But as long as you can make the minimum, then it might be a better deal, if you don't mind a debt hanging over your head for awhile. (Of course, In Debt has some fun roleplaying possibilities-she can use her supreme face-ness to try to extort some extra cred on the side to pay off that debt...)

but really, the skills are all there, the things are tweaked-I'd say try to grab 15 BP and you'll be able to finish it off fairly well.

IMO, Edge is a wonderful stat to have-I try to get at least a 3 on my characters, unless their bad luck is again part of their character.

Your Pistols is fine-Semi-Automatics is a good, solid speciality; with 5 dice for that, your 5 agility and a smartlink, that's 12 dice, and that's excellent. You can easily take some cover and fire back with some good skill. Hell, you could probably do a 2(+2) and have 11 dice smartlinked and still do plenty for that being your backup.