Hey, I was thinking of creating a decker character, and have never done it before, and was wondering if anyone had any advice on that. I'm creating this decker more for fun than anything else, as I already have a character, and my group already has a decker who probably won't die anytime soon. Right now I am looking at starting with the Kraftwerk-8, which costs 400k. As far as ware goes, I am thinking datajack, math spu, encephalon, and cerebral booster. I am also considering a trauma damper, 150-300 mp of headware memory, a chipjack, knowsoft link, and fingertip compartment.

As for attributes and skills, I am looking at 6 intelligence, 1-2 strength, 2-3 quickness, and I'm not sure what else. I'm also not sure if I should be a dwarf or human. Right now my inclination is human, as the karma pool seems more attractive than the stat boosts and infravision. The manual isn't clear on a few things thing; are dump shock, black IC, and sparky IC resisted with body or willpower? Is the simsense overload target number based on the amount of damage taken in that one attack, or the total amount of damage your icon has taken including that attack? Does the ICCM filter also allow you to make 2 seperate tests for dump shock like it does against IC?

As far as skills go, I am going with a 6 in computers, and 4-6 in computer B/R, electronics, and electronics B/R. I'll round it out with ettiquete(matrix), pistols, and car. Knowledge skills, I'll need data brokerage, and security network familiarity, but beyond that it's hard to decide. Chokepoint familiarity seems like a good choice, some knowledge skill like matrix data havens or some such relating to the matrix, and beyond that, programming knowledge skills, but I don't know which ones. Cyberterminal design would be good too, but I'm not sure if a starting character would have much use for that skill at first.

As for other equipment, I figure I'll get a couple offline memory modules, one to store backups of my utilities and one to store data. 2 or 3 knowsofts/linguasofts if I get the chipjack or headware memory, a cheap vehicle, most likely a jackrabbit, and a lightweight armor vest and pistol, computer and electronics kits and shops, a chip cooker, and maybe a cheap program design suite. Altogether this should run me less than 25k. Do the standard black market cyberdecks come with display screens, hitcher jacks, iccm filters, or anything else listed in the matrix book but not the core rulebook?

That just leaves utilities, which is my biggest concern. The Kraftwerk-8 has 1000 active and 2000 storage memory, so I'll get 1500-1900 mp of utilities, running somewhere from 150k-300k in nuyen. I know the sleaze utility is the most important, but I'm not sure about the rest. I know armor, medic, cloak and attack are fairly important, though I hope to avoid battles. What I'm really unsure about is operational utilities. As far as I can figure, deception, validate, spoof, read/write, and browse are the ones that would get used most often. I'll want to have every operational utility at least at level 3. I think a low-level dataworm might come in handy too, mainly for borrowing accounts from unsuspecting wage slaves. Am I missing anything?

You don't need a Knowsoft Link if you have a Chipjack.

if you have Matrix, you need to get the Validate utility. behind sleaze, it is the second-most valuable utility you can have. it allows you to create valid accounts, which in turn allows you to perform a variety of tasks without rolling. that means, when performing allowed tasks, you always succeed and you never get caught.

Check out this thread from August. Creating Decker Characters

If I have a chipjack, I don't still need a knowsoft link to use knowsofts stored in headware memory or used via datajack?

you need a knowsoft link to access knowsoft stored in headwear memory and piped in through your datajack, but not those stored on chips.

Well crap, it never occured to me to look at the availabilities of decks.

Going by standard character creation rules, you can't have anything with an availability above 8. Renraku Kraftwerks 8 has an availability of 10.. The best you can start with is a CMT Avatar..

But don't let that damper your spirits..

There are plenty of Decker-friendly items that are accessible at character creation.

Provided your GM doesn't inforce the 'no cultured bioware at creation' rule, you can always get Cerebral Boosters, rating 2..

Then there's the Encephalon Computer, rating 2.. And, of course, a Math SPU rating 3.. Those two pieces, together, will give you 5 additional Hacking pool dice.. And that's ALWAYS nice.

Yeah, true. With and intelligence of 8, MPCP of 7, and the cyber, thats 10 hacking pool. What really bothers me is having only 1 level of response increase.

bah. if your DF is high enough, you don't need response increase. you can trade in 6 of that hp for +3 DF.

Actually, you can add an extra 4+2d6 to Matrix initiative if you just get a reality filter and run on pure DNI.. Bam, you've just made up for the lowered response..

Besides, by the canon rules, it's impossible to have anything above a CMT Avatar at character creation.

Yes, I could make a reality filter to make up for the lack of response increase. After looking in the book, I see that that is faster and easier than I had thought. However, it would reduce my already low MPCP to 6. As for pure DNI, that's a given, since you need to be running pure DNI to use a hot ASSIST. But if I can't get a Kraftwerk-8, than maybe I should just start with no deck, but a bunch of spare parts and tools, and make my own. If I end up biting the dust before my team's decker does, than we will already have another decker to pick up my slack while I'm building my hotrod deck.

i haven't tried it, but you might be able to build a custom deck with a higher MPCP, if you skimped on everything else. not sure how worth it that would be, though.