All right, so it turns out that I managed to complete my Street Samurai before the Gunslinger Adept (who will be next!). Build, as usual, follows. Please critique as much as you'd like. The goal of this character is to be a consummate Street Sam - lots of implants, combat monster at any range, and (as a character choice) moderately capable in social situations.



I like keeping my mental attributes at least average, so I'd like to keep Int and Log at 4. Etiquette and Negotiation are my social skills of choice in order to reflect the nobility of the historical Samurai, and I've crammed about as much as I can in for guns and augmentations. Character is addicted to augmentations and, as a result, is in pretty heavy debt to the Yakuza loan sharks who he went to in a desperate bid to afford more augmentation.

Please critique away and let me know what you think!

At a glance you don't really have too many points left over for contacts unless you're using a houserule for them. Also, for me, the edge is a wee low and I can't stand not having software and computer skills.

Also, check the rules on specialization. I left my book at the office, but I believe you need at least 2 ranks to specialize. Solid combat monster otherwise.

Oh, one last thought: Only 1 fake SIN? It also might not hurt you to either move a point of cha or log into Bod (since you're neither a hacker or face) so you can wear heavier armor, or wear a form fitting armor shirt under that vest.

That's my food for thought to add.

The build has 10 points left over for Contacts, which is fine by me. As for specialization, there are sample characters in the book that have rank 1 Pilot skills that are specialized, so I'm assuming it's ok. I'd have to double check the rules, though.

Software and computer... meh. I'm envisioning this character as sort of a modern throwback - not that interested in anything that won't help in combat, more of a Ronin/Samurai of old brought into the Sixth World.

I'm fine with Bod where it's at for now - it'll probably be the first stat that I raise during play, followed by skills.

Only 1 Fake SIN to start, something that I usually do for my characters since you don't usually wind up burning it in the first few sessions, and the Hacker can make up a new one.

As long as this character is a pretty strong combat monster in melee and at range, I'm satisfied. Pretty much everything outside of that specialization is a choice that I've made for character purposes. Thanks for the input, and I'm glad that I know that I've got the combat part at least basically right!

Keep the advice and criticism coming, folks!

With SR3 and earlier, maybe. But you can specialize in any skill by spending 2 BP or karma as long as you have at least 1 rank in it.

I'd raise Edge a bit if you can find the points. Edge is extremely important, and having only 2 might hurt you in the long run with this character.

I agree with this, but I'm not sure where I'd free up the 10 points for another point of Edge. I'm open to suggestions on that one... otherwise, thankfully, Edge can be raised with Karma during play as well as Body can be. Expensive, I know, but worth it in the long run.

I have to echo the reservations about Edge. I also think your perception is way low. Perception is one of the most all-around useful skills in the game. And for your combat skills. You have Automatics and Pistols at 4. In BP that's 32. You could have the Firearms Skill Group at 4 for 8 more points. That might be worth dropping off two ranks of heavy weapons and buying that back with karma.

(Longarms = great for sniping).

I'd also personally drop the unarmed skill just a tad and put those points into perception, which is much more useful. To make sure you don't get caught without a melee weapon (if you prefer), I suggest a carbon knife thingie.

Longarms are for more than just sniping. Shotguns anyway? I'm a big advocate of those. And actually, since you have Cyberspurs, do you really need unarmed at all?

Perception winds up being 5 after augmentation and specialization (for visual, anyway), and I'm reasonably comfortable with that. 3 for other senses should be adequate until I get some Cyberears (since I have no doubt that I'll be giving in to Augmentation Addiction at some point).

2 points from Unarmed and put them into the Firearms Skill Group, maybe? I think that I like that more than giving up the points in Heavy Weapons, since Heavies tend to be Full Auto only and impose the harshest dice pool modifiers. I think that this is a good change - original post edited to reflect it.

EDIT: Worked out better than expected - since Automatics was at 5, I only needed to pull one point from Unarmed in favor of the Firearms Skill Group at 4.

Unarmed is mostly for the Shock Hand which, as I understand it, uses Unarmed skill to hit. You don't always want to kill those folks you're after in melee, after all, and Cyberarms do Physical damage every bit as much as the Spur and Katana do.

I think you meet most of your goals, but your various choices made for style/flavor keep him combat-capable rather than a combat monster. Which might be good enough, depending on the campaign, and how much of the brunt of the fighting he is expected to bear.

Did one of your earlier incarnations of this character have the armorer skill? Because I note that you have repair kits for your blades and guns, but not the skill to use them. You can always default, I suppose.

Second point first - I had considered the Armorer skill and discarded it due to a point deficit. I did choose to retain the kits for use while defaulting for routine maintenance of the character's blades and guns, however, so those were left in intentionally.

First point - how would you suggest increasing combat capability without making too terribly many sacrifices in other areas? I really want this character to feel like a traditional Samurai as much as possible, so some intellectual and social ability are a must, but I'd definitely like to be able to pass the 'average troll with a baseball bat' combat test two or three times over as well. As ever, open to suggestions on that count.

I didn't check your cyberarms capacity totals, but make sure you leave enough room to get a cybergun. The SMG is nice, but the heavy pistol packs a better punch at almost the same range. Cyberguns are great because they're very, very hard to detect.

And what do you have unarmed for? Those times someone breaks your cyberspur? Redundancy so you can do the same job multiple ways is great, but at some point you can stop. Besides, once you get the cybergun, you can use that at melee range, for those times someone breaks you cyberspur. Which, since my tone doesn't carry over electrons, I'll explain clearly -- will probably never happen.

Your Edge and Body are low, your Logic is high. Honestly, 3 Logic is plenty; it's better than most non-dragons you'll run into, and you'll still be smarter than your average street sam. It also contributes to 0 of your non-knowledge skills, which leads me to my next point.

Grab the code of conduct Bushido. It's perfect for your character. For 5BP, you get +2 Street Cred (bonus to all social rolls against people who know how awesome you are), but the drawback is that for every time you raise a Combat skill, you have to raise a Knowledge skill before you can raise a Combat skill again. Logic 3 and a good selection of Knowledge skills, plus sticking to your honourable code, will impress upon people that you're more than a chromehead with a gun fetish.

I agree with Cracker about the Firearms group deal, and also about Perception being a bit low.

Guts should go, imho. Bushido is more in the flavour of a honorable warrior, and Dareadrenaline is cheap as geneware goes, if you're looking for something to stiffen your spine. Daredrenaline also helps for spell resistance rolls, always a plus. Furthermore, High Pain Tolerance is a fine quality in a samurai, but it can also be acquired from 'ware; a Pain Editor not only eliminates injury modifiers from Stun (which is what you'll be downgrading a lot of damage to), but adds another +1 Willpower, for more spell resistance and a total of 11 Stun boxes. Not available at chargen, though. And if you're still worried about physical damage wound modifiers, a rating 6 stimpatch is 300 nY, eliminates 3 times the damage (for wound purposes), and works for an hour.

Or you could play with SURGE. For 10 BP, you could get Pain Tolerance 4, or Pain Tolerance 2 and toughness, or Pain Tolerance 3 and celerity, or... basically, mix and match, and then suffer from Slow Healer, Nocturnal, Astral Hazing, Biosystem Overstress or some combination of superficial features as the negative.

Curious what you're going to do with those repair kits. Didn't have enough points for Armorer?

Also, every one of your Agility-based skills works with the arms exclusively. Why bother with muscle toner? For that matter, Synthcardium is... actually... more expensive than muscle augmentation? What the fuck sense does that make? Friggin' retarded. The Synth is more Essence-friendly, though.

Got the room/money to slap a Radar Sensor 4 in one of those arms? Just because it's headware doesn't mean it HAS to be in the head, and seeing through walls is handy.

Make sure you get a connection who's hooked up with some people. Like people who can sell you Panther XXLs, milspec armor and high-rating cyberware. You'll like it.

As written, your MMG will have 6 RC. That's nothing to sneeze at, but the Ingram White Knight has a better gas-vent system than you can buy, which also leaves room for a heavy barrel. Alternatively, buy a tripod you can set up when necessary, that'll teach the recoil who's boss.

I'm sure I could pick some more nits (for example, I heard there's an obscure rule in Arsenal stating that gas-vent and sound suppression can't be active at the same time), but you're pretty good overall. I'd come up with some more specific praise, but I'm tired.

His low Body and low Edge are his two biggest weaknesses. He will have a lower dice pool due to firearms as a skill group, but he can raise it, and get specializations, in game, and in the meantime a dice pool of 14, with a smartlink, is adequate. Not sure where you could cut to fix the first two problems, though. I'm not sure you really need a Logic of 4, when a 2 is someone who is not stupid, and a 3 is high average - you mainly seem to want it to have decent mental stats, rather than for any functional benefit, and I think a 3 is fine.

I would get synthcardium: 3 instead of the muscle augmentation and toner. You will be using your cyberarms for ranged and melee combat. All that is left is athletics, and a +3 dice pool bonus will do you more good than a mere +2 to improve your composite Attribute scores. In fact, if you do that, you could probably lose a point in Athletics, and still be doing better. So I would recommend moving a point from Logic to Body, and losing a rank in Athletics to raise Edge to 3.

Good god, but I love your feedback. Now to go at it piece by piece =P



I agree here and may well wind up stripping the Shock Hand and Armor off of the right arm to make room for a heavy pistol eventually. All of the cyberguns beyond the holdout are, unfortunately, not available at character creation without the Restricted Gear quality, so that can probably wait a while.



As I stated before, at the moment Unarmed is in the build to support the use of the Shock Hand since, despite the fact that you're in melee, you don't always want to kill everyone in arm's reach.



Changed - Synthacardium over Muscle Toner and Augmentation, dropped a point of Athletics for a point of Body, shifted a point from Logic into Edge.



Done and done by getting rid of Guts, as below.



Firearms group deal is already incorporated into the build in the first post, so I agree as well! Do we think that Perception 5 (after augmentations) will do for the time being? I suppose not... 1 point of Unarmed swapped for one base point into Perception, which brings it up to 4 augmented, 6 for visual tests.

Guts is gone in order to make room for Bushido. I think that I'm going to wind up keeping High Pain Tolerance over other options, largely because I don't want to screw around with SURGE any more than I absolutely have to (which, thank god, is not at all), and I can guarantee that this character will be getting more 'ware later, so a Pain Editor may well be in the cards down the line (I know that it overrides High Pain Tolerance, but I'd a) like to have something to cover the gap in the interim and b) like to think of a Pain Editor as my Augmentation obsessed Samurai seeing something that's working better than what he's got, going "Ooh, shiny" and needing to upgrade right now)



Thought line here involves the character grabbing some of the Bioware first, then getting the Cyber to boost the body's new 'natural' even further. That, and I'm being guilty of applying some real-world reasoning to the game - having arms be able to articulate independent of the body that much better than the body as a whole can just seems... counter-intuitive at best. Anyway, fixed this as mentioned above.



PLENTY of room for that in the left arm. Way the hell too pricey for character creation, though .



Go go Contacts! I knew that I left that section blank for a reason ^_^



Honestly, this seems more like a minor tweak/personal preference issue than anything else. The MMG has 6 RC, plus another one from Str, which reduces the worst usual recoil penalty to -2 (-4 after Heavy Weapon doubling), which is pretty manageable.



I recall that rule from Arsenal, but I also noticed that Sound Suppressors need to be replaced after every 300 BF/FA shots. I'm really not sure how either of these things interact with the built-in Sound Suppressor that the 227-X has, however.

Suggestions appreciated and incorporated into the base build, in addition to sacrificing a point of Unarmed to boost up Perception a tiny bit more.

Added a couple more quick changes to the weapons/gear - changed the Foregrip on the M202 into an Internal Bipod (which can serve the same function as the foregrip, plus folding out for an extra point of RC if the need arises), and added Personalized Grips to the Katana and Wakizashi for the extra die on each in melee combat.

EDIT: Removed the Vision Enhancement and Vision Magnification from the Cybereyes and downgraded them to rating 2 due to the lower need for capacity. Used the and Essence freed up from this to add Attention Coprocessor 2 instead. The net result is that the augmented Perception works considerably better, at the cost of not having built-in binoculars. Which can be solved by... a pair of binoculars. Hoping that this goes at least a good part of the way toward fixing the Perception issue noted above.

I would change the firearms group 4 and heavy weapons 4 to:
Pistols(semi-automatics) 3
Automatics (SMG:S) 3
Longarms(shotguns or sniper rifles) 3
Heavyweapons(machineguns) 3

Costs the same, but gives you an extra die with all of you guns.

An incredibly good point, and worth considering. The only tradeoff would be the loss in versatility in favor of gaining one die on all ranged attacks... as it stands, this character can pick up and fire pretty much any non-exotic gun with equal proficiency, and I kind of like that. Anyone else have thoughts on this change? If it seems to be the overwhelmingly supported choice, I'm certainly not averse to making it. Could possibly even drop Longarms completely to make the weapon skill set-up look like:

Pistols (Semi-Automatics) 4 (+2)
Automatics (Submachine Guns) 4 (+2)
Heavy Weapons (Machine Guns) 3 (+2)
Blades (Swords) 5 (+2)

With the end result being 16 dice for Semi-Automatics and SMGs, 15 dice for Machine Guns, and 15 dice for Swords (16 with the character's personalized sword). Thoughts?

That would be even better idea if you don't wan't to use shotguns nor sniper rifles.
Ofcource i'm pretty sure somebody will soon point out that it's more efficiant pointwise to buy the specialications with karma after the first run.

EDIT: You should also think about getting Throwing Weapons (Lobbed) 1 or 2 so you can throw grenades with some skill.

It's more efficient to buy the specializations with karma after the first run.

EDIT: I forgot about my "don't be sarcastic on the internet" rule. I just said the above because Max made me do it.

I thought for a bit about suggestion more specialization, but I know there's only so much flavor you're willing to change for a few dice here or there, and I kinda like the efficiency of Firearms. Besides, who needs an assault rifle if you have the AA-16?

And if you ever see a few hundred thousand nuyen fall off the back of a truck, one thing to spend it on it reflex recorders, the unawakened man's Improved Ability.

Also, what are your feelings on bulky cyberlimbs? Because you wouldn't have to remove much from the right arm to slap a heavy cyberpistol in, if you made it a little bulky. Actually, for my tastes, I prefer having a strong arm and an agile arm. Maybe there's some mixing and matching that could be done. For example, if you put the shock hand in the left arm, the +2 touch bonus and the -2 off-hand bonus would cancel out. If you did that, making the right arm Bulky 4 would give you room for a heavy cyberpistol and another point of Agility enhancement, and the left arm would only have to be Bulky 1 to fit that radar unit.

I agree about the efficiency of Firearms, and I kind of like having the added versatility of being able to use just about anything with a trigger.

Reflex Recorders are definitely on the list. For Firearms at the very least, possibly for Blades as well.

I hadn't really thought about bulky cyberlimbs. I'll have to look up the rules on the, but that definitely sounds like something that could be done during play (since I know that I don't have the to do much more cyber upgrading at creation here, and definitely don't have the 5 points for Restricted Gear to get the gun hand). Overall, the suggestions on the arms certainly sound like they're a pretty plausible solution to the issue.

Otherwise, character looks pretty good in its current iteration for starting out?

As to your question about internal suppressors, they shouldn't need to be replaced if my memory serves me. I don't remember seeing anything about it in 2nd - 4th ed.

That's because they hid it! But I found it on page 152 of Arsenal, stashed away in the description of Gas Vent weapon mods.

Eh, so it can be quiet or it can be easy to control, but not both at the same time. I can live with that =) Somehow, I think I'll be getting more mileage out of the Vents than the suppressor, though...

McAllister, how's this iteration of the character look? Something that's strong for a starting out chargen character? Something that has a little bit of room to grow into a real combat monster?

And DarkKindness, here's the text from Augmentation.
That's 1,000 nY for every point of Bulky, up to a max of 4. The Availability isn't much, if you can find a doc who'll put in a cybergun, he'll bulk 'em up too. Your cosmetic choices are buying shirt for trolls (awesome) or just going sleeveless all the time to show off your SIKK GUNZ (except for the ones you're NOT showing off, if you know what I mean). Either one will impress the ladies.

But yeah, I can see you're a little strapped, so all this will come in play.

Also, I'm going to be posting a bit of an odd fellow soon, I'd appreciate some eyes on him when I finish polishing.

He looks good. You've got some room left for 'ware and some ideas for what to get when the cash rolls in. You've got a solid concept that hasn't hindered the character's effectiveness, but you've made some room for choices like Bushido that'll make sure it's relevant for the character. Increasing attributes with karma is a bitch, but you'll have enough karma to do it once you've polished your skills a bit. You're equipped for your job (although I'd tug on the hacker's sleeve until he lends you some IC). You might want to consider some more stealth capabilities, but that's honestly as easy as buying a 2,000 holdout pistol, maybe a camouflage suit, and sinking 6 karma into Infiltration (Urban) 1, if you find your character wanting to.

Roger that. Thanks for all of your help on this character (and the others...). This one needed some more involved editing, but I'm quite happy with the way that it turned out.

Next up is the Gunslinger Adept - I'm sure that that's going to need some editing, too, but I'll have it up by the end of the day.