I was wondering what kind of characters would benefit the most from being a human with an edge score of 8...

The main thing to remember is that in this game, edge refreshes daily and we want to avoid burning it.

The only book allowed is the "Shadowrun Core Rules 4th edition book".

PS: It would also help if you post what skills they would have and the equipment they would purchase.

Get 8 edge and 1 point in every skill you can justify having.

You now have 3 (average stat*) + 1 skill** + 8 edge (12 dice pre-mods) to 8 tests every day.

*120 BP spent on normal stats

**Get specializations with karma, groups with BP (3 or 4 skills for the price of 2? Deal! Be careful though, do you really need all forms of melee combat?)

In that case, no one gets any use out of a huge Edge attribute. You should just buy a 2 and be done with it. Getting a few more dice if you decide to roll the attribute as well is not that useful. Usually, it's better to use it to reroll all the non-hits. So, the only thing a higher Edge gives you is more rerolls between refreshes. If the refreshes now come faster than your Edge tends to run out, you get almost no benefit from having more.
Don't play Mr. Lucky in a game that refreshes Edge that fast.

Depends on how many dice you're throwing normally. If your normal pool is 12 dice, then yes. Rerolling failures is worth 8 or more dice.

If your pool is 3....not so much.

In our last Shadowrun session, I went through 5 Edge in a single (short) combat... only 2 of those were spent offensively (to stop one from getting away - hooray for S'n'S ammo!), the rest to (barely) stay awake (I sustained 8 boxes of Stun, while two others from my side were down, when things finally calmed down after about 4 seconds). Part of this (almost) fiasko was, that we were seriously underequipped at the moment (didn't really expect that kind of trouble there), but Edge can be a great equalizer.

Bye
Thanee

I kinda agree with Dragnar on a mechanics point, but I think as a character concept it's great.

I'd think that low level skills in a multitude of things would be good. Would let you use edge on just about anything you needed at a moment's notice.

Also consider a Skillwire Expert System. You could get some softs in rare skills and re-roll failures with edge. With low level skills in more used things + edge and a skillwire expert in rare things you could be a Jack of all Trades quite easily, having very little you can't perform at least average at.

I'd take move-by-wire and skillwire expert system, get the lucky quality and max that sucker. The rest can be fairly average, no huge need to make crazy dice pools. When the karma starts comming in you can boost the ones you like fairly quickly at low levels.


*edit
Oh nuts, I forgot you're only using the core rulebook and neither of those are in it.

You could still get the skillwires but without the expert system to compliment it you can't reroll with edge.

To make sure PCs weren't too reliant on what is essentially a luck attribute, I was thinking of house ruling that the edge attribute couldn't be taken higher than the lowest other attribute (magic/resonance of course being excluded where not appropriate).

However the way you are going to play it I would definitely go for the jack of all trades build that others recommended and just use edge when the appropriate skill comes up. Although you might want more than the minimum amount in skills you think are going to come up frequently for your character (i.e. you might want to be good at shooting and dodging more often than 8 times a day). Look up some of the luckybunny builds on the forum for ideas for your character.

Wow. Way to bone humans.

Math isn't nearly as useful as cool. And rolling an 8 extra dice is freaking cool. I'm tempted to try and build a Mr. Lucky Mage, I am not sure it is feasible though.

For a Mr. Lucky, you don't want to depend on Edge simply to function. You want it to either pimp your peripheral skills when you need to use them, or to negate a bad roll, or to pile the dice on top of an already respectable pool to completely overwhelm the opposition. Buying an Edge of 8 is a hefty chunk of build points, but you can still be a badass sammie, face, or hacker on top of being lucky. Cain's version (and he is the one who coined the term "Mr. Lucky for such builds, I think) was a crack shot with a pistol on top of having that high Edge Attribute.

Occasionally I toy around with creating a Mr. Lucky/Phys-ad combination. Give him 7 or 8 Edge and a couple levels of Restricted Gear so he can purchase 20 doses of K-10. After using it, he rolls the (1) Edge test to stay sane, and drops from the stun damage.

Might be impractical for a PC, but I think I could make him into nice antagonist.

That's wrong. On so many levels.

Physad shifter then.
Stun damage gone like whoa.

Except shifters aren't human, so you'd have a lower max Edge. Still doable, though.

That... really depends. Mr. Lucky only describes someone with maxed-out Edge. So the skills and equipment you want would depend on what kind of Mr. Lucky you want - a lucky hacker? A lucky mage? A lucky social adept? A lucky street samurai?

General advice, I already gave - be good at your core skill(s), so you can save Edge for when you really need it.

I will add that Mr. Lucky works better with more specialized character types, since that high Edge eats up a lot of build points. So things like a street samurai focused on pistols, a dedicated face, etc. will work out better than concepts that are costlier such as hackers, detectives, or covert ops specialists.

I had a character in my campaign with Edge of 8. You get to re roll those 6's so He would get insane number of hits on tests. He got 18 successes on a melee combat test, and his combat skill was only 2. You punch the ganger...and he....explodes..

Not really. It just means you're no longer using your edge on rolls that are absolutely essential to save your skin. Let's say each person's edge refreshes after every eight rolls he makes. You get eight extra dice on every roll you make. The average person only gets four dice to use on half his rolls. I don't see the problem. Unless you argue that your rolls are successful without edge half the time? I don't think that's necessarily true, since it depends on the particular build.

Plus, re-rolling is only the better tactic for decent-sized dice pools. An Edge of 8 comes in handy for things like your Lucky Samurai rolling his Charisma: 2 and Intimidation: 1 against a ganger leader.