Looking to get some brainstorming and some much more veteran insight from Dumpshockers.

Back in the 90s I used to play and (mostly) run Cyberpunk 2020, and hence got to make a lot of good NPCs and see some excellent PCs. As part of my general GMing style I like to resuse NPCs and old PCs in the game as background NPCs (which I'm not looking to debate the merits of). The majority of these old Cyberpunk 2020 characters have been a breeze to convert over to Shadowrun.

One is a bit of a problem, and I want to find a solution as he's one of my favourite characters I saw while running. In Cyberpunk he was a Solo who refused to get any cybernetics whatsoever, proclaiming the meat was better than the tech. And he was good despite not having any cyber. What made him still capable without the cyber was the Solo's special skill (which I don't recall the name of), which essentially added directly to initiative, giving him the drop.

I'm looking to replicate this character in Shadowrun, and even introduced him without thinking him properly through. So, is a Street Samurai without cyber or bioware a lame duck? And, to be specific, I don't want him to be an Adept either. Thoughts?

It's tough to do. You have a couple options though, and you'll likely want to combine them...

1) Obviously, skills and attributes will be more important for you than the Adept or Cybersammy. You need everything as high as possible. You'll probably need specialize in one area early on... Conentrate on just guns or just melee or whatever and jack the corresponding attributes and skills as high as possible, and specialize in a specific weapon for the +2 bonus.

2) Edge. All of it. Edge will let you compensate, at least in the short term. A character with 6 or more edge is going to be able to buy a couple extra initiative passes and/or go first in an initiative turn. You can also spend edge for extra dice, to reroll failures, and you'll have more of a saftey net for crit glitches.

3) Drugs. Combat drugs. YOu'll have to deal with addiction, but so long as you have a steady supply of money and drugs, it's not an issue. Combat drugs can put you on part with a moderately cybered sammy, giving you strength, toughness, and speed boosts and even giving you an extra IP.

4) Have a Mage on hand witha couple Sustaining Foci and buff spells. It's cheating a bit, and not going to be 100% reliable, but an Increased Reflexes spell will do wonders for you.

So yeah, it's doable, but it takes work. With Edge though, it's a lot more doable than it was in earlier editions.

Bull

COOL is the stat. Added to combat pools in 2020 for Solos

Or small unit tactics in sr3...

All of what Bull said, plus equipment that imitates 'ware. There are also some good qualities that only affect the uncybered individual. Lightning Reflexes comes to mind with the +2 REA for only 15BP.

Things like Exceptional Attribute (Agility) or (Reaction) will also help, as will using Genetic Heritage to pick up something like Reakt. But in the end, it's going to come down to having a lot of Edge.

Always get a tacnet.

Actually it's Combat Sense, and it is not added to skills, just to Initiative (at least in CP 2020, this could have been different in CP 2013).

But without that he's going to have a hard time in 2070 Shadowrun. Acting first is doable and he may be able to hold his own in duels, but if he face several boosted ennemies and some of them are still able to act after his first initiative pass those extra IPs are going to quickly take their toll.

Also in Cyberpunk armors are extremely effective. If you go for the high-end ones, you can routinely soak up assault rifle bursts at close range and laugh in the face of a a .454, making such a concept more survivable... This is less true in Shadowrun.

A note on these, getting sensors for it can be a little tricky at first, but if you know what your doing hear are a few tricks:
-Always have the hacker get controll of the camera's and any other intruder dection systems your opponents may have set up.
-Drones are a MUST, but don't discount vechials, idle/enemy vechials in the area can be hacked to bring more sensors in.
- A small sensor on each player can help.
Tacnets are easy to get and cheap in SR4, and can help give you that extra edge over the opposition.

Yeah, my bad. But Solos still need cool.

I am a little surprised no one else has said this:

Bioware

The guy doesn't like cyber, right? Says meat > metal? Sounds like bioware to me. Don't have my book around but could have sworn there is something that will help with Initiative.

Or is this character asking for more IPs?

If he's okay with taking bio, then there are plenty of available options. Synaptic boosters for IP, Muscle Toner/Muscle Augmentation, skill recorders, enhanced articulation, the list goes on.

How about spell knack: Increase Reflexes, level one Initiate with Quickening. That will give him a Magic of two, he can cast Increase Reflexes at force four, use Edge to cast it so that you get all four successes then Quicken the spell using some extra Karma so that it's hard to dispell.

That will give him +3 initiative +3 Initiative Passes.

Edge + Bioware would be my instinct, too.

However... how would he feel about being a Dracoform?

You should talk to your GM about lifting (or at least extending) the cap on Qualities for you. Since the game assumes that either you'll get boosts from magic (a "special" stat) or "cyber" (so from your money alotment), not going either route kinda messes up the build process for you. So ask for a change, considering the direction you're taking the character.

15BP - Adrenaline Surge (go first, first round of a new combat)
5BP - Hawk Eye (all range modifiers dropped by one step)
15BP - Lightning Reflexes (+2 reflex)
10BP - Natural Athlete (+1 running & gymnastics)

And so on. Also, if you had been gene modified before birth, would that affect the character's concept?

Adrenaline surge , 15 Bp, lets you ask first in the first round of combat, from runners companion.

I'll have to agree on the Edge suggestions. It's powerful, if used carefully.

A mundane sammie is not the statistical monster an adept or chome-job can be.
So to really perform, you need to do what the others are usually too overconfident and lazy to do.
Master the basics. Note- the basics are karma, time, money, and detail intensive, but make you look _very_ thorough and professional.

What is the role of a streetsam, after all?
1) Get the jump on the opposition in a combat situation.
2) Whack them before they can whack your allies.
3) Look mean to keep the enemy muscle nervous in negotiations.

So where do these _require_ cyber/magic boosts?

1) Usually the "getting the jump on the enemy" involves initiative and reaction boosts. Now, to be honest, I've got nothing against reaction boosts. They are quite handy, after all. They are primarily useful _during_ a fight, however - not for "getting the jump on the bad guys". The best way to get the "initiative" is the old fashioned way - control the fight from the outset. The best way to do that is to be the one starting it. The best way to do _that_ is to be aware of your surroundings and situation, and start things before they do - or get out of there before the excrement hits the oscillator, if that seems smarter.

This means that probably the most important things your street sam can have are ... Intuition, Perception, sensory boost shades and earbuds, perhaps a few dedicated sensors running sensor analysis programs, and an extra comlink running a threat analysis Agent to help keep track of the lot of it (no point getting bogged down so much you get the +2 distraction modifier when _trying_ to be alert). And knowledge skills. Lots of 'em. You can't know what's wrong unless you know what's right.

Preparation is the other half of the equation. Having the right tool for the occasion is a big part of it. Proper legwork can save you a lot of trouble as well. Whenever possible, try to arrange any possible conflicts to happen on _your_ terms, preferably long ahead of time.

The rest of this point merely requires a suitable level of paranoia. If you are afraid of a security response during a run, leave a few suprises for them on your way in (Oddly enough, security teams get awfully cautious after the first boobytrap). If things go well, you can always pick them up on the way out. Have an exit strategy at each point in the run. If you are afraid of a doublecross at a meet, change the meet location at short notice, so that neither side can get there early. Make sure it's one you have scoped out, boobytrapped, and bribed the local gangs in advance. Make an example of anyone who betrays your team. One that cannot be mistaken.

Remember your priorities - Survival first, rep second, mission third. You're a mercenary, not a fanatic (some games may vary).

2) This one also seems to revolve around initiative for most street sams. But it's not that bad. Part (1) hopefully has ensured that you have the initiative (it's known as suprise) before the fight ever starts. The rest is to use the right tactics for the situation. Change your MO based on expected resistance and terrain. And carry a backup incase you are wrong. There are points for style, but ruthless effectiveness wins. Take the easy way. Why shoot at the steel lynx if you can flip it or drop a foil blanket on it? Why get into a running gunfight with the armored security team if you can drop the ceiling on them or slow them down with a liberal amount of freeze foam or similiar problems? It's still a good idea to geek the mage.

3) Meh. go for the faceless Man-in-Black approach. Impersonally intimidating. You want someone to look agressive, ask another party member. You're too busy keeping an eye on things to strut and ponce about like a ganger.

Notice I said nothing about soaking damage. That's what trolls, spirits, and drones are for. No self-respecting samurai gets his threads shot up. That's what the basics are FOR.

----
Okay, admittedly, what you see above is about as removed from the standard shadowrun muscle as you can normally get and fill the same role. That's because the standard muscle is expected to get a team out of a bad situation through sheer superhuman badassness. The one above _anticipates_ and _prevents_ the bad situation, or at least gives it to someone else first.

Well. Damn. This is a challenge. In order to be effective, with spirits, wared-up sammies, and adepts as your opponents, you're going to need dice pools to be competitive. Fortunately, we've a few tricks up our sleeves.

1) Initiative Passes. No matter how you break it down, you need more than one pass.
How To: Some flavors of Infected, such as goblins. Drugs like Cram and Jazz.

2) Going First so you don't Die First.
How to: Edge to go first. Adrenaline Surge quality to do that automatically at combat start.

3) Not Dying. You're going to need a high reaction. With some Martial Arts tricks, we can turn your defensive dice pool into an offensive one.
Ways to achieve this: Genetic Heritage(Genetic Optimization: reaction) for one point nore than it would be normally. Reakt EPE. Lightning Reflexes quality adds +2 to reaction, AND uses the Augmented values, but doesn't stack with ware or magic.

4) Edge. Lets face it. You're going to need it. Play a human, get lucky, max it. Or get lucky anyway, and max it.
how to: Way to many build points, and review how it may be used. To go first, to take another pass, to pre-emptively add edge dice to a test and rule of six them all, to post-emptively add the edge dice only with rule of six, or reroll nonhits.

5) Effective dice pools. Since you're going to want to be effective in whatever you do, you're going to want to roll high, but still roll enough dice to not suck.
How to: Specialize Everything. Focus on High stats. Pick a metatype - their expanded natural maximums are going to make a difference. Consider going Troll or Dwarf.

6) Making up for the difference. You're going to need a lot of gear. Fortunately, gear can replicate almost any cyber-ability. So you're going to want to have the toys to make up the difference for you.
How to: Restricted Gear: milspec armor. Restricted gear: agent 6. Restricted Gear: Tacnet 4(smartlink pilot upgrade your guns. Stick a sensor upgraded iball in your pocket. Have some dobermen on standby.) Get a good PAN setup. Good commlink, good firewall. Glasses or goggles with Thermo/Flarecomp at least, and earbuds with dampening minimum. Make sure you're not valuable, precious dice due to Vision Penalties. Get a Reach 2 melee weapon. the dice makes a difference. Electricity damage owns everything. Get stungloves and sticknshocks. Don't be afraid to use smoke and chemtech to your advantage - especially when it won't affect you, due to chemical sealed armor or properly configured vision mods. Armor Helmets are -surprisingly- useful with their capacity, even the one on the Urban Explorer. Personal ultrawideband radar? Yes please.

7) You Know Kung Fu. Martial arts can be used to increase your effectiveness in a variety of areas, from +infiltration from ninjutsu, to Krav Maga's Take Aim as a free action - which you're going to be using a lot with Vision Magnification to ignore range penalties.
How to: Maneuvers. Disarm, Setup, Finishing move are all nice. Multistrike is -surprisingly- useful, because Melee attacks may simply split their dice pool to attack multiple targets within range - combined with things that add to a specific test(and not the dice pool), like a specialization(+2), tacnet(+1-4) and Personalized Grip(+1) that extra +1 dice from multistrike suddenly becomes Free Lunch. Iajutsu can let you quickdraw -anything-(like grenades.) Clinch lets you get rid of someone elses reach bonuses(stupid trolls with long weapons). Full Offense is amazing for a Gunfighter, because it still lets you defend against range attacks.

Qualities. Hit up the Runner's Companion. Any quality that improves skills and uses augmented values (College education, trustworthy, catlike, etc) is worth considering. Think about Astral Sight. If you're really set on not getting any Ware, the ability to astrally percieve is -invaluable-. And, more importantly, will help you sneak past awakened threats. Assensing is awesome, astral projection is icing on the cake, and being able to take astral combat skills is useful(Attacks of Will are Willpower+Banishing, remember?)

9) Consider going Rigger as a side-job. You don't need a lot to do it. Good Command, decent commlink, and a VR-unit with trodes lets you do a decent enough job, and drones are potent and disposable backup that also contribute to your tacnet.

Lots of good suggestions here, but in a game where not every player min-maxes to the fullest (I.E dicepool of 12-16 is good), your only real problem is going to be Initative passes which completely dominates combat. Drugs is an option but has it's own risks, especially with evil GMs.

In my own game I have allowed a talent similar to the Lightening Reflexes, but instead of getting +2 reaction (all very nice by itself and superb with karmaGen), you get +1 reaction and +1 pass, just like Wired One. Drawback? Doesn't stack with any kind of augmentation or magic. Cost would be probably 20BP but that's up the the GM of course.

In the end the character will be weaker than he could have been, so you have to compensate with good tactics, Shadowrun knowhow, planning ability etc. Make sure you're still an asset to the team.

There was a SR novel that had a character just like this. His name was Hood and he was a Troll who modelled himself as Robin Hood/Archer build. No magic. No cyberware.

I am no expert when it comes to 4th ed, but from what I read, if the character wants no artificial enhancements whatsoever (no cyber, no bio, no magic)... then max out your combat attributes, combat skills, Edge, and get the best gear that mimics what you need.

EDIT: Missed Darkhen's Post... Oh well...

Actually, No... Looking at my Handy Dandy Cyberpunk 2020 Book (Page 34-36, under Career Skills), the listed Special Skill for the Solo is called Combat Sense, and it is added to both Awareness Rolls and to Initiative, it is not aded to combat pools at all... Cool/Will is a Category of Skills...

Keep the Faith

I'm going to mean you intend the character to be completely unaugmented/nanited, unemerged and unawakened as well as not a changeling, infected or drake. I also assume that you intend no drugs or "add on cyber" like smartlink contact lenses.

I agree that edge is crucial. Take the Lucky positive quality and max it out as much as you can, with no less than 6 points.

Also, pick one type of weapon from the firearms skill group and max it out and specialize. You'll need those 8 dice.

Dodge will be immensely needed. Specialize in ranged dodge. Use gymnastics for melee. 4 points in both of these.

Put 4 points into perception.

That covers the (in my opinion) absolute nessesities. Now for fun add ons.

Ambidexterity can be usefull if you're willing to split your dice pool and shoot at 2 targets. 2 Heavy pistols you've specialized in and an agility of 4 means you can shoot 6 dice (more if you use edge) at 2 different targets. Great for taking out low level grunts. Spend edge well and you can do it in 2 initiative passes.

Toughness will help you resist damage. It's an expensive quality for what you get but it helps.

Hawk Eye! I cannot stress this quality enough! It combines well with the ambidexterity quality.

After that it comes downto your gear. Your weapons choices will be important. Make sure you have something that can affect multiple targets. Grenades are good for that, as are full auto weapons. With full auto invest in recoil reduction!

Armour the hell out of yourself. When it comes to armour less is not more!

Now, once the fight begins...run away! Seriously, shoot somebody and get cover! Anything to make it harder for them to hit you.

That's all I got. Hope it helps.

... And be prepared to wait.. and wait... and wait... and by the time the rest of the PCs are done acting their 3-4 passes you can finally act again, assuming the combat isn't finished already, which it probably will be.

No really, there are good suggestions here but the hard fact of life is that actions are Alpha Omega, and barring house rules, you're not going to matter much in combat unless you allow yourself either augmenation, magic or drugs.

Thanks for all the replies guys n' gals.

To be clear, I am running the game, so this guy is an NPC I want to include, but I figured it would be useful to get his kind of insight from experienced `Runners rather than muddle through it on my own.

I may allow him to take Bioware, though the original concept was certainly "no cyber implants" so I think bioware would be right out if the player was still playing him.

Gear and good skills/quality will likely be the name of the game.

High edge, Unique and expensive qualities and combat drugs are where it's going to be at. Other then that, no by design those without toys are surpased by those with toys, and I for one am glad for that.

Yeah, what's the point of having the "selling bits and pieces of yourself to get an edge over the street trash" theme, or the whole transhumanist theme, if some unaugmented mundane can perform as well as a vatjob in combat?

The biggest problem that an uncybered mundane faces is that anything he can get (high Edge, high skill, etc.), an augmented character can get, too. The 40 points he saves on gear will typically mean he has a more well-rounded skill set, and that's it. And even something like that, he could fall behind in. Someone with a pumped-up Agility and skillwires could still have higher dice pools, even with less raw skills.

The only thing making such a character remotely viable is that not every table maxes out their augmented characters. If the group has a lot of sammies with multiple roles (sammie/face, etc.) who only have 2 IPs and are rolling 12 dice or so, then a mundane character with high Edge (remember, you can spend Edge for an extra IP), maxed skill, and a few good positive qualities could actually compete.

I think an interesting thing to do would be to 'cheat' and give him masking as an adept or something, making him crazy awesome and looking like a mundane.

Other than that, my suggestion is to get some mil-spec heavy armor D:

I, for one, would kinda like to play in a low-powered game where people didn't minmax, and were capped at 2 passes - except for the hotsimmers, who are extra special.


I'd also like to point out that, as worded, Suppressive Fire lasts until your next action. Which means that it can be hilariously effective on a 1-pass grunt. Because if they go first, they get to make -everyone- else deal with it until they go again. Which means pass 2, 3, and 4. Give the guy an LMG or an AA-16, and it may just be a way to even the odds.

Making this guy as a PC would be a bit easier in our campaign, which has houseruled chargen qualities point totals. Our maximum BP cost/value is 70/-70, with the stipulation that if you stay at or below 35 points positive you aren't required to buy any negatives if you prefer not to. But if you go past 35 points, you have to have matching value in negatives alongside them (so if you went the full 70, the minimum for negatives is -35).

What this would give you is more leeway on using the genetics-based qualities out of Augmentation, allowing several genetweaks that boost initiative/reaction. If you also took the escaped clone quality out of Runner's Companion, you could say that this character is a tweaked clone of the original CP 2020 Night City veteran. But from a story standpoint, if the character started with these modifications from birth would they then be considered to be augmentations or 'cheats' of any kind in their eyes?



Ooo, now that is a whole fun fruity flavor of nasty. I'll have to remember that... and try and make sure my GM never does.

EDIT: Didn't see Udoshi's post until after I posted mine.

I was thinking about that angle, myself. It would be kinda neat to have some useful inherited tweaks - after all, you can't blame yourself(too much) for the sins of the parent, even if you prefer to have your body free of cybernetic trash.

A little clarification from the OP on where, exactly, the no-augmentation no-unawakened line would be -great- in helping out potential builds here.

Thank you. Now go take a look at a wide-bursting, wide-choke/spread AA-12 firing flechettes. Do it. You know you want too.
edit: Spoilers. Its nasty as heck due to blowing your opponents defense pool out of the water. -4 wide choke, plus -6 for a longburst(realistically. you -could- do long). And, hey, due to the AP mod, its pretty much all going right to stun, so you can't even kill anyone wearing a bare minimum of armor by holding down the trigger and praying.

Be a mechanical street samurai.

Get 2-4 guns, give them flying abilities, pilot and gunner programs.

Then get an augmented body military spec body armor with +strength and +agility upgrades.

Then be a mage to cast a few key spells, like.. getting +3 rounds. (or have a bound spirit/fetish)

So at the beginning of the fight, you are agile as an elf, strong as a troll, activate 4 weapons that get an attack apeice and you get 4 attacks a round yourself.

Sounds good to me, just expensive. So will possibl take time getting this all, or making it.

Even more so than in past editions, Shadowrun is a world where combat is ruled by those with multiple actions. One of my friends loves the game world but strongly dislikes this one fact.

Has others have said, to be an unaugmented human and stand a chance, you have to max out Edge. After that it's all about skill and tactics.

A also agree with the poster who suggested, that for someone playing such a concept, the restrictions on allocating points to attributes and merits be raised.

one way would be adrenalin surge, lightening reflexes and lots of edge and good skill and equipment and tac-net. Good tactic for maximizing your strengths.
.

Personally, I don't think that the problem is that multiple actions are powerful (though they are), but that there are character types that can't get multiple actions without limiting their ability to do what they're supposed to do. (I suppose another way to put it is that it's *so* trivial for some character types to get extra actions that it makes other character types inability to do the same all the more punishing).