This is an archetype that has always confused me. A weapons specialist is someone who is good at a lot of different types of weapons...but what's the point, since you only use one weapon at a time in combat. Why do the archetypes of weapons specialists from SR3 and SR4 never have any kind of boosting cyber or bio? is it so they can use their mighty one IP to make a single attack while any other weapons user they might face will shred them with multiple IPs/enhancements?

It's basically an archetype demonstrating that you can have a combat-oriented character who's mundane with minimal to no implants and still be somewhat useful. The problem, as you pointed out, is that the game has a hard-on for initiative passes, but really only make them viable for people with magic or implants. In concept they rock (and is personally one that I'd prefer to play a lot of the time), but mechanically IPs are just too important in combat. And the few perks you get for not having to buy implants or magic is outweighed by the crazy costs the game has for skills and attributes anyway, not to mention the restrictions thereof, so you still wind up unremarkable from everyone else. I mean, it's not like you can have a bunch of skills with a rating of 6 or anything despite having access to more skill points. And, really, who needs more than one firearms skill in the shadows?

Hopefully SR5 will downplay or outright remove initiative passes. That'll allow for a lot more mundane and unaugmented characters.

A classic example of crome and wire always wins?

The point of a weapon specialist is not to be a streetsam with a broader weapon choice. They are what the title would suggest: weapon speciliasts. That means they can not only use but also maintain, repair, upgrade and build weapons and explosives. They are not your go-to-guy when you want doors kicked in or sec troops gunned down by the dozen. They are your go-to-guy when you need the right weapon for the job, a gun fixed, a new mod installed, a wall removed or a bomb built. They are the ones that know where to get your weapons and what weapons to get to best suit your job profile.

To put this in a (rather misleading) technical term: they are tech characters, not fighters.

The entire archetype, from its name down to its description, is an oxymoron. That said, anyone who tries to claim that they're not intended to be a combatant in addition to being a techie is only fooling themselves.

I always thought the Weapons Specialist, as presented, would make a far better contact than an archetype. They look cool and handy to have around, but never see myself playign one.

I agree. But some may want to play one. It's a viable team role. It's just not one I would want to play.



Thank you Captain Obvious!


Emphasis added for those who were unable to read it without visual aids. Also, there is a difference between a combatant and a fighter.

Yep. Someone clearly has trouble reading all right.

Oh, and for the record (and despite the fact that they're very much synonyms of one another):
combatant, n. 2. a person or group who fights
fighter, n. 3. a person who fights, struggles, resists, etc.

I play a weapon spec in my SR group. Mine is cybered up a bit for the IP's, but the point is to be able to pick up any weapon off a corpse and still be able to throw 15-20 dice on it's attack regardless of what type of weapon it is. You don't always have your preferred gun on hand.

Right now I'm playing an infiltration/hacker kind of character. he evolved to also be a weapons specialist. I fix/mod weapons, armors, build bombs and use a heavily modified pistol-sized grenade launcher to use the best of my single IP. Also, combat drugs are good, cheap way to get extra IP's without the need for augmentation. 2 initiative passes can mean A LOT with the right weapon.

They are rather pointless as a character archtype (edit- as presented) in my mind. They really can't do anything a street sam or adept can do and they have no real advantage over either. A sam especailly can outshine them as they can only go so far in the shoot things in the face skillset before they have to start branching out. They might work in a merc campaign but they'd probably be back in the rear rather than on the front lines. As was already said they make better contacts than PCs.

As I said before: that's not their purpose. A hacker can't do anything a street sam or adept can do, either.

I wouldn't say combat drugs are a "good" way to do it, more like the only viable alternative. You have to worry about the overly addictive nature of all drugs in the game (though, thankfully, they're not as insane as they used to be), and if you're surprised or otherwise find yourself in a fight you weren't prepared for, you have to wait as many as two full Combat Turns before their effects kick in... and had to waste an action to initiate it to boot.

One rule I tinkered around with a long time ago was taking advantage of Essence to allow characters to have more passes. Essence 6 gave two bonus passes, and 3-5.99 gave one. I got rid of the spell Increased Reflexes and adjusted the adept power and implant options appropriately, but I never had the chance to really test it out. On paper it looked pretty good. Characters who surrendered part of their soul for cyberware had to adjust for that by getting the implants, and cyberjunkies and dedicated adepts were the only ones who could get a full 5 IPs. It also gave characters (particularly magicians) a reason not to cyber up unless they really needed or wanted to, and even then they had to make a hard choice between going all out or balancing between speed and power.

I really should try to toy around with it again sometime.

And a Street Samurai doesn't need just one skill to be a hacker, either. All they need is Armorer and maybe one or two knowledge skills purely for flavor, and they've made the Weapon Specialist superfluous.

Something to consider. Weapon Specs have a resource that they don't... Essence. It's conceivable to see this archetype as one to branch off of. It has techie aspects and combat prowess. Pick a direction and start cybering up!

Really? Please explain them.

There's another idea for the weapon specialist: They're new to the shadows and don't have any 'ware yet. Nothing's stopping the player from adding some IP boosters after play has started. It all comes down to what the player wants, of course, but it is easy to justify in character. For example:

Jane Doe the weapon specialist is not new to combat. She's seen lots of it in the Middle East and has learned many weapon related skills which have served her well. For reasons she chooses not to talk about she has left the Middle East and lost her SIN in the process. She's made a couple of contacts in her new "home" of Seattle and has done allright in a couple of milk runs. Now she's told by her fixer she's ready for the next step and is made part of an impromptu shadowrun team. She nods and expects to succeed. After all, she's got the skill and the will. How can she fail..?

Later, as a street doc is patching her up she forks over her shiny certified credstick and says, "Doc, I already lost a big chunk of that flesh when that sec-guard shot me twice before I could even get a round off. Fill it with the wired reflexes out of his corpse I brought you to dispose of. That's not happening to me again!" She has learned a lesson of the shadows: survival takes sacrifice!

By putting off getting those implants 'till later she has a higher, more varied skill set. 'Ware can be added during play by spending nuyen but you can only buy skills with money if you have skillwires!

Or, for that matter, take latent awakening at chargen.

What I was trying to say, which Dr. Funkenstein has already stated is that a Sam needs is the armorer skill and a few fluff knowledge skills to be able to make the weapon specialist superflous. Hackers and street sams are two wholly different "classes" while the weapon specialist doesn't have anything that makes them shine. What does a team lack when they don't have a weapon specialist? Ask the same thing about basically every other archtype (except the bounty hunter) and you will find a missing skillset.

Kinda ironic I'm argueing this while my avatar is the weapon specialist.

The problem is that one (nuyen) is not always easier to get than the other (karma). I've been in lots of game where the karma flowed a lot more heavily than the nuyen did. In fact, I can't remember the last game I played in where I had enough cash to upgrade a major implant, but I've improved my skills quite often.

I do not think anyone here is trying to say the Weapon Specialist is useless, just that they are not overly useful when compared to other options.

"fighter" in my above differentiation is a character with the sole purpose of being the most efficient combat machine, possible.
"combatant" is merely an armed participant in a combat engagement. A hacker with a pistol in a firefight is a combatant.

And yet again we still have "the Weapons Specialist is a literal martial artist. A master of unarmed combat..."

I don't disagree with that at all. You can definitely turn a street sam into a weapon specialist. But that's not really an argument, as you can turn every character into a weapon specialist. The defining aspect of a weapon specialist is knowledge (read: skills and contacts). That knowledge is equally available to everyone.

The reason the weapon specialist is listed additionally to the streetsam (to name an excemple) is to show different group roles, of which the weapon specialist is one.

Let me repeat that: Even a mage can be a weapon specialist. "Weapon specialist" has nothing to do with combat efficiency, inititive passes, augmentations, spells, powers or software. It has to do with focus.

Most groups will field characters with double specializations. Our group for excemple has a Houngan/Face, a Hacker/Rigger/Combat Medic, a Streetsam/Weapon Specialist and a Melee Adept/Heavy Weapons Specialist.

Like all other archetypes, the "Weapon Specialist" is primarily a "fleshed out" team role. The provided archetype in the BBB can fulfil it's designetd role. It's designated role is NOT to be an equal to the street sam in combat.



The presented archetype is not, correct. Personally, I'd rather use an NPC for my modifications and weapons aquisitions. It is a viable team role, though and someone might want to play one.

Completely agree.

I do have to say that this thread has given me a strange desire to play the Archetype exactly as is. Mainly because it is outside my "comfort zone" character wise and it never hurts to step out of that for a while. Also because the thread inspires me to see how useful I can make the character without changing it.

As far as I know drugs don't take two combat turns to kick in, I could be wrong though and in this case I ask the source. But nothing like an auto-injector connected to your PAN for immediate deployment. Also, I know, street sams can do this too, but since they are "in theory" already spending points in other stuffs (AGI, BOD, REA, gear), a "weapons specialist" could have a higher Edge to spend more of them in combat. Spending a point of Edge to go first even though the Street Sam has a natural reaction of 5 plus WR2 plus RE2 and intuition 4 while you only have reaction 3 and intuition 4 can make a lot of difference with the right weapon. Again I point to my character where I've pulled this stunt quite often to fire a airburst linked gas grenade with the right gas in it (usually neurostun or Warp).

The two Combat Turns I'm talking about refer to 1) the potentially missed turn due to being surprised since you won't have as many dice to roll, and 2) that changes to your number of passes don't kick in until the start of the next turn. Even an auto-injector requires you to command it to activate; there's no health monitor that detects when you're in combat for you. At best it'll use up you Free Action if you can convince your GM it's similar to Eject a Smartgun Clip, even though it's technically closer to a Simple Action ("Use Simple Object"). There's also the bit about how most drugs don't work instantly, anyway. Even Immediate drugs don't kick in until the end of a Combat Turn.

As for your argument about Edge, that's not a very sound argument. Nothing prevents a Street Samurai from matching your Edge score, or from using the exact same weapons and tactics a Specialist does.

There's also the point that the only thing that makes a Weapon Specialist a Weapon Specialist is the Armorer active skill and a couple of knowledge skills, the latter of which is mostly flavor. The Specialist has all the same limits that a Street Samurai does (only one skill at 6 or two at 5, same limit on attributes, etc.). At best, the Specialist can have a wider array of combat skills... but that's not much of a perk in a game where you only need a couple of combat skills in the vast, vast majority of situations. We're talking about -- at absolute most -- a 50 BP difference between the two. That's a whole 5 attribute points (or just two maxed) or three rating 4 skills. Not a huge difference. And certainly nothing that 250,000 nuyen worth of implants can't put to shame.

Well, sure. I'm just pointing that even though my char is nowhere near what a street samurai is, I can still defend myself, put a dent in a samurai street's armor.
Yeah, it doesn't take much for a street sam to be a weapon's specialist too, but this means you have to broad your role (and I'm all for broadening characters, I'm playing with a ninja/hacker/armorer/demo expert one) but most people like to play specific niches. Just saying.
Also, a biomonitor could detect for increasing flow of adrenaline in your blood or something like that.

That's basically what I'm saying though: The Weapon Specialist doesn't actually fill a niche. They're a one-skill pony, to twist a phrase... and one that can't even fulfill their job description in the sample archetype even compared to the other samples. The Covert Ops Specialist and Gunslinger Adept can match her "mastery" of unarmed combat, and the Enforcer, Sprawl Ganger, and Street Samurai can outclass her in a straight up fist fight! And that's based solely on skill levels, nevermind access to initiative boosts and the other myriad benefits each of those archetypes have.

It's not really an archetype so much as a description of a single skill. Like I said in my first post, it was an attempt to show you how to make a non-magical, non-cybered combat-oriented character, but it pretty much fails compared to the other archetypes. Combat simply isn't an area that an unaugmented character can excel at. And while even a poorly built character type can be useful in a good player's hands, that doesn't mean that it's not a poorly built character type.

Perhaps the archetype is more like an attitude?

The archetypes range from playable (if not optimal) to awful. The weapons specialist is poorly designed. I agree with Dr. Funkenstein about the intent of the flavor text, but in this case the flavor text does not at all fit the character presented. This is not a very combat-capable character, sorry. There would be much less of a disconnect if the flavor text matched the character better - this is more of "an armorer who likes to play with her toys" than "a literal martial artist".

It illustrates how not to optimize a character. Blah Attributes all in the 3-4 range, no adept abilities or 'ware, and even the spread of skills is not impressive, since many of them will be redundant most of the time. A mundane character has a hard time keeping up with augmented characters, but you could make a mundane character that is far more effective than this!

Totally agreed. The last thing a mundane needs is mediocrity across the board. "I'm slow, squishy, and I can't hit the broad side of a barn. Fear me, world!"

About K-10: what about Dopadrine? Automatically ends Berserk when taken.

Even if you can't convince your GM to have that end your indefinite-duration rage from failing the Edge test, you could always take the Dopadrine to cancel your berserk before the K-10 ends. By my reading, you make that Edge test if you're still berserk when the K-10 wears off and you take 18S. If you're not still berserk then, no problem! You just have to not die from 18S. And deal with the addiction penalties from mixing drugs.

edit: whoops I think I posted this in the wrong thread

Of the party roles listed in the first chapter of Runner's Companion, which would you say the Weapon Specialist from the BBB is intended to fulfill?

Intended? Somewhere between Close Quarters Combat, Fire Support, and Logistics, but not doing any of them particularly well.

It's a shame, too. She's probably my favorite piece of character art out in that book. And I don't really like elves all that much.

Dr. Funk... I read your idea for non-cybered characters getting extra IP passes, but I think that if you play test it, you'll find that it's too generous. I would say that if you have Essence 6 you get one extra IP pass, but any lower and you lose it. This gives mundanes and mages something to work with, but still make getting 'ware a "better" investment.

Also I disagree with your assertion that getting 'ware means losing part of your soul. I believe that Essence is your soul's connection to your body. If you have Essence 6 then you're at 100% and if you're 0.01 Essence then your soul is still connected to your body, but only barely.

Mages can cast Increase Reflexes on other people too..

But yeah, a Weapons Specialist is just a Bio-sam who can't afford their Synaptic Booster yet.

I didn't really delve into it when I mentioned that. I'm a believer that cybered characters should have an advantage, but they shouldn't completely outclass others. If a cybered/adept character can get, say, 5 IPs when the norm is 2-3 and 4 is considered exceptional but not uncommon, then that's a happy medium for me. Sure, I could just subtract -1 from each of those numbers, but having multiple initiative passes allow for more options for everyone involved. Just look at the mechanics behind toxin delivery times or critter powers like Fear to see what I mean. It also lets characters get a few implants without completely losing out on that.

I'd also be adjusting the costs drastically. No more losing 5 or even 3 points of Essence just to gain that relatively minor (compared to what it is right now) edge in combat. It would essentially be a complete overhaul of the initiative system rather than just a simple tweak here and there. It's hard to judge it based solely on this crappy description.


I didn't really mean or believe that Essence is one's soul. It just sounded cooler than "giving up some of your Essence."

I'm a fan of the hot elven rigger...with 2 charisma (?) gotta love how stats never seem to match the character.

Charisma is not a measurement of exclusively attractiveness. Not in SR, not in any RPG. It is first and foremost a measurement of your presence, of your ability to influence your environment. That's why Charisma is also used for things like "Intimidation".
You can be ugly as fuck and still have plenty of hot girls to excersice with. Also, you can be hot as hell and still utterly fail in any social context. Is the term "socially awkward" familiar? That's Charisma 2 for you.

If you need an explanation for the Smuggler's low Charisma:

-Maybe she's a bitch
-Maybe she's pushy
-Maybe she's a sociopath
-Maybe she snorts whenever she laughs
-Maybe she farts all the time
-Maybe she eats like a pig and burps like no tomorrow
-Maybe she's just "alien" as in reclusive; more into machines than people
-Maybe she's all of the above

I really wish people would stop thinking exclusively about attractiveness, when they read charisma. Charisma is foremost a personality trait, not a phenotypical expression.

Except that as an Elf, she should not have a Charisma lower than 3...
Just Sayin'

Keep the Faith

If you people are talking about the Smuggler when you say Rigger, she's a human with the Elf Poser negative quality, not an actual elf. If you are talking about the Specialist, she does not have a Charisma lower than 3.

Indeed, Look at that... Not a real Elf...
Damn Posers...

Keep the Faith

And the new kid makes his first post, comin' out swingin' with a one-two correction-correction punch!

In SR4A the smuggler is a Human with Charisma 2, in SR4 she is an Elf with Charisma 3.

Still not an elf with charisma 2 though.

Also, I'm slightly embarrassed that being nitpicky was what finally compelled me to register after a couple of months lurking...

Yeah, I assumed that the Smuggleer was still an Elf in SR4A... that is what I get for assuming though...

Keep the Faith...

RedFish, I don't know who you are, but if your first post on this board is to own Tymaeus in the face, I think we'll get along juuust fine.

(Tymaeus, I love you dude, but seriously that was awesome.)

True enough, I was just pointing out a possible source of the confusion.

Awesome Indeed... what I get for not looking...

@ Knightrunner... Thanks for the support... that is indeed what I was referring to, as I assumed that the character in the Book was still an Elf... a Little confusion goes a long way apparently...

Keep the Faith