When it comes to introducing people to the game.... what do you guys think about using the pre-made characters?

It depends entirely on the potential player. Some may like not having to worry about it and just want to jump into the action, others may want to come up with their own concept, and others may just want to go through the process so they can understand the game better.

I think it is a good idea for a one shot sort of thing. Get them introduced to the setting so they have a clue about what they need. Make sure to outline the importance of skills that are often forgotten during chargen but important in play like perception.

The reason I suggest a one shot is because it is hard to grow attached to characters that are just handed to you, so long term play tends to be less enjoyable.

I'd also suggest trying to find the 'sample character' thread I think it was, where there was a community effort to create several premade characters that weren't as bad as the ones presented in the books.

My advice:

1. If they are a new roleplayer---probably a good idea to use the templates. Saves explaining the concepts of character generation.
2. If they are experienced roleplayers---they may or may not be interested in learning all the ins and outs of chracter creation to play the game. Let them decide if they want to make their own. My exception is if it is a 1 shot adventure. Then go with either the archetypes in the main book, or create some premade ones (this helps ensure all the possible skillsets are covered).

Totally agree with Karoline. The sample characters suck (big time) like the street sam having blades 5 and carries no blades (or spurs).

Its important to have Premade Chars for Conventions
When I support/GM at Conventions I always carry (at least) 25 selfmade Chars for new Players

with a prepared Dance
Medicineman

I agree with the thought that pregens are perfect for one-shots or people that are new to the game and want to cut their teeth on a character presented to them. I did want to note that the SR4A pregens may have been fixed a bit because the street sam has both a spur (in right cyber arm) and carries a katana and a survival knife, for what it's worth

I'm not sure but this may be the link -> Sample character archives

Don't know if that was the one that I was thinking of, but it certainly seems to work.

Nice, didn't know that.

Actually, I'm not aware of a printing in which the Samurai didn't have at least the katana and survival knife. Honestly, the Samurai and the Gunslinger Adept are two of the sample sheets I'd take the least issue with. There's more point efficient ways to get the same or better results but at the end of the day their dice pools in their bread and butter skills are about where they need to be to fulfill their roles. I can't say the same for the Sprawl Ganger, for example, which doesn't do anything as well as the above examples and also comes saddled with Uneducated, which is probably the worst flaw in the game if you play it as it is actually described in the book. The Enforcer is only a pinch better off-- he has Uncouth, which is another contender for title of worst flaw-- but at least he has some initiative enhancement. The Weapon Specialist becomes surprisingly playable if you swap Lucky for two more points of Edge, but even so it's a pretty damn vanilla sheet.

Overall, I'd say the best 4 man team of Anniversary intro characters that touches upon all aspects of the game would be the Street Samurai, the Occult Investigator, the Drone Rigger and the TM or Hacker. It's a bit of a tossup between the last two; neither are very good sheets, with the Hacker lacking an Agent and social skills while the TM is real flimsy and pretty reliant on threading/sprites. The Gunslinger Adept and the Face are also solid contributors in their niches but they both suffer from a severe case of one trick pony. Still, if you get in a real pinch it'd be nice to have something better than the Investigator's 6 social dice to fall back on. That'd also let you swap out the Investigator for the Street Shaman's raw summoning power and Heal as well.

I think that -premade characters- are a glorious idea for introducing people to the game, jumping in feet first and doing a testrun to see if they're interested in more. Unless you have a -really experienced- gm willing to walk everyone through character generation on the spot, I'd say they're pretty much essential. Better to emphasize how fun the system can be, than go 'okay, now you need to learn all -these rules- before we can have fun'.

I also think that the -sample characters- in the SR4 books are complete ass, and don't even follow the rules some of the time. The Sample Character Re-write Project is well worth mentioning, by the way. A while ago, some people here took a collective at the sample characters in the book, went "Wow, that's shit", and decided to fix it themselves. So! Viola, enjoy.

I had 4 of my 6 players in this campaign coming in with no tabletop RPG experience at all, and the other two with no SR experience. So a couple people's characters essentially were refluffed premades, the face and the weapons specialist, specifically. But I did have to, after a couple sessions, go over the sheets with a fine-toothed optimization comb. Traded the Weapons Specialist's luck quality for a fuck-ton of gear and ware (gyro-stabilizer and HMG, assault rifle with gas vent, DocWagon contract, wired reflexes, et al), which helped a lot, and the Face got the hang of things pretty quickly and modified it herself quite a bit. Specifically, she looked through Arsenal and tricked out her pistol, and got a hunting rifle modified to fire semi-auto.

So I think it was useful, in that asking them all to make characters or meet with me to do so would have been unfeasible.

IMOO Bounty Hunter Troll sucks most..dropping Str to 7 saves 10 bp and str based damage remains,
Increse Agility from that
Dropping Archery to 2 ( 4 bp=20k yen)
dropping Reflex Enchanters and replacing them to Wired Reflexes..

All my current players started out with premades from the BBB.

We have the elf weapon specialist, the ork hacker, and the ork gunsliner adept.

They worked pretty well out of the gate as is. After each of the first couple of sessions I gave them the opportunity to alter some of their skills and qualities. The only thing that got changed was the weapon specialist's luck quality to Adrenalin Surge.

The characters have played fine and I haven't noticed any trouble.

Any other changes I've wanted to make to characters I've done through RP and game play.