Alright, new campaign. New GM. He is playing a little hardball. Nothing over 12 restriction (not even with Restricted Gear quality). SR4A main book only. (Although some qualities and cyber options from Runners Companion and Augmentation, etc will be allowed).

Need a Street Sam/Gunslinger with at least 16 dice in guns. No ambidex characters unless you can get both guns at 14+ dice each. I am thinking Orc, just for toughness, and strength backup for unarmed or blade damage in case of gun failure or misplacement.

Last of all, he doesn't want Min/Maxing per se. So no Logics of 1 or anything, and skills have to be diverse. No "one trick ponies" so to speak, so he's gotta be pretty solid with infiltration or something else that will assist the group.

Other group members include:

Infiltrator/Rigger
Face/Hacker
(Unknown 4th Party Member)

So we are really lacking on firepower.

If you decide you can assist me, I just need a base skeleton of a character. No in-depth items are needed (such as medkits) unless you know something awesome like Goggles of Uber seeing that will help me.

Other than those restrictions, every other form of character making is in. 400BP system. (250Y limit for 50bps for items)

I am open to Cyberware, Adept Powers, Mage Powers, Bioware, or whatever other hidden gems you might have.

Even if its to give me tips of something I may not know. (I.e cyberarms with massive agility/str bonuses, etc)

Thanks for you help!

Elf, Muscle Toner, maxed out weapons skill plus specialization and smartlink should do the trick for the desired 16 dices when firing a gun.

Yeah but that leaves my damage taking ability, and my melee ability kinda in the crapper. Although strength doesn't matter too much when using shock gloves I guess.

I was looking at doing cyberarms, I can get like 8 agility, nice strength/body and 2 extra damage boxes that way.

Military armor for the damage soaking!

LoL if you don't think my GM would let me take restricted gear quality (5) I doubt he would let me handle milspec armor, ROFL

Ah, minor details.

First of all, you get dice from getting your primary firearms skill at 6 plus a specialization, and a secondary ranged skill at 4 plus a specialization, instead of the firearms skill group.

Then, with soft-maxed Agility (5), add muscle toner: 2, a reflex recorder for your primary firearms skill, and a smartlink mod to your cybereyes. You will have 5(7) Agility + 6(7) skill +2 spec + 2 smartlink, for a respectable 18 dice.

For speed and dodging, get the combo of wired reflexes: 2 (alphaware) and reaction enhancers: 2. For senseware, get cybereyes and an ultrasound sensor. For soaking damage, get some orthoskin (the biggest expenditure of the lot, but way less obvious than dermal plating, and infinitely more Essense-friendly).

For your melee skill, get either unarmed at 4 specializing in martial arts, and a shock hand or shock glove, or get monofilament whip at 4 with the whip in a fingertip compartment.

Even with decent Attributes, Edge, and 50 resources, you should still have enough skill points to get basic social skills, perception, dodging, and perhaps first aid and/or infiltration. And a fixer, maybe one other contact.

The trick for a speedy gunslinger is to not pimp your Body and Strength too much - you're not some muscle-bound sprawl ganger. Maybe get Body of 5, leave Strength at a serviceable 3, with soft-maxed Agility and Reaction, leaving enough points to get, say, 2 in Charisma and Logic, and 3 (or higher) in Intuition and Willpower.

Well here's a pretty simple cyber adept build for you
Ork adept
Body 6
Agility 4(6)
Reaction 4(6)
Strenght 5(7)
Charisma 2
Intuition 3
Logic 2
Willpower 3
Edge 2
Magic 5(4)

Iniative 7(9)
IP:s 1(3)

Skills:
Pistols (Semiautomatics) 5(+2) <-------------------Can be changed to firearm skill of your choise
Blades (Swords) 5(+2)

Adept powers:
Improved Reflexes 2
Improved Combat Ability [Pistols] 2
Nimble Fingers
Sustenance }------------------these last 2 are just fillers of my choise for the last 0,5 power points

Ware:
Muscle Augmentation 2
Muscle Toner 2
Cybereye Rating 3 with:
Eye Light System
Low-Light Vision
Smartlink
Vision Enhancement 2
Vision Magnification
Flare Compensation

Weapons:
Force 2 katana weapon focus with personalized grip(if gm allows weapon modifications from arsenal)
Gun(s) of your choice

Armor:
Armored Jacket
Form-Fitting Body Armor Half-Body Suit
Whole PPP-set except the helmet
Gives 14/11 armor
if gm doesn't allow armors from arsenal, then armored jacket and a helmet is a best you can get providing 9/8

This build costs 295BP, leaving you with 105 points (+35 can be gotten from negative qualities) to round out the character.
40 of those points can be spent on attributes and 36 on getting more money.

You get 6+5+2+2+2(smartlink) = 17 dice to shoot your selected gun
and 6+5+2+2[+1(personalized grip)] = 15[16] to hit them with your katana that does 7P basedamage with AP-1.

LOL, Retricted gear is ok, just not above 12R

The Game Master

Can I not have my full Milspec armor then?

Yikes! You suck!

What about this guy?

He has 16 Dice for SMGs (Agility 6 + Automatics 6 + SMG specialization 2 + Smartlink 2) and acceptable tanking capablities with advanced Equipment. The Availability of the starting Equipment is 12 or lower.

Race: Troll

Attributes:
Body 9
Agility 4(6)
Reaction 5(7)
Strength 8
Charisma 2
Intuition 3
Logic 2
Willpower 3

Speical Attributes
Magic 0
Resonance 0
Edge 3
Essence 3.18

Initiative / Passes 8 / 1 (10 / 3)
Condition (Stun) 10
Condition (Physical) 13

Qualities (Postiv / Negativ):
Racial: (Thermographic Vision)/ Normal: Cyberware Compatability [AUG] (10 BP) - Toughness (10 BP) - In Debt (25000) [COM] (-25 BP) - Combat Monster [COM] (-10 BP)

Active Skills:
Automatics [SMG] (6), Dodge [Ranged Combat] (4), Pistols [Semi-Automatics] (3), Unarmed Combat (4), Intimidation (3), Stealth Skill Group (2), Influence Skill Group (2)

Knowledge Skills:
English (6), 15 free Points

Contacts:
6 Points for Contacts

Weapons
Colt Cobra TZ-118

Armor
Armored Jacket [8/6]

Cyberware
CYBERWARE:
[2,1] Wired Reflexes II (Alphaware)
[0,21] Cybereye Rating 2 [+8] (Alphaware)
+Flare Compensation [-1] (Alphaware)
+Low-Light Vision [-2] (Alphaware)
+Protective Covers [-0] (Alphaware)
+Smartlink [-3] (Alphaware)
+Vision Magnification [-2] (Alphaware)
[0,21] Cyberears Rating 2 [+8] (Alphaware)
+Audio Enhancer (Rating 3) [-3] (Alphaware)
+Damper [-1] (Alphaware)
+Increased Sensitivity |AU| [-1] (Alphaware)
+Spatial Recognizer [-2] (Alphaware)
+Select Sound Filter (Rating 1) [-1] (Alphaware)

BIOWARE:
[0,4] Muscle Toner II
[0,2] Platelet Factories

~ 10,000 Nuyen for Lifestyle and Equipment

You are not talking about the same thing. Restricted Gear is a 5 BP quality in Runner Companion that lets you get one piece of Gear (only 1 per 5 BP in the quality) with Availability up to 20. Now that you say it, they really could have used another name

On the OT, I don't see the problem. Agility 5 + muscle toner 2 + gun skill 5 + specialization + smartlink = 16 for a mere 66 points and you can still get another skill to 5.

In the day and age of Contacts and glasses that can have every image enhancement. Why does anyone take Cyber eyes?
It seems like a complete waste of money and essence.

<edit> my memory sucks at times.

Sabs: Because glasses and contacts can be misplaced and destroyed.

Well for my build it's becouse you can't get eye light system in any other way(IIRC)
And that build also had just that sized hole of essence left.

Aesthetics? Eye laser systems?

You can have 3 sets of each for the same prices at the cybereyes, and without the essence loss.

I understand for mages. Because of the horribly written rules, but for everyone else?

And if those 3 sets get lost, damaged or confiscated, you replace them. Again and again and again. Cybereyes are a one time expenditure and are so common people don't care if you have them as a rule.

That said, it could also be flavor. Back in the day, there were no contacts/glasses that could do everything, so a lot of us old-time SR players don't go anywhere without Eyes and Ears.

Or how about this answer: Because we choose to. The advantage of all this stuff is choice.

In the end, what does it matter? We do, you don't, why does it matter?

The same reason you get an implanted commlink and sim module instead of just using trodes and external gear, primarily because it's really cool and then for advantages in having the capability hidden and difficult to take away from you. Especially since a commlink only costs 2,000 nuyen to imlant, spend the 20,000 to get it as Deltaware when you can and good luck spotting that on any cyberscanner or assensing test.

I still give the majority of my characters (mages included) datajacks as well. Must just be a throwback.

Yeah to me its mostly that "this character was around before all this newfangeld tech and there's no point in going back to meat eyes when you have cyber eyes"
Same think really goes for datajacks too.

Alright, allright. Lets break out the nasty tricks. I'm going for the gunslinger build.

Move By Wire 1 in Augmentation is avail 12.
It stacks with Reaction Enhancers, which are cheap, so get those. You're going to need a high reaction to tank. (alternatively, blow a lot of cash on a synaptic booster 2. Its Rating x 6 availabilty)
Grab 5bp of Martial Arts(krav or firefight for flavor). Snag Watchful guard for 2bp, and another 2bp for Full Offense(read it. you can still defend against ranged attacks)
Another 5bp for more martial arts. I recommend kung fu for the general dodge bonus. Snag riposte(which lets you parry melee, then shoot someone).
5bp for ambidexterity.

Bone Density 4 lets you punch like a tank, and take bullets like one. Its also avail 12.

You have two options to pump your agility. The first is a pair of high agility customized cyberhands(or lower arms for cyberarm slides). Agility 9 is pretty cheap. Or you can use a decent starting agility and go for Muscle Toner/aug(you'll be limited to 2 at start, but upgrading to 4 should be within your ability soon enough). Both are valid options
Get a biomonitor and an Autoinjector. They're both cheap, and can go in cyberlimbs if you so desire(or armor, such as an undersuit of FFBA). Take one with Cram, and one with Jazz. That's two extra passes if you need it.

Grab a tacnet 2. Its availability 10. Whatever you run it on, whether it be a datajack or a commlink.Its going to need 4 people to run, and 4 sensor channels, and adds 3 dice due to the hardware mod. First: Get an offensive iball, gecko tip it, improvd sensor array, and make sure it has a good camera and either radar or ultrawideband. Its going to stay in your pocket. Next, choose your guns. Smartlink then, Pilot Upgrade them(arsenal mod). Now they count as drones. The smartlinks come with a camera and laser rangefinder(2 channels), and can take vision enhancements. give them two more so they meet the channel requirement. Now get yourself a snazzy pair of goggles and earbuds so YOU meet the sensor channel requirement. You may not get the smartlink bonus for double wielding, but you do get the tacnet bonus all the time.
Skillwires are also a decent choice for a dual wielding sam - the Personalized option adds +1 to the -test-, so its not split, overdrive 1 can add another dice, and the penalties can be canceled out with a Focus reality amplifier and a sim module, and hardware optimization can add another +1 to a specific activesoft(such as your main gun skill). Thats 3 dice after the split, so while you may be limited to a rating 3 skillwire at start, it benefits both guns.


If you really, really, really wanted to, then agility 9 with Aptitude and a skill at 7 would net you 16 dice base, so that's 8 after the split. Its very expensive(due to attribute costs), but an Elf with Muscle toner 2 can do it. Upgrading the toner to 4 and picking up a genetic optimization(agility) will let you have an agility of 11, plus your primary weapon skill of 7, which is 9 dice after the split before bonuses.

I would definitely go Automatics for your primary weapon skill. The warhawk is nice, but machine pistols can handle people just fine. You can always decide to stop double wielding, pick up an assault rifle, and put down a ton of dice at a decent range with an alpha or ak

Honestly, when my current character was first written (before I had to remove the amnesia), I gave him cyber eyes because I wanted the optical records removed. I wanted AR over everything because it would keep the character from remembering even when he was somewhere he had been before, I wanted to change his biggest sense in an irreversible way.

With a previous character I had gone in a different direction, simply refusing to cyber him, not because of any disadvantage or flaw, but because the character wanted to remain untouched for reasons that were personal in some ways, spiritual in others, and religious (as in following the teachings) in their own way. Alas, the character in a number of different directions simply didn't work out. (I hadn't found a number of rules that made parts of the build incorrect, teammates kept pressuring me to ignore the concept, and I ended up pre-maturely retiring him at a point where I felt he would have retired himself anyway (rather than getting two bullets in the back of the head).

Ware and gear is often not a matter of min/maxing as it is a matter of character concept. Sure, it's a waste of build points, but at times a character concept asks for a few build points to be wasted.

So you're GM doesnt want a minmaxed character? Make a Satyr with a sp-sp-speech impeh-peh-pehdiment.
Put 40 pts into the Animal Husbandry skill group then make a 360pt orc (for Satyr) minmaxed Gunslinger.
See? No longer minmaxed! Now only SEMI-minmaxed!

Its called Ultrawideband Radar rating 4 and yes, it really is that good! ;-)

Is his name Torgo?

I think Jaid has got the idea if you don't want to over do it..

If you're looking to make a hardcore tank, my advice would be to combine what Udoshi said about speedballing drugs for increased Initiative passes, and then getting multiple, customized up-armored cyberlimbs.

Your face should be able to Con you in as a bodyguard, if you need to go in guns holstered.