Starting a game with some wholly new players to shadowrun and a couple who haven't played in a long while.

We did a character build season that ended with them saying "I will finish everything up later." But I am a little worried about character balance. So I would like to hear everyone's best advice for making a good character.

So far I am thinking:

Take at least one point in perception.
Everyone needs at least one weapon. Combat characters should have two types if weapons.
Even if you can't use it as a weapon, have a knife.

Thanks for the help.

I imagine some things transcend edition...

If it's a group of entirely new players, have someone take Common Sense.

Leatherman tools (or their 2070 eqv) are your friend.

Don't kill cops or reporters. Have a non-lethal way option handy.

Your rep is everything. If someone in your crew becomes a liability to future employment, disassociate yourself asap.

my b&e guy has a clip of stick and shock and a clip of capsule rounds with narcojet..
non-lethal is your friend

Watch your back. Shoot straight. Conserve ammo. And never, ever, cut a deal with a dragon.

Beyond that, don't kill if you can help it, and if you can't help it, make sure it can't be traced back to you. Don't screw your Johnson until he screws you first. There's no such thing as too much plastique. Geek the mage first.

The sidebar on page 8 of Runner's Companion, Shadowrunner Essentials, actually does a pretty good job of laying out the true essentials. For skills, you need infiltration (although characters with really good Agility can sometimes get by on defaulting), etiquette, perception, and either dodge or gymnastics. For gear, a commlink, fake ID and licenses, armor, a weapon, and a medkit.

Beyond that, it depends on your specialty. A face would probably take the influence group and the intimidation skill, and have social skill-boosting enhancements such as tailored pheromones or kinesics. A street samurai would likely have pistols, a heavier ranged weapon skill, and a close combat skill, and have a smartlink and some Agility-enhancing and initiative-boosting 'ware.

For overall advice, I would say that you want the essentials as outlined above, then to be good at your specialty. This is generally done through a combination of Attributes (the ones you use for your main skills should be the ones you get at a higher rating), skills, and dice pool modifiers (there are powers and enhancements that can raise your Attributes, raise your skills, or give extra dice for tests).

There is a lot of debate on how high dice pools should be, but obviously, the higher they are, the more likely you are to be successful. The game discourages maximizing dice pools by making some things disproportionately expensive; for example, maximizing an Attribute costs 25 build points instead of 10. This is where the term "soft-maxing" comes from - it means, for example, getting an Agility of 5 and a skill of 6 instead of an Agility of 6 or 7 and a skill of 7. Note that with dice pool modifiers, a soft-maxed skill can still be a substantial dice pool.

The other thing to think about is what the character's breadth of skill is. If you can only do one thing, you might be bored for much of the game. So maybe your street samurai or other combat type might be less bored, and more useful as well, if he can drive the getaway van, patch up his wounded comrades, interrogate a captive, etc. There are no "classes" in Shadowrun. Nothing is stopping you from having a mage with a shotgun, or a street samurai who can hack systems. However, keep in mind that you only have so many points. Being a one-trick pony can be bad, but you can spread yourself too thin, and wind up with a character who can do lots of things, but none of them well.

Kit I highly recommend:
Spare commlinks that can be dumped at need.
Spare IDs that can be dumped at need.
Uniforms for various city service providers.
Ski masks and/or nanopaste disguises.
Zip ties.
Rope.
Multitools.
Duct tape.
Spray paint.
Flashlight.
Duffle bags.

Weapons:
Pistol and concealable holster.
Non-lethal weapon.
Spare guns that can be dumped at need.

Implants:
Don't implant anything that you could just carry.
Don't implant anything that is inherently and obviously illegal.
Cyberlimbs are good.

Skills:
Somebody needs to have some negotiation skill. Preferably a lot of it.
Just about everybody should take a few points in dodge.
A point of perception is good...a specialization in "Visual" or "Hearing" is even better.

Misc:
Everybody should take at least two low-loyalty, low-connection contacts. Weapons dealers and street docs are good. Gangers, cops, reporters, activists, wageslaves and fences are also good.

Other than that, it's pretty dependent on the team-role in question. I agree that everybody should have _some_ combat skills.

My 2 cents.

Note that he mentioned combat types specifically. That's not an accident. Combat skills are inherently pretty damn narrow, particularly firearm skills which don't even operate as a defense pool. Now, combat is important, but it's not actually that expensive to be a pretty good fighter and attribute boosting cyberware can let you dabble in plenty of areas, so taking a sideline is a pretty good idea.

I take most skills at 1 or 2, and rely on high stats. (The goal is to have fun at lots of things.) You don't *need* 20 dice, because the GM's job is to not kill you.

Says who

Nah jokes, I do agree.

Yeah, it's the Universe's job to destroy you.

What!? I've been doing it all wrong for years.


Honestly though, I build characters in the exact opposite of the way Yerameyahu just described, so I am a li'l confused right now. I only take a 1 or 2 if it's something you can't normally default AND I have a correspondingly high attribute for whatever reason. Example: Hardware is surprisingly useful on a Hermetic. You can just slice the damn maglock that way instead of slinging crazy mojo.

Try to cover all your bases when it comes to the group. A team of all sammies will be fun for about three runs. A team where everybody has their niche will be fun for months.

Don't get TOO bogged down in the planning. Have one good plan and one backup plan. Always have a way out.

Think outside the box when making a character. Even "silly" augmentations can be extremely useful. Taster-booster? Run chemsniffer software on it, be able to tell when your food is poisoned automagically. Get a cybernose, become a bloodhound. Telescoping cyberlimbs? More useful than you'd think. Magnetic cyberlimbs are a good way to keep hold of your gun, latch onto railings, surf down maglev rails, and never lose your keys again.

Don't be afraid to ask for custom gear. Want a cyberarm you can load 4+ clips of ammo into for storage? Houserule it.
Yeah, scratch that. New players should stay away from custom gear.

Shotguns are your friend. Automatics, doubly so.

EDIT

One crucial thing I forgot: Have your players write a good backstory for their characters. This'll help you to present unique situations that tug on their heartstrings, and keep the players interested in keeping their character alive.

I just hate Defaulting, Whipstitch. Versatile tends to be so much more fun than 'optimal'; obviously, there are games where you *want* to minmax, but a 'friendly' campaign for new players? I'd rather have my character with high Attribs/gear, and low skills; with 1 or 2, maybe a Spec, you can easily get 9+ DP. That's plenty for most normal things.

I'd advise new players to *avoid* custom gear/other fiddling with the rules.
Ha! Given that shotguns equal 0, I'd say Automatics are way better than double.

That it's cheaper to boost skills rather than attributes when in game is a bonus as well. You can fully fit your niche a lot faster, and then head back into general territory as the need arises without much change.

For a home game, I'd go the Yerameyahu way and make sure everyone (players and GM) understands how assisting works.

One way I like to think about dice (and obviously open to debate).
21 dice = Go away. I can do this by myself.
18 dice = Can someone hold my tools?
15 dice = I could use some backup on this one.
12 dice = I can back you up on that.
9 dice = I can hold your tools.
6 dice = I think I can, I think I can.
3 dice = you're kidding me right? I'm color blind and you're telling me to cut the red wire?

I don't see the need for 18 or 21 dice in a home game. 15 for the character's focus, a couple 12s and some 9s and your character should be busy most of the game while getting their job done.

Nicely said.

What Doc Chase said-- the system tends to reward extremes at either scale. I like being versatile, I just think I go about it in a different way than Yerameyahu does. If I have 10 points laying around I'm picking up another point of Edge, not a couple of 1's and a specialization. They're just too easy to buy later.

Plus, my philosophy as a GM is that I don't ascribe to a "It's the GM"s job not to kill you" mindset. The world is what it is in my games, and they were that way in my former GM's games as well. Mall cops are mall cops and Red Samurai are Red Samurai, and the latter will be just as deadly whether we're playing a standard 400 bp game or one where we rolled 300 point gangers. Johnsons (usually) won't knowingly give teams jobs they don't think they can hack (that is, after all, bad for biz) but aside from that I don't "scale" the world. As such a dice pool of say, 6 isn't really all that much different from having a 8 because you avoided defaulting-- you can half-ass your way through things, but not so well that you should really be planning the run around the assumption that you won't botch the roll, since it's hard to say when negative modifiers might bite you in the ass. So such pools are nice to have for legwork, but unless you're hitting 12 dice or so I wouldn't go trying to do anything mission critical without some Edge as backup.

That's a good point: new players may not understand how Edge works and how it's useful. Be sure to look into it, and be aware that more Edge gives exponential returns (figuratively, of course).

As in the 'Metagaming' thread, I don't think anyone suggests that you make mall cops stronger or Red Sams weaker. Fitting the game to the players means *not* hitting them with a dragon, not 'making the dragon out of tissue paper'.

I still don't agree that you need *anything* close to 18 dice just to be 'competent'. If you're making opposed rolls (shooting people) and *they* have 18 dice, sure. But opening locks, hacking, driving, etc?

Heh. I figure if you're cascading 15+ dice on something then you're at the top of the game.

A character I'm building will have 21 dice for driving while hot vred in
It's purely for amusement value and for letting the GM let me do reconculously crazy driving feats.

Totally. I'm not saying people can't (obviously) have huge DPs, or that doing so is not *very effective*. I'm just saying it's not required to be 'competent'; anyone with 12 dice, or 10 dice, etc. isn't instantly a useless lump poser.

12 dice is the unaugumented maximum skill/stat for a human 'runner, so I'd hope it's pretty damn good. =P

That's what I'm sayin'!

Hm... well there have been a lot of equipment and skill value mentions. (And the tip with never dealing with a dragon - IMPORTANT - but also everybody breaks that damn rule)

But i just have to say:

If they present their character sheets and background just check for this ONE thing: COULD they have survived to that point?

For example if someone maxes magic, has hundreds of spells all mental attributes as high as he could. But no dodge, no physical attribute over 1, no social skills and a background as "I was living as a poor child on the STREETZ before awakening and becoming the WORLDS GREATEST MAGE" - you just crumple that sheet and throw it into his face. No way he got to the point where he is that way.

Just with that thinking of REALISTIC (haha) characters really rounds them well and makes for better gaming.

Sadly, hopes and reality don't always match up. In this case, it really depends on what the test is. One of SR4's niggling thematic issues is that by the RAW unaugmented exceptional people often fail to do things that many ordinary people have accomplished in real life with fair regularity. It's not really a surprising development when you consider that there's tests where a "professional" skill level of 4 will represent a third or less of your total dice pool. In many ways, I consider that stupid ass table that describes what a skill rank "means" to be one of the more damaging things to have been put into the game simply because it makes skill more important than it turns out to be in practice. Looking at total Attribute+Skill pools is a lot more accurate and a good starting point, but in some cases it's still a pretty blunt tool due to the sheer weight of modifiers present in the system. The other issue is that to be a successful shadowrunner you often need to be able to perform your role despite the presence of negative modifiers. So while going from say, a defaulted pool of 6 to a pool of 8 or 10 after a skill rank and maybe a specialization is definitely nice, it's not necessarily a big enough boost that I'd buy it at chargen with BP when I could get it while in play for Karma. If I'm going to pay a premium for something I want it to appreciably change how I plan a run.

Red Samurai, professional rating 5 - 12 dice to shoot things.
Tir Ghost, professional rating 6 - 12 dice for infiltration.

Heck, even the "High Stakes Negotiator" from RC, who's basically described as one of the absolute best of the best, tops out at 17 dice for Negotiation (bargaining).

If a DP of 12 isn't good enough to get the job done most of the time then the problem is probably that the GM has had to scale things up due to rampant min-maxing.

And yet one guy with nice contacts and an attention coprocessor can spot them on a clear day with a base pool of 6. All I'm saying here is that pools are highly variable and there's usually a better way of boosting one than paying 4 bp for 2 dice, which is exactly what avoiding a default is.

How many dice you need to roll for a skill varies from table to table. Keep in mind that magic, combat, and social skills are easy to boost, but also face a lot of potential negative modifiers. 12 dice with a pistol might be good enough most of the time, but what about when you are moderately wounded, with poor visibility, firing at someone crouched behind partial cover?

Also keep in mind that generally, you want a nice healthy margin of dice over your enemies, who generally will tend to be unwounded, on their own turf, and outnumbering you. Even with a nice margin (20 dice vs. 12, for example), you can still expect the dice to surprise you - a lot.

But different groups face different types of opposition. If you are playing in a group of gang punks or newbie runners, you probably won't need 20 dice against the other gangers and similarly weak enemies you will face. Party composition also plays a role, though. If you are the only combat guy (or face guy), you might want to be a bit more buffed up.

Finally, you should look at it from a metagame point of view. If the GM always has his missions turn into a firefight at some point, no matter what precautions you take, then there isn't much point in wasting a lot on stealth skills, beyond the bare essentials. On the other hand, if the game is mostly talking, and guns are rarely drawn, then a pistols skill of 10 might be plenty. And you want to keep your power at a level that doesn't make the GM threatened or uncomfortable. If 16 dice can get you by most of the time, but 20 dice leads to SWAT teams showing up out of the blue, then get the 16 dice and shore up a few weak areas.

Don't forget that Defaulting is super-lame. It's total metagaming to say, 'oh, no worries, my stat is high enough even though I obviously should have some training in this'.

6 dice = "I think I can"

Oh, holy crap. That's not right.

-Tir.

Why not?
6 dice means that you have decent odds of failing a TN 1 roll.
You have a 50% chance of failing a TN 2 roll.

6 dice is pretty much, I can do basic things, but if I can't buy my 1 success then my chances of failing are non-trivial.
I wouldn't want to risk my life on a 6 dice pool in SR.

Does that apply to vision enhancements and a smartgun link?

As for obviously illegal, that can be gotten around for the most part, but I think all wired reflexes and synaptic accelerators are R if not F. I don't have my book with me. For me, one of those two is a must have if you're a non-mage. Even if it's only a single extra IP.

I've looked at the cyberlimb stuff, including Augmentation, and maybe I don't understand it but they don't seem that good. Kind of expensive for limited gain.

It applies triple to vision and audio gear. Just get contacts or goggles, and earbuds. Get 3 pairs if you're worried about losing them.
I agree 1000%. People at first see that they can implant a machine gun or bottle opener or kitchen sink, and they don't stop until someone says, '… why?'. Hehe.

6 dice is a attribute 3 skill 3 character with no tools in a world of tools. One can get 6 dice with a level 3 agent and level 3 software running on a level 3 commlink. It's a level 6 first aid kit in the hands of a child. It's the perception rating of a LEBD-1 or a Doberman or a Stormcloud.

It's a greater than 1/12 chance of failing a TR1 test.

Edit: A 6 in Missions means you can't buy avail: 4 gear between missions on your own. You need someone else to buy it for you.

It's true that you can forget the tools. +3 Perception is easy to get, +2 firearms, that crazy medkit (or emotitoy)…

I prefer cybereyes and cyberears to goggles and earbuds any day. Both goggles and earbuds will have to be wireless unless you have them modded for skinlink, and even then they're pretty obvious looking. You will never lose or forget your cybereyes/ears, and there are more modifications for them than goggles. Cybereyes and cyberears are DNI, can be hardwired, and have more capacity. You usually can't tell them from the real thing unless there is obvious cyber for cosmetic reasons going on. You'll never forget them at home. When you wake up in the middle of the night with the mob banging on your door, you'll be glad you got those implants.

Never bothered with an implanted gun though. So inefficient. =P

No reason that earbuds are obvious.

Still, there's almost nothing that you can't get in the non-cyber versions. They have more capacity because they *need* more. Personally, I never lose or 'forget' my gear, thankyouverymuch. Hehe.

You're spending less money, no Essence, and getting at least the same effect; no brainer. If you have trodes (of course you have trodes), then they're just as much DNI, and it's easy to skinlink. Besides, you don't have to get goggles. You can have contacts, and/or glasses, whatever.

Unless you're a mage or an adept, or don't want that crap in your temple.

Besides, not many people are going to forget their earbuds or glasses when they're needed for so much with the commlinks.

I use Contacts with flare comp, smart gun, and image link, and I use glasses with lowlight, thermal, image mag, image enhance 3

What everyone needs:

Skills:
Athletics
Influence
Infiltration
Perception
Dodge (if Gymnastics Dodge is not allowed)

Items:
1 good Comlink
2-3 disposable ones
High rating Analyze and Browse software
1-2 good Fake SINs
2-3 disposable Fake SINS
Modded Glasses & Earbuds
Form-fitting Body Armor (if allowed)
Emotitoy R6 (if allowed)
3 Sets of Armor: one for "blending-in" jobs (Actioneer Suit/Armor Vest), one for normal jobs (Chameleon Suit/Camosuit), one for "nobody cares about the bodycount" jobs (the heaviest you can wear and get your hands on... usually that's Full-Body armor, but light-milspec is the ideal)
endoscope
gasmask
2-3 (thermal) smoke grenades
1 obvious weapon, e.g. an Ares Predator, especially if you're a non-gunfighter. In a world where "Geek the mage first" is common, not carrying a gun pretty much marks you as a mage/technomancer whatever.

For Sammies:
Low-profile weapon (anything silent and concealable works)

For mages:
Magesight googles

and after you buy all that stuff you basically have 0 points left over to actually make your character

Should every runner have that stuff eventually? yes.. but you can't get 1-2 good sins and 3-4 disposables, a bunch of different commlinks, etc.. at char gen. A lot of that stuff can and should be picked up 'in game'

You can pick up disposable commlinks for about 100 nY each.
A R4 fake SIN, one R2 and one R1 will cost you a grand total of 1.4BP at chargen.

I look at that list and I keep wondering "Why?"

I don't think I have a character that has all of those things. My current character doesn't have half of them. Some of them don't even make sense for my character to have at this point in time. Maybe as a list of "someone on the team should have these". I can sort of see that.

I'm on a budget. This is what I typically take, depending on what I'm running



There.

Honestly I think that's a pretty good list. You want to not have to default on things like running, climbing and talking, so influence 1 and athletics 1 are something my characters always have. Infiltration isn't always necessary though, and I always wear the heaviest armor possible, I just conceal it well.

You always want some sort of image and sound link so you can communicate with your team. And it's so cheap honestly, it'd be dumb not to. Everybody should have perception to pick out obvious things, as well as dodge to keep from getting shot. Dodge: Worth every point

Gasmasks are useful because combat chems are useful. If you use combat chems at all, you should have a gasmask. Endoscopes are meh, since smartlinks do the same thing.

Interesting!

I played the heck out of 2nd Edition and implanted cybereyes and bottle openers through all that time. Of course, I don't think goggles were as good back then. There were certainly no contact lenses.

How about the illegal stuff; IP boosters primarily? How do you get avoid the illegality of that and stay competitive in a firefight?

And what am I missing with cyberlimbs that make them good? I mean sure, you can put equipment in them but by the above argument I can just put that same equipment in my pocket.

For IP boosters, have one of your SINs with an ex-security background and a fake license to go with it. Any piece of R gear should have a fake license associated with it.

Cyberlimbs good largely because of the extra physical track boxes they add as well as all of the nifty things you can put in them. You can upgrade the stats of it, add armor, put things like internal air tanks, undroppable blades, ultrasound sensors, smuggling compartments, and even turn your hand into a grapple gun (Try putting that one in your pocket).

Ok, maybe I was a bit unclear. My list isn't exclusively about chargen (heck, I'm mentioning milspec armor), but rather, about what most runners will need in order to succeed with a GM that does not necessarily have "the world will accomodate you" mindset. And seriously, the total cost is like, less than 40k (heavy armor not included), and it's hardly set in stone.

As for playing without Influence, ymmv. Remember, you defend against social skills with Attribute+social skill, and often, you won't have a Face to do the talking, especially if the NPC is specifically talking to your character. Besides, it's nice to be able to acquire your equipment without relying on your fixer and paying him like 20% royalties.

Basically, ask yourself these question:
1) Can my character survive in a high-combat situation?
2) Can my character walk around in high-security zone (A or better) without immediately drawing suspicion?
3) Can my character contribute to the team outside of his specialty?
4) Can my character get past a bouncer in a nightclub?
5) When stripped of all illegal gear, is my character still playable?

If you answered "No" to more than one of these questions, then maybe you should get back to the drafting board.

A good set of Alphaware wired reflexes turned off with a trigger are pretty good at fooling the detectors. In theory, they should be almost impossible to spot when turned off by all but the most sophisticated of scanners. Can't remember if/what the modifier is in 4e but it was pretty substantial in the earlier editions.

As cool as the rules are for them/cheap they are, I can't imagine too many reasonable people willing to use any of the non-triggered, "always on" reflex enhancers like synaptic accelerators and boosted reflexes.

Someone made a good point: in previous editions, cyber versions of things (like eyes) *were* often better (Smartlink?) or simply the only version available (UWB radar sensor before Arsenal came out?).

I wouldn't say that cyberlimbs are good, but *a* cyberlimb (or just a hand) can be good. It's a place for your nanohive and other little widgets.