My wife and I have played SR on and off since 2nd Edition. However, it is more off than on. This will be our first time playing around with SR4. Our DM has played Food Fight 4.0 and made a character for Virtual Seattle years ago and threw a character together this past weekend for fun (though didn't finish with it due to time).

I'm wondering if there are some general Die Pool guidelines that some folks might have for making characters that are starting out. Clearly in Char Gen we can make characters that are very good at what they do and have reached the top of their Karma advancement in their selected field. I'm just wondering if their is a guideline for dice pools other than 'Reach for the stars, chummer!'

Thanks for thoughts.

The range is so wide it is hard to say. Personally I am happy with 12ish dice in my area of specialty except maybe melee combat which since it is default weaker I'd pas with a few more dice. Areas I expect to use but not excel, 6-8 dice is fine with me. There are plenty of people who want 20+dice for there specialty though, so it really depends on the players and the DM.

If you are NOT optimizing, and want someone to be 'good' in an area, then shoot for 10-13 dice in their primary area of expertise.
Around 5-7 dice or less is Glitch Heavy territory. The odds fall off as your pools increase. This is the 'you suck at it range'.

So, yeah. Shoot for 10-12 dice, and then add a specialty, and you ought to be good.

You should also note that the system as a whole tends to work better with DP in the 10-15 range. A lot of the wonkiness people have identified in the SR4 dice mechanics occurs at very low and very high DPs. If you stick to 10-15 starting out you will get a good feel for how the system is supposed to work (such as it is) and then you can delve into making super min-maxed ubber killing machines later.

I basically agree with this post. I used to think that 12-14 was good until I realized that 15+ plus was entirely possible.

Below 5 is...yeah, expect failure. With penalties mounting up as they do, don't be surprised if you fall to one die or less in your weaker areas.

Same question for B/I too. I know that there is no such thing as too much damage soak on a run, but just wondering where we should be looking to be at. The Ork Street Sam that is in the group is currently looking at 21 dice of ballistic soak before receiving an Armor spell. I know that others of us aren't meant to be taking the hits (if we can avoid) but it seems like he will be hard to hurt and the rest of us will get changed from new runners into Chinese take out rather quickly.

Thanks for the thoughts so far.

Yeah... you will find a LOT of material here regarding armor ratings. I think it THE most variable rating in the whole game. It varies wildly between 4/1 and about 40/40. On the other side the AP and damage values nearly do the same, going from 4/-0 to maybe 20/-half or -5 through the different weapons and skilllevels.

Also some inconsistencies with vehicle body and armor and much more. There are a lot of ideas out there hhow to houserule in that department, too.

But i just say: Take it as it is... for now. You still can crack anything... with some thought.

This heavily depent on your body value, but on human range of 1-6 i would go for max even value you can, so:
2/2 for body 1
4/4 for body 2
6/6 for body 3
and so on.

Honestly, this sort of thing is going to vary from game to game and GM to GM. Heck, maybe even from adventure to adventure.

I'd suggest talking to your GM and sharing your concern with him. He should understand that you're attempting to help maintain game balance at his table, and -- hopefully! -- will oblige with an idea of what he has in mind for his specific campaign. If I were a budding GM, I'd then respond by taking a look at what adventures I had planned, or at least at some NPCs I knew you'd be likely to clash with, and I'd try to help the party make sure they were a few dice ahead of your standard "grunt" types, at least.

It's going to matter an awful lot, though, if the "grunts" he has in mind are Halloweener street gangers, or Tir Ghosts! Either one could be the "Jones's" you're trying to keep up with, depending on just what flavor of campaign the GM is going for.

I would generally say that for "typical" Shadowrunners, 10-12 is pretty good already, only for combat skills some more dice (like 12-15) would be good, because there are so many negative modifiers involved. It's also really easy to get there without minmaxing... Attribute 5 Skill 5 Specialization Smartlink -> 14 dice already and nothing outrageous involved.

Generally you will do fine, if you have your good Attributes at 5-7 (depending on race (not counting trolls) and cyber-/bioware) and your average Attributes at 3-4 (Magic should be at least 4, better 5, especially for Adepts; Edge is ok at pretty much any level, but generally good to have at a decent level, as it is a great way to cover your weaknesses up a bit or give you some extra dice when you really need them); good Skills at 5 and average Skills at 2-4; then some extras (usually cyber-/bioware) to either cover your weaknesses or underline your strengths a bit. This will also leave enough room for improvement.

Aiming for a more generalist approach is usually more fun overall than having ultra specialists.

Bye
Thanee

The thing is, one of the big themes of the game is that magic and bodily augmentations can turn people into superhumans. And the rules enforce this by giving awakened and augmented characters a lot of cheap, easy ways to get extra dice. So powerful adepts, mages, or street samurai are not necessarily munchkins - they fit both the setting and the rules.

Also, while you can hyper-specialize too much (the system discourages absolutely maxing out a character, by making those last few points disproportionately expensive), you can still easily have a high dice pool in your specialty and be well-rounded. This is especially true if you are awakened or augmented - you can wind up with a better mix of skills than a weaker generalist type. One example - for a street samurai, someone takes restricted gear twice and gets a suprathyroid gland and muscle toner: 4. That character, with an augmented Agility of 9, will have pretty good dice pools even for Agility-based skills of 1 or 2 (heck, 8 dice for defaulting). And with the boosts to his Attributes, he might actually have more points to spend on skills.


The best bet, overall, as some people have said, is to talk to your GM. You can make characters with vast differences in ability using the same 400 points. It is a great system for being able to make what you want, but you can wind up with characters who are not balanced in regards to each other. So getting a bit more guidance (like Critias said - Halloweeners or Tir Ghosts?) from your GM will help you a lot.

It doesn't matter. Really.

If you're a bunch of generalists, you just assist each other and get high pools.
If you're a bunch of specialists, it's easy to dice cap in any number of pools at char gen.
If you're the only person with a couple points in a pool, then you're the best there is at that job, even if you're not good at it. Enjoy it.

What is important.
Let other people have their time to shine. Don't min max your generalist so that he's better at everything than everyone else at the table. Don't try to be in the spotlight all session long. Don't get mad if the session involves the area your character really sucks at.

One of the hardest things in a group in step back and let other people shine or take center stage when you are the shy type.

For me 10+ dice pool is good for your secondaries. 14+ for your specialization. 6+ for the "I am ok, everything is fine here, how are you?" skills

It also depends on a lot of factors. Equipment modifiers, specializations, threading/overcasting, etc. So for example, a starting Technomancer with Resonance 5, Exploit 5, and Hacking 5 will normally have a 10 die pool there, 12 if they take a specialization in Hacking for the pool, there becomes additional factors like Threading (up to an extra +5, or +3 if they TM doesn't have a sprite sustain), plus another +5 if they have a sprite on hand to help out, and that 12 die pool jumps to 22 (or 20). A base logic 5 first aid 5 character can, with a rating 6 medkit and the right implants, have over a 20 die pool easily. And these aren't even min/maxed characters, so in the end it depends on how much you want it to be default and how much you want to allow for gear/overasting/threading/etc modifiers. Again, it depends on the group. Do you want to play a group of generalists, or a group of specialists? Do you all want to rely on natural ability or spend lots of money for implants, foci, etc?

Reducing your damage is a more complicated than just having a lot of body and armor. Throwing out the whole 'don't get shot at' argument, you still get two rolls to reduce most incoming damage, one defense test and one damage resistance test. Except under certain circumstances both tests reduce damage by the same amount die for die, and average of 1 less damage taken for every three dice thrown. So you aren't really looking for what number is pushing B/I too high but more for the total of thier dice from both pools, which varies by attack type, but generally looks something like this:

reaction + dodge + body + armor

That being said my personal opinion is that 21 armor is excessive, but that is a subjective campaign dependent view. If everyone is stacking a gel-pack armored jacket with full FFBA, PPP, and then multiple pieces of cyber then it could be the norm for the campaign.

Thanks for the thoughts so far. I have some folks in here giving advice for where the game works best and others that seem to be saying it is a hard to answer question because of the level that the GM wants the game to be at. Both are fair answers. To those who are saying it varies depending on opposition, some ballpark die pools for specialists in those various game levels would be appreciated.

I'm well aware that in SR you can have a wide range of DPs from one to another, and the system is happy to let you do that and encourages it. I am also aware of the negatives that you can take as you get beat up. I'm just trying to not overwhelm the GM.

He thinks that he wants to start us out above the Halloweener level (from what I understand of them) but at more regular gang level.

Edit: Looking at the Seattle book I guess the Halloweeners are a bit higher up the totem pole than I thought they were. More like a bit ahead of the Small Potato gangs or at the level of the middle gangs. Is there a good book to use for example gangers of various levels?

Again, varying levels. Sure, the Halloweeners have some impressive higher ups, but your average ganger on the street is pretty unimpressive. The same could be said for the Ancients, they have a lot of awesome firepower, but the average grunt isn't much. Numbers play a part there though. If it's just the two of you, do you want to be able to handle 3-5 newer Halloweeners with one Rager, or fight off wave after wave of them without breaking a sweat? Do you want ultra-specialized characters or more well rounded characters? How do you want to handle those Halloweeners?

To give you a good idea, I started up new with a group that had been going a while, was rotating membership each week, but one of the regular players played a very experienced Sammy. He was human but a good Sammy with excellent cyber/bioware, good armor, good weapons, etc. We're talking about a guy who's running out of ways to gain notoriety just so he can buy it off with street cred to reduce his public awareness level. I came into the group with a 400 BP troll phys ad who wore urban camo armor and used killing hands/monowhip up close, and a basic ares alpha for ranged combat. This guy had custom weapons and armor, and I was able to keep up with him blow for blow in combat and soak about as well as him. And I could still do other things, like sneak about (yes, a stealthy troll), but my specialty was the combat. To the two of us, a group of Halloweeners, even 7-9 with 2 or 3 Ragers, was a joke. But social situations were when we went "Uh....... do we have a face or elf about?"


So HOW do you want to deal with those Halloweeners? Do you want to destroy them in combat? Sneak past them completely unnoticed? Infiltrate them and turn them against each other with your charms and wits? Hack their cyberware? Send in an army of drones?

A good rule of thumb to go by is this: for attributes, buy 4 points in attributes tied to your specialty, 3 in areas you want as a sort of backup, and only 1 or 2 in areas you want your character to be ok/weak in. For skills, unless you want to super specialize in a certain skill (for example making specifically a sniper rather than a more general ranged combat specialist), it's generally fine to buy the skill group(s) that are primary for your character up to 4, with 3 for others that are important but secondary, and then buy individual skills that fit your concept, maybe a group at 1 or 2 if you have everything there. And from there, buy gear for your remaining points. Let me give an example of what I mean.



You're making a technomancer hacker, and you decide you want to be a human, and go with the basic cyberadept template. You want to buy Resonance up to 5 because that is your primary attribute over all others, but you'll also want to pump up your other mentals, especially willpower, so 5 there too and 4 or 5 in the others. You want a good reaction for AR so you buy that to 3, and leave your agility and strength at 2. Body you decide 2 or 3 based on how much armor you want to wear. And buy a point or two of edge (3 or 4) to round you off if you want, or leave it at 2.

Next come skills. You'll want the cracking group (all of it) at 4. If you plan on using sprites a lot, buy tasking up to 3 or 4, otherwise only go to 1 or 2. Electronics group to 3 or 4, depending on how much you plan on doing the hardware/software stuff for your group and doing data searches. Beyond that you decide since you already have an ok charisma, you want to be a bit of a face, so you get Influence group to 2 or 3. Then you just get little bits here and there. Are you a TM who dives under tables when the shit hits the fan? put 2 or 3 points into dodge. Do you plan on fighting back a bit? Get a point or two in both dodge and some kind of ranged weapon. Want to patch yourself up after you take Matrix damage? A point or two in first aid is nice then. You get the idea.

Finally gear. Bought that point or two in first aid? Buy a rating 6 medkit, and you're able to be a decent doc (4 logic + 1 first aid + 6 equipment = 11 dice). Got a commlink to pretend you're a normal hacker? Buy some emotion sensor software and you become an impressive face (4 charisma + 2 Influence Group + 6 software bonus = 12 dice).

As you can see from my earlier post, those equipment bonuses can make a huge bonus. Imagine a dedicated elven face (7 or 8 charisma, 4 influence group) with specialties (+2 dice), the emotion software (+6) and implanted pheromones (+3)..... that's easily breaking 20 dice, and 9 of them come from equipment alone.


So wrapping up this LONG post, if you're wanting to do 2 people against 3 or 4 Halloweeners with maybe a Rager? I'd go with the 12-14 for primary specialty, 10-12 for secondary, and 6-8 for skills you're ok at. If you're wanting to handle wave after wave of them in whatever your means is, I'd go for the 16-20 range in primary (with or without equipment bonuses), 13-16 for secondary, and use equipment bonuses to get by in your only ok areas.

What is emotion software? Couldn't find a reference in the SR20 book Index or otherwise.

It is something that generally you might want to pretend doesn't exist. It is stupidly cheap software for your comlink or whatever that gives you rating extra dice in social tests. Fluff wise it is reading the subtle emotional cues from those around you and prompting you with appropriate responses. It is so cheap it is easy to assume that everyone has the max rating 6 on them at all times. Which means it is kind of a wash, but at the least it gives people in the somewhat normal human 3-4 dice range some glitch insurance.

Arsenal, pg 60.

It's strange in many ways.
1) It's cheap. It gets cheaper if you buy it installed in a robot toy which is even more broken and often disallowed.
2) It's meant for use in cameras but some/many GMs won't let it be run on cameras/cybereyes/goggles/etc so it gets run on commlinks.

Note that a standard camera or commlink can't run rating 6 software as is. It needs response/system increased. It's easier to assume the software is more prolific at 3 or 4. (Note that as far as I can tell, empathy software can't have the optimization option but, (and I don't have the heart to do this with my character), the commlink can be optimized to run the empathy software at +1. (Giving a +7 bonus with empathy 6.)

I agree!