[Moved from wrong forum. Sorry, not sure how it ended up in bug reports.....]

I'm returning to Shadowrun after quite a while. I haven't played since high school - it's probably been 10 years, we were playing 3rd edition I think. Anyway, I'm starting up again with some of those old high school friends and am a bit over my head in character creation I've gotten soft playing D&D 4e

I'd love some help/input/general pointers. Our group is pretty small - 3 (with a sometimes 4th) runners + the GM. Our group needs a hacker and some extra long range fire support, so I'm thinking of taking over those roles. This is where I'm a bit stuck. What would be the best way to go about making a character such that they are proficient at both. The hacking should be #1 priority, but sniping needs to be a solid secondary ability.

We're using the standard 400BP. Since it's been a while for all of us we'll be starting off with Food Fight to get back in the swing of things, but I have no idea where our GM will be taking us from there.

Anyway, I'd really appreciate some direction, recommended skills, pitfalls to avoid, etc! Thank you!

Well you have two choices. A combat hacker or a hacker rigger. A combat hacker is pretty self explanatory. It's a samy with hacking skills or a hacker with sami skills depending on which you put more points into. A hacker rigger would be less in you're face and all the long range fire support would come from the drones and not you.

So would you rather the drones do the fire support or you?

Well, there is always a place for a Hacker who is proficient with a sniper rifle as well - that's good long range support both in the matrix and in the meat. It's harder to go VR at need, but that's not the end of the world.

I'm liking the Hacker/Sniper more I think. Any suggestions on key skills I shouldn't miss but might be overlooking?

You'll want Cracking Group at 4, which costs 40 BPs but gets you hacking, e-war, and cyberwarfare all at 4. You'll want Longarms at 6 probably. Hackers rely on programs, so get all common programs at 6 and most hacking at 3 or 5, depending on how cost effective you want to be. Rating 3 programs are considerably cheaper than Rating 4-6. Honestly, riggign is pretty nice because you can get ground and air drones, and with gunnery, you can use any weapon, pistols, machine guns, missile launchers, sniper rifles, whatever.

Edit - for the sniper hacker, I'd go adept, and pump your hacking skill and longarms skills. Probably get some improved reflexes for extra IPs (initative passes), that way you can hack in AR and shoot.

Idk, the best combat hacker I saw was mundane and used Move By Wires 2 with pirated Skill softs. Not only was he good at what he did but with those skill softs he was really well rounded.

I'd not want to speak ill of anyone else's GMing, but if he was getting away with using pirated skillsofts without some interesting side effects, then there was a problem. There ought to be a side effect to getting those ridiculously steep discounts.

That said, one of the first things I thought of when I saw the OP was skillwires.

The only thing you can do is put bugs in them, bugs can be removed by a good programmer. We had a Technomancer with data sprites. Enough said lol. After a certain point the GM just kind of decided to stop putting bugs in them because he knew the TM could just debug them so it was a pointless dice roll.

Also, remember that Skillsoft clusters are your friend.

DocWagon Paramedic
Skillsofts: DocWagon Procedures 3 (Know), First Aid 3 (Active),
Medicine 2 (Active)

You get First Aid 3, and Medicine 2, for the cost of 3 slots.

Knight Errant Self-Defence
Skillsofts: Dodge 3 (Active), Unarmed Combat 3 (Active)

Whiskey Noir
Skillsofts: Forensics 4 (Know), Intimidation 3 (Active),
Shadowing 2 (Active)

And they only cost 14,400 Straight up, with availability ranging from 6 to 8.

Design other ones with your GM that would fit in with your campaign, and not be broken.
(avoid the 4/4/4/4 cluster)

A personal favorite custom cluster was what we referred to as the Ranger cluster which was Parachuting 4, Survival 4, and Tracking 4. You don't realize how useful those skills are till you use all three in the course of one mission. You track the target, escape by parachuting from a building with a specialized parachute, and then survive the night on your own as the rest of your team couldn't jump out the window like you and you're stuck surviving in a bad part of town to injured to move till morning and have no way of calling for help. The mission was mostly a disaster but parachuting out of an Aztechnology building is great for you're street cred.