I had idea for character, I took the Corporate Wage Slave NPC stats and gave him Edge of 8, and made him physical Adept who's abilities can all be attributed to Luck (Combat Sense, Free Fall, Spell Resistance).

Any Idea's on how I can make him even better?
Is it possible for a physical adept to not be aware of his abilities?

Concept: Corporate Wage Slave Amateur (Extremely Lucky) Hacker (Cool! a backdoor into Zurich Orbital Bank!")
John Ryan "Insert Clever Street Name Here"
Age 32
Average Height, Weight


Attributes (270BP) Rating
Body 2
Agility 3
Reaction 2
Strength 2
Charisma 3
Intuition 3
Logic 3
Willpower 3
Edge 8
Essence 6
Magic 6
Initiative 5
Initiative Passes 1

Positive Qualities (35BP)
Adept 5
Lucky 20
Astral Chameleon 5
Guts 5

Negative Qualities (35BP)
Day Job 15
SINner 5
Sensitive System 15

Adept Abilities
Combat Sense 6
Free Fall (12m) 6
Spell Resistance 3

Skills (80BP) Rating
Computer 2
Data Search 2
Hardware 2
Software 2
Hacking 2
Etiquette 2
Pistols 2
Dodge 2
Perception 2
Pilot Ground Craft 2
Infiltration 2
Automatics 1

Knowledge Skills (18 Free)(2BP)
Mitsuhama Corporation 2
Business 2
Corporate Politics 2
Matrix Games 3
Trid Shows (Shadowrun +2)3
Politics 2
Sports (Urban Brawl +2) 2

Language Skills
English N
Japanese 2

Gear
Seven Leaf Clover
Shadowrun MMORPG
Miracle Shooter
Plasteel Restraints
Commlink (5/5/5/5)
All common Programs Rating 5
Stealth-5, Exploit-5
Vitals Protector
Lined Coat
Colt Manhunter w/ 2 clips Reg Ammo
HK MP-5TX w/ 2 clips Reg Ammo
Flash Bang Grenade

Vehicle
Ares Humvee

Contacts (34BP)
Jessica (Simstar/Supermodel/Wife) Con6 Loy6
Angel (Free Guidance Spirit) Con2 Loy6
Faith (Fixer) Con5 Loy4
Holly (Fox Shapeshifter/Stripper/Wife's Girlfriend) Con2 Loy3

Custom Lifestyle (11000 month)
Perfect Roommate-Wife (High Lifestyle)

Awakened can't take the Magic Resistance Quality.


sure, if he never got to make that test the name i forgot. and he never met someone who assensed him. Both contradict working for a corp as a wageslave. They have better use for these people...

[quote name='Makki' date='Apr 15 2011, 07:21 PM' post='1061160']
Awakened can't take the Magic Resistance Quality.

Opps 8/

Holy ba'gez'us man, what is with the contacts?!

Also what Makki said, since the first thing I noticed was the Magic Resistance Quality. Unless your playing in a low powered game, this guy will be drastically under powered. Sure he can add a bunch of dice with Edge, but there is a limit on how often you can use it. Even using Edge he is only throwing 15 dice while hacking. With 400bp you can build a hacker throwing 12+ dice before edge.

BUT, they can take the Spell Resistance Adept Quality, which is what it looks like he did. Unless, of course, it was changed since it was originally posted.

He's LUCKY! I changed the Qualities (20th Anniversary Ed. Shadowrun has Magic Resistance Quality on two pages, looks like it ends on one and then continues saying magic users couldn't take it. I missed that one)

So, Changed it... Got it.

I can see a corp having use for a Mystic Adept or a Magician, but a physical Adept?

Head of security?

A few things.

1. Buying edge to 8 and magic to 6 is really hard on the BP. Drop each by one and invest in other useful attributes. Much, MUCH more efficient use of your points.
2. Combat sense 6 is overkill. Drop it by 3 and pick up improved reflexes.
3. Free fall is way limited in application. Improve your non-combat skills or something. Way better use of PP.
4. Get bioware. Seriously, get bioware. Muscle augmentation/toner, cerebral booster, and trauma dampener are the top of the list.

meh this guy isn't really a former wage slave.

What did he DO for a corporation? I can't figure that out.

TPS reports.

When players at my table make characters I ask them what their concept is before doing anything else. Then I ask about background. If the numbers I see support what they say their goal was (often times at the expense of min/maxing), then I usually give them something (like a free positive quality or something).

Not every concept really functions that well in the game. Sure, it's a neat idea - an ordinary schlub, but super-lucky. But in practice, he's an ordinary schlub in a vocation filled with skilled, ruthless professional corporate saboteurs and covert ops specialists. And his big schtick is that eight times, he can roll about as many dice as a typical shadowrunner would.

Mr. Lucky, as originally posited by Cain, was a character with skill in the high teens in pistols, and acceptable dice pools in most other areas. The hyper-lucky character works by being able to function without that high Edge most of the time. Then he has it when he needs to send a normal dice pool into the high teens, or his pistols skill into the stratosphere.

This character could still work, just not in a "traditional" SR4 game. He would be fine in a game of similar quirky characters new to the shadows.

I would use karmagen for a build like this and softcap Edge at 6 - no Lucky and no Edge 7 is 55 karma, or another skill group at 4. You can only max out one attribute anyway.

Then I´d amp up the skill level and attributes with leftover karma - there should be a ton. There are qualified people amongst the wageslave population, and for the reasons Glyph gave I´d build one of those.

IF you buy magic to 6, spend it on stuff useful for running. Combat Sense 6 would be nice if it went with better Reaction and Dodge. Throwing eight dice on the defense with Body 2 as backup is not much. Free-Fall is VERY cool but a gimmick without the Athletics ability to go into high places. Your Spell Resistance only helps if a group mage provides Counterspelling dice. How about awakening as a mystical adept, gaining true counterspelling and access to Improve (Attribute) spells?

Edge doesn't count against that limit since it's a special attribute (if that's what you meant).

Under karmagen only one attribute may be maxxed. For BP-gen the sentence is under the header for Physical/Mental attributes, so it can be seen as not limiting Special Attributes. I forfeit the option, the last point is hardly worth it anyway.

I Pitted this character against the Street Samurai Arch type, with both characters using their edge, This guy won every time. Might have been different outcome had I used optional edge rules, but still... And one of the most important parts of being a shadowrunner is your Contacts, and he has 34 Build Points worth.

Most PCs created by players who know WTF they are doing usually outclasses any of the archetypes. I am not sure if it means that you have read the rules and understood them or the guys that created the archetypes... did not.

The SR4A Street Samurai does much better in that regard. Still, the true test is pitting this char and the archtype against a runners opposition. The mix of opponents depends on the campaign, but I assume you`ll find that even eight enhanced rolls can be spend within one combat.

Like I said, it depends on the type of campaign. Sure, he can go head-to-head with at least one of the standard archetypes (although note that the archetypes, for good or bad, are far from optimized). But that's one combat, where his staying power is not really being tested. Eight Edge can get you through one fight, easy. But shadowrunners often run a gauntlet of difficult tasks and persistent opposition to achieve their goals and escape in one piece. And again, like power level, this, too, depends on the campaign. In a less frantically-paced campaign, where you only need to roll eight or less times a session, and then your Edge refreshes, this character would be much more viable.

some archetypes tend to roll far less times than others. A matrix char, especially a TM, can get wound hands from all the dice rolling, while a Face can get away with 5-8 dice rolls per evening. Combat chars can be rolling all night, or never touch the dice except for a successful infiltration roll, in case everything goes as planned. So, I agree with what you said. That said, I play a Edge 7 Face, most of the times struggling to spend all points in one run.

What I think would be more interesting would be to answer "What kind of Wage Slave?". A Wage slave could be anything from an accountant, a security guy, an IT kind of guy, a normal bureaucrat, or even a janitor.

I think this concept might be fun to play, but I would make sure that he has skills to level 3 for the normal skills someone of his wage slave field, and then perhaps some computer/hacker skills at 3-5.... skills that someone who might just be interested might have. Or even, maybe he's just a fan of shadowrunning, and so has knowledge skills, but not real skills.

That combined with your edge/unknown adepts (or even mage) skills, he might be able to get involved with a shadow team, even though he would not be super effective. I don't see any reason why you need to min-max every character to be the most efficient possible. Playing a slightly handy capped char can be fun. Plus, it would be hysterical if you could make your accountant(or whatever) skills useful to the group. This reminds me of the movie Old School, where the guys are dumb, but they defeat the bureaucracy at the school, because they are just really good at filling out paperwork.

By the way, you could sure be an adept and not know it. Even working at a corp, they would not have a mage walking around assensing in every cubical to see if these average worker might be awakened. Especially if he is Lucky, he may have never been noticed by someone that might tell him.

This ^

One of the player's in my game is playing a Private Eye character. The character is a human with no cyber and no magic, but has an edge of 7. The character is the face of the group in many ways; most contacts, decent charisma (though not as much as the Gypsy Shaman that people don't trust), etc. The character is also pretty handy with his revolvers. He is basically a character with a lot of BP put into skills and contacts since there wasn't a high resource cost, and zero magic/tm cost.

In my game, there is not an abundance of dice rolling. In fact, the first few runs this character was there for he didn't spend more than 3 or 4 points. As he came to realize how much he could support the team he fell into a jack-of-all-trades support mentality and began using edge more. One of the challenges I now face as a GM is that I occasionally need to set up situations where he is forced to spend edge faster so that he feels vulnerable; something we've all enjoyed.

For some games, depending on the player and the gm, a jack-of-all trades character with high edge can really get a lot done. It can also be a lot of fun for everyone involved. My only comment with regard to the OP's build was that I did not see how the BP expenditure matched the stated background.