One thing I've seen in many of the other forums I frequent, are stickied threads with useful (usually crunch) resources. Things like sample PCs, theoretically optimized PCs, neat combos, stuff like that. It makes sense that this forum doesn't have that (given the small size when compared to goliaths like the D&D forum, or many of the Warhammer forums), and the open ended nature of PC building in SR.
Still, for new players (or even veterans, or DMs looking to help/hinder their players), it'd be awesome to have a reference thread to check out how to *really* make an unkillable troll, or what a solid street-sam can look like.

Maybe there could be a section just for combos, and equipment.
There'd have to be some sort of standard, which would most easily be a legal starting character. But you'd also want a few maxed out builds to show if a physad really is better than a streetsam after infinite karma.

It'd of course be hard to organize, because of the huge variety of options, but having a place where forum goers to go and see what the real capstone for various areas is would be very useful.



Also, and this is a very D&D thing, but is there some standard for judging damage output? An equation for measuring DPR? If not, it would not be hard to put one together, and it would be a very useful thing.



Is this the sort of thing that the community is interested in? Would it get stickied and updated as new builds get put together, and old ones tweaked?

The idea of skill packs and gear packs or typical stuff for a skills set would be nice. Comlinks are a bit complicated. A few standard builds for those would be nice. I think I remember a PDF a long time ago with something like this. It was a combo of a few active and knowledge skills you would buy. Sort of like how types of contacts have a skills set that goes with a theme. I may be thinking of another game :\

One of the things probably limiting Threads like this is that specific topic threads tend to devolve away from their main topic very quickly. For example your topic devolved away from the main topic withing its own post.

The DPR thing is a bit more complicated in SR because it depends so much on hitting a target. You can easily calculate how many successes you will get on average with your dice pool. You could compare a number of builds against three columns: 5/5, 10/10, 20/20 armor to see how much damage if any you will do. Minus consideration for successes it is just the damage listing for weapons, number of attacks per turn you get. I guess that is why builds in shadownrun, even for street sams tend to go by the metric of dicepools.

The uh, other forums have a forum with posted homebrewed PACKS. At least one thread is gear-based but I can't say if there are commlink sets in there.

Here and here are some character archetype threads.

The optimization threads are generally only useful as theoretical exercises, especially since a lot of those builds depend on exploitation of rules loopholes, twisted interpretations of ambiguous rules, and a GM who lets you get away with it. Either that, or they are "how much can you get for X" builds that are less concerned with actually viable characters.

Generally, dice pools and multiple initiative passes are the most important measures of a character's combat effectiveness, but Shadowrun is a pretty tactical game, so a character who is a glass cannon (capable of dealing massive damage, but easily taken down by attacks from others) or a one-trick pony will have a shorter lifespan than a slightly less optimized character who has shored up his weak areas a bit more.

Theoretical exercises are good though. When Johnny Noobsauce thinks "I wanna play Razor-hands! He's a super lethal robot samurai", and then bellies up to the table with a 5 AGI 5 Exotic Weapons PC, he needs help.




I agree with all of that. But it's useful to know how lethal a PC needs to be in order to blow through a squad of Renraku Red, or if they can barely tangle with some AAA ganger wannabes.

In that context (rather than "How can I get 28 in pistols?"), I agree. The way I see it, most things in SR4 do have hard maximums. Right there, or close to it, is where you have the best in the world. It goes down in increments from there, and the runners fit somewhere on that spread of ability. For the robot samurai guy, you can tell him that a base skill and Attribute make him top notch - among unaugmented humans. But the other cyborgs are going to have customized cyberlimbs with increased Agility, for a stat of 9 or so (gotta keep up with the meatier sammies with that muscle toner, ya know), and they will also have reflex recorders and possibly cyberlimb optimization to increase their skill, too. Well, not all of them - but certainly all of the "super lethal robot samurai" ones.


Fortunately, they do have stats in the books for a lot of generic mooks, and the PC archetypes can be used for certain types such as gun adepts or street samurai. It really depends on the campaign, though. It's hard to quantify how much you need, when 12 dice can be plenty for one campaign, while 20 dice might barely be enough in another campaign.

The skill rating descriptions are not useful. They have a bit too much hyperbole at the upper end, and they don't really convey how good someone is, since the skill is only about a third to a half of the dice pool. There have been some threads giving ratings by the entire dice pool. But I have not found those that satisfactory, either (although they are a big improvement). The problem is that some skills (such as combat or social skills) have a lot of relatively cheap dice pool boosts, and other skills... don't. So a 12 in one dice pool might be awesome, while a 12 in another dice pool might be more middling.

What works better for me is to find the hard maximum, assume that some NPC is at that level or near it, and work down from there, figuring out where the average starting runner can fall on that scale. For instance, a street samurai with Agility: 9, Strength: 7, unarmed combat: 6 with a reflex recorder and a specialization in martial arts, three levels of the martial arts quality for +3DV, wired reflexes: 2, and ceramic bone lacing. This guy would be considered extremely tough - he would win bar fights single-handedly, and rarely run into a big challenge from a single opponent.

He would not be unique in his badassery, though. He would have peers - underworld enforcers who are personal expediters for their bosses, company men or paramilitary troopers focused heavily on the martial arts, successful pit fighters, augmented gang bosses who got there by beating up their rivals, and melee-oriented street samurai such as himself. He would also have people tougher than him - elite members of groups such as the Wildcats or Red Samurai, full-body cyborgs with all the bells and whistles, multi-initiate adepts walking a path of martial arts mastery, UFC (augmented division) contenders, and so on.

When you have roughly figured out where most NPCs would go, it is easier to figure out where a PC would fit in. The guy with 5 Agility and 5 exotic weapon skill, you could tell him - you're about the level of the Red Samurai Lieutenant's unarmed combat ability, although obviously far less rounded in skills (keep in mind that the sample mooks for things like Red Samurai and Tir Ghosts are a bit too lightly augmented, in my opinion - the published adventures tend to make such characters tougher), and slightly more skilled than, say an underworld posse member or a veteran cop. You're twice as good as a Humanis Lieutenant or punk ganger. So overall, you're someone who can handle one or two punks, or go toe to toe with a tougher guy. But you're not as good as a typical street samurai, much less the more optimized build that another PC is likely to come up with.