Good Day!

I'm aiming to create a mundane security/weapons specialist with as little augmentations as possible, and right now I'm in a desperate need of an advice from more experienced players. Is this lind of the character even has the right to live or lacking additional IPs from either magic or augmentation, he will severely lack in effectiveness? (That's my major consern right now as my personal experience says that IPs rule the battlefield).
What are the options for such character if there are any?

Thanks in advance.

Well the game system by design iencourages people to go magic or tech as ther'es really little inducement to do neither (outside of roleplay which is reason enough but not setting correct). You can squeeze a couple IP's out of drugs. I have a character who is using a datajack (or blech, trodes) plus a cheap comlink with an agent. Installed on it. The agent responds to simple phrases (which is a free action) and triggers the autoinjectors in the characters clothing for Cram and Jazz. Just be prepared to pass some addiction tests.

You can always try to do something like adrenaline surge and just be really really effective right out of the gate. Going first is quite important. You'll still want more IPs, but you can follow my common suggestion of cram, jazz, or kamikaze. If you need more IPs, you could spend edge for that extra pass (you'll have a high edge right?). You also go command rigger and use a drone for lots of IPs that way.

For better or for worse, SR is a game where you buy your awesome with BP/karma or cash. Overall, you'll got a uphill struggle.

All the combat skills fill basically the same primary niche: Roll agility+skill to hurt people. So spending points on a bunch of combat skills like the corebook specialist is a recipe for mediocrity even with half-decent 'ware choices. I suggest you tweak the idea to lean more towards the security specialist/spotter side of the equation. A character with points in Hardware, Automatics, Perception, sensory 'ware, a manatech dealing fixer and a couple sensor drones is a helluva lot easier to make a viable part of the team than some unaugmented goober who just has Firearms and Close Combat at 4.

What they are saying is generally true. In order to be a really effective mundane with bare-minumum augmentations, you need to how to use the system, and rely on the GM's open-mindedness.

On GM openmindedness, I've been working on a Martial Maneuver (Arsenal, 158) to allow mundanes without cyber a little more flexibility with IPs.

Martialist reflexes
The character is capable of moving extremely quickly, Delivering multiple punches and kicks to many opponents at once. In game terms, this Maneuver grants the practitioner an additional IP each time it is taken. The maximum number of times this maneuver is available is 3, or the highest number of ranks in any one martial art the Character possesses the quality for. These IPs do not stack with IPs from other sources, and have drawbacks of their own.
For each round the character uses this ability, he takes Fatigue damage equal to number of times he has taken this maneuver. If a character has 6 boxes of fatigue or more, he cannot use this maneuver until he rests.

@OP: If you want minimum augmentation (High Essence) go with a synaptic booster level 1 or 2 depending on how you feel about spending money. The booster will give you extra IP's without blowing your Essence to hell and gone.



Hunter... I don't know what to say. It sounds nice, but why would ANYONE want to get 'Ware or magic to boost their IPs when they can have "Act without Thought"? Most fights are not that long (don't last longer than 1 or 2 rounds) and you can rest between uses. Hell, if you're a mage, just use a Heal spell and you're good to go.

For what it's worth I wouldn't put anything in that rewards people for not taking magic or tech, you want to be the special snowflake that's groovy, you have to live with that choice.

If that is in relation to my post, I don't feel the ability is a reward. If anything, it could be downright suicidal (If you need to take that much fatigue damage, it restricts other thngs you can do, as well. Like running, and swimming.)

Unless you have bi-cardiac. That gives you two extra boxes of fatigue damage.


I agree with you 100%. My combat medic mage, not only has magic, but he also has 2 points of 'Ware.

You may be correct. It's a work in progress, among other things I've considered. Of course, I am also looking at it from the perspective of my own setting, which I use both optional rules for slower healing (Body -wounds for P, will or body-wounds for S) and I limit Heal to working within the Force rules (the attempted damage =Force. If force>magic attribute drain is physical. Cannot attempt to heal damage greater then magic x2. But, the drain is F/2-2.

I can certainly see your side. In a standard game, it is a killer ability. It's also a house rule, and can much more easily be adapted, if allowed at all (change the fatigue damage to physical damage, for example). It's not everyone's bag of tea, just giving an option to think about.

Basically, you should just be aware that you're paying a significant amount of effectiveness to be a Special Snowflake. If you're cool with that, don't worry about optimization because you're already shooting yourself in the foot in that regard. If you aren't, play something else.

Remember your team-role. You are the support guy, you use commons sense stuff like tactics to save the day.

Also, do combat drugs when the bullets start flying your way.

I liked in 3rd edition how like small unit tactics could give you an initiativ bonus (and hence extra IP's).

You can be quite effective with even just 1 IP.

Devote some money for Drones. Not as a Rigger, but more like a Robot Commander. A Fly-Spy in a good angle versus some foes in cover means you can use it as a spotter.

With a Grenade Launcher and a variety of grenades you can provide smoke/thermal smoke, big distractions and heavy enough firepower to scare off some corpsec. You can even be the Suppressive Cover guy. Dual wield some SMGs and you can lay down two suppressive fire zones that are overlapping.

Drugs are also a good choice provided you're willing to risk addiction.

Firstly, thanks for all replies and ideas. That's quite a number of options, and coming here for advice certainly was a good idea!


True. But setting-wise Irish Tir elf who was unlucky to be born without magic would be an example. Tir culture highly disapproves of augmentation, but as far as I understand, not everyone gets to be awakened.
But my decision was more influenced by the fact, that we already got a bunch of spellcasters and near-zero Essence guys, so I wanted to make a different character.



That's the whole point. I'm ready to pay for being that special snowflake, but I don't want to be a burden, as I have such example already. In one of our groups we have an augmentation-free mundane Face, and I sometimes find him lacking in possible actions, despite Face dealings being in my opinion the least augmentation/magic dependent role. And I go into combat side of things, the gap would be even more obvious.

So I'm ready to look for alternative tactics, less -ware and spell dependent actions. Ideally I want to find a role and means of fulfilling it that wouldn't be hampered by this 'purity'. But being just a litlle behind is not big deal. On the other hand, if all I can possibly so is to be that snowflake, I'd better start looking for another character concept.


So, to sum up the ideas, I can go for drugs, drones (idea which I like the most), alpha+ bioware, manatech and some advantages like Initiative boost or buying IPs with edge (playing a mage before, I forgot about that, thanks for the reminder!), which is morу like a Tir Ghost to me. That's probably the way to go!

And one question about manatech - is it possible to get spell effects as manatech?

Not as far as I'm aware. The best you are going to get as far as spell-like abilities is using magical compounds, like Shade or Animal Tongue, or somehow conning a spirit into service.

Bugger. Because having spell-tech would certainly solve a lot of problems

Yes it would. And make magic far too overpowered (especially with how much people on here seem to think it is anyway.)

That said, there should be more of a defence against magic, for personal use.

Well, I would certainly second the notion that magic is powerful. Maybe not allpowerful, but given a bit of time to prepare for the encounter, my Mage could achieve almost anything and was restricted only by the amount of spells avaliable to him.

But that's probably offtopic, and to stay on topic, I should add that I can squeeze a bit more from the GM in terms of avaliable gear than normally allowed [queue angel-face smiley here]

Things like Senseware and Headware are nearly mandatory for EVERY character (at least the fluff suggests that). Besides that, most veteran employees in the security branche WILL have some sort of initiative boost because the opposition WILL go this way also. Have a look at standard cybersuites for security corps or example grunts in this field of employment. Part of the dystopian theme of Shadowrun is that in order to survive you have to sacrifice at least part of your humanity to even have a chance.

Even non-awakened Irish-Tir-Elves lean towards augmentation. The fluff just suggests that they try to have it as covered up as possible to hit the "back to nature"-theme. Hands down.. do you really think the Danaan families would NOT want their security to be top notch?

You can be a VR joystick rigger who wouldn't be all that much better with tons of augmentation. You almost certainly want some augmentation, but you'd be looking at more like 2 Essence or so, rather than almost all of it.

How it works:

You want a good Commlink with a high response. You want a good Command program. High rated command programs are not super-duper expensive. You want on your commlink Response Enhancers and Simsense Accelerator, and Optimized (Command), and you want the gear to hot-sim. You want implanted a Simsense Booster (.5 essence), Reflex Recorders (Infiltration, Shadowing, Perception) (.3 essence), and an Attention Coprocessor (.3 essence), for .95 essence of stuff.

You yourself want high Intuition, high Gunnery (this should probably be your 6), Infiltration, Shadowing, and Perception. You really, really want Codeslinger: Control Device. You should probably have at least some Pilot Ground Craft and Pilot Aircraft. You can get a lot of mileage out of First Aid because you can Control Device a medkit and roll First Aid+Command.

Other than that, you can more or less do whatever else you want with your remaining points. High edge is probably a good investment. The only thing that could make you better at joystick rigging is being an adept and having Improved Ability for some of your skills, but it wouldn't make you dramatically better.

Ideally you would stay in the van, hotsim, and Remote Control (or Issue Command) to drones, and try to avoid physical combat entirely. You can be perfectly effective while doing this. If you are forced to fight physically I recommend drugs and/or running for your life.

Fair point, notes taken!


I assumed they would have 'lesser' metas wire themselves to hell while they, true masters of life, reap the benefit


Thanks for the input! I'll look into all these options, maybe it is what I need.


I was thinking about first strike.
Assuming all goes well, I have my drones, I fight with a team and so on. Then I have a role. I can support other combatant, create destractions, be a spotter/coordinator and so on. But it will, sooner or later, come on the other side of the lucky coin. Sometimes things go bad, they always go bad. That's where I need to take down a guy or two. As it is worst-case scenario, I can't run away, help is not coming and the guy is pretty bad-ass himself. So I need to take him down or at least disable myself, in as little action as possible. Assuming I can win the initiative, is there a viable alpha-strike in the mechanic?


And an unrelated question - are there anywhere solid numbers on capatilisations of corporations depending on their rating?

Okay, so more what can you do to be ready if you get into a physical fight in your meat body without help?

First, try to avoid this by using a Rigger Cocoon. Another good idea is to make sure you have an armed drone near your physical body at all times - you can Control Device it to kill people much more effectively than you can kill people yourself, even when only in AR. But in case you can't avoid it:

1) Own and wear proper armor. FFBA and Softweave, then make sure you have as much as you can put on encumbrance-wise. Especially if your goal is more not getting killed than winning fights, you're better off focusing on having a good Body score and nice but inobvious armor than anything else.

2) The easiest way to be effective is to use a one-handed weapon like an SMG with a Cyberarm that's been customized and enhanced to have maxed Agility. Even if you suck (0 Automatics), you can get a modified Ingram SuperMach with enough RC to do a long wide/long wide or a full wide, have a 9 agility arm, smartlink for another 2, and be rolling 10 dice and penalizing dodge. Use Stick-and-shock or chem rounds loaded with something like DMSO+Slab, or DMSO+Gamma-scopalamine, or something else similarly nasty (that replaces base damage). Of course this requires you have a cyberarm.

3) Jazz and Cram are the way to get extra IPs as a mundane, and they stack.

4) Wear chemically sealed armor and drop Chem Grenades loaded with chemicals as in 2. Don't dick around with inhalation vector toxins, those are much easier to defend against.

5) 2 and 4 lead you to hitting someone with a chemical attack and then waiting until the pass ends for them to drop. Thermal Smoke grenades and Flashpaks are a good way to buy time.

6) If you don't want a cyberarm, you can get mehhh dicepools with Automatics anyways. Focus on getting a lot of recoil compensation together - unaugmented, you can scrape up 8 RC on an Ares Alpha. Assuming 2 agility, Automatics 1, specialization in Assault Rifles, and Smartlink, you can roll 7 dice, and do long wide/short wide, which will at least have a pretty good chance of hitting most people. You can also use drugs to pump your agility, although if you take a 5-drug cocktail on a regular basis expect some addiction rolls.

Thanks for the imput!

And what about martial arts? Are they a viable choice, at least as an addition to other abilities?

doublepost, sorry

Yeah, I'm afraid that's not really true unless your GM magical tea parties social encounters and doesn't reward the use of disguises-- the Face, as the name implies, is the member of the group who is most likely to have to get out there and be seen on camera or walk right up to that guard, after all. In fact, I'd argue that Face is one of the roles that stands the most to gain at chargen from having magical abilities and augmentations simply because they stack up so well and the social augs take up relatively little essence even if you go whole hog. So unless your GM magical tea parties everything or otherwise sets the dice thresholds low augmented and magically active characters will always have a serious, serious edge in that arena. The only thing an unaugmented mundo will have on a social adept is maybe more points to spend on contacts. Even that may not be true, however, given that high attributes and skills cost more than Tailored Pheromones or a Kinesics, Con, and Improved Ability combo, so it's possible to be roughly as good as the mundo for cheaper, at which point the augmented guy can then take his savings and spend them on contacts. Really, the only role that I felt ever really worked fine as completely unaugmented was the Hacker back before Augmentation or Unwired ever hit, since ultimately they were still gear dependent (if not implant dependent) and Edge is very powerful for them. Riggers are similar but have always at least strongly benefited from a Control Rig.

Martial arts are potentially useful but probably not in the way you're thinking. The closest you're going to come to being good at physical combat is using attacks you can Wide Burst with; you don't want to sink a lot of points into trying to be good at melee combat in your meat body. If you like the idea of martial arts there are some uses; the trick is to gab things that don't just help you fight physically, but also help you with guns and joystick rigging.:

Krav Maga's "Take Aim as a free action" trick is useful since you can use it both in the meat and while joystick rigging. Ninjutsu can give you +1 die to Infiltration tests which again applies to both meat and joystick rigging - only do this if you already have Infiltration 4, though, because it's 5 bp for that point. Pentjak-Silat and Wildcat can both give you +1 die to called shots to increase damage, which is a frequently useful option; this does require a free action, though, so you should probably take either this or Krav Maga's take aim as a free action, not both. You will be mostly making Full Burst attacks as a complex action, so you can spend one free action to call a shot for anywhere from +1 to hit, +1 DV to -2 to hit, +4 DV.

Manuever-wise, I wouldn't spit on Watchful Guard even if it's only 1 dice. If your GM will let you use Vicious Blow with Stick-and-Shock ammunition, then it provides a hilarious way of tasing vehicles and drones to death; I think as written it does allow that but your GM might not like that one and it seems a bit fishy to me. Full Offense is nice because the penalty only stops you from defending against melee attacks, but it appears to work with all attacks including ranged ones. Also, if you are joysticking a cheap drone, it might be worth it anyways. Multi-Strike might or might not be useful - I have SR4A, so I can't tell what it's meant to refer to. If it only works with melee, no. If it applies to the use of Full Bursts to hit multiple targets, it might be worth 2 bp. If it also applies to using an AE attack like a grenade, that's nice too.

That's another thing about my homebrew maneuver, the Martial Arts qualities generally don't offer anything particularily helpful, while counting against the quality limit. And when they are helpful, they really only help when using parts of several disciplines. Not very attractive an option, if you were to ask me.

Yeah, most of the martial arts styles synergize VERY badly with themselves, but some of them synergize quite well with other styles. Also, a lot of the abilities are just plain awful.

...and then there's Krav Maga which is so much cheese i've seen it get martial arts flat banned at a number of tables.

With Mundane, get some stealth skills and Longarms or Archery. Also a character with a really high edge can do wonders.

With Mundane, get some stealth skills and Longarms or Archery. Also a character with a really high edge can do wonders.

And here I was trying to sound diplomatic
If 'magic tea parties' being steamlined railroaded scenes, then yes, that's exactly the point. Can't say much about augmentation, but as far as magic goes, there are just too many effective ways to influence social interactions to miss it.



Seems I got the right impression of Krav Maga
And maneovres like Finishing Blow/Set Up aren't worth the effort?

Well, by magical tea party I mostly meant the gm essentially tossing the dice out the window for a while rather than just railroading, a situation that is a pretty common occurrence with social situations in many games. Besides, even if the GM plays things to the letter there's still a degree of variability given that how much a net hit is "worth" is still left to GM discretion. I don't even really dislike magical tea party all that much, actually. Hell, the most sublime "gaming" experience I've ever had was a round of Munchausen after a few drinks.

In our group it's almost always 'roleplay now, roll later', with rolls affected by the roleplay itself (actually I'm the main propent of this style), so stats are vital, but sometimes it's possible to cut some angles.
Still, having a more options is having more options, even if we don't roll a single die

Finishing Blow is for melee only. Melee is sketchy in general and not a good idea for your character.

Set Up is crap. If you can Set Up succesfully, you could have hit them. Why would you trade a hit for a small number of extra dice on your next shot?

I suppose there might be some extreme edge cases where Set Up wasn't a trap, but it's not worth 2 BP. If it was free, I can't think of the last time I would even have considered using it.

That is how I've played so far, but I'm not in total agreement with it. Personally, I would prefer if all the characters (NPC's included, though it would be faster to buy hits or do the actual rolls for many of them before hand) roll Ettiquette, and then the GM uses that to guage how the character should act (based on the actual character's personality, of course. But sometimes, even a typically rude asshat will have a good day and be all smiles, or a happy go lucky guy will havea string of bad luck when he wakes up, putting him i na foul mood). Then, use that to guage the penalties that may occur on the rolls later (con, negotiation and intimidate, most likely)

In my opinion, this will also be an interesting circumstance of players roleplaying their character having an off day.

Martial arts are a great way to make a mundane combat worthy. There are options that let you crank up your DV (i think capped at +3) which can make your damage comparable to bone lacing cyberguys with higher strength than you.

Also, you can use Ninjutsu technics to fight better in the dark, and utilize vision hampering grenades, like thermal smoke etc. to give yourself a slight advantage. Remember, vision penalties are halved in melee, so make em blind then get in close and punch em where it counts >:)

Strongly disagree with calling it "combat worthy"-- it's really more like a half-decent last resort option if you've been relieved of your weapons. Melee just isn't a very good primary shtick in shadowrun* and compounding it by restricting yourself to the most expensive ways of being good at melee makes for rough sledding. Taking Unarmed or Clubs along with the Gymnastics skill isn't a terrible character feature but if you go that route I'd rather suggest concentrating on the Krav utility bonuses, the ability to deal damaging disarms on Full Parry or jacking up your Block or Parry skill so you can get back to your gun rather than expect to be punking people in hand to hand.


*I do not even seriously consider melee frontliner to be a complete role on a lot of teams-- anything above low powered street level games and you should be able to do something other than just say "I violence it if it is close enough," full stop. The characters I've seen succeed with hand to hand weren't good characters because of their mad melee skillz but because of an overpowering advantage in durability or stealth. It's a lot easier to get away with bringing a knife to a gunfight if you happen to be all but immune to heavy pistols.

Are you talking about essence or nuyen here?

The 'Nullhead' is an old concept character I've posted a while ago.



I've created another character based on the 'Nullhead' emphasizing the rigger part a bit more and tossing in a face, but I have no character sheet in English. I think the sniper/rigger path is the way to go for mudans w/o ware. Their huge advantage's that they can pass any security checkpoint w/o seting off an alarm.

Essence. As I mentioned, I can get a bit more stuff out of GM for this one (the rumor is we'll need it and it still won't enough )

This is very much true. The only effective melee characters I've seen have been effective because they were outrageously tough street samurai, and melee forces people to pay attention to you.

That can largely be done while having bioware, too.

But i really like the blandness / erased combo, one of the few themes that fit for a human. Generally, i dont see why one would want to play such a character though. You can be low-dog with implants as well



If you just dont want to spend the BP, have a look over here -
Consider this, the ware of a ganger of mine:

Used Wired Reflexes 2
Muscle Replacement 2
Attention Coprocessor 3

While that does eat up all your essence it is only 35k. And it's really as "low-dog" as it gets. The boni are great though.

Show me a better way to invest 14 Karma

Thanks for the character idea!

As long as you're not in a group of gung-ho prime runner types I could easily see such concepts working-- especially with karmagen-- since they tend to be pretty gadget oriented and for better or worse Shadowrun is a rather gear oriented game. As I implied earlier, the trick is to avoid eschewing nuyen advancement entirely and to pack some tricks that don't give a rat's ass what your attributes are. If you're going to be a mundo then you should consider being a very technical boy. Knowing a few people in high places doesn't hurt either. I've played a character that was mostly a mundo and he got by basically by being a Trust Fund kiddie/small-time fixer.

In mirrorshades and trenchcoat games, faces with strong unarmed combat are very good too. Social infil can and will leave you without guns. A character able to get in under the radar AND retain some combat ability can give you a lot of options. There is also bath house negotiations or getting padded down and having your guns removed before a meeting, where unarmed combat is also very good.

I think the system is right in leaving melee at low power levels. It is totally unrealistic for melee to equal firearms, and I think there was no reason to add the martial arts DV increases. It is completely unrealistic.

The Reason WAS to make melee more equal in usefullness to firearms . . Also, in a game with magic and cyberware, it's best not to complain about stuff being unrealistic . .

As for the OP . . Any magical shenanigans in your group? If not, take Astral Hazing and act as a mostly mundane means of countering magic . .

Yup, there will be mage. But I'll think about this option - maybe we can work out something interresting from this

It is pretty handy to give foes the -3 Attacker in Melee Combat modifier while you are axing them. On its own, the debuff isn't worth it, but since you grant it by just attacking someone, it's nice.

An important point here is that unarmed combat != melee. A lot of people have an illogical love for armed melee combat which is one of the most niche roles in the game. Unarmed combat is not a terrible idea because of what you mentioned- and also because you can add Unarmed to your melee defense. Lots of spirits and critters are melee-centric and published material often has a lot of NPCs with silly katana fetishes.

However, you have to keep in mind that there's a "threshold of effectiveness." A 2 STR mundane with Agility 2, Unarmed 4, and +3 DV from martial arts qualities is simply not getting their BP's worth out of the martial arts because they are just not going to do enough damage for anyone to care. They'd be better off replacing the martial arts with, say, Palming 4 and trying to sneak in something like a Shock Glove. Or with a legal cyberhand that has an integral legal shock ability. Or any number of other things.