The pugilist is exciting but I have some notes/questions

1) you can't take off-hand training with unarmed combat skill

2) the 0/0 overcoat that costs 20 , where is that mentioned?

3) can you really get a personalized grip for gloves? I guess by RAW it makes sense, but you're not really gripping anything.

4) why don't you have a rating 4 fake SIN/license?

5) I didn't get the significance of having most of your knowledge skills being related to things you either had a compulsion to not get (bioware) or could not learn (firearms), but perhaps that's just the charm of the character. Also the fomori knowledge is important?

6) It seems awkward that you can do 5S(e) damage with a touch attack, but if you punch with the stun gloves it still only does 5s(e). Then if you train at boxing you can do 6S(e) or more. RAW is RAW?

I learned so much from reading this, there were a lot of neat tricks that you used.

Be aware that at MOST tables this would never fly. Not so much tricks as exploits, imho. Dual Wielding Gloves, seriously?

They are reach 0 weapons, which is covered by two weapon style. That aspect actually makes sense. As I imagine it typically unarmed combat would be performed with someone in the orthodox stance and you get a -2 modifier for using your other arm explicitly (or if you went southpaw for some reason). Learning two weapon style basically means your stance and style has been trained to be more defensive. I wouldn't consider this an exploit. Increasing damage with a stun weapon with boxing skills... that's more of an exploit, although I don't see a RAW issue.

RAI over RAW anyday. Seriously, i cant do two-weapon-stype with my bare fists but with gloves it works? no way!
And of course, the +DV to electric attacks via fighting styles is just as invalid.

1) You are 100% right on that, I missed it [I'm less familiar with the MA rules since they aren't used in missions]. I think the way to go is going to be to just suck up the -2 to parrying. I updated the google doc.

2) It's just "Clothing." (SR4A 327) The idea is it's a "homemade" version of a Ghost in the Shell style camo shroud.

3) Yep. I see no real problem with it - not all gloves fit everyone perfectly, so "personalized grip" gloves would be suited to the exact shape of your hands. I don't see anything suspicious about this one.

4) It's fairly arbitrary - most of the SR4A sample characters have rating 3 ones, so I used rating 3.

5) That was a joke.

6) I can sort of see that being skilled at boxing would let you land blows in the right place to inflict more pain with the electrical damage. RAW, it works. RAI? Honestly, I doubt anyone even thought about it.

I think it's more stupid that you can't use two-weapon style with your bare hands. I mean, think about it, without TWS it wouldn't even hurt a boxer to have their left hand tied behind their back, but in real life boxers wear gloves on both hands and they do, in fact, frequently block with one hand and punch with the other.

This counterargument was a billion times better than mine. Sigh, brevity is the soul of wit.

Yeah it is fairly sad it works that way, you don't get much for your complex action. The only things I would not allow are the +DVs or the changing it to physical damage of the shock gloves. That is a big stretch IMO.

RAW both those are legal, but of course you're free to houserule them and I would understand that one, especially if SnS was also getting the nerf bat.

You could modify the pugilist to not use Unarmed if your GM hates it; you would probably want to use a Vibrosword, suck it up and dumpstat your way to STR 5 until you can dig up the karma to fix your dumpstats, and then slice and dice people instead of facepunch (of course, this makes the "wants to be an ork or troll" factor much bigger, also the "should use Bioware" factor). You'd want to switch the martial arts to have +2 with Blades from Arnis de Mano and Sangre Y Arroco, pick back up Offhand Training instead of Vicious Blow (since you're now using Blades) and I dunno what you do with the freed up 5 bp/quality points. That would leave you doing 9P/-4 which is nothing to sneeze at.

This is what my version of the adept concept in question looked like when I made him. Very different from Umaro's pugilist. Looking back on Phoenix, I think the one major change I'd have made would be to focus on fists or knives (not both) and put all the points I saved into Agility. Alternatively, I might have just eaten a point of Magic and gotten Muscle Toner, and found *some* way to justify that into the concept I was working with. Fortunately, he has fared well due to a lenient GM and some favorable house rules in play.

(In case there are mistakes, don't judge my rules fu by this. I did make this character quite a while ago, and have learned quite a bit about SR since then. Still I don't think there are any glaring errors, at a glance anyway. Oh, also Improved Reflexes and Improved Ability (Blades) are not already factored in to the stats in this format. Likewise his martial arts advantages aren't listed: both are from Kali/Eskrima and I believe are +1 DV with Blades and inflict damage when making a called shot to Disarm.)

If anyone can name the fictional character this guy is loosely based on, they get a virtual cookie. I'll give you a hint: it's really obscure and you probably haven't heard of it.

The main things I would QQ about aside from lack of focus are:

1) You have a lot of stats at 4, but the BP/karma system punishes you for that. Especially Body and Willpower being even. You'd be better off having 5s and 3s unless you never want to raise most of those stats.

2) You have a lot of skills at 1 and a lot of specializations; again, best bought with karma.

3) No Manuevers! A lot of the value of Martial Arts comes from manuevers, especially Two Weapon Style.

I don't actually believe that 'lack of focus' is problematical character design in and of itself. I don't think everyone needs to be hyperspecialized or even highly specialized. Some things I should definitely have tossed back, however, like the Clubs skill; that was a pure flavor tax that could have been lost. Same probably goes for escape artist.

1) Interesting. Again, I was building to a concept so, yeah...
2) These are all things I wanted to be able to do out of the starting gate. And a few of them are the difference between a terrible dice pool and a halfway decent one. Pistols, Dodge, and Pilot Groundcraft in particular are all good choices, I think, since the character is never going to be firing a non-semi-automatic pistol, dodging a non-ranged attack, or (hopefully) driving anything but his bike. So those are all almost like having the skill at 3 for half the cost. Otherwise I'd be stuck with Attribute - 1 for all of those things.
3) Yeah, I agree. It would take this character's melee defense from good to awesome (Dice pool of 12 to a dice pool of 20). And it is also basically how he fights. A knife in one hand for parrying, a gun in case he has to shoot someone, and making his actual attacks, generally as kicks, knees, and elbows, sometimes using shock frills. So the guy is already effectively wielding four weapons; vibroknife, gun, shock frills (again, delivered effectively with body slam type contact) and his 8P feet, knees, and elbows. (My GM has been really lenient about the 'Off Hand' penalty, I know.)

EDIT:

Wow. Holy poop is the 'Full Offense' maneuver terrible for non-trolls.

I have always felt that this is because normal use of unarmed combat uses both fists (as well as the feet for most styles).

By the way, manfully resisting the urge to make an O.J. Simpson joke about the personalized grip gloves.

A blade version would definitely work better. You can do some nasty combos. Get the Arnis de Mano advantage of being able to inflict damage on a disarm, get two-weapon style, and get a level of counterstrike (the adept power from Street Magic). Someone attacks you, you get full defense for free, even with the penalty of -4 dice for disarming you will still outclass their dice pool - you damage them, and then get to use your net hits +1 as a bonus to your attack.

The lack of focus I meant was the one you were referring to with too many melee weapon skills.

Full Offense isn't quite that bad. It only stops you from defending against melee attacks. People who aren't melee specialized are usually not going to be as effective with melee attacks as with ranged attacks even if you do get no defense. It's a specialized manuever to be sure, but when you need to, say, take down a mage, or a gunslinger, or whatever and there aren't melee-oriented enemies around it might be handy. Admittedly it would be low on my priority list but it might be worth 4 karma eventually.

I think the blade version is also good, but I don't think it's better. Shock Gloves are both highly damaging and also concealable, but with blades there's a tradeoff and relying on large weapons like Vibroswords makes me uncomfortable. Yeah, there are concealable blades, but it's forcing you into a damage vs. concealability tradeoff that isn't there with unarmed. Also, you can use Arnis de Mano's damaging disarm with anything, not just blades - it's not really an advantage of blades.

Counterstrike is by no means bad; just lower on the priority list because you can already thrash anyone who's meleeing you pretty hard.

I'm kind of meh on the disarm manuever, because it only works on people who are meleeing you with weapons, whereas the most dangerous melee opponents are paracritters and spirits. Called shot to disarm is better, IMO, because you can disarm guns and two-weapon style won't help you against them. That said if you can spare the bp it's not a bad idea.

I did a close combat adept myself, with the more stringent restrictions (no martial arts, no ways, and no bioware), and he didn't turn out that bad. Obviously not as high-powered as less-restricted characters would be, but still decent. Here he is:

Pretty similar to my guy, actually, just better by virtue of being an ork and not a human. : )

Too late, I lolled.

I've seen Critical Strike in action, and it definitely makes Adepts deadly enough. The guy who built the character optimized him for speed and damage; he tended to charge groups of goons and multi-kick any two of them unlucky enough to stand too close together. Critical Strike 6 did a good job of making them fall down very quickly.

Sadly, this was in the days when we fully appreciated the importance of Body and Armor, and he was shot down by a couple of wide bursts that deprived him of Reaction defense.

I've seen Critical Strike in action, and it definitely makes Adepts deadly enough. The guy who built the character optimized him for speed and damage; he tended to charge groups of goons and multi-kick any two of them unlucky enough to stand too close together. Critical Strike 6 did a good job of making them fall down very quickly.

Sadly, this was in the days when we fully appreciated the importance of Body and Armor, and he was shot down by a couple of wide bursts that deprived him of Reaction defense.

His crowning moment of awesome was when an enemy mage was hiding behind a door, poking out his head now and then to cast a stunball. He crept towards the guy across the ceiling and attacked him from above, throwing him into the middle of the room.



Useful lesson: a melee adept needs to be able to close in on enemies and enter melee combat extremely fast, preferably by surprise.

As promised, more archetypes. In particular, they round out the numbers of each metatype, leaving 4 of each (except dwarves, of which there are still only 2). Also, more adepts. There were some requests for a more rigging-focused character, which the Info Savant is (for mundane rigging, see the Mercenary Rigger).

Martial Artist, a troll augmented adept focused on melee combat and social skills.
Former Neoprimitive, a troll augmented adept who uses archaic throwing weapons to great effect.
Gunslinger, a human augmented adept focused on mastery of pistols.
Magical Rocker, a human magician focused on flashy combat magic and rocking out.
Info Savant, an ork technomancer focused on rigging, with hacking secondary.

Why are all archetypes upload at google docs and not posted here in spoiler tags for easier reference?

Mostly because I made them in google docs originally, and it's easy to print them off. Would people like to have them here in spoiler tags?

Would be cool do have them here too.

Wow. These archetypes are great. Kudos for the creativity and hard work. I was curious about two things:

1. I don't follow the calculation of the essence of the transhumanist mystic adept.
2. Why no dodge on the characters?

Thanks.

Why would dodge be useful?

How don't you follow the calculation of the transhuman mystic?

As for the lack of dodge, the idea is that shadowrun is a very offense heavy system and combats are pretty fast. Thus you'll likely only going to see 2-3 passes and thus spending an action on full defense has a huge impact of your ability to do stuff. Also unless you're willing to spend a lot on it, active defenses aren't likely going to help too much.

More attention is paid to passive defenses like armor. A decent number of the archetypes have some sort of melee skill to help defend themselves in melee combat as well.

Wait; I think I see what my problem was with the essence calculation. I was reading too quickly and thought he had two complete cymberlimb replacements, plus bioware, and claimed a deduction of less than 2 essence.

Hida Tsuzua mostly answered this, in addition, there are two more reasons. First, a lot of people have Gymnastics (often with a Synthacardium implant), which lets you Gymnastic Dodge. Combined with Unarmed, it's almost as good at dodging as Dodge and it lets you do more stuff. Second, "active-use" abilities like full defense actions tend to be not a good idea for new players; it's hard to figure out when you should and shouldn't take a full defense action (and you have to remember that it's an option), whereas passive defenses (like high Body scores, defensive 'ware, Reaction, and Combat Sense) are on all the time and thus easy to benefit from.

This is awesome. Great idea.

My group uses a similar setup. The rating 6 medkit is unwieldy duffel bag sized.

So... "Troll Portable" then.

I recently learned that a Cyber Holdout Pistol is not a Pistol, but rather an Exotic Range Weapon. I fixed all the archetypes who used cyber-implant guns to either keep it with less dice, replace it with something else, or have the right skill. I also included more Blade weapons under the Bad Enough Trog's suggested purchases.

Do you, by any chance, have the "Ghost" archetype (LMG-wielding stealth character) in Chummer format? I'd like to tweak him into a sniper specializing in rifles (for long-range engagements) and handguns (for close-quarters combat).

Sadly, no. I plan to put the archetypes into Chummer or some other format, but I need to learn how to use it first.

Oh well. I'll have to click it over to Chummer myself then.

Maybe this has been discussed before (Though I couldn't find it if it did), but you mention the exact price of letting the vehicle and weapon modifications be done by an NPC, but I personally couldn't find the guidelines for determining the costs anywhere... And it just so happens I'm butting heads with my GM on how much to pay for it, so I'd to shoot some guidelines at him so he doesn't overprice me .

Now, I realize the GM's word is final, but something's wrong when I have to pay 4000 nuyen for Personalized Grip (A 100 nuyen 10 threshold Artisan modification).

Shadowrun Missions has rules for hiring NPCs to do modifications for you, which is what I used to calculate them. To the best of my knowledge, they are the only guidelines and of course are only for missions.

Another question (I keep em coming!)

You mention that the technomancers would benefit from a custom stream, but for both of them, what kind of custom stream would you recommend? I have no idea what makes a good sprite, though for instance the Courier sprite seems a bit, well, useless... All I know is that Machine sprites are a must. Any recommendations for what's most likely to see play?

Cheers

Yep, the sprite types are not terribly well balanced. To make an optimized custom stream, start by picking the drain attribute you want (Intuition for the Info Savant, Charisma for the Technoshaman, Logic if you want to be a cybered technomancer, Willpower if you want to suck).

The pick sprites like this:

You really want a sprite to do fighting for you, but you don't really need more than one fight sprite. Paladin sprites bring defense (you can hide behind a pack of Registered paladin sprites forever), Fault sprites bring offense. Tank sprites are godawful.

So, Paladin OR Fault

Crack, Machine, Code, Sleuth, and Tutor sprites all offer useful, irreplaceable abilities. You can't fit all of them in, though, so you need to give up one of them. Machine and Code are really really good, rather than just good, and thus it then comes down to picking 2/3 of Sleuth, Tutor, and Crack.

Machine: Almost everyone should take this. Machine sprites can drive drones/vehicles for you and can provide passive bonuses to anyone else's stuff. Especially as a Charisma stream technomancer, you should take Machine and then have a pack of machine sprites hanging out in your team's guns if nothing else.

Code: Also a really powerful type of sprite, because they can chill out in your bionode and help you do damn near everything. Again, pretty much everyone should take this. Also info sortilege is nice.

Sleuth: Find people using Traceroute. Cyberstalking is really useful and effective. There are other ways to find people, though, this is just a good one - not the only one, and not necessarily the best in every circumstance.

Crack: Crack sprites are good for hacking nodes when you don't care about being subtle, you just want to do something and get out. A high rating Crack sprite can kick down the door, take the paydata, leave, and then the alarm will go off. If you don't care, Crack sprites are a risk-free way to get it done. If you do care, they are not good and you should do it yourself.

Tutor: Some people think that Tutor sprites + Biowires let you pull wacky shenanigans. If you can sell your GM on this combo letting you use any skill in the game any time you want then these guys are the best sprites, but if your GM has laid off the Betameth, they are useful for their ability to give people temporary skills (albeit taking extra time to use). Still broadly useful; you can use them to get noncombat skills like Armorer, First Aid, Medicine, Hardware, etc that your group otherwise lacks. Also good for Dial-A-Knowledge-Skill.

Aaand it's me again with yet another question.

This one's regarding the Info Savant's Strato-9. In the goals it advices to buy a Vanquisher Heavy Autocannon for it, but the drone itself only has a normal mount. In the rules (I think) it states somewhere normal mounts can only hold up to LMG size, you need a reinforced for anything more. Furthermore, the Vehicle Weapons entry (under which the Vanquisher falls) states you can only place them on fixed and heavy turret mounts...

Am I reading something wrong here? Or misunderstanding?

The Strato-9's weapon mount is Reinforced, not normal.

Horrible, horrible necroing, I know. But, I thought I'd let folks know that I'm currently popping these into Chummer format and uploading them to Omae (Chummer's stuff sharer). Credit is given to UmaroVI for the work he did on them, and a link is provided back to this thread for people to look at the tactics and such. I'll post again once they're all up there.

Edit: Magical Rocker is over budget by 2 BP.

Hey, thanks. I'd be happy to link to that in the original posts here and on the SR4A boards. I never managed to get proficient in Chummer

I will look into the Magical Rocker. Let me know if you turn any more errors up.

Spirit Medium: Good to go.
Paranormal Investigator: Good to go.
Magical Rocker: Already told you, but for the sake of having the list, over 2 BP.

Transhuman Mystic

1) Knowledge Skills: Assuming you're only using free knowledge points, in which case he has 30 to spend. You've allocated 34 points.
2) After double checking and making very sure that I have everything, I have 16 BP left over. This is including the extra 4 BP that I haven't spent on additional knowledge skills. I believe this partly comes from allocating 9 BP to focuses when the single Health Sustaining Focus only consumes 3BP to bond it. After re-reading the equipment, it looks like you mean for the Mystic to have 3 Health Sustaining foci. May want to add a 3x to that line, somewhat confusing otherwise. And, after getting that tidbit fixed, you're actually over 2 BP (402).

Burnout Combat Mage

1) Body is only weighing in at 4. ((3*2)+8+9)/5=4.6, which I assume Chummer is rounding down. I'm not positive if that's the correct ruling or not, but due to this both AGI and REA are taking a -2 from being over armored.
2) Microsensors with Radio Scanner 6 and skinlink is 200 , not 170 . So currently off on costs by 30 .

Negotiator

1) The Ingram Smartgun X can't be equipped with an external gas-vent system since it already has one built in. SR4A PG. 322. Chummer doesn't seem to be registering the fact that I'm telling it to uninstall the Gas-Vent 2 that the gun comes with, so leaving it at the moment and gonna bug Nebular to see if that's working as intended. Otherwise, good to go.

Will either post again, or edit this post with more things as I find them.

I have the Magical Rocker and Transhuman Mystic 2 BP over as well.

As for the Burnout Combat Mage, I have the legs having Body 9 and Body 10. The left leg has 3 base, 3 customized, 3 enhancement for 9. The right leg has 3 base, 4 customized, 3 enhancement for 10. That gives an average 5 body. The sensor's price needs changing.

Magical Rocker: is indeed 2 points over. Not sure where that came from but it adds up to 402. Removed the "Urban" specialization from Infiltration and put that on the "Suggested Purchases" list.

Transhuman Mystic: the Knowledge skills do indeed have an extra 4 points. Shuffled them a bit to fix that. You are correct about the foci and I added a "x3."

Burnout Combat Mage: as Hida pointed out, the legs are 9/10 not 8/9.
Good catch on the sensors; took it out of Drugs (-1 betameth, -1 cram).

Negotiator: I don't think that's correct. You are right that you cannot have both a Gas-vent mod and a Gas-vent accessory per Arsenal 148 and SR4A 322. However, per Arsenal 129, you can remove mods, so you can just remove the built-in Gas-Vent 2 and put in a Gas-Vent 3 accessory.