Is it possible to have a useful and reasonably combat capable character in SR4A with no magic (inc resonance) and no augmentations? I get the feeling it probably is - using very high edge, maybe drugs to boost combat, and spend all your cash and the best gear/equipment...? What do folks think? If anyone has played such a character I'd love to hear how it went.

A lot of stuff useful in combat can be worn as gear rather than installed internally, so mostly yes.

The killer is going to be IP - an expensive drug habit may be in order...

For some reason, this archetype appeals to me immensely, although I don't think I've ever sat down and made a serious attempt at building him. You need to define "reasonably combat-capable," though. With drugs and the right gear, you could have a decent second-line shooter. Melee effectiveness, outside of an ambush with a stun baton, is probably out of reach, and any decently augmented samurai will put the Badass Normal down like Old Yeller. You'll want to use the points saved to round out with one or two secondary skillsets: B&E, stealth, face, rigger, hacker, etc.

Yeah, I guess by "reasonably capable" in combat I mean able to deal with average threats - gangers, security guards, or actually I suppose pretty much anything except the "big bad guys" that tend to show up at the end of a module... At which point it's over to the combat experts to get the team through. But I'd like the character to be able to be fairly "bad ass" for most run of the mill combat scenarios.

I think you can still get pretty good dice pools, they'll just be harder to improve. Automatics 6 (Machine Pistols) + Agility 6 + Smartlink + Tacsoft 4 = 20 dice as an unaugmented human. Getting your AGI that high will cost you, though.

Yeah, usually starting with agi 5 is best. Taking sensitive system is a very good way to get more points for character stuff. You can also buy more contacts, be the team's fixer and face. Being totally mundane also means you can walk through any scanner without any hitches unless you forget to leave your guns at home. You can also utilize the services of a normal hospital without worrying whether that nurse will report that you have unregistered restricted genetic/biological modification.

You should be able to build a GuardXL with 400 BP. Make that an Ork, or maybe a Fomori for anti-magic goodness. Is SURGE acceptable?

Building a normal char without augmentation won´t yield you any BP/karma if you try to have reasonable stats anyway. So suck it up and don´t try that. Spend your points on friends and gear to obtain the "useful" trait. Solid base for augmenting later. You could start from the Enforcer archtype without ware.

Long term, if the rest of your team makes full use of their potential, you will eventually be called a non-combatant if you don´t get ware.

I don't know if this counts, but what about the possibility of making someone who primarily uses one or more critters for combat? I suppose if you have awakened or augmented animals, that kind of breaks your rules though.

He could also be a non-rigging rigger.

There are lots of ways to do a mundane, most people just choose not to do so as it's an uphill struggle being the only guy without superpowers. I've tried it. And it did not go well, but he is my favourite character.

For reference, I went melee combat with a focus in damage avoidance, as well as outdoors skills. Since most people tend to not take the outdoors group, it made me fairly useful when it did come up. I also spent some points in demolitions (grenade traps)...

Quick stab for a starting point:
http://fairlygoodpractices.com/shadowrun/mundane.htm

Notes:
1) No disadvantages, so if we need to boost a skill up or acquire something, there's points technically available.
2) No skills > 4 yet, again, room to grow.
3) Is the plan to make the character a Cram/Jazz addict? I hate to say this, but you basically have a choice between magic, augmentation, drugs, or nothing. I'm not sure that it was your intent to have a walking pharmacy and I haven't done that with this starting point, but you need to decide if that's the direction you want to go in.
4) I gave him Astral Sight and Assensing 1, Astral Combat 1. I'm not sure that was within your vision.

Creating a character good enough shouldn't be a problem. But I have doubts about his evolution. Most character evolve with karma and money (witch are what character generaly have at the end of a party). With such a character, the money will have a lower influence.

TBH it seems to me that you may as well set those points on fire as take Astral Sight and associated skills.



Yeah, it's suboptimal to go without any implants at all, but at least as a rigger you can have things to spend nuyen on and generally it's better to be rich than to be good in Shadowrun. I'm afraid as a physical combatant or a character who otherwise relies on their own attributes, however, you're stealing money, and I don't mean from the corps. It can work, but only because the game is a cooperative one at heart. So if you really must go the mundo route and don't want to be a tech boy I'd recommend an emphasis on social skills, edge and contacts. Having Erased and Trust Fund helps too; you can more or less serve as the group's secondary fixer and having rainy day money can be pretty nice if you're not afraid to bribe people.

drones or sensor pack carrying squirrels for your personal Tacnet.
Milspecarmor with Upgrades for compensating cyber.
Edge for awesomeness.
Drugs and Edge for extra IP.

While I don't disagree, not taking magic/augmentation is basically setting points on fire anyway. One can spend 25 points taking agility 5 to agility 6 or restricted gear and 32,000 (12 points, .8 essence, 3000 left over) to take agility 5 to agility 9. I was hoping via my notes to get some more guidelines as to the intent from the OP since it feels (to me anyway) that a Shadowrun character without ware or magic is like a businessman without a smartphone. Why are they without ware of magic? Are they from some rural area, allergic to implants and not blessed by mana, a metahuman from Boys Town who intended on getting into pro sports and still hopes to so they're staying away from drugs and ware?

Trode Net + Commlink + Drone = Capable. Toss in Remote Control for the drone and a good Command program and you're there, although you'd need to figure out how to squeeze out those IPs. A hot-sim'd comm with a Simsense Booster (or Accelerator... whichever is the comm mod) gets you to 4 IP with no augmentations.

I understand--I virtually always hit the 50 gear point cap-- but that doesn't mean you should throw good bp after bad. Basically, the more sub-optimal the character concept, the more conservative I am about choosing only strong picks within the parameters of that concept. That you're already kind of weak is just all the more reason to top off one of your bread and butter skills and buy a decent contact rather than chase another theme. Other good alternatives would be asking your GM if they're comfortable with you getting creative and sinking the points into broad skills like Hardware and Chemistry.

Much of the answer boils down to the definition of "combat capable". If fight by proxy is acceptable, by all means play a rigger. We tend to judge that trait by personal capability; mages and riggers are usually non-combatants for us - without any disrespect, quite the opposite in fact. The willingness to play cooperative is welcomed.

Why play as a non-augmented normal?

I mean why not one piece of 'Ware: Synaptic Booster 2. I mean just having that piece of gear turns you from "So So" to something nice. Yes, it's expensive, but honestly why not?

I went the other way: I have a combat mage who has two points of 'Ware. Yea... his magic kinda sucks now, but I have enough advantages to survive to get a higher magic.

There's nothing wrong at all with wanting to play an unaugmented mundane character. The challenge of making one that can hold his own is rewarding in and of itself.

Other people have hit the main points. The best way to do it and remain competitive is to go with either a concept that doesn't need much outside help, like a Face, or one that boosts your combat abilities from outside sources, like a Rigger or Hacker. Other concepts are certainly possible, but you'll have to accept that other characters will likely outperform you in nearly every way.

The problem is that gaining magical abilities or getting augmented isn't that much of a BP sinkhole during character creation. If you really specialize and go crazy with it, yeah, it can cost a lot of resources, but, say, a basic street mage can be done on the cheap. And what you can do with those points as a normal person isn't going to really shine. And anything you can do, an augmented/magical character can do with nearly the same level of ease, too. Including the use of tactical networks, drones, Empathy software, drugs, and so on and so forth.

But if you're okay with the possibility of being outperformed, can manage to find a niche that you really like, and have a GM who really likes the idea and will work with it, go for it! It can be a lot of fun.

I tried something similar once but the game only lasted two sessions, so I didn't get to see how it really played out. I went with a completely burnt-out warrior adept with a drug problem, and due to having Sensitive System due to his former magical abilities coupled with his personal philosophy, he was reluctant and unwilling to go under the knife. He was sort of like a RIFTS Juicer instead. Had a lot of auto-injectors in his clothing and armor for select combat and awakened drugs, and a biomonitor with a custom agent program to monitor his system and apply the drugs as needed or as commanded. I had fun when I did get to play him, but the drug addictions and other side effects never got a chance to come into play.

easy answer: only 1% are awakened. that's why he is without magic.
for the no ware part I suggest getting the Sensitive System flaw and in addition my custom flaw at level 4

Explaining "no magic" isn't the problem; you just weren't in the "lucky 1%". But why don't you have any 'ware? I mean, from a player perspective, playing a "pure" character is an interesting challenge, but what's the IC reason? Because passing up that much easy power needs an explanation.

I think you should try to turn the mundane-ness into a strength somehow; play up on how no amount of detector work is going to show you up to be a threat, because there's no cyberware weapons or magical potential to detect. You don't look like a criminal to most security people, because criminals tend to carry combat-enhancing 'ware.

The tricky part is bioware: there should probably have been bioware scanners, but they fell through the cracks between Arsenal and Augmentation development, so by chance it's very hard to detect bioware. Which means that nobody can see that you don't have it, which kind of spoils the above setup.

I think you should consider finding an unusual niche. The bland-looking face that can easily infiltrate high-level corporate offices because he really looks like a suit, with no piercings, tusks or implants. Maybe with martial arts, plastic-bullet & holdout guns or even a syringe with poison - get close to people because you don't look like the enemy they're guarding against.

Not everyone is keen on the idea of having their body slaughtered and replaced by machinery. Especially in the 2070s were you can duplicate many of the more useful things without implants, such as with trodes and contact lenses.

The topic of this thread mentioned "A realistic char", and for my nuyen, a shadowrunner with no augmentation and no magic who is trying to be effective in combat is not a realistic character. Shadowrun is a brutal, uncaring, and above all unfair setting, and the rules for the most part support this. Your opponents will include people with superhuman abilities, who have traded some of their humanity for power(or were lucky enough to just be born better than you), and your high essence score isn't going to save you when some troll gets 4 IP to beat down on you with a pair magic katana.

Edge is useful, but only temporary, and drugs can help, but addiction is nasty thing that will eventually kill your essence anyways.

Playing an unaugmented, unawakened character who is designed to engage in physical combat is just unrealistic in shadowrun.

With 400 build points, you can certainly build a character capable of dealing with comparatively weak enemies like gangers and security guards, but it will be more expensive.

Mundane, augmented characters will be weaker out of the gate, and slower to advance. They can still take on a variety of roles, from combat, to covert ops, to face, to hacking or rigging. But in every case, the character will not be as good as he could have been, with magic or augmentation.

It's certainly doable, but playing such a character will be a challenge from a power perspective. Shadowrun is a very tactical game, with a lot of situations where you can completely negate another character's overwhelming superiority with proper planning. But you will be more dependent on this, and there will be times when your inspiration runs dry.

The really impressive stuff though, you can't do external. The cerebral booster, synaptic booster, muscle toner - all are extremely efficient ways to become a lot better than the opposition. 20K turns you from average to genius; that's more cost-effective than any school.

SR is about people who basically do insane jobs. Huge risks for (hopefully huge) rewards. Breaking the law, breaking all manner of ethical boundaries. I really think that the people who avoid augmentation are a fringe minority among shadowrunners.

If I may quote from Augmentation:


There are other sections in Augmentation that indicate having at least some augmentation normal but not universal. That's my touchstone, then. Not having a mod in SR is similar to not having a computer at home today. (I started to say cell-phone, but those are even more ubiquitous.) If you don't have one it's usually because you can't afford one or have some sort of principle against having one.

Look, one of the major drivers is going to be 'normals' who need some basic things. Let me give two examples:
Diabetes: autoinjector (reusable) and biomonitor.
Near- or far-sighted: cybereyes.

This doesn't count the accountants who pick up encephelons and/or math SPUs, or attorneys and counselors who pick up tailored pheromones, or the entire generation of techies who picked up datajacks, or...

You can do without, but you're not being 'the majority' when you do so.

No one's saying that such a character is the norm.

But Shadowruns comprise all of the outliers of society. Why shouldn't that include those who, for whatever personal reason, despise the idea of sullying their bodies with metal or mutated organs? The shadows embrace the freaks of the world. And in the Sixth World, an unaugmented mundane character is very much a freak.

You could try playing a pariah.

"We're in the minority; Runners who are not jacked, rigged, or wakened. We live by our guts and our wits."
-Jazzman Harker, Shadowrunner


Note that this quote is from first edition.

Agreed. Beyond the fighting-by-proxy discussion, it must be said that Shadowrun isn't D&D so an awful lot of your planning on a run may very well be dedicated to setting things up so that nothing "level appropriate" for a Street Samurai gets a clear shot at the team to begin with. As such there is admittedly some value in being able to hit 8+ dice on full defense while running to cover or being able to reliably punk a rent-a-cop, ferret drone, street thug or other mundane threat with your pedestrian 10-dice-with-a-SMG Automatics pool. But frankly, getting much better than that starts getting real expensive real fast without 'ware, drones or magic at your beck and call, and a fair number of people will be able to cheaply match you thanks to judicious use of inexpensive 'ware. So I would say that the unaugmented can defend themselves effectively in a good number of situations if they keep their head on straight and work as a team. But if you ever want to elevate violence beyond being a last resort? Then you should look into getting wired up-- shooting your way out of the building or raiding the warehouse is a helluva lot easier when you've got 3 passes and can switch to your internal airtank when the tear gas starts flowing.

In earlier editions of SR, this might have been easy & possible. Dirk Montgomery was a PI. Not a razorboy/samurai, but he had a colt manhunter & knew how to shoot it.

Earlier edition/mechanics also had it where your initiative determined your IP's. If you had a high enough of an Initiative score, you minused 10 from it, & the remainder was your new initiative for the next IP. If my Initiative was a 23... I go on 23 (first IP), 13 (second IP), 3 (third IP)... i think this was how SR1 handled initiative.

This is no longer the case in SR4A, so while you can still go first (via high Initiative score or Adrenaline Surge quality), you'd only get that 1 IP. As with a thread I started about IP's & roles... seems like combat characters need many 3 IP's at least.

maybe even start with Addiction flaw at severe or burnout level?

Yeah, I'm not saying it doesn't happen at all, but that the default shadowrunner embraces 'ware, you need an IC reason not to want ware. You might have objections about cutting up yourself, but realize that makes you abnormal. Having some 'ware isn't "something extra", it's the baseline.

Can you have a starting character performing like that?
Yes, sure. And with some drugs, you might not be dead that fast.
But over time it will get worse and worse.
It is one thing to have missed out on around 200k worth of ware. It is another thing to have missed out on 500k worth of ware.

Or easier: Not having a muscle toner 2 is not that bad, but not having a muscle toner 4 kind of is.

A few ways I can see to make an unaugmented character be efficient enough:
- Drugs (more IP, better attributes)
- Edge (more IP, act first, high dice pool)
- Gear such as a power-armor ("external cyber")
- Rigging, or more generally the use of drones, AR and software.
- Animals (biodrones or paracritters)
- Some qualities, even more if the character is SURGED.
- Style: you don't have to be the part if you can look the part and know how to exploit that.

If we consider the base archetypes:

Street-samurai : Power-armor to soak damage and get physical bonuses (and look menacing enough that many people will prefer to avoid conflict with you), drones for additional firepower, edge to act first when you need it, and drugs or Edge when you really need a second IP.

Rigger: A good commlink and drones. Your dice pool won't be as high as those of an adept or an implanted rigger (though you can get nanites shot to help you) but you'll have more/better drones at chargen.

Face: Good charisma and social skills + the right style to get a lot of bonuses. Plus you can go wherever you want without drawing unwanted attention (no unusually high concentration of pheromones, no illegal ware, not awakened=no risk of mind control or kinesics).

Mage: Stunball=neurostun grenade, illusion=holographic projector (+thermographic smoke), invisbility=chameleon suit... Or paracritters: just get a trained merlin hawk (or even better: a whole flock of merlin hawks) and have it use mindlink to talk to him and ask for an air spirit.

It depends on the parameters of the game

- the more mirrorshades and the less mohawk the better, even though that kind of defeats the point
- high edge refresh helps. Once per session means that an 8 edge Mr. Lucky can just buy a few IPs. The trouble with this is that the Mr.Lucky with ware is still better
- it depends on matchup of the group. If you have to play with a 25 dice 4IP gunbunny then you're not going to shine

Obviously you can deviate from the "pure normal" concept with Surge, which can make you a bit more awesome using a different pool of points.

I would say there are a few concepts this has a chance of working with:

A sniper/assassin, maybe doubling as a face, if you are satisfied with not having too many dice. No defence means you still deal sufficient damage
The support gunner, but you'll need to make extensive use of suppressive fire and full wide bursts.
The rigger as was said before
The man with a contact for everything: Basically you can have shoddy stats but decent socials, and then just bring your troll mercs to a fight. Contacts is basically an ulimited BP pool, right?

The problem remains that any and all concepts will still be stronger with ware, as long as you don't get to change the point distribution. Essentially this means that there is a reason that every other character gets to pick his resources from several pots (attribute, skill, ware, magic, gear), while you get to pick from fewer pots. Usually each pot will have some things that are efficient, and others that aren't, and you probably won't get by with just getting the efficient things, while your point allocation can't overcome this weakness.

None of this means you can't have fun.

As an unaugmented mundane, you will suck - in the sense that you could always be turned into a character who does everything you can, better, and also does more stuff. What you are basically asking is "how sucky can I be without being so sucky I am dead weight," and that depends on how poorly made the other characters are. You can easily make a 400bp adept who is worse at fighting than a well-made 400bp unaugmented mundane, so if your buddy makes Adept McSucky, then being Mundane McSucky isn't a problem. If the other players think the sample characters are too powergamed, you'll be fine. If they make a modest effort to make good characters, you won't be.

Because they are a liability to their teammates.

The closest RL example, I can think of a character like this is Evan Wright ("The Killer Elite", "Generation Kill"). In 2003 he was embedded with the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion of the United States Marine Corps during the early stages of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He contributions to the team are minimal. There are some things he can do for the people he's embedded with, such as when they send him shopping for diapers, but for the most part he is a non-contributor. He slowly earns their respect ("Even Rolling Stone will pick up a gun.”), but part of that is simply the fact that he endured 17 firefights, including one during which 26 bullets slammed into his Humvee door.

That example makes it, for me, a twofold problem.
1) Why Shadowrunning, knowing that without magic or ware that the chances of survival are minimal?
2) Why is the character accepted by the other runners knowing that his contribution to the team are also minimal?

The first people have explained. 99% without magic, some with sensitive system, some with personal aversions, and worse comes to worse, desperation.
The second is much harder for me to understand. Why is his future use to the team worth more than his immediate share right now?

I don't think runners expect their faces to be heavily modded; while players are aware of the "necessity" of pheremones, I doubt it's all that common. Likewise, if you know a guy who can hack "well enough" in AR with trodes, why would you bust his balls? He gets the job done.

It's not the optimal build, but it doesn't have to be. It just has to get the job done. Obviously you wouldn't want him on the front lines during a fire fight, but there are roles that an unaugmented person could fill on a team.

Really?

There's plenty of concepts where an unaugmented, mundane character can do well. Faces, detectives, snipers, riggers, and hackers are all prime examples, many of which have been brought up here. Take that sniper for instance. Long Arms (Sniper Rifles) 8 + Agility 6 + Smartlink 2 + Tactical Network 4 grants 20 dice right off the back. With a Barrett or a gauss rifle (if he prefers Heavy Weapons), he can take out most opponents with a single shot. He also has access to nearly every sensor in the game, can have drone spotters helping him out, and with a high Infiltration skill and some ruthenium-coated and thermally dampened guile suit, he can be all but invisible while doing so. Cyberware and magic isn't going to improve that very much.

Less than absolutely optimal? Sure, no question. A liability? Only if they're really poorly made and try to do something that they can't do nearly as well, like a straight up combatant.

Agility 6 unaugmented to agility 9 augmented will buy back 13 build points and give him 3 more dice (allowing an improvement even if you drop to what I consider is a much more reasonable Tacnet 2) and he won't be trying to aim a Sniper rifle while coked up on Jazz and/or Cram. (I do not even want to think about roleplaying that. Ignoring the fluff there almost seems mandatory.)

The problem I see with the proposals here is that they seem to be either (and sometimes both)
a: suboptimal for their roles by a significant degree, either by sacrificing general ability or having weaker specific ability.
b: ignoring fluff or ignoring role playing disadvantages in an effort to force this requirement in. Sure, one can toss the fluff on Jazz and Cram, but does the OP want to do that or does he really want to play a combat capable character with 1 IP or should he ignore potential fluff issues with being combat capable with trodes.

If I understood what the goal of the OP was better, I'd feel more comfortable with this, but right now it feels like "sure we can do this if we ignore X and we accept everyone else is built badly". Is that the goal?

As a GM, I find it much more enjoyable to work with PCs that are sub-optimal and interesting than hyper-optimized and dull.

And nearly all optimized characters are dull. Same numbers at all times, just random faceless dudes in armor jackets. An unaugmented face is not significantly underpowered. He's missing some pheremone dice that 90% of his opponents won't reasonably have anyway. If he's really hard up, he can get one of those stupid social toys.

You can do almost everything you need to do as a hacker with AR, so being restricted to Trodes isn't that big of a deal. If he has to duck down when the shooting starts, well....a technomancer would have the same problem. Hell, a starting unaugmented hacker would probably have more flexibility than a starting TM, given how expensive CFs are at chargen.

I agree fully, which is why I've repeated asked what the OP's reasoning is here because what I'm seeing are optimized sub-optimal characters. The OP has given us no personalty, no character history, no raison d'etre. He's given us a technical challenge and I can't see how that technical challenge, in and of itself, creates a personalized character that is more than a faceless bag of numbers.

Well, Marid Audran at the start of When Gravity Fails would be a good template. He's terrified of what being augmented will do to his brain, and hopelessly addicted to drugs to give him an edge over his competition. Role-wise he's basically an investigator/face.

Honestly, augmented or awakened characters are less likely to be dull - they get the cheap boosts, so they have more points to spread out a bit. An unaugmented mundane will have so many stats and skills to soft-max that he will usually be more hyper-focused.

You might have missed the "with one shot" bit, implying that he had no augmentation whatsoever. Because he doesn't need it. Snipers are one of those few roles (like the others mentioned) where personal initiative passes aren't a necessity to get the job done.

And no, he wouldn't get three more dice, because the dice pool is maxed out at 20. Also, why are you personally dropping his TacNet to 2 to prove your point? The point is he's using other methods and sources to excel at his job. You might as well be saying something like "well, his Agility should only be 3 since that's more reasonable for a normal human. But my super augmented character has Agility 9, ergo your normal guy is stupid."

The character also has more build points and cash to invest in these things. While your augmented guy is blowing 200,000 nuyen on implants, he's blowing 200,000 nuyen on all these other toys. And in the end, he still does his job well. Could augmentation give him other benefits? Aside from extra passes, which he doesn't really "need," not really. The sniper is getting everything he needs from skill and equipment alone.

The same would be true of the other mentioned concepts; faces, detectives, hackers, riggers, etc. The latter two even include extremely high initiative passes.


Why would it be required to ignore the consequences for using drugs? Who's advocated that whatsoever? It's an option, and it works, but it has both long and short term consequences. But if, for whatever reason, a character has an aversion to implants but is okay with popping some Jazz, what's wrong with that? It's why it's in the game to begin with. And if you start tacking on extra disadvantages, well, that's just bad GMing in my opinion.


No.

The goal is to do something different. Like a Troll Face or a Dwarf Kickboxer. Just because something isn't min/maxed to the extreme, that doesn't make it bad, let alone detrimental to the game. Elitism and snobbery is what's detrimental to the game. Thinking outside the box should be encouraged and celebrated, not ridiculed or shamed like this.

You'd think so, but in practice the "best" augs and spells make everyone look about the same. They certainly carry the same general gear load. Trying to be effective without that stuff should, in theory, force you into some unconventional builds.

Isn't Hood (Troll Archer) from 1 of the novels totally un-augmented?

Hood was also fabulously wealthy and secretly the CEO of a corporation, wasn't he? His main contribution to that group was being the only one with a working brain, as I recall. I remember that being one of the weaker novels from that batch....the one with the burned-out mage was the best, no doubt. The three-parter with Kellan Colt was...a little simplistic, but a good intro to the setting for new players.

EDIT: The book I was thinking of was Drops of Corruption, by Jason Hardy. Not sure if he's ever on these forums, but nice book, Jason!

Unaugmented characters have popped up from time to time in my game, and almost inevitably they do great. Proper prior planning means that anyone can make a serious splash if they do things right. Skills and solid attributes, and making sure that people with initiative pass boosters can't get with in arms reach are solid tactics. Watch some Burn Notice for some inspiration!