- Pick race (Human, dwarf, elf, leprechaun, etc)
- Pick theme (Gear, Magic, other?)
- Pick focus (Fire support, melee, magic, social, etc)
- Optional: pick secondary focus (with each focus listing a strong, average, and weak synergies with the primary focus)
- Apply PACKS (Official, Derie, or other)
- Customize (add and remove skill points, items, qualities, etc.
For the foci, I was thinking that the Runner's Companion was a good place to start. Each one would result with some "minimum stats," recommended skills, and maybe items too.
For example, a gear oriented fire support would maybe give a 2 charisma, a 4 agility, and threes in everything else. Skills might be a firearms skill group of 4, but that might dissuade someone from focusing on automatics. That could be a secondary choice, though; do you excel with one type of weapon or are you a generalist? From there, gear might include smartlink, smartlinked weapons, armored clothes, ammo, etc.
The idea is to take a new or newish player, take them through character creation and wind up with a character that is theirs without scaring them off (Ah! Too many options!) and not leaving any fundamental gaps in the final character (Uhm, you have 5 guns, but where's the ammo?)