Hello there. I seek opinions from the community about what to do with a character of mine.

First, an outline:
For a pnp game I'm in I decided I wanted to try and make a character that didn't have a specific role, but rather developed towards fulfilling a role as the game went along. I've done this before in other games and always enjoyed it, the early struggle eventually being overcome and the character developing.

To this end, I made my character. An Latino Ork former ganger from Puyallup.

The character has good physical stats and average mental stats.
B A R S C I L W
8 4 5 7 2 5 2 3

He has the athletics, stealth and influence skill groups. He has good perception and dodge.
He has Latent Awakening
His only 'ware is a datajack

The problem I'm having is that I don't really know how to develop him first. I can't decide what to focus on or how to quickly get good at any one thing. I'm enjoying the character but it's taking longer to improve than I though due to low karma awards and irregular play.

After our last run I managed to score big. Came out with over 300,000 . I'm now deciding what to spend it on. I figured that kind of windfall should allow me to at least buy some 'ware to improve my abilities in key areas. I'll probably have about 20karma to play with too when it gets dished out. What do people think would be the best way to go?

N.B. I realise I probably haven't explained myself very well here but have a go anyway

Get a Synaptic Booster and Muscle Toner / Augmentation, and an Attention Coprocessor. If your regulary get such payouts, invest in skillwires.

Maybe you want to have a look at these characters. Especially the Generalist and other multi-role ones. That way you can compare your character with the archetypes, find one that's similar enough and pick up some ware and other tricks. Without knowing the rest of your group (roles already covered, dice pool dice, holes that regularly bite you) it's kinda hard to advise.

This payout is very much a one-off.

I thought about MBW2 for the IPs and skillwires together. I was thinking of getting Cerebral Booster too.

The rest of the group is pretty combat oriented. That's the reason I tried to stay general cos I knew everyone else would be combat-heavy. We've only been playing regularly for just over a year and most people are still on their first character. We had a Technomancer who died, so now have no matrix support at all. We do have a mage though he's combat heavy. An infiltrator/sniper, a weapon specialist and 2 melee goons round out our very narrow scope. I've been trying to pick up skills here and there to fill the gaps.
I do have a pretty decent Commlink so may pick up a few matrix skills to patch up that gaping void in party ability

Yep, if you go for the role of "the go-to guy" for anything tech related, you'll have the rest of the team vying for the right to jump in front of bullets for you - because otherwise they can't get past the next locked door. So I'd use that cash to get the MBW or a set of skillwires. Load up on tech skills and computer/hacking skills, and if you have any money left over, get the appropriate kits/gear. It's a hard choice between the two peices of ware, because the MBW is nice, but the skillwires leave more money for skills and gear.

That combat heavy group needs someone who has a way in besides kicking in the door.

I dunno how you guys are handling the latent awakening thing, but a Kinesics & Tailored Pheromones combo could go a long way towards making up for your crappy Charisma and if you pick up Intimidate being a big ork with a gun can swing you some situational modifiers to boot. Muscle toners are always good.

Yeah, unless you are set on MBW (which, don't get me wrong, is fine if you use Dodge and want the Skillwires), I would go Synaptic Booster 3 and buy skill wires (and that expert system) separately, and you are way up on Essence. MBW is very essence-intensive (unless you go alpha or better) and won't leave room for much more 'ware at a later time ...

If you do want cash and essence left over for Bioware such as Muscle Toner, Muscle Augmentation, Suprathyroid Gland, Tailored Pheremones, Cerebral Boosters and the like, alpha MBW2 could be doable.

Or, if you want that list of stuff above, skip the MBW2, and get Synaptic Boosters 2 instead. Stick with all Bioware, except for a Skillwire system.

All these augmentations are great... if you hope your Latent Awakening quality goes to waste. I'd absolutely never suggest people take that quality, as it demands such a massive amount of karma to be useful to a character that it'd simply be better starting as a mage (which are karma-sinks to begin with), but as you already have the quality I'd bring it up with the GM.

You could also take a dip into rigging fairly well with that amount of cash - invest in a few good drones and a decent commlink and you're gold.

Here are some extraordinarily important questions that need to be answered for us to properly help your character though:

1) What exactly are your skills?

2) How frequently does your group do combat?

3) Are you actually interested in using that Latent Awakening?

It depends on what he gets. If he is going to get one of the lame 1-magic-point-and-can't-improve-it powers like astral sight or a spell/spirit knack, then it's better to cram in 'ware until he has a smidge over one Essence, because getting it afterwards will mean the quality gets wiped out, and was wasted. If he gets mage, then he's screwed. He will be so far behind skill, spell, and Magic rating-wise that, with the low pace of advancement he describes, it would be hopeless to try to develop it. The only decent quality is adept. Fortunately, adept powers and augmentations tend to have synergy together.



The biggest trouble with developing this character is that, frankly, despite him saying he doesn't want a combat-focused character like everyone else, his Attributes point him in that direction. His low Charisma and Logic kind of lock him out of the face and techie roles in a game with slow advancement. With his high Intuition, and already having the athletics and stealth skill groups, he could develop into a B&E character, only needing the hardware skill with a specialization in MagLocks. But personally, I would probably use the windfall to focus on beefing up his combat capabilities - at least get something that will give him multiple IPs. Things like synthcardium, muscle toner, an attention coprocessor, and cerebral boosters would help him be better at B&E, too.

latent awakening is awesome for becoming an augmented adept. All those augmentation so is reduce your maximum magic, but that doesn't matter, because you will start with Mag 1 only anyways.
Say you lost 2.7 points of essence. This makes your max Magic 3, which will cost you 10+15 karma to get. Fairly cheap for that 3 power points you now have. Later on you can initiate and increase your max magic further.

I agree, that latent awakening to a mage is aweful. You'd need too much karma to get all those skills, spells and magic.

Cheers for all the replies

If I'm honest most of where the character fails is down to me incorrectly estimating our advancement, and the fact that it was a first character.

I ran the first few missions our group did and I was awarding 3-4 karma a night. When I built my character I worked on that principle but the current GM only gives out 4-5 karma a mission, with missions typically taking 4 or so sessions. I was trying to be too clever really.
The reason he has low mental/high physical stats is cos as an Ork they start higher and I figured cos of the BP/Karma transfer it'd be easier to raise my Logic from 2 to 3 than it would to increase my body from 6 to 7. I didn't account for it taking me so long to do though so now they're lacking behind. Thats why I considered Cerebral Booster 3.

The Latent Awakening again comes down to us starting out. No-one knew the magic rules well so no-one build a mage. I decided to take the quality so that when we were more comfortable with the rules I could maybe provide that support. Again, a low karma rate has put pay to that idea but I'd still like to make use of it at some point.

His actual skills are Athletics Group 4; Stealth Group 2; Influence Group 2; Intimidate 2; Perception 4; Dodge 6; Heavy 1 (LMG spec); Pilot Ground 1.
That's it. Again, I was trying to buy a few higher-level things rather than loads of low level. I picked up heavy cos I found an LMG so that's my main attacking skill at the moment. He's great at escaping and getting away (high dodge and athletics) but not very good at fighting back. Conceptually, he was kind of a drug runner / street rat who made his living through making drops and not getting caught rather than fighting. It's letting me down now though.

One thing I do already have is a good commlink. I (again found, he's a bit of a scavenger) a Battle Buddy Basic so with a few upgrades that'll be singing.

I also have First Impression (didn't mention it above) so that compensates a little for a lower charisma when trying to talk and stuff. I have the best contacts in the group too, and am the only one who regularly uses them (which is how I've ended up with a load of money )


Of course, there's always my hidden final option. Background wise, I tried to make the move from Street to Shadows prematurely as he's trying to support his missus and child. Now I've got some cash I could retire into the countryside and live off my il-gotten gains and just start over with a better idea

I think you can bootstrap your way to meh OK hacking ability. Having low skills is sad, but if you can cough up for at least 1 point so you aren't defaulting in the key stuff, buy a good commlink and programs, and buy Log-linked skill boosters, you can pull it off. You won't be a superb hacker but you can manage pretty decent.

Yeah, I think you're right. SB2 takes about half the cash, which allows him to cherry pick a fair few other bio and cyber options, and a few nice new toys besides.


I always thought it would be interesting from a RP perspective for a LOG 2 character to suddenly become a lot more cerebral after he got his "brain boosters" put in, perhaps with his newfound intellect becoming intrigued by the virtual world, and getting a R6 Agent with tutorsofts to teach him the dark arts of hacking ...


Sounds like Tailored Pheremones are your friend here.

How about this for a loadout:
SB2, Cerebral Booster 3, Tailored Pheremones 3, Sleep Regulator, Cybereyes, a R5 or R6 Agent ...

just be aware, from a choice aspect, the more cyber you have the less useful your awakening will be when it eventually comes around. I know this is sort of a metagaming look at it, but at the same time, you took the quality & too much cyber will have made you waste BP.

As long as is Essence is above 2 or so, he should be just fine.

unless he wants more than a 2 magic eventually

That is what initiations are for...

Even just 1 magic 1 essence can go initiate to go above.

Those skills with those stats aren't bad. The easy answer would be "moar Heavy!", but I think that it'd be prudent to take either Automatics (my first suggestion) or Pistols/Longarms (either/or). Two points and a specialization gets you four dice to throw, six with a Smartlink, ten with your Agility, and eleven with P4MO. You can even toss in a Reflex Recorder to squeeze out a nice, even 12 dice for only 12,000 and something like 10 karma. You can RP it as the street rat finally getting sick of always running and deciding to finally take a stand for himself, finding his proverbial backbone.

That 'link is really good. With the proper loadout you can do what I suggest above and become competent at hacking - see [shameless plug] this thread for some ideas [/shameless plug]. And again, with only a Command program you can be a fairly effective rigger using Remote Control rigging.


Again, unless he gets Spell/Spirit Knack.

On Latent Awakening, when I picked it I was under the impression from the GM I'd get to choose which quality I ended up with. He wouldn't deliberately give me something useless. Adept is looking best, though I'm also tempted to go Mystic Adept and pay the extra Karma just cos, well, you never know, one day.... plus I love spirits.


Another thing, and I admit this wouldn't bother most people, is the roleplaying issue. I always like my characters to have motvations. This character was trying for a 'quick buck' to get his family out of the barrens and improve their quality of life. Most often, this doesn't come off. In this case it actually has and I find myself thinking 'well, maybe I should buy 2 years worth of High lifestyle and settle down'. It's one of those spend money to make money things though, or in this case, spend money to increase fun for me

[shameless plug] Fun with Free/Ally Spirits!, specifically sections four and five. [/shameless plug] You don't need to be Awakened to enjoy spirits.

I'll track down a character I'm playing who is an Ares SINner who uses Calling with a free spirit that's a contact of his and he's entered into a Spirit Pact with. He was actually really fun to play.

Found him: Alexander Lee.


The Formula Pact allows the PC to use himself as the formula to call the spirit Ventosus (latin for something like whirlwind or somesuch - a F6 Free Air spirit) and then uses a combination of Conjuring Free Spirit and Calling rules to gain favors (ie: uses Negotiation and Binding mats). The fact that if Alex dies Ventosus may be perma-banished also helps sometimes. Alex uses Ventosus as an ally, not a tool, and usually only in times of specific need - the proverbial trick up his sleeves.

He's tossing 9 dice for Pistols (+2 Smartlink, +2 Semi-Auto) and 9 for Unarmed Combat (+2 Martial Arts, +2 Touch Attack). He doesn't have it now, but Alex was going to be training in Firefight. He's also throwing 7 dice for Perception (+2 Visual, +3 Audio), 9 dice for the Influence group, and about 6 for the Stealth group, so he can stealth in a pinch (IIRC Ventosus has Concealment) and can be a workable Face if the need arises, in addition to being competent in Combat while not being amazing at any one thing. One of the most conservative, lower-end-of-the-power-scale builds I've done.

Bah, I knew it was too good to be true. Oh well.

Not to mention:

Try reading up on Spirit Pacts on page 108, however (remember also to read all the way through a Quality - the last sentence of the Quality directly references the page I stated). They are not exclusive to the Awakened, although many only benefit the Awakened. A fine example of a pact that benefits the mundane would be the Friendship Pact that FSPCs get, as would the Life Pact and Dream Pact.

Yes, pacts can apparently be made with mundanes. However, mundanes cannot take the Spirit Pact quality.

Upon completion of a spirit pact, the recipient gains the Spirit Pact quality. That is the mechanism by which the game recognizes the Pact in the first place. What you're proposing is akin to having characters be ambidextrous without taking the Ambidextrous quality.

EDIT: To clarify how this actually works; the spirit has the Spirit Pact spirit Power (Street Magic, page 110), which allows it to enter into Spirit Pacts (Street Magic, pages 26 and 108) with mortals and even mundanes. Maybe you are getting confused because of the different names?

No, this is wrong. Spirit Pact is a quality that lets you start play with a spirit pact. And you must be Awakened to have the Spirit Pact quality. Mundanes can become part of a spirit pact, but they have to get it during gameplay. This is black-and-white in RAW - Spirit Pact specifically says that the character must be Awakened. However, the Free Spirit power Spirit Pact works on mundanes and does not require that the target have or gain the quality Spirit Pact.

So, to recap: mundanes can get spirit pacts. They just cannot start play with them by taking the Spirit Pact quality.

Very well. From now on my mundanes will have a 1/6 Free Spirit contact for 7 BP to gain a Spirit Pact at the start of the game. That's dependant on how RAW you want your games. RAW is good, but RAW to the absence of logic is a bad thing.

Why would that be a Logic Disconnect. Especially since once you actually pick up the Pact you will have to pay Karma Points (10x Spirit Edge*) to keep it (you have just purchased a Positive Quality after all). And no, I would not let you purchase it at Character Creation either, since a Mundane is not Awakened. *Shrug*

Probably would not let you start with a Free Spirit Contact either. But that is just me. *shrug*

*For the Math, the BP is 5 x Edge, and you pay 2x this cost once play has started to purchase the Quality, so 10x Spirit Edge for the Pact that you pick up. Not really all that worth it for a Mundane, in my opinion. *shrug*

Spirit pacts, at least the examples given, don't have very many that mundanes can use, and those are not that useful. Dream pact? I don't see the benefit to the character, quite frankly. Formula pact? I could see a PC being tempted by this, but I wouldn't waste resources on it as a player - I doubt old age is really something that will come up in most games. Life pact? Good (if mild) emergency healing, but over time it can cost you a lot of karma. It is noted in the fluff that a spirit usually enters into such pacts with magicians.

The Formula Pact is an attractive one in that the person bestowed it (even a mundane) can use himself to automatically summon the spirit to himself, as per Binding A Free Spirit, page 108, Street Magic. Note also how I said "using a combination of Calling and free spirit rules," earlier?

And also, usually ≠ always, meaning not only is it possible, but probable that mundanes have Spirit Pacts.

Only the Dumb Ones.

The ability to have a spirit show up because you are his True Name does not a dumb mundane make. Heck, even the Life Pact is vaguely attractive to mundanes. It'd save your life in a pinch, for the low cost of Karma that you have little else to do with.

I know the conversation has turned towards spirits, but I won't be awakening just yet so I'm going to switch topic.



I've been looking into this. What Logic-linked skill boosters are there? I've found PuSHeD, Encephalon level 1 and 2, and the Nanoware one which is up to level 3, for a total boost of up to +6. That would be nice, however, the Nano boost states it doesn't work in high-stress situations such as hacking extremely secure systems. This is a pretty inaccurate measure of when it would work. If I was poor at hacking I'd find it a lot more stressful whereas someone better would walk through. What is a measure of 'highly secure'? Those 3 dice could make the difference between the situation being stressful or being a breeze.

Also, for a character who isn't a dedicated hacker I'm unsure if the Encephalon bonus is worth the high essence cost (1.5 for +2 to hacking and computer skills)

Well, if you use a "Focus Reality Amplifier" (Unwired, p.189) there is no stressful situation anymore - but prepare yourself for a BTL addiction if you use it too often.

Life Pact is ONLY useful if you do not spend your Karma. I have yet to see a character that has little else to use their Karma for, as you claim. So, no, not all that useful.

Cool, I'll have a read of that.

Also, I've been thinking too about 'ware balance. If I'm going to eventually awaken as anything but magician then as I see it it will pay off to have as much 'ware crammed in as possible beforehand (so I only lose the max magic, and not an actual magic point as well).

So, I'm looking at the most efficient way to use 5 essence. For efficiency I'm thinking of trying to hit a 50/50 bio cyber split so I can get as much as possible at 50% reduced cost. This works out at 33.33r essence of each type to spend.

I would probably get PuSHeD and a level one encephalon. You're right about a level two encephalon. It has too high of an opportunity cost for a secondary role. I'm not sure I would even get cerebral boosters - for a tertiary hacker, you might be better off staying as the equivalent of a script kiddie, rather than a full-bore build-your-own-commlink, code-your-own-programs hacker.

Be careful not to outsmart yourself while fussing over the 50/50 split--not all 'ware is created equal and most of the time the drawbacks of investing more heavily in one 'ware type ends up being strictly academic.

Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it does not exist. Besides that, this topic is not important enough for me to argue anymore.

On Essence and implants: avoid the Adrenaline Gland - it's generally not worth it. Try some Damage Compensators, Platelet/Trauma Damper, and some Reflex Recorders just for general purpose bio.

Who is arguing? Certainly not me. So you would rather use Unspent Karma at a horrendous rate to stay alive, rather than using Edge, which is one of the thins that it is designed for.. Huh. Interesting. As for your viewpoint existing... I have seen a lot of characters over my 20 years of Shadowrun, and I have YET to see any that have no other use for Karma. You may be unique in that area, as far as my experience shows, if you actually hold that philosophy.

Assuming you are buying edge back up to where it was, it will almost always be cheaper to use a life pact to stay alive.

Firstly, why would you buy Edge Back?
And secondly, that is not true. I could take 20 points of damage (10 past my Overflow Boxes, so I am either re-rolling or Burning with Edge), which would cost 42 Karma to survive with the Life Pact (reduce me to Full Health/Overflow -1 Boxes). I could burn my Edge 2 to a 1 and only spend back 10 Karma to raise back to a 2, whic his far more cost effective than trrying to Spend Karma to Survive the hit through a life pact. Even at the extreme, the Edge 8 guy repurchases that 8th point for only 40 Karma (just under the cost of the Life Pact Guy). Though why someone would do that is way beyond my comprehension. And yes, I generally do not have Edge Stats above a 2-3, except in exceedingly rare concepts (maybe 4 out of 60 or so characters) *shrug*

The Life Pact, if used to keep you alive will consistently add up to more, over time, than re-purchase of Edge, assuming you choose to repurchase Edge, which I generally do not choose to do. *shrug*