Low Essence also makes it harder to affect the character with Health spells...ok yeah, that's still pretty lame.

This needs to go on the 5E wishlist. Essence should have some kind of impact, maybe a modifier to one/some/all social-type tests?

The reason why this is a bad idea is because it makes augmented characters worse but doesn't touch Awakened or Emerged characters.

I'm not sure I've actually seen anyone like that on these forums. Pax seems to not mind being numerically suboptimal, as do pretty much all of the people I've seen who play mundanes for roleplay reasons. I personally don't play mundanes, but I would like to see them be a more reasonable option for those who do want to play them.

Even putting that matter aside, there's still the matter of good game design. If you're going to give players an option, it kinda needs to be something that is actually worth their while to choose. You may argue that playing a mundane in Shadowrun isn't mandatory, and that anyone who chooses to play such a character should expect to suffer a hit to their effectiveness. But... why exactly should they? What good reason is there for making mundanes so much weaker than other player character archetypes? Why shouldn't they be more balanced?

You seem to be treating character archetype as a sort of game difficulty slider. That if you choose archetype X, you should expect difficulty level Y. Thus, you'd have to be an idiot to play a mundane and then complain about how underpowered you are. But what if you extend that metaphor? Is playing a mage essentially playing on "Easy" mode? Are street sams "Medium", while hackers or faces are "Hard"?

Personally I don't find that notion very appealing. Personally, I think of my character archetype as being an expression of the character's nature, which ideally should be separate from the character's power. In a game so heavily invested in storytelling, players should be able to tell the story they want - about the character and persona they want to play - without feeling unreasonably limited by their archetype of choice. There should be room for variety, and for comparable abilities across archetypes. An Invisibility spell doesn't flat out beat Infiltration, or Disguise, or Chameleon Coated armor, or the Conceal Critter Power. They all operate in a unique way, but they're all roughly balanced in terms of costs and benefits. No one source of optical concealment is substantially and blatantly superior than the others. And thus, if you want to play an Infiltrator, you have many options open to you, all of which are primarily flavor based rather than mechanic based. You don't just automatically play a Mage Infiltrator because Invisibility is inarguably the best choice for stealth. You get to pick the type of sneak-thief you like most, rather than the one that is a walking "I Win" Button.

Likewise, the various character archetypes are more or less balanced as well. Pick any two archetypes to go head to head, and it's often a toss up as to which will beat the other. They have roughly the same levels of power for roughly the same costs, and the major differences innate to their abilities are often somewhat situational and condition-specific. But mundanes aren't like that. They alone pay higher substantially higher costs and end up with substantially lower levels of power. It's not just a matter of making the best usage of the abilities available to a character in a given situation - it's that all things being equal, the mundane is less powerful and less capable for the same or greater costs.

~Umi

Which is as it should be. Such characters are great fun, in my opinion. Absolutely love my Russian Mercenary for that very reason.

Because those resources can be better spent elsewhere to bolster other sections of the character, of course. *shrug*
My position is entirely based upon the caveat that "just because you can, it does not mean that you should." *shrug*

And I think that a character that never fails is dull, boring and lifeless. Success is all the sweeter when you have had to overcome failure to get there.

... but in SR2, smartgoggles and laser sights gave the same 1-point advantage. Hence why I specified using Smartlinks to their full ability, in SR4, without an implant.

Right, I feel obliged to clarify myself.
Being mundane and unaugmented isn't wrong in any way shape or form. If your character have a good reason for it.
What I take issue with is when people assume unaugmented to be the default position and augments are something you want to avoid like the plague. In SR having some degree of augmentation is the norm, this is heavily reinforced in the fluff and very integral to the setting.
I see some newer players flat out refusing augmentation for really arbitrary reasons that doesn't even apply to the character at all.
What I was trying to get across originally is that augments aren't evil soul eating aberrations and rejecting them makes you the odd one out, not average Joe.
That augments are as real to character progression as karma, not a cheap way out.
and most importantly, they're not a certain munchkin branding.

Which I see as a balance problem. The benefits of the smartlink were balanced against the drawback of being an implant. Once they're available without that drawback, you might as well make it a standard feature on every gun because there is no reason anyone except those trying for 'retro' hardware would ever not want it.

Smartguns can be hacked. laser sights not so much.

The other thing I dislike about it is that social skills are used to resist social skills. If anything, someone detached from humanity should be harder to intimidate, seduce, etc.


It's hard to make every option equally good in an open build system like Shadowrun. I'm not even sure it's a good idea. Some things should be less optimal, for the sake of verisimilitude. The game lets you create a bewildering variety of characters, of varying power levels and stages in their lives - I love Shadowrun's character creation system. But the downside of this openness is that characters can range pretty far up and down the power scale.

There are games where mundane characters can do things that would make a cyberzombie or multi-initiate adept gape in wonder - Shadowrun is not one of those games. One of the big cyberpunkish themes is transhumanism, and the alienation from normal humanity that comes with it. Mages and technomancers are like espers in Babylon 5 or mutants in the Marvel universe - envied, despised, sometime used by the powers that be and sometimes experimented on like lab rats. Augmented individuals have become superhuman, but left something of themselves behind in doing so. Having an unaugmented mundane who could duplicate a street samurai's abilities with pure skill, or shake off the effects of magic with little effort, would undermine those aspects of the game. In my opinion, it was a deliberate design decision to make magic and augmentation give characters such cheap and powerful boosts. It fits the intended tone of the game.

Agreed. A Mundane sans augments or magic is an inferior choice by comparison, just not a useless choice. You can be powerful and even highly useful as a Mundane, though it is harder to do, and comes with its own drawbacks. In the end, many a Mundane will likely buckle to maintain his edge, or to gain one once he becomes surpassed by those who augment. Where that line is is highly dependant upon the Mundane's build. That is not to say that the Mundane cannot be useful, or even more powerful than other characters.

And that final point, where the mundane finally gives in and gets their first augment ... should be a major watershed moment in the character's story. IT is, after all, part of the theme of cyberpunk.

Indeed, it should be.

It's also worth noting that while being a permanently unaugmented mundane is suboptimal, starting out as an unaugmented mundane (or cheaply augmented) and getting augmentations later is not.

It's just hard to be satisfied with an unaugmented mundane character, in my opinion. I've tried putting those together, but it just never felt like I was actually building a SR character.

As a note: I have had the exact opposite experience. Mundanes can work (and I have been immensely pleased with the results of the few I have attempted), they just take a lot of effort, and require really good motivations. That said, they are not my first choice for a character in Shadowrun.

They tend to be mine, if I'm not playing a decker (and I never am, no one ever wants to GM one). 'Ware is more fun when each piece is on the sheet not because it had a nice +X, but because the character ran into situations that made it appeal to him. Or just got blown up and needed a cyberarm because clonal replacements were too expensive.

Which is never?
Clonal limb (type O) is 4000¥ 21000¥
Basic off-the rack cymberarm is 15000¥

Never mind me I was looking at an eye or something...

Sure... But that level of Character development is possible in Chargen. Every piece of ware a character (of mine) has has a reason it is there, not because of the mechanical bonuses it provides. Takes a while longer to create the character that way, but it is more fulfilling to me at least.

Take time and accessibility to acquire. Oftentimes, the Cyber is more immediately available (fluff wise), where the Clonal tissue has to be grown, and likely has a shelf life (at least in our games it does).

Look again I was reading the wrong entry
Unless you want an eye on your arm stump

Oh, it is. But it really makes for better war stories, and thus better group cohesion, if the rest of your party will give you shit for years because you lost a hand to a Stuffer Shack vending machine, or got that new cyberfoot because a hellhound took your old one for a chewtoy.

Or ran through knee high monofilament wire. As a dwarf. Human knees.

A type O arm is also just a generic Frankenstein arm you get tossed onto your stump. If you actually want your new cloned arm to match the rest of your body, you need to get a cultured one, which costs 25k , and more importantly, it also requires that you surrender a tissue sample that they can grow a new arm from. It doesn't seem unlikely that the clinic would keep some of that lying around, in case their corporate HQ might need it (for example if they want to throw ritual magic at an uppity runner).

If I was a corporate cloning facility, I'd also incorporate some RFID tags in the fresh limbs/organs.

This is just ridiculous and antagonistic, IMO. And it doesn't fit because it's bad for business, as whenever those tags are discovered, word will spread that it was done and the facility won't get as many patrons.

You know, every street doc with a medical facility or a cloning shop can do this. The rules are in Augmentation, p.126

Yeah the skin tone/build may be a bit different but otherwise it makes no difference what so ever, neither cloned or type O replacement organs/limbs give essence loss (Augmentation p.126)

Also, if you're going through an actual, legal vendor for that cloned arm ... the odds are, you'll be choosing a limb by narrowign ranges down by ethnicity, metatype, overall build / biometrics, and yes, at least a "close" match to overall skin tone.

Maybe it won't have your healthy golden tan (or pasty white "I live in mom's basement" lack-of-tan) right away, but that's just a matter of time. Maybe it will freckle more/less than the rest of you, too. But overall, it's not goign to be "look look I'm a patchwork franken-samurai".

...

Unless you've having to go to back-alley "clinics" where you get whatever limbs are freshest, and maybe have to outbid the local "ghoul deli" to vet an arm at all. Then, yeah. Frankenstein.

I dunno, Franken-Samurai sounds like an awesome character concept. Ultra poor, always in debt, cobbled together from anything they can get their hands on...

~Umi

Nope not required. As far as I'm concerned running in the shadows is about being smart. More dice will help but it comes down to planing and luck.


Strongly depends on the type of character. Street Sam characters are probably the worst at keeping up (I would go so far and say its not worth it because you will be punishing yourself heavily).

I'd say Faces suffer the least obvious mechanical penalty; an unaugmented (or very lightly augmented) face who uses drugs for IPs can still do reasonably well in their area of expertise, and many of the things that would make them better are either highly illegal (Tailored Pheromones) or are sufficiently obvious (Commanding Voice) that they may not always be desirable to use on a regular basis. Plus, a completely mundane face with no restricted or forbidden 'ware will by definition pass nearly all MAD scanners and most wards with minimal hassle (assuming an actual non-criminal SIN or decent fake SIN). That's a big deal; most characters are going to have issues with that type of security, and it's a very common one in the 6th world. Plus, the lack of gear lets you sink more resources into contacts which are faces' bread and butter, or a second specialty.

Yeah, the mundane has problems. He's gonna have issues if he tries to sam it up, and obviously the adept and mage routes are right out. Hacker... depends. The IP problem is always a big one. Other than IPs, agent-focused hackers can work if you're willing to speedball Jazz and Cram occasionally, or even use synaptic boosters if that fits in concept. Sure you won't have the 4-5 IPs of a dedicated and chromed/adept specialist, but you won't always need them either. B&E infiltrators can work too, but they're gonna be at a disadvantage if things go sour.

That's kinda the thing. Sometimes you have to pick and choose your battles. Know your limitations, and pick where and when to fight against them.. or the opponent.

I've also got a face/infiltrator set up this way.. I've been hoping to play it. No restricted ware, little in the way of forbidden gear that isn't throwaway (maybe some of the infiltrator gear, because some of that' pretty expensive, but... better to throw it out and stay out of lockup then get busted and not be able to get strings pulled to get out anyone who did sort of deal) and an actual SIN just to further get past the problem of ubiquitous MAD scanners and security checks, just in case etiquette, con, and negotiation pools of 15 or so, with disguise pools of 10-12 don't work...

And by the same token, the augmented character is a possible source of used cyber/organs/unSINned mage genetic material to sell to black market contacts when money gets tight. On some teams its safer to be mundane.

Who in their right mind would try to beat up a street sammie covered in 2 ton of chrome?
Looting, sure... But beating up for his ware? That takes a special kind of crazy

2 doses of tetrodotoxin (DV 12P immediate toxin) and the sammie is gone - or rigger with a blimp mounted sniper rifle, then the sam does not even know it was his teammate that tried to off him.

People with that capacity surely have better pass-times, Tamanous recruits ghouls for a reason.

Oh, the blimp mounted sniper is not that expensive, and riggers ALWAYS need more money for new toys. Because (according to Augmentation) medical shops are built for rigging control, most of my riggers even have a medical shop and medical knowledge.

Your rigger needs a hobby, you should try knitting

Already got a drone for that, the MicroWeave Spider from Attitude (p. 163 for the fluff text, p. 166 for the stats).

Beat him up? Why would anyone want to do that? That guy is psycho-dangerous. Just wait and let nature take its course. Many runners with superhuman abilities get lazy and stupid. All you need to do is be a few seconds too slow to save their butts, but just fast enough to rescue their unconscious, defenceless, and quite valuable body (think of how many donuts you can buy!). Then blame it on your lack of extra initiative enhancement.

Then bring them to your second-favorite chop shop (your favorite street doc doesn't do this kind of work - I hope), and snip, chop hack, saw, and you and your contact just made their rent this week. Any leftovers can go to keep your ghoul contact happy.

I once saw a paranoid chromed character who was afraid of this sort of thing. He paid extra to have his most expensive cyber boobytrapped. Ah, the fun of buying your own cortex area bombs, disguised as nanite hives. After all, how many street docs are trained in demolitions?

It isn't paranoia if the ghoul in the party keeps swapping your Gold Bond for paprika.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

Mundane faces are the most penalized compared to augmented and awakened characters, especially compared to augmented awakened characters, who are stacking tailored pheromones and kinesics. However, they can still do well, because social skills are an area where it is easy to get your dice pools into the stratosphere, but unlike combat, a dice pool in the low teens is still pretty good, and will get the job done most of the time. Heck, the face archetype in the main book only has a commlink and a datajack as 'ware, fairly minimal augmentation and nothing that helps him as a dedicated face.

Considering that the baseline Mr. Johnson from the books (probably the weakest Mr. Johnson you'll run across) has 10 dice, I'd say it's a good idea to have minimum 15 dice on a Face.

I'm pretty sure at the end of the movie you're supposed to question whether or not Deckard was actually a replicant or not. But I could be crazy.

We're discussing transhumanism on a game forum on an invisible network of silicon chips and radio waves. We're all insane!

Would a professional assassin (IE someone who specializes in eliminating a single target very very effectively) be a viable pure mundane build? Sniping, poisoning, that sort of thing... You can make do without the extra initiative passes, and even augmented agility is not really vital (it's nice, but not really a must-have thing).

I'd say so.

its viable? yes, will you be the best at it? probably not

you'll want to figure out the best ways you want to kill & determine what skills will best suit your desired build & buy basic equipment to maximize your overall potential, but yes, it is a Viable build, you'll just have overall lower dice pools.

Absolutely. Snipers are less sensitive to "lack of IPs" than most other combat builds - because ideally, they'll only take the one shot, then disengage from combat. Assumign there are any survivors to be in combat WITH.