At the end of the movie yes you're supposed to question, because Ridley Scott didn't bother finishing the book before beginning the film. In the middle of the book it's unclear, but by the end Deckard is most definitely human.

Why? 12 Dice is just fine in my experience. Anything above will likely guarantee success, but that is a waste of resources if 12 dice gets you there more than half the time.

"Best" is purely subjective, though. If you are comparing a 12 DICE specialist with a 24 DICE specialist, then yes, one is objectively better. However, if the 12 Dice Specialist always kills their mark, the 24 Dice specialist cannot make them any more dead, and in fact wasted resources to get those additional dice.

This is only true if the 12 Dice specialist ALWAYS kills their mark, no buts no ifs even suffering from a -12 dice pool. Then sure.

And if 12 dice only gets you what the Johnson is really willing to pay for half the time, then that means the other half you get paid less than the job is worth.

Of course, but it is not hard to mitigate some of the penalties you are talking about, even for a mundane. And a Longshot Edge test covers the rest of those grounds.
As for your second point. It is again subjective; because Reputation does not rest upon Dice Pools, it rests upon Results. *shrug*

I was specifically avoiding the introduction of dicepools in my comment, by best I meant the highest dice pool available without it being "wasteful" as you put it, mind you 12 dice might be completely horrible at some tables because its all subjective. Even my 20 pool on my sniper sometimes doesn't even kill an opponent, so I'd assume a 12 pool at my table will minorly wound the opponent.

Simple principle of GMing: "scale the NPC opposition to the PC's abilities".

Indeed... Unfortunately, Table are extremely subjective, and Dice Pools do have a lot to do with that one. _Pax_ has it right, though. Opposition should be scaled to the PC's in a lot of ways. Though, to be honest, I scale the world, and let the PCs fit into the world, rather than Adjust (DnD style) to the Characters. At our table, the characters fear Firewatch Teams, regaredless of their Dice Pools (and not because Firewatch Teams have overwhelming advantages due to DP's, because they often do not).

Generally, I'd scale the world, too. But, if the PCs are sporting 20+ die pools, their fixer(s) aren't going to offer the kind of work that would be suited to folks with a DP of 10-12.

See, that fellow with the DP of 12, might be hired for runs against gangs, low- to mid-level local crime syndicates, lesser A to AAA corp facilities, B and C corp facilities, and so on. They probably don't leave the immediate area of the sprawl they live in, and if they travel, it's "not far" - CalFree or Hawaii or maybe Denver, for a Seattle based group, for example.

Whereas, the guys with 20+ die pools? Probably get hired for jobs all over the globe, have a contact or two in every major region (amongst the whole group, naturally) or can friend-of-a-friend stuff there, at the least. They would consider hitting a C-corporation's facility "slumming with the n00bz", and would turn down most "go do X to gang Y" jobs as not worth their time.

The opposition scales to the PCs, simply because the PCs are "overqualified" for all the lesser-opposition jobs out there. You wouldn't hire Stephen Hawking to run a register at McDonald's, any more than you would hire a middle-school kid with C's in math to teach post-graduate level physics courses at MIT.

Indeed, You and I mostly see Eye to Eye on Jobs a Johnson would give to a group of PC's.
We base ours on Reputation, though, and not Dice Pools. It is up to the Characters to accept or decline based upon what they think that they can successfully accomplish; and we have had characters die because they overestimated their capabilities to accomplish a mission. *shrug*

Hey! My 20DP shooter took a bodyguard job suited to a 10-12DP character. Of course, I'm just using this job as a cover for another job and quite possibly may set up the character I'm supposed to protect to be kidnapped by the rest of my team.... Of course I also had to go seeking jobs rather than being offered them. :shades:

Your fixer probably knows you're a good shot, beyond that he probably doesn't know you can shoot the wings off a fly unless you make it a point to show it off. Which would figure into rep as well I suppose. Fixers should be hooking you up with Johnsons based on your areas of specialty and you and the team should decided if you overqualified, underqualified, or don't really care because you owe a Yak boss a ton of Nuyen.

Oh, in my case the job is well below what the fixer knows I or my team can handle. It's just one of those ways maybe to make a little extra bank while doing something else or as I said, it's an avenue that gets us access to one of the locations we want to get access to so we can get someone to get us access to the target location.

Another factor is the player. I've seen players who could make a dicepool of 50 ineffective and others who could make 10 dice do the work of 20. Playing smart is just as important as any numerical advantage.

This... Oh SO MUCH this...

I'd say that the major factor is the GM. I have seen GMs who could make a dicepool of 50 ineffective and others who allowed 10 dice to do the work of 20. From the perspective of a bystander, I thought the GMs had preconceived notions of what constituted "smart play". Playing to what the such GMs deem to be smart play is more important than actually playing smart in game. Well, you could say that the smart play would be to be able to convince the GM to see things your way.

I have seen GM's where this is the case... However, I have played with a number of players where no Dice pool would save their hides. It was astonishing...

They tease with the idea, but it is a moot point, because functionally, Deckard is still human-powered, and going against superhuman opponents - which is what it is like to play an unaugmented mundane in Shadowrun.

On dice pools - number of dice is easy to quantify, but how the GM runs the game is not always as easy to qualify. Shadowrun is a tactical game, but high dice pools give you a bit of slack - it's hard to come up with clever plans all of the time, and the environment or the GM's rulings might not always be conducive to your character's latest brainstorm. Like I said, I have played characters with high dice pools and not had a problem being challenged, even by gang punks.

This is me. It's not uncommon for me to have a dice pool >15 and still only roll 2 hits (without edge).

-D

Well, in our group there are two of those, maybe even three. Out of seven total.

I've been thinking a lot about wholly mundane characters, part because there are/were three of those in the party, part because I need to create an npc of the type and part because there are some mundanes in the setting - for example, Tit Nan Og elves who despise augmentations, but not all of whom are awakened.
And I would really like to see some examples of capable mundanes. Especially combat specialists. As far as I got, everything a mundane can do, an awakened or cybered can do better. The advantages are dismal. It's like comparing elves to humans - elves are better in every way save Edge, but I haven't seen characters with Edge 7 at all. Mundanes can probably be better skillmonkeys, being able to cross over many fields, but in each field they would be trumped by a non-mundane character, not even necessarily a specialist in the field. In the end GM has to tone down the opposition just because otherwise they will rape mundanes.

And to save the argument, I know all about roleplaying. This doesn't stop me from trying to make as highly optimised character as the concept allows. And When I want to make a, say, capable security specialist, and I see that certain implants would greatly benefit him, I need a reason not to use them.

PS: the rigger talk was enlightening. Thanks a lot!

I personally would like to play at your tables, our table often has us babysitting someone or maybe stealing something, on a number of occasions we've been sent after worthless personal items our team generally makes rent & maybe enough to cover the essentials I think the most money we've ever had one hand was 40k nuyen at one time (this after earning over 100 karma as well)

Another mundane build that works well: Demolitions expert. Let the aug-up troll blow stuff up with rockets, that's not your thing. Your job is to remove inconvenient doors, walls, buildings and suburbs with a few well-placed charges. You're also a defensive expert, whipping up shaped-charge shrapnel mines and collapsing key areas of the landscape for tactical advantage.

Sure, there are a couple of augs that could help this build, but they're a few extra dice rather than a must-have I-win button (Like extra IPs are for a combat expert).

A secondary area of expertise that works well for this character is Knowledge skills (including Engineering, Chemistry, Bomb disposal), and of course toxins (Gas and splash grenades are good no matter how many initiative passes you have).

That hurts. Personally if my group had a couple of lean runs like that I think we'd start making our own fun (IE: Hacker locates valuable commodity. Group plans heist. Group steals valuable commodity. Face sells it. Profit.)

We're working on that, but its more or less the GM seems to like more cookie cutter runs & no matter how much we've pushed to get paid well, he seems to keep throwing us 5-10k/runner, & the only reason we had a decent payday was we killed a few gangers & chopped them up. Though I believe we are now going to "deal"" with the go gang that caused us problems....might make some decent money there.

Try to take their vehicles as intact as possible. There'll be some real money in them.

took 4 bikes, but we kept those most of the group didn't have bikes, now we do.

Off the top of my head....
Cerebral Booster (+1-3 Logic)
Encephalon (+1 die for Demolitions)
Math-SPU (+2 die for Demolitions [if you can argue that you use math in demolitions])
PuSHeD (+1 die for Demolitions)

if you're going Ware route the yes, however Adept route has other options.

NeoCortical Nanites (most of the time, +3 to demolitions)
Reflex Recorder (+1 to demolitions)
Genetic Optimization (Logic) (lets you get 1 more logic)

Why do people keep arguing mundanes are better at being generalists? That is totally backwards, it's where mundanes fail the hardest compared to augmented characters. If your goal is to be competent in as many different things as possible (where competence is defined as something like 8-12 dice or whatever), a mundane will trail so far behind an augmented character it isn't funny.

Reflex recorder is not an option. Demolitions is a Technical skill not a Combat or Physical skill.



Attribute boosters are probably the single largest part of the issue.

Cerebral Booster +1-3 to all logic linked skills (2 BP or 4 Karma per +1).
Muscle Augmentation +1-4 to all strength linked skills (1.4 BP or 2.8 Karma per +1).
Muscle Toner +1-4 to all agility linked skills (1.6 BP or 3.2 Karma per +1).
Tailored Pheromones +1-3 to charisma linked skills (3 BP or 6 Karma per +1).

So no matter what, at some point during character creation it is cheaper for a character to advance that augment over the skill itself. I think the conception that mundanes are better generalists stems from the fact that they're eschewing expensive augmentation and thus have more points to use on raising skills. This has some merit if you are hitting your wealth cap without augmentations, but hitting 250k of wealth without augments is tough for a mundane (riggers excluded).

Oops, I stand corrected.

Who, exactly, said that?

I think you've misinterpreted something. It's been stated that augments are clearly better "hyper-specialists" in most areas, but that hyperspecialisation itself often leaves you less-capable in other areas. But that is not the same as saying "mundanes are better generalists".

Well, capable mundanes are easy to do, especially with the right meta-type. A capable vanilla human is much harder.

Mr. Lucky is pretty capable at everything, several times a run at least.

An unaugmented troll loaded down with armor, good body, and a decent automatics skill is pretty capable combat wise. Throw in the close combat skill group to round it out (because it's got the strength for it).

My first character was almost completely mundane (might have had muscle toner, don't remember). He was a demolition/knowledge skill/junkie character. He was capable even in combat, but he speed balled jazz, cram, nitro, kamikaze, and/or novacoke to compete with everyone else. In combat he relied on grenades, automatic fire, and dynamite. Sadly he died when he critically glitched on a demolition test involving 47 kg of cheap explosives. I think drugs are a viable route for mundanes to stand up with everyone else. They let you compete at international levels, just ask Lance Armstrong.

I have yet to see an Augmented/Awakened Character with 50 skills at start, Most of which (slightly over half, IIRC 28 of them) are in the 7-12 Dice pool range (with 10 of them at 12 Dice, IIRC), and with none of them less than 5 Dice. Yet, I have seen a Mundane character with just such a build. That particular character is often MUCH more useful than the specialists in the team due to his crazy amount of skills. *shrug*

Now granted, the skill pools for the Augmented/Awakened characters are in the 9-14 DP range for their important skills, but they are NOT generalists at that point, they are specialists.

Well, Tymaeus just did.



You might not have personally seen one, but that just means nobody has actually built and played it. I don't suppose you have the character sheet of such an unaugmented mundane starting character on hand? In the interest of comparing apples to apples I would like to compare to an actual character instead of Schroedinger's Mundane.

Not only that, but having a sheet and seeing how the skills are arrayed can tell if the character is actually better than an augmented character or not. Augments often provide dice to a large number of skills at prices cheaper than raising each of the skills by one. Unless you have a direct need to have ranks in the skill, more often than not the first rank + augments + further ranks is cheaper. So the consideration is whether or not the augments are too expensive more than anything else and if the augments are too expensive, you'll still likely end up worse off. When you're talking about 50 skills, however, the odds are that you're going to have most of the skills the augment boosts.

Enhanced Articulation is 40,000 (8BP) and grants a total of 9 dice. To raise Climbing, Diving, Escape Artist, Gymnastics, Infiltration, Palming, Parachuting, Running, and Swimming all by 1 rank would cost 36BP.

The only conceivable way that the mundane is better is if they have a rank of 1 in every skill and even then that's questionable. That's because for 4 BP you're effectively increasing your DP by 2 rather than 1 (+1 and eliminating the -1 from defaulting) but even if you assume the first rank is effectively doubled in value you're still comparing 8BP for enhanced articulation against 18BP for the skills.

Not handy, no... And to be clear, I am not saying that the Mundane is BETTER than the Awakened/Augmented. But he IS generally more effective in more areas. Yes, he only has a Single IP pass, but he always goes first in the Combat Sequence (A Quality), and he also has a 12 Initiative (as a backup). His EDGE sucks a bit (I think it is a 2 or 3), so he cannot augment his skills with Edge use much. His combat skills are 10 (Melee)-12 (Guns) Dice (Specialties), so he can fight well, but with one pass, he is hampered by the lack of IP unless he takes a combat drug for the 2nd IP. Where he really shines is in the supplemental skill areas. He has a ton of them. Far more than the other characters combined. They may not be at specialist levels (7-10 Dice for most of these, also specialized), but they are all functional. Will a Specialist in a given category do better? Yeah, probably, but the nice thing is that we do not have enough specialists to cover all those skills, so he is quite useful in that regard. *shrug*

No arguments on Augments. Yes, Augments would make the character MUCH better, especially with the array of skills he already possesses. And I have never argued otherwise. However, the original premise was not whether Augments were better (at least that was never my stance), it was whether you could make a Mundane Character that could compete with Augmented/Awakened Characters on a team. And the answer is an unequivocal Yes. *shrug*

And the character is question does not have any antipathy for Augmentations, so it is not a philosophical refusal to possess any. It has just not come up. He has had no REASON to implant any augments, and even if he did have a reason, he has not had the Money to do so (part of his background). When he is injured, and has need (and the money) to get implants, he likely will.

As a note: The character was an exercise in seeing if you could make a Mundane that could compete in the world of Shadowrun, as a "Runner. I think he was pretty successful at doing so. AS for Gear, his gear budget was only 40k Nuyen (those skills eat up a lot of starting resources), so ...

You do realise, that challenge cuts both ways, right? Maybe we'll want to see an actual example, rather than Schroedinger's Adept or Schroedinger's Cybernaut ...

How can that be? Your statements are in direct contradiction. If augmentation can be used to build the same character more efficiently which allows for higher dice pools, how can the unaugmented compete with that? In all categories the augmented would be better.

An unaugmented mundane generalist can compete with augmented/awakened specialists because he covers areas they don't. He can't compete with an augmented generalist because the generalist will be better in most things than the unaugmented mundane generalist. We need to compare apples to apples here.

Yes, that is the point. If you would like to provide an actual example of an unaugmented mundane generalist, then I am happy to provide an actual example of how much that character could be improved by being augmented.

And no, I'm not going to show you the augmented character first, because then someone will claim that because a mundane could theoretically have 5 dice in Knowledge: Feng Shui that they are better in some situations and impossible to compare etc etc etc.

My point is that he is only "generally more effective in more areas" because you are comparing apples to oranges. If you compare an unaugmented mundane generalist to an augmented mundane generalist, the augmented mundane generalist will be as effective in some areas and more effective in some areas.

I'm not going to argue about whether this means the unaugmented mundane can or can't "compete." This is a waste of everyone's time as much as trying to argue whether someone is tall or whether a collection of sand is a heap or a pile.

No doubt... Augmentations in the same areas will always do better than a non-augmented. I never said otherwise.

The unaugmented character will have more areas of use than the Augmented character. Those augmentations do use resources that the Mundane can otherwise use for Skills. The question is one of scale, I guess. I have never managed to create an Augmented character with as many skills as the totally unaugmented character. I guess it could be done, I have just never quite accomplished that task. Something to look at I guess.

Which has never been a point of contention, at least from me. Take the same character and add Augmentations and of course he will be better. That is obvious.

Augments use money, yes, but the amount of BP/Karma it takes to acquire them gives a far greater benefit than if you were to individually purchase those skills.

Qualia and PuSHeD together cost 40,000 and they give you a collective +1 to all logic and intuition linked skill tests. So for 8 BP you raise all your knowledge skills dice pools by 1.

No arguments here. In the case of the character I played, however, that 40k was more useful in actually acquiring some equipment (rather than benefiting a +1 DP for a bunch of those skills). Augments can always come later (when funds are less tight); it is hard to run with absolutely no equipment, though I did have a ganger who did so for a bit.

Seems like that's a pretty obvious benefit there. A lot faster to gain and buy augs later than to get the karma for all those skills.

Should work nicely. Though it really depends upon how fast your cash flow is in game. Ours is not too bad; it has been good enough to get me some great toys to date. I am seeing how long I can go before I HAVE to augment to stay competitive. In comparison, I have only received about 16 Karma so far. But that is enough to Specialize 8 Skills.

At a glance it seem to be that edge would be fairly important for our unaugmented hero.
Especially for a generalist, let's you do what skillwires don't, nice for extra IPs in a pinch aswell.