So in an effort to build a street sam of my own ran into a problem, I decided to take the one in the core book apart and see how he was built. he spent too much money. 607.555 nuyen

cyberware 193000
28000 Cybereyes: 3 (flare comp, low light, smartlink, thermo, vision enchancement: 2, Vision Mag)
7200 Dermal Plating: 2 (alpha)
74800 15k Cyberarm: 15K Str Customiation, 19.5K enhancement +3 str, 19.5K enhancement +3 agil, 4.8 sub machine gun, 1 external clip port
83000 15k Cyberarm: 15K Str Customiation, 19.5K enhancement +3 str, 19.5K enhancement +3 agil, 6 +2 armor, 5 spur, 3 cyberslide

bioware 317000
24000 enhanced articulation
17000 platelet factories
56000 reflex recorders (blades, longarms, sneaking, unarmed)
190000 Synaptic booster: 2
30000 Syntha cardium: 1

vehicles 12000
-12000 Harley Scorpion

Gear (60000)
-1650 earbuds [500 audio enhancement: 1, spatial reconizer)
-47200 4 fake SIN [Rating 4, each with fake licenses 2400(Rating 4, concealed carry, possession of firearms,
possession of augmentations)],
-3000 Hermes Ikon commlink (Rating 5),
-600 jammer (area, Rating 4),
-3150 lined coat [9, chemical protection 3, fire resistance 3, non-conductivity 3],
-750 Medkit: 3
-1500 medkit (Rating 6),
-100 micro-transceiver,
-15000 Middle Lifestyle (3 month),
-750 5 stim patches (Rating 6),
-1000 2 trauma patches,
-300 white noise generator (Rating 6)

Weapons 25555
-1000 Katana
-500 Sword
-1450 Ares Light Fire 75 (smart linked) w/ 3 spare clips, 100 rounds regular ammo]
-1925 Ares Predator V (smartlinked APDS ammo (100 rounds) , 3 spare clips]
-1530 HK-227 (smartlinked) 3 spare clips, 100 rounds explosive ammo]
-4200 FN HAR (int Smartlink,3 spart clips, 100 APDS ammo
-2850 Enfield AS-7 (int Smartlink, 3 spare clips, 100 flechette ammo
11800 Ingram Valiant (Int smartlink 3 spare clips
-300 3 high explosive grenades [Grenade, non-aerodynamic, DV 16P, AP –2,
Blast –2/m]

total spent
607555

I'm guessing that he was build with gear and ware prices being alot lower. Can we have those prices please?

Are you talking about one you built for yourself, here, or the archetypical one? If the archetype, he's not one of mine; the idea of an Orc Sammy with two cyberarms hurt my head too much.

This is the one from the core book. fixed the first post to reflect that.

Yes please.

Can you get additional money with the 25 free Karma points during character creation?

SYL

Yes, you can.

And 25 spent karma should only net him another 50k to spend. Even if he maxed out on negative qualities to get 50 karma to spend, he would only have 100k in extra cash, and he's got positive qualities, ruling that out.

Just to test it: can you check the Sam again with SR4 prices? I have a certain feeling ...

SYL

There's a cap on how much karma you can spend on extra resources (10, for 20k extra cash), just FYI.

I'm blaming forgetting that on being up all night with a newborn. That clause makes the street samurai over by even more cash. Time to take a closer look at the hacker.

Street sams got no love in sr5 so far

So perhaps you can tell us how the street sam was build?

SYL

Personally I think this counts as the nicest thing done for street sams so far in 5th ed. I'm also pretty sure none of his Karma was spent

25 Karma
Ambidextrous (-4)
Code of Honor (Bushido) (+15),
Guts (-10),
Home Ground (Street Politics)(-10),
Incompetent (Acting) (+5)
21 karma to spend

Both attributes and skills have both the appropriate amount of points to match up to a priority.

Afaik, it was Aaron who build him.

That said, a change in cyberware price would go a long way in appeasing all those displeased by the perceived cyber nerfs.

Dumpshock user "Aaron" is the one who built him.

It would have been extremely helpful for the Archetypes to list which priority choices they were built with so players could get a more diverse feel for character gen. I wonder who's bright idea it was to not show that?

near as a i can figure

a 450K
b att 20 points
c ork
d skills 22 points
e magic

I did ask about priorities being posted in the errata, no response on that.

Nope. Sorry.

The sample characters having errors is tradition, guys.

The Followers of the Way of Do As We Say, Not As We Sample?

Hey UmaroVI,
will you be working on new archetypes once SR5 Missions rolls out? I really liked the ones for SR4.

Catalyst is nearly the Temple of that Way.

Yupp. And the Combat Mage (you know the human with the lovely troll image next to him) looks really weird, too.

The way I deconstructed him was
A: Magic
B: Attributes
C: Resources
D: Skills
E: Race

Everything adds up quite nicely except that he spent only about 12.000 Nuyen on gear out of his budget of 140.000. That guy doesn't even have a commlink...

And his armor rating of 13 is one too high for his armor jacket. Just looks like, you know, maybe a Troll's natural armor was added to that.

-CJ

A few errors i can accept, but to making something so far beyond what is recreatable really points to how much of a rush Catalyst was to get things sown up before the summer con season.

I'm not sure yet. I'm definitely holding out for the first big round of errata (so that Mystic Adepts get fixed).

I'd included these, since I figured that new playwers would want us to show our work. Included where the 25 "slush fund" was spent as well, but I think those were dropped for space reasons.

I'll probably put together a walk-through of a few examples before GenCon, show how some were built and how to build others.

I plan on creating more in the future, for certain. At the very least, I want as many of the original archetypes re-assembled as possible. Bull and I both pushed for the inclusion of a Rocker, but, sadly, it wasn't to be. I won't let that dream die yet!

At first glance the hacker has too many psoitive qualities...
Analytical Mind (5)
Aptitude (14)
Codeslinger (10)

Not legal either. Case closed.

-CJ

I told Randall to just keep the pXX references as his throw-back to Shadowrun editions of old, but no. He had to go with broken-yet-somehow-still-horribly-underoptimized archetypes.

still better than the technomancer with priority A in resources they did as one of the examples for making a character. and the 'street samurai' example for building a character who had resources D, as i recall... *facepalm*

"Oh, i know just what my technomancer needs to start off with... a lifetime supply of specialized ammunition! yes! that is exactly what will benefit me most as a technomancer!"

Honestly i'm going to bump this thread as for me it's very telling. The 4th edition Street Sam is now impossible to build in 5th edition (legally) and even if you could build him he'd be outclassed by magically active characters. 'Ware hate is really the only applicable term for what's going on.

Just game progression. Part of the goal was to get away from the 4e state of characters coming out of creation as the best in their field, with everything they'll ever need.

Having a character advancement system means that player characters are meant to have room to actually, you know, advance.

Suggesting the prices need to be fixed in errata actually got booted out of the errata thread so probably no chance of that happening.

No, it's not. It's about bringing characters more in-line with one another. The balance for sams over physads over the editions has been time. Street samurai characters tend to be just about as good as they're going to get right out of the gate. Sure, they can upgrade to betaware and open some essence holes to get more chrome, but it's just baby steps. Meanwhile, adepts get their hoops kicked by sams out of the gate, but they can initiate as many times as they can save up karma, getting them limitless room for growth.

All this edition has done is level that playing field a bit. I've played with it. Sams aren't as good as they used to be out of the gate compared to adepts, but they still outclass magic users. And adepts don't get off easy. First, initiation is more expensive in terms of karma (first grade is 13, second is 16, third is 19). Second, initiation is now capped at Magic attribute. Third, the extended test to determine if an initiation is successful is at an increment of a MONTH. Now go re-read the extended test rules and look at what happens if they fail. Finally, you don't get an automatic power point when you initiate. You have to choose it instead of metamagic when you initiate. Oh, and the geas trick to lower power point costs? Not in core.

We has qi foci now tho

That was more because the errata thread is for actual mistakes in the book, not design arguments. The thread was already split to take that stuff out once.

For the love of god, please go reread the rules.
1. Initiation limit is exactly same as it was in SR4, there's no real cap as it's an endless feedback loop.
2.Ofcource you don't get automatic powerpoint when initiating, you get it when you raise your magic, just like in SR4.

And then there's the dirt cheap Qi foci, that allows for more powers.

Maybe you should read them.

p325, first column third paragraph. "Your initiate Grade can never exceed your Magic attribute."

Also on that page, no mention is made of getting a Power Point when you Initiate or when your Magic attribute increases, but specifically states on p.326 second column first paragraph "Power Point (Adepts Only): If you're an adept, you can take a Power Point instead of a metamagic. You can take this as many times as you like." (The second sentence is a clarification to the rule you can only take any metamagic power once). The only place where Power Points = Magic Attribute is specifically listed on p308, where it is very clear this is ONLY at character creation.

If the rules state otherwise, please let me know what pages they say so because that would be a major conflict that CGL would need to address quickly.

having just looked at the adept powers, i have to say i'm overall pretty underwhelmed with adepts, at least in core.

maybe later splats will make adepts more scary. but right now? most of the ridiculous stuff adepts could pull is really not that ridiculous any more. kinesics doesn't add to all social skill tests. there's no more dirt cheap non-combat skill boosts. really, most of the interesting stuff they can do is matched by 'ware, give or take...

they'll still be pretty good, particularly since there's still nothing restricting you from combining being an adept with getting 'ware (so stuff that's way easier with 'ware, like better senses, is still within reach). and they'll be viable without any 'ware at all, i suppose (combat sense is still pretty good, for example). but i mean, i'm not convinced they're going to be replacing street samurai any time soon, particularly since imo the hallmark of a good street samurai is way more than just being able to kill stuff.

a good street samurai should be a combat beast, yes, but a narrow focus is generally not what i expect from one. they're the person on the team who knows a lot about explosives, who is both a combat beast and also able to sneak around, can drive (not as well as a rigger, but well enough), can use those crazy weapons that normally don't get used (what, you think the adept is going to invest in using a flamethrower?), and so on.

*facepalm* And this is why I need to learn to stop going to forums.

And the maximum for your magic is 6+Initiation grade, thus forming the endless feedback loop i mentioned.

From page 278
POWERPOINTS
Power Points are the quantified qienergy that adepts
can spend to buy permanent powers. At character cre-
ation, adepts receive Power Points equal to their Magic
attribute, while mystic adepts have to buy Power Points
with Karma. Subsequently, Power Points can come in
two ways. You get a free Power Point whenever you increase
your Magic attribute, and you can gain a Power Point through
Initiation(p. 324) instead of gaining a metamagic

your initiate grade cannot exceed your magic attribute. but your maximum magic attribute goes up when you initiate. so, when you've hit your initiation cap, you raise your magic. this raises your maximum initiation grade. so you initiate.

you can do this indefinitely, so long as your essence does not drop below 1 (actually, if you've got an exceptional magic attribute, you're fine so long as you don't hit zero or below, and you would even be fine *at* zero if that didn't kill you).

as to gaining power points when you increase your magic, page 279:

"Subsequently, Power Points can come in
two ways. You get a free Power Point whenever you increase
your Magic attribute, and you can gain a Power
Point through Initiation (p. 324) instead of gaining a
metamagic."

note that this comes right after a sentence discussing chargen for adepts and mystic adepts... as such, this is *subsequent* (ie after) chargen that these rules are discussing.

Too slow man

what? you think any of them are so mind-bogglingly awesome that they're going to make street samurai obsolete?

i've just spent the last couple of days explaining to people why technomancer powers aren't that great. i can start here too.

adept powers have a theoretical unlimited cap. that being said, with the number of skills you're likely to want for combat alone (never mind the other stuff that a good street sam should have - sneaking around, perception, etc), street samurai aren't exactly going to run out of things to spend karma on either.

No, because I'm sick of dealing with people going on and on and ON about how this build is broken and this build is nerfed and it's the SAME DAMN BUILD! The system's been out for FIVE DAYS and everyone's already an expert at every rule and has made every single character possible and played them for thousands of hours to know exactly how they're going to balance against one another and I'm just getting sick of heading about it.

A game product forum probably isn't the place to be, then, if you're tired of discussion of your own game product.

Not seeing where the Adepts are the weaker ones here. Their powers lack all of cyber/bioware's drawbacks, they can get improved reflexes 3 out of the gate where Sammies are limited to 2. And the choosing a PP instead of a metamagic issue? A: Most of the meta magics aren't helpful for adepts unless you're a mystic adept. B: That's not the only way, every time you initiate you can spend karma to raise your magic rating and you get a new PP from your higher magic rating as well. As for capping initiation at Magic can you site that? As stated you can raise your magic past 6 with initiation so that's not exactly a hard cap unless I'm missing something. You might have to spend a lot of karma but you can raise your magic as high as you can initiate if you have enough.

Edit: Ninjaed multiple times on the initiation issue but hopefully repetition will help it sink in.

improved reflexes 3 is nice. but at that point, they're not left with many points for anything else interesting.

meanwhile, a street samurai may be limited to slightly less initiative, but can get a ton of other stuff in addition to wired reflexes 2.

Force 4 qi focus= 12k 8 karma out of chargen = improved relfexs 1 rating, allowing an adept to take Imprvd. Ref. 2 for 2.5 and then still have a rating of 3, also foci can now RaW be tattoos.

Not many points left over for anything else Interesting? You've still got 2.5 points to spend on stuff. Or, alternately, you've got 1.5 points to spend on stuff, and 1 point of cyber or Bio. Resources 'C' appears to have plenty of cash for neat Adept Foci + Cyber/Bio.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS