Ok, so shadowrun 5th edition is out. Dodging is bigger and better than ever. Skills go twice as high as they did before. Augmentations are massively more expensive. Armour is far more prevalent.

So what is a good out-of-the-box dicepool these days?

Case in point: My Face has a solid agility (5), 6 ranks in pistols, and Cybereyes with smartlink (+2 for smartguns), giving me 13 dice with my pistol. Is this good? Bad? Meh? I don't have a yardstick to measure against.

Help?

For a dedicated shooter, this would be pretty bad.
For somebody who is just trying to get by, it's enough.

The average Streetsam is going to have Agility 9, 6 ranks + spec, Cybereyes+Smartlink and possibly a Reflex Recorder, clocking in at 19-20. The average combat adept is going to have a similar dicepool if he uses Attribute Boost and invests points into the particular skillboost.

That said, your DP of 13 is average, and good enough for a secondary combatant.

Interesting. So a B or A into resources is pretty much a must-have for a good Sam?

I wouldn't say Agility 9. It would either require every sam either A. Being an Elf with max Agility, B. Being an Ork, Dwarf, or Human with Exceptional Agility, or finally C. Every Sam has two Cyberarms at Agility 9. I'd say 7-8 would be more average Sam agility, but that would still put their shootin' pool at 17-18(if they run the Smartlink wireless.)

Dunno, they might be getting used 'ware to get that extra point.

Out of curiosity, what's the best cyber/bioware setup on a budget (resources C) that you guys have found so far? Combat-wise, that is.

EDIT: Gotta say that damage compensators are looking pretty sweet at 2 grand and .1 essence a pip. Thoughts?

Ok, another dice-pool thing. My face has 13 dice (8 charisma, 5 skill) in impersonate, con, performance, etiquette, leadership, negotiation, and intimidation. I'm kind of relying on flexibility over raw power here (A in skills, so I had plenty of points to play with) but is that going to be enough or should I start aggressively pursuing more bonuses to be able to do my job?
Tailored pheromones and first impression are on my list for acquisitions later, but I wanted to get the feel for the campaign before deciding whether to instead throw those resources into upping my combat stuff.

Most combat experts will aim for a minimum of 10+1D6 or 9+2D6 for Initiative, to guarantee a second Initiative Pass, and thus the possibility to go Full Defense if needed. Since physical defense is also Reaction+Intuition, that means 9-10 will also be the base defense roll (12-14 on full defense).

So an attack dice pool around 12 will be bare minimum to have decent chances of hitting those.

I'd say yes, considering the price tag on initiative enhancements.



With 140k to play with, I'd say:
Cybereyes R1 [Flarecomp, Smartlink] (use Contacts/Goggles for other mods, since they are vastly cheaper external) 9k
Wired Reflexes R1 39k
Used Bone Density Augmentation R4 15k
Used Muscle Toner R2 48k
Used Orthoskin R4 18k

=> 129k, leaving you 11k+Karma to fill out the rest. This uses an even mix of offense/defense, and I'm sure there are more optimal paths out there. It should, however, get the job done.

I'm not sure there is hardly a dice pool at our entire table that tops 15 dice for anything. Of course our table doesn't feel the need to min-max every detail, but I feel it's a solid group of characters.

Looking at shooting on each character:

Elf Mage/Face - Shooting: 3 Dice (Defaulted Agility, she uses magic in combat, and doesn't even carry a gun)
Former Corp Bodyguard (street sam using tech) - Shooting 16 Dice
Former Ork Ganger (low tech street sam): Shooting: 13 Dice
Hacker/Rigger - Shooting: 6 Dice
Security Expert (Jack of All Trades) - Shooting: 11 Dice

We got by just fine in the first sprawl wilds mission. We'll see if combat gets harder with more shooting back instead of more critters.

If you heed the words of the optimizers on the internet, you will be disappointed with the dice pools of a perfectly playable character. My advice is to sit down with the people at your table and decide how high you want to go as a group. Use the skill ratings chart on page 131 as a guide.

On a budget-I guess the Muscle Replacement, some Cybereyes with the fixings, Dermal Plating, and some sort of Bone Lacing or Density(Plastic Bone Lacing or Bone Density 2). You could then squeeze out Wired 1.

Prio B could get you into Wired 2 range, or the lighter essence of the Synaptic Booster, though only at level 1.

Now if you go Prio A? Limbs all the way. To customize up 1 Cyberarm to 9 Agility, 9 Strength(Custom to 6 and grab 3 points each), and 2 points of armor, it costs a total of 94,000 and 1 Essence. 2 arms would cost 188,000 . Adding a Torso(with +3 Agility and Strength, +2 Armor) would be another 69,000.

So you'd get an incredibly pimped body with +6 armor for all of that, increased stats(you'd have to add in your natural legs's stats for an average but it would still be good, and anything done with the arms would be done with 9 Agility and Strength), plus 3 extra Condition Monitor boxes, and some essence left over to play with. With Priority A resources you can afford the kinda expensive Synaptic Booster, though you'd be drained. All in all, for a richer sam, limbs are the best bang for the buck. (You CAN do a limb-sam on B, but you have to forgo the torso, or take the full allowance of bonus nuyen, and you won't have much left.)

Seconded. Generally, a DP of 12+ means you are semicompetent in something and can use said skill actively in opposed tests. 18+ means you're smoking most opposition, barring horrible rolls.

Yeah, with most of the characters I made-min-maxed somewhat but not 100% bleeding edge optimized-they threw between 15-17 dice in their specialty, somewhere between 8 and 12 in secondary, and 6-8 in their 'dabbled' skills. I for some reason haven't felt the extreme need to push DPs as high as I admittedly did in SR4. I don't know *why*, mind you, I did in 4, but for some reason I felt like squeezing more in that. (I think because I felt more limited with the chargen-with all the limits they tossed on your head like the ultra-expensive final attribute point and the skill limitations-I somehow 'fought back' against that mentally by wanting to squeeze. When they give me MORE, I want to be more reasonable. Go figure. )

To put it into perspective the Average Human who does what he does day to day to make a living (sec guard, customer services, basic programmer) will have a pool of 6-7 (8-9 if specialised). An Average Professional with a capital P there will be pooling at 9-10 dice (again probabley with a speciality taking them to 11-12). Augmentations typically seem to add 2 to relevant stat and people dedicated to certain goals will be having stats at 2pts higher than the average. So an Augmented and Dedicated Professional will have Att 5 Skill 7 Aug +2 so base pool of 14dice. A Shadowrunner in their area of expertise should probabley be around this dice pattern too, so 9-10 dice Att+Skill then bonuses for Augs and Specialities. Seriously I tried putting together some of these 18+ DP focused characters and they didn't even look remotely playable (aka I can do 3 things REALLY well and everything else worse than the average guy in the street).

What is Good?

To crush your enemies and drive them before you, and to hear the lamentations of the women.
That is what is Good in Life.

See, I would say that the OP's example is Very Good. He is a Professional Grade Shooter, with above average Agility. He is a GOOD shooter. Her is NOT someone who is "just trying to get by."

The Average Street Sam DOES NOT HAVE AGILITY of 9. He is WAY above average in that regard.

This... Oh, SO much this...
Please IGNORE that you can start off with DP's close to or over 20. They are NOT a necessity to be good at what you do. 12-15 Dice is more than good as a starting character.

Mongol DM: Conan DM, what's best in life?
Conan DM: To crush the player characters, see their dice fail before you, and to hear the lamentation of their players.
Mongol DM: That is good! That is good.



I should clarify: by "average streetsam", I meant the average streetsam character build by an optimizer (which make up a considerable part of Shadowrun's playerbase). By no means were average, inworld streetsam meant.

Take a gander at the Archetypes. That'll give you a general idea.

Beyond that, a professional layman will have an attribute of 4 and a skill of 6, so is tossing 10 dice. A normal employee would have an attribute of 3 and a skill of 3-4 depending on how new they are.

Finding an attribute of 5 and a skill of 8 (give or take) is a seasoned veteran and as high as you'll generally find.

Shadowrunners go to crazy lengths to tweak themselves higher, but it isn't neccessary to play "How high can you go?!" and stack dice like mad.

If you toss 12 dice at a problem, you're going to succeed just about every time and is a rock-solid number for full time "This is what I do!" guy. 6-8's plenty for a back-up.

So, for a Face, for instance, 12 dice in Negotiation or Con is rock-solid, while Pistols of 6 dice (8 with a Smartlink) will get the job done.

Can we stop for a second to acknowledge that this time around, despite having several errors, the archetypes in the book do not suck horribly?

This is the clasic argument of Optimization vs Flexiblity (Although I've discovered that aglity 9 makes you bad ass at everything.) I always vote for flexiblity because I consider most runs a failure if you end up in open combat. 12 dice will get you an average of 4 hits per toss. That will keep you hitting most targets.

At CharGen: a good secondary pool is around 10-12, a good primary pool 14-16. an optimized pool 18-20.

Usually, for an augmented/magically improved, somewhat optimized character, it's going to be primary attribute 9-10 (6+4 augmented or 7+3 or metatype), primary skill 5-7, gear/magic/other +2, Plus sometimes a specialization.

It also depends on what sort of action you're trying to take. Factor in situational modifiers, enemy opposed test pools, and even things like how many IPs you're likely to end up with. A lot of the time, your "base" dicepool is deceptively powerful, despite being small.

~Umi

You and I definitely have different definitions for an Augmented/Magically Improved, somewhat optimized character. The first being that my Primary Attribute is likely to be 2-4 points lower than yours is. Primary Skill will be 4-6 (with a likely Specialization). Gear/magic/Other optional, but not necessary.

Very, Very True...

My players aren't munchkin, powergamers and certainly not combat-addicts, but they like to be *good* at what they do when playing Shadowrun. I share their opinion of what a good team is: a set of semi-specialized, efficient pieces that would be weak individually but very strong together.

What you are failing to see is that 12-14 dice IS GOOD. Yes, 18 Dice is BETTER, but are generally NOT NEEDED for a starting character to succeed at his tasks.

I believe it was confirmed by J Hardy that used cyberware is NOT available at CharGen.

Not sure about that (and I actually would find that to be counterintuitive), but we do know used cyberware won't be allowed in missions.

Guess they should have stated that in the book, and not used such things in the Archetype character builds, then. *shrug*

Honestly, I can't imagine a dumber rule, and if it was printed in three-inch letter, caps, boldface, underlined, and bright red across the page in the book, there's no way I would use it at my table. If used cyberware is too awesome to allow a starting character, then you statted it out wrong.

It does state the only standard and alphaware are available at CharGen on pg.95. I think he was just clarifying that that statement excludes used cyber as well.

I love you for quoting Conan (even if those movies had pretty much nothing to do with Howard's excellent writing).

However Arnold did punch out a camel. But I got to love me some Howard.

Indeed he did. For what they were, the movies were awesome and I'll still watch them whenever they happen to be on TV. Never bothered seeing the new one, it looked like a terrible disappointment waiting to happen.

On topic, this has been really helpful for the characters I've been making. I don't hyperspecialize or overoptimize and I'm finding that I get around 10-14 DP before modifiers (i.e. 12 automatics prior to smartlink, etc) on my primary skills.

I generally like to make hybrid characters that can be good in multiple roles though.

Doesn't matter.
Rules say it is.
And seeing how that one is with errata, it's unlikely to change i guess.

Maybe, but yet, there is at least one Archetype that uses such ware in their build.

And as Rystefn indicated, it is a poorly thought out and thoroughly dumb ruling that does nothing but eliminate low-end character concepts from starting characters. And if a System is so worried about those low-end pieces of ware that Used Cyber represents, then they did it wrong.

* LINK *

Hey I'm just putting the info out there so you can all make informed decision. What those decisions are at your table do not effect me in the least. Developer intent, when it can be found, in order to clarify vague rules is taken into account and played that way at our table. Once it has been show to be unbalanced through gameplay we house rule it. What you do is entirely dependent on the people at your table and I do not judge it.

I do miss good ol' used alphaware though. Was awesome while it lasted.

SR5 p. 451 "Only standard, alphaware, and used implants are available for purchase at character creation."

With used being a category of its own now, I doubt it it can be combined with other grades.

I believe that J. Hardy indicated that this was the erroneous entry in the book. It might be worth researching if it of concern to you. If not allow it. As I said I was just throwing the info out there so you could do with it as you please. If I hadn't the someone who does care would not be able to look into it.

That is our groups assessment as well.

if he had wanted the rules to say that, he should have made sure that they do.
as long as there is no official errata document for SR5, him saying that it's not allowed on any old internet board (not even the official one, mind you) does not carry any more weight than me saying it is allowed on the officially unoffical one which is kinda semi official.

Also a dumb rule. Because when you buy a used car with great gas mileage, the instant you get behind the wheel, it starts using extra gas, right? And when you buy a used computer, the extra RAM just vanishes into the ether, right? Used gear is going often be less awesome than new in box, but better quality stays better quality when you hand it someone else.

And as long as they keep to "there are only 4 grades of ware [standard,alpha, beta, delta]" used is not a grade in it's own right but a modifier for grades.