So, I've been away for a few years. Never really got far into SR4, and now I find we have a new version. That's all well and good, heh maybe I'll stick with it this version. Anyhoo, this question is for those that have crunched the mechanics of the new version a bit more than me, and perhaps have more extensive SR4 experience.


What is a reasonable Jack of Trades build, if possible under this ruleset? Is it possible to have a character that can be 'solid backup' for any/all given shadowrun areas? Magic related abilities, combined with Decking abilities, combined with combat and social abilities? What would be the minimum karma/experience 'level' needed to pull it off, can it be done with a 'new runner'? Partially triggered by my more recent play with Shadowrun Returns, where its more simplified arrangement made it easy enough to dump a few points here to get a healing spell, a few points there to get a drone, while still being a primary decker with shotgunny skills.

It can be done with a new runner - you'll want to choose Attributes A and (assuming you wanted a magical character) either B or C in magic. I take E in skills and buy a bunch of lesser-used skills at level 1 using the Bonus Karma. You won't be great at everything, no character is, but you can be reasonably competent in many things depending on how you distribute your attribute points. It's quite easy to make "powerful" characters as Humans since they get so many special attribute points (to raise your Magic to 6 if necessary and pump your Edge, which is an extremely powerful die pool).

Essentially a bard? Doable, but tricky. Decking, for instance, takes a pretty serious investment, as does magic, and doing both is a real balancing act.

I'd suggest Magic A, Resources B, Attributes C, Race D, and Skills E (Part of my soul died typing that, you should know) ... this gives you enough cash for a deck, plus enough leftover for skillwires (You're going to need *so* *many* Skillsofts!), Wired Reflexes 1, and enough spare points to bring your Magic back up after the cyber goes nomnomnom on it. You're going to be stretched in a ton of different ways and it'll hurt, badly.

A Combat Decker? Doable. A Social Magician? Easy. Combining three of those is hard, and adding a fourth is just gonna make you cry.

But it *can* be done.

You'd probably want to make a "Mr. Lucky" type character, with a broad pool of skills to spend your maxed out Edge points on.

~Umi

Had a solid build for that in SR4A (Karma-Gen Build). I am pretty sure that he cannot be completely done in SR5, however. He was an experiment to create an unaugmented character that was viable. I really enjoy playing him. Get to use my crappy Russian Accent (which occasionally turns to Crappy German) to boot, so extra bonus for me.