For you more experienced players out there, when creating characters whose primary jobs are to handle noncombat situations (Infiltrators, Faces, Hackers, etc. etc.), how much combat ability do you consider sufficient in order to keep them alive and functioning when situations go pear-shaped? What sort of dice pools do you usually plan into a character who is only there for extra fire support when the bullets start flying? Any particularly favored Combat Skills to use for this sort of thing?

I've read a good sweet spot for IPs and reaction enhancers is +1 but are there any other good guidelines like that?

It really depends on the team makeup and the sort of game you're playing. If your GM tends toward the combat-heavy game, then clearly something more than Pistols 3 and a Hammerli 620 is indicated. If he's happy to let you circumvent most fights, you might be good to go with a high Dodge skill.

Assuming you're playing a character like the face and the game does have a decent amount of combat you'll probably at least want to break even with regular joes with gear.

So 3 attribute + 3 skill + tool (smartlink) = 6-8 is the offensive dice pool of regular joes.
Their defense test is usually a also 6-8.
Their bullet soaking tests are usually 12+ (3 for body and 9 and up for decent body armor) EDIT: Just saw that this is a SR4 post- in that case soaking tests are probably 9+

Because all these tests are opposed rolls it makes a big difference to know your game master. Some game masters have lots of regular joe-security like what I just outlined above. I've played with plenty who mostly use commandos for security (cause seriously regular joes don't stand much chance against cyborgs).

Another thing you can do is grab a cheap machine pistol or submachine gun with full auto and mostly support using the suppressive fire rules. In this case look for a weapon with a high ammo count.

Another tactic is to choose one thing, and be decently useful at that.

For example, let's say you're making a Face character. He's not supposed to be a combat monster, but sometimes negotiations get ugly, so as a practical matter he packs a couple of Big Fragging Revolvers to at least buy him time to reach his transport. In that case, get him some pistols, maybe with a sixgun specialisation, and some classy holsters.

Another example might be a very physically delicate elf hacking type, who never intends to be anywhere near the fight, but doesn't mind performing a little overwatch for his buddies when things go south. Fair enough, get him a good hunting rifle, an awesome scope, a tripod and a shooting mat. Add some long arm skills, and you have a halfway decent backup sniper even if he just curls into a ball and cries when faced with a threat close by.

For Mundanes: 10+ DP (including all mods, such as smartlink and spec) with a gun based attack. The baseline DP is usually Agi 5 + Skill 1 + Spec 2 + Smartlink 2.
In normal/Black Trenchcoat games (or games where reality ensues) the skill taken is pistols, with the following guns: Morrisey Elan w/ plastic ammo (entire gun and ammo bypass MAD scanner) for social/stealth situations, a separate ceramic silencer for the aforementioned pistol, a Colt Government with external smartlink and silencer for combat/stealth situations and either a Ruger Thunderbolt or Ruger Super Warhawk (with SA firing selection mod) for when the shit hits the fan.
For action-oriented/Pink Mohawk games (or games where gun control does not exist and law enforcement consists mostly of overweight, unskilled meatbag mooks), the skill taken is automatics, with the following guns: B&P MP9/FN5-7 with suppressor for concealed carry, Ingram Smartgun X for a compact, out-of-the-box usable gun and an Ares HVBR with FA mod and tricked out recoil comp for open combat.

For Technos: Use drones. Ford LEBD with Supersquirts/Parashield Dart rifles and Narcoject with take down most opposition, and Pepperpunch grenades are cheap (25$ a pop) and awesome.

For Mages: You've got spirits and spells. Do I need to spell it out for you?

No pun intended of course.

As a verision-agnostic answer, go look at the NPCs. Your average runner who isn't a primary combatant should at least have one skill (usually pistols) be on par with, say, low-level corpsec or street gangers.

I think the DP matters more than the skill alone, though. Comparing DPs might be the way to go.

I disagree with the notion that a support character who does expect to get into combat occasionally should have parity with the average security guard. A 50% chance of success means you die half the time. I would recommend a dice pool of 12-14, not quite sammie or combat mage level, but enough to contribute to a firefight. Typically, pistols with a specialization in semi-automatics, with a good heavy pistol, is the right mix between concealability and stopping power.

Some characters might have more or less than this. A mage will primarily rely on spells (have at least one good direct combat spell even if you are a healer) and spirits. Technomancers might not even be equal to a security guard, but should generally seek cover when a fight starts. Faces and deckers can have more, and covert ops specialists should have more (since they ned to be able to take the occasional guard out quickly and silently).

I think 4e's absurd divepools have warped your perception of 'non combat' character. Hell, the statblock for Knight Errant beat cops (a very common shadowrunner enemy) are running Ag 4 Pistols 4 for a DP of 8.

The DP 12-14 you're calling for is higher than the stats for elite security grunts, on par with what they stat out as baseline Red Samurai.

Because NPCs are run straight out of the book, and never ever have a tactical advantage (hint: they usually do as the defenders) and never purchase specializations.

I think that ALL characters should have some skill with pistols. Your combat monsters should be skilled in every firearm type, but non-combat types should be also proficient in automatics. That covers SMGs, machine pistols, and assault rifles. That should give you enough diversity that you can handle almost any situation.

Have you read 5e? Seriously, the notes recommend intentionally not having NPCs make dodge rolls and letting them be one-shot kills if they're not plot important. Page 382 or so.

Note the SR4 tag.

I think most support characters should have decent combat skills, just like I think most combat characters should be good in a few areas outside of combat. Be very good at your specialty, but don't be so focused on it that you are useless outside of a narrow role.

The NPCs in the base book don't have specializations, smartlinks, etc. The NPCs in published adventures tend to be more robust. Someone with Agility: 3, pistols: 3, a specialization, and a smartlink rolls 10 dice, and it is absurdly easy to improve this with some relatively inexpensive augmentations.

Dice pools seem high in SR4 because too many people consider them to be the default amount of dice you roll, rather than the amount of dice you roll in optimum conditions. Someone with 12 dice rolls a lot less when he is crouched behind partial cover, he is lightly wounded, it is dark, it is raining, and his target is moving.

it's not just an sr4 question, but overall play. it really depends on your character. you could have an absolute combat monster, personally I like to have at least one flashy combat spell like flamethrower that has a physical component and if I can afford it, one mental like mana bolt or stun bolt. but it really depends on your use of spells. to look at Harry Dresden-the current archmage of urban fantasy he has 'force' and flame spells and most of his other spells are not combat but turn him lose and he can really make a mess of things.

I mean setting off fire alarms screwing up computers-elevators and the like, a wind storm ripping up small items from desks and whirling them about, spells to obscure sight at the top of stairs all are going to cause no end of trouble.

Alright, so what I'm getting so far is that for optimum effectiveness people are suggesting dice pools of anywhere of 8-14 or so for offensive dice pools, depending on your GM or level of general combat. How about standard defensive?

Also for weapon choice, what do you considered a "healthy base" for Damage Value? If taking firearms as an example, =< 4 is "light", 5-7 is "moderate" and 8+ is "heavy."

Standard defensive for non-combatants: avoid combat, or strike from a position where retaliation is unlikely. Failing that, for mundanes a 6+ on physical dodge (without fulldodge) should be the bare minimum. Anything below that is just asking for it. Willpower and Body 3+ is also a minimum (take the attribute at odd values). Basic Armor values, depending on splatbooks, should be anywhere from 6-9, depending on the availability of Softweave and Formfitting Body armor. A DP of 10+ for visual/auditory perception is also highly desirable, since you don't get to dodge what you can't see.

For firearms:
4 or below means it's a last ditch defense. Even with two hits, you are unlikely to down most people. The exception are burst/FA automatic pistols, which can pack quite the punch.
5-6 is concealable combat strength. A lot of the weapons in this category have burst/full auto available, making them a lethal package.
7+ is primary combat weapon category. Most rifles and heavier stuff falls here.

Damage value alone isn't that accurate though, since a LMG is definitely not a concealable weapon but still only has a DV of 6. I tend to group them by this:
"Last Ditch": Can be concealed when wearing a revealing evening dress or swimwear. Usually not very strong, so non-standard ammo (poison injection needles, taser darts) to even the odds.
"Light": Anything that can be concealed under normal clothing. Most pistols fit here.
"Medium": Anything that can be concealed under a coat. Some compact automatics and sawn off shotguns fit here.
"Large": Weapons that can only be concealed conspicuously, such as golf bags or guitar cases.
"Dakka": Concealable takes a back seat to firepower.

I'm less concerned with dice pools than what you do with them. for weapons you want to have at least an smg, not for hitting power but because anyone using just a hand gun will draw fire on them, to the tune of 'geek the mage'

YOU NEEDS MOAR DAKKA. YOU CAN'TS EVER 'AV ENUFF DAKKA. DAT'S WHAT'S CALLED FAKT. SO ENUFF DAKKA IS ALWAYS MORE DAN WHAT YOU GROTZ 'AV.



-k

Shouldn't the only viable answer be "talk to your GM"?

14 was the dice pool on my last combat character!

I bet he had a lot of other skills/specialties, though. The line can blur a bit between a support character who can fight, and a combat character who can do other stuff. And sometimes the other stuff can make a big difference. I remember a sniper character who threw 20 or so dice or so getting picked apart by the other posters - how the character couldn't climb the wall, pick a lock, talk or sneak past anyone, or basically do anything but shoot people after being levitated to the roof by the mage. If I had to choose between hiring that guy, and a guy with 14 dice who could also sneak, fast-talk, drive, and pick a lock, then the second one would be my choice.

No, not really. Drake.

Never even shifted to drakeform.

I still took less damage than most of the other players. I had fewer kills and did less damage, but I also didn't expend resources being healed.
(That's the same game that the "melee vampire" "charged" the shotgun weilding thug and almost died without doing any damage to anyone)

16 was the DP on my last combat character. He also had a 14 non-emotionsoft/non-Glamour DP on social rolls and a 12 DP on sneak, perception, disguise and most matrix related stuff. I figured I needed that for a convincing former intelligence agent.

I always kind of viewed the general attitude toward weapons in SR as being that open carry is essentially the norm in many places, at least on the streets.

Why? Because weapons are cheap and highly available. (At least before 5E, that is.)

An Ares Predator IV, the legendary, most trusted handgun among Shadowrunners in 2072, runs for a mere 350 nuyen. If you rent an apartment, you pay 2000 a month in lifestyle costs. Any schmoe can put away a little bit of their paycheck for a few months to buy one, and I always saw it as being expected that most people would buy one, or if not a Predator, than any of the cheaper guns floating around. The Ruger Super Warhawk and the Remmington Roomsweeper are both 250. If you're on a budget, the no-frills Colt America L36 is 150.

Of those guns, the Roomsweeper is the highest availability at 6R, but it's a shotty, so that makes some sense. The others are all 4R or 3R. For comparison, if you want to learn a language in your free time, Linguasofts come at an availability of 2. If you want to go camping somewhere you won't have commlink connectivity, a GPS has an availability of 3. And if you want to get the world's most common piece of cyberware, a pair of cybereyes, those clock in at availability 4.

"But guns are Restricted! That means you need a license to have one!" Naturally. But we're talking a Corporate world motivated by profits, and there's no profit in denying guns to Average Joe.

Think about it. More people buying guns means more money in your pocket. They need licenses? You offer training courses, for a modest price. Heck - monetize the registration program itself with license fees, renewal fees, et cetera! Then, of course, they'll need a constant stream of ammunition since you gave them that trial membership to the local chain of corporate gun ranges, and naturally they'll be auto subscribed to your monthly catalogue offering all sorts of new goodies, gizmos, upgrades, and accessories. There's a million and one ways to commoditize gun ownership, and if you don't, one of your competitors sure will!

"But then if everyone has guns, what's to stop the unwashed masses from staging a Revolution?" All the usual suspects.

First, naturally, is bread and circuses. Keep them fed and amused, keep them distracted, keep them chasing their own tails, and profit all the while.

Second, the corps control all the really big guns - even if they fail to distract the masses with mass media and bullshit, they can always violently put down anything that threatens to spill out of control. Race riots? Send in the Firewatch Teams to clean up and flood the media with news of a "terrorist attack" or a "bug infestation" or any number of other plausible and scary potential threats to cow the populace with. Even if they smell a rat, are they really gonna stand up to milspec armored, drone-supported, professional murderers who have their corporate pensions on the line?

Third, the corps sell themselves as the glue holding society together in a crazy world. Things are nuts out there - dragons, magic, freaks, mutants, Infected, paracritters, spirits, radicals and terrorists of all kinds... things that Average Joe doesn't understand or even want to, and sure as shit can't handle on his own. Are people really stupid enough to go against the corporations when they're ostensibly the only ones holding back the tides of chaos? I think not!

Fourth, although the masses ostensibly trust their would-be corporate protectors, it doesn't hurt anything to let them feel like they control their own destinies a bit too, even if they don't actually. Putting guns in the hands of Average Joe makes him feel like he can protect himself against at least some of the dangers that lurk out there, and the odds are actually overwhelmingly high he'll never actually have to use the damn thing.

Fifth, an armed society is a polite society. History is full of examples of civilizations wherein everyday open carry of weaponry was normal, accepted, and essentially utterly uninteresting to the average person. Like guns in the Wild West, or swords during the Rennaisance, and pretty much whatever people could get their hands on for all the rest of human history since the first of us picked up a great big stick and swung it at their neighbor's noggin.

Sure, there's an argument to be made for high security areas and upper class neighborhoods asking you to check your weapons, but for your everyday passerby on the street in Seattle? Not even the Barrens, just Seattle proper? Everyone's gonna have a pistol on their hip or a shotgun slung over their shoulder. They'll need to be able to show an ID and their license for it if stopped by the cops, and if they stand waving it around or shooting they're gonna be in a heap of trouble, but just openly carrying? I doubt anyone would bat an eye outside of gun-free zones.

Handguns are everywhere. They're cheap and easy to get, they make people feel safer, they fill a consumer demand, and people are gonna get their hands on them one way or another. You can restrict them all you like, but enforcement only goes so far before it fails, and you're pretty much throwing away potential profits. Far better to have the bare minimum of regulation to extract the most lucrative amount of gain out of a market that's going to exist one way or another.

Now, assault weapons on the other hand... ;P

~Umi

My Current Mercenary (SR4A) character has DP's of 12/14 in several combat skills... about a dozen support skills in the 10-12 DP range and 25-30 more from 6-10 Dice (he has almost 60 Skills - Not too shabby for a character with only about 50 Karma - When you do not have to buy Augmentations or Spells/Foci, you can afford a stupid amount of skills in Karmagen, even with only 750 base points).
None of the Skill Ranks are higher than a Skill 4. And he is unaugmented and unawakened. Now, he does have a ton of Specialties (almost every skill is specialized) to assist in his skill application, and he has some pretty good gear. If he ever augments, he will be very impressive.

Yeah, my example character above is a mundane, albeit augmented. It's amazing how far you can go versatility wise if you don't hardmax and use Karmagen.

2 and 4 plus specializations seem to be the sweet spot in terms of skills in Karmagen, and it is those ratings that I use most often.

That's one of the features I like about karmagen. Dice pools are one of the major metrics that determine a character's effectiveness, so higher dice pools should be more expensive. Karmagen lets you build a decent, functional generalist far more easily than build points, with its flat costs for skills. Best of all, specialists don't really suffer - you can get what you normally would for them, and have a few points left to add some flavor or versatility to your concept. Generalists, by contrast, make out like bandits compared to build points - but they still don't seem unbalanced compared to their specialist counterparts.

Indeed...

I think that to most people, this is true, generalists do not seem unbalanced compared to their specialist counterparts. Why? One reason I can think of is that by virtue of the kind of build, the size of individual dice pools are smaller than the specialist largest dice pool and since most people use dice pool size as a gauge for whether a build is unbalanced and the larger a single dice pool the more the build seems unbalanced, thus the build flies under the radar.

But if you use dice pool size but this time instead of the maximum dice for a single pool, you use the combined dice pools of multiple tests, you can quickly see where the generalist is unbalanced. Instead of 10 dice for 1 test, you have 260 dice for 26 tests for a generalist compared with 100 dice for 26 tests for a specialist, you can quickly see the unbalance.

Are you suggesting that the specialist and generalist should have the same total dice at the end of the day? Because frankly that doesn't track - the specialist gets substantial reward from their specialty that should come at a cost to the total dice they have. The simple fact is that you can't go using just one single metric and pretend it gives you a good view of balance.

I think the problem with comparing overall dice used by a karmagen build is that you are taking things purchased with exponential costs and comparing them as if they were flat costs and/or equally valuable. Someone with a dice pool of 20 will be more effective, generally, than someone with two dice pools of 10.

This is why I like karmagen. Getting lower-rated skills and Attributes is cheaper. I like that because in build points, being a generalist is not usually as viable as being a specialist. You pay too much for those comparatively low dice pools, and don't get enough versatility to compensate for the loss in effectiveness. And I say I don't mind the boost to generalists - as someone who usually prefers to play specialists.

I think someone with a dice pool of 20 and another of zero would be less effective generally than someone with 2 dice pools of 10.


I think that the generalist should have 10-20% more total dice at the end of the day, because frankly the specialist doesn't get that substantial a reward from his specialty dice pool.

It's hard to actually have a dice pool of zero, since you can default for most skills. Dice pools, to me, represent an opportunity cost more than an absolute value. In other words, what did my specialist give up to have a dice pool of 20? If I have a sniper with a dice pool of 20+ with his sniper rifle, what else can he do? If he is barely functional at skills he doesn't use that often, it might be a good tradeoff. If he is underpowered or lacking in other skills that a sniper needs (such as perception, infiltration, etc.), then that high dice pool might be too costly.

This discussion shows that the answer is something like "discuss it with your GM/table".

In some groups (especially when playing SR4 with no additional book), a character is expected to have a DP of 12-14 in his best areas and 8 in his secondary skills. In others (SR4A + all additional books and karmagen), the character will be expected to have 20+ in his primary skills and 12 in his secondary skills.

In some groups, a successful run is one where no bullet is shot ; in other groups, if there's no need to shoot a bullet, there's no need to hire runners.

And some Runners are literally paid in bullets. I've offered my group pay in either cash or APDS of the same value, and many of them went for the ammo.

Thing is, the Specialist will have stupid high Attributes, so his Defaulting is still in the 7+ DP range for skills with no points (I have even seen defaulting with double digits on some specialist builds). That is not true for a Generalist, most of the time.

It's still not as bad as I've seen in some other systems. My gaming group broke Alpha Omega pretty quickly.
You could pick races that were either "high attribute" or "high skill" where the higher your attributes were, the larger the dice you rolled. So at the bottom end you'd have "six d4s"* and at the top end you'd have "six d20s." Mind, it wasn't possible to start the game with more than 6d6, and even that was stretching it for a specialist, as attributes ranged from 1 to 100 (players generally starting in around 10 to 20).

Mechanically you'd roll dice, sum, then add your skill (like D&D). You just split the dice up between your actions, always taking the largest dice you had available each time you picked up one or more dice.

Anyway, the idea and balance was that the same exp investment in skills vs. attributes would average the same. The same cost of getting +1 in a skill worked out to the same cost as getting the next die-size up (and accounting for the fact that attributes covered multiple skills).

The problem came down to a single spell. It was intended as a late-game debuff spell, but throws the whole balance between attributes and skill points out the window.

The spell stated that "the next time you rolled dice, you rolled d% to figure out what your effective attribute was, and took dice accordingly." We realized that this heavily favored skill-heavy races, as you could dump all of your attributes to 1, buy all of the skills, then cast that spell on the party. Targetting up to 10 people, for 10 dice rolls each, expiring in 4 hours cost almost no mana (like 2, and you generally had about 20 before you started casting with blood) and the difficulty was really low. +2 for number of targets, +8ish for effect, +5 for duration. And on a d%, what are the odds that you'll roll below your natural attribute? Who cares! Even with my awful attributes, I still have MASSIVE SKILLS.

All you needed was one specialist in Black Magic and you turned the entire party into hyper-specialized generalists.

*Technically you could go even lower, down to only a single d4, but with the mechanic of how dice got split between combat passes, it was really really advantageous to have 5d4,1d6. If you split 3 dice and 3 dice between two passes, then in each pass you'd roll 1d6+2d4 (as you always take your best dice first). And having less than 6 total dice was just bad.

I would have thought that the specialist would have mostly stupid low Attributes apart from his core Attributes. So his defaulting on those skills linked to his low Attributes would easily be zero.

In some cases, you would/could be correct, but not in all cases. There are 2 Stats that control the majority of skills (Agility and Logic), and it is relatively easy to have very high values in both of these two Stats. Then there are another 2 stats that are crucially important to a runner (Reaction and Intuition) which cover MOST of the remaining skills. So, with a decent investment in 4 Attributes, you can be sure that you cover the majority of skills.

In practice... Most specialists have really High Agility, which then translates into easily defaultable skills that matter the most to specialized runners (Combat gumbies are the ones who seem to abuse/take advantage of this the most). Throw in a decent Edge (And in SR5, it is stupidly easy to have a High Edge - Mundane Humans tend to start at a 5, IIRC) and you are golden, especially with the refresh rates for Edge in SR5.

There are some corner cases to be sure... Charisma and Logic based characters specialize their stats and sometimes don't care about Agility, but that is rare in my experience.

The Generalist will have solid stats across the board, while the Specialist will tend to be more swingy, depending upon how hard they want to specialize, and in what. BUT, the fact remains that Specialisats tend to have extreme high stats in their specialty which translates to high Defaults on skills they do not have. In the end, it will tend to balance out somewhat with the moderately skilled Generalist in that they will roll very similar Dice pools in their non-specialized areas. The glaring difference will be in their specialties.

Which is a line of thinking that typifies the generalist, not the specialist. You could have a specialist push one attribute very, very hard (for SR4A, see Logic 6(9), PuSHeD and Neocortical Nanites for a Logic Default Pool of about 12), but 4 is unlikely - a combat specialist in SR4A could push Agility and Reaction, for example, but Logic and Intuition would be at best lower priority.

Now, for SR5, it's a bit of a different animal - Limits force a specialist to spread their attributes out; a stealth specialist would need to look at Strength, Body, Logic, and Willpower for limits alone, plus Agility and Intuition for dice pools.

I guess that is just how I tend to think, since most of my Characters tend to have average stats for their type to start with, since they had to have survived in society to the point where they became Shadowrunners... *shrug*

It is hard to quantify how many points of dice pool a specialist should have vs. a generalist, because dice pools are not just skill, but skill plus Attribute. Then you have augmentations and magic that can increase an Attribute, increase a skill, or simply add to your dice pool. This would seem to give generalists an edge if you are only counting points, because every skill gets to add those Attributes/modifiers. On the other hand, you can default on most skills, so the difference between a skill of 3 and no skill at all is just 4 dice.

Take two characters, both with augmented Agility of 9 and smartlinks. The first guy gets pistols of 5 with a specialization (34 karma). The second guy gets the firearms skill group at 2 and the heavy weapons skill at 3 (34 karma). So the first guy has dice pools of pistol: 18, automatics: 10, long arm: 10, and heavy weapon: 10, for 48 total dice. The second guy has dice pools of pistol: 13, automatics: 13, long arm: 13, and heavy weapon: 14, for 53 total dice.

So these guys are close, with the generalist having slightly more dice. This is about where toturi thought it should be, with the generalist getting 10-20% more dice. But that is only with everything else being equal. That is rarely the case. Just going by the specialist and generalist builds that have been posted on Dumpshock for character critiques, they usually seem to be built with different philosophies. The specialist builds I have seen tend to be heavily augmented, with high Attributes and comparatively few points spent on skills. The generalist builds I have seen tend to be lightly augmented, with Attributes in a more average distribution (3's and 4's instead of 2's and 5's), and more points spent of a wider array of lower-rated skills.

I think a lot of this stems from how the characters are envisioned. Specialists tend to be former company men, mercenaries, career criminals, or security/police officers, and moving to shadowrunning just involves a lateral move to going freelance. Generalists tend to be more average Joe types who suddenly find themselves uprooted from their comfortable lives to survive in the shadows. Obviously, these two types of characters will not be close to the same power level, even though they may be made with the same number of points.

I find average to be a good starting point - though I don't at all mind reducing attributes where it's suitable.

Characters should have dice pools that would have enabled them to survive in their circumstances before they became shadowrunners. Most characters live within society, so their dice pools should enable to them to survive within society. If they had low stats, then maybe they barely scrap by with low skill or are considered "normal" if they are skilled enough to compensate for their low stats.

I think that shadowrunners should also have dice pools that would have enabled them to survive in their circumstances after they became shadowrunners. What I mean is, while they should be good enough in their specialty, they should be functional outside of that specialty - or have an explanation for how they got by without that ability beforehand. In other words, the merc guy should have the connections to get miltech gear rather than relying on the face, or at least have that lack explained in the character background (maybe he was part of a merc team that was disbanded, and the quartermaster handled all of that before). I like characters with an organic feel to them - clusters of skills that go together, with no glaring omissions unless they are there to create a deliberately flawed character.