Shadowrunners are supposed to be an eclectic mix of freelancers who come from all walks of life. They can be crazy misfits, or idealistic windmill-tilters, or burnt-out former company men tossed to the curb, or underworld enforcers and street punks who want to move a step up on the food chain. So I don't have a problem with bounty hunters, unlicensed investigators, ex-cops, and such as shadowrunners.

Just two things. One, most of the above should have a "former" in their description. And two, they should either be from a profession that could logically segue into shadowrunning, or they should be assumed to have picked up some skills since then. Because shadowrunners are what they are now, and they should be able to meaningfully contribute to the team. Some lend themselves to this naturally. An ex-DocWagon HTR specialist could have combat, driving, and medical skills, all plusses for a shadowrun team. Others need more work. Playing the ever-popular ex-stripper? Ask what she can do besides lap dances. Most likely, she could be built as a face-type character.

The archetypes are, as always, a mixed bag. The best ones can perform the basic functions they are hired to do, but others lack essential skills of their specialty (the covert ops specialist desperately needs the locksmithing skill, which replaces hardware for most things in SR5), or the dice pools to reliably succeed in common tasks.

How useful they are can also vary, depending not only on the archetype, but on the campaign. If it is a campaign where the team spend a lot of time in tribal lands or out in the wilderness, the bounty hunter will suddenly be a lot more useful, and will take center stage a lot. In a more urban campaign, a lot of his abilities will see little or no use. The smuggler is good at vehicular combat, but if chase scenes are not common, he will be little more than a glorified taxi.

I think both are pretty low. Attributes you need to put C into just to be average and that is freaking harsh. skills the absolute # is a bit low especially as it goes down from A but also the rules on how it can be spent screws things up for me. Can't use standard skill points to break up a skill group, you have to go to Karma, can't put a specialty on a skill group etc. The 10 points in skill groups ends up hurting character design more than I like due to these unnecessary rules. Skills and groups are already fairly gimp compared to attributes, there is no need to add extra burdens.

I think the thing is as well Skills A is in some ways a suckers choice. Yeah it worth the most karma but that is due to skills being massively over priced and not their actual value. While having a ton of skills is very fitting for characters which is why I take it, dropping down to the bare bones of skills is much more effective overall unless your GM is going out of the way too highlight a wide range of skills. A gun skill is cool, all 3 is barely better than just 1 so taking a C or a D in skills is not much of a mechanical hit even if it may be a large thematic one. Due to this, I wish they had more skills across the board so even low level priorities covered not only the basics but some thematic coverage for a complete character feel.

I've got my gripes with skills, too, don't get me wrong, it's just the attributes that really chafe when I, personally, sit down to try an' make a dude.

But oh well. The more I talk about it, the less professional I look and the closer I get to violating NDAs by talking about backstage discussions we had a little over a year ago...so I don't wanna do that. There's plenty more about chargen I'd like to say, but can't/won't, and I don't want to derail the thread and then have to clam up. Overall, suffice it to say that right now, as I kill time working up a Missions-legal character in case I get into an SR game or two at GenCon later this summer, attributes are more frustrating to me than the low skills are, and I'll leave it at that.

well I guess the question I would have to ask is, do you as a player feel the stat points you get has always been too low or was there a particular edition you felt hit the sweet spot alright.

Personally I don't have problems with having not enough Skills and Attributes, but I also generally don't drop either below C. I do feel that the E choices are mostly unworkable at my table, and are almost trap builds.

First off, my table has a rule where if you put an attribute at one, it must be integral to your character concept in some fashion. In other words, leaving Logic at one post character creation means you want to play the dumb jock or whatever. That said, mechanically, a lower attributes priority can be traded off with a higher metatype priority. This works mostly with an Ork or Dorf, but, you're looking at a Priority of B for an equal amount of special attributes as a human at priority D. However this means giving up 6 points you can spend anywhere, to be replaced with 5 points prespent in places that you may or may not have wanted to spend them, along with some minor advantages and disadvantages that don't make up the difference. So unless there's a driving roleplaying reason, mechanically it's usually just better to go with a human and humans have a hard time working with a D or E attribute priority at my table, or else you end up with the socially inept decker who also can't do a 40m sprint without his inhaler.

Skills D or E, I could see in a Pink Mohawk sorta setup where social skills and stealth are of a less priority, or in a lowered power scale setting than shadowrunners typically operate, but for my table, the low skill priorities just don't work. We have an expectation of specialists that can at least handle themselves against lower level challenges. But a Skills E is completely used up by the time I've got a decent combat skill and perception, with the rudiments in athletic skills, stealth skills, social skills, and computer for matrix searches. Which means that a Skills E effectively leaves no room for the character's actual specialty unless that specialty is bullet catcher. Which I suppose would work for a Tank build, and a Skills D could work if the only specialty was combat with your preferred method of combat.

To fix my problems, I might houserule in Attributes at C/D/E getting two more attribute points, but that'd make metaraces an even worse deal. Which means giving more special attributes. Which makes Magic priority even worse, which now probably needs skill groups instead of skill points. As for skills, I might give 2 skill group ratings per priority, but I'll definitely go with what Shinobi highlighted with breaking/merging of skill groups during character creation so long as the individual skills are equal, along with specialties tied to skills within skill groups.

It does kinda make me wonder how rigorous the design of the priority table was, and what were the design goals and discussions of the priority table were during development, but alas, NDAs and the like.

My current character is rolling 7 Dice (Pistol Skill) and I take her on the Runs with me. And no, her weapon is not wireless enabled, that's just stupid.

I felt in 4e it went downhill and the priority system makes it feel worse in 5e as the increase to 8 attributes did not come with enough extra points to compensate. But the smaller importance of stats may be influencing my memories. Still A in attributes gave you enough in 1-2E with only 6 attributes to get have straight 5's in stats, in 5e that is straight 4s. The spread in 5e seems roughly the same as 1-3e just with 2 more stats to put things into. In my experience the drop leads to more min.maxing as people only feel comfortable boosting even to average their secondary stats once they excel in their area of expertise.

For me that is totally cool if your character is not combat focused. If you are playing Butt Kicker, your combat skills should be 12+. This is just because with a 6 dice dodge pool for the average guy and with cover you will miss too much otherwise. With all the negative modifiers in combat you need a bit of an edge on the average joe to hit him, unless constant full auto sprays are your thing.

The trouble with the priority system is that the low end priorities are too weak. Unfortunately this messes up trolls more, because they have to sacrifice Priority A or B for metatype. That leaves A or B to get decent Attributes, C in resources to get some bare-bones augmentations, and D for skills. So this only reinforces the stereotype of trolls being brutes good for nothing but combat - they can't afford anything else. It is disappointing, because I liked playing the occasional troll against type, but not enough to do it if I am going to be penalized that much for it.

On the flip side, I am liking elves at metatype D for mundane builds. Yes, you are stuck with Edge of 1 (while a human will have 5), but even with Attributes set at A or B, I find that I like three extra attribute points more than I like 4 points of Edge.

Then play GURPS Cyberpunk

Shadowrun at its core is about freelance teams of deniable assets performing burglary, sabotage, abduction, and jobs on a similar scale. Archetypes exist to give new players reference points how average (or shall we say "archetypical") character builds look like, or provide straightforward quick start characters. Putting two and two together, archetypes should provide typical characters for the typical jobs. Choice is great for advanced players, but just a cause of frustration for new players.


@Wak:

Overproportionally long arms are canonical (though often forgotten), but since when do they have short legs?

I hate GURPS. *shrug*
We are obviously not going to agree on that, so...
No worries.

Maybe you need to try NERPS GURPS

Maybe...