Of course, what you can do in the middle of a fire fight is not the same as what you can do that is important in combat. If you know that there is an alert guard up on the catwalk overlooking the door you need to get into, sure your group could run out there shooting, at which point the hacker may as well shoot too. Or the hacker could go after his gun pre-preemptively, to, say, pop out the clip just as the groups good shooters pop out to try and take out the guard.

As well as, as already mentioned, all the flow control that can sometimes be done.

After all, the point of shadowrunning is usually to avoid firefights where possible, and to certainly, absolutely, avoid fair fire fights. Seems to me hackers have a roll in both of those, to help reduce the number of situations where simply shooting is their best option.

Where did I say that? You're straw man is showing.

Fine, but then don't try and use rules you never read and never used as an example, ok?


From Dictionary. com:




Um, no. Let's say you have 24 points for skills. You spend 6 on your primary skill, which is the most you can spend. You've still got 18 left for other things. Where's the tradeoff?

What, 20+ dice for your specialty isn't enough? Come on, check out the character archive, 20 is pretty normal, and the characters are decently well-rounded.


Not under priorities, where you can't spend attribute points to raise skills. And under 4.5, it's not that big of a deal, since you can't raise non-primary skills part 4 anyway. There's not much of a trade you *can* make in that system.

In other words, you can't prove it, and you won't put in the effort to prove it.

Should have mentioned: he works as an auto mechanic. So yeah, he can do that. Not all of that was in the army, but a lot of Humvee specifics was.



All army recruits are required to pass a first aid course as part of their training. They also are trained to start an IV, which is a task many nurses aren't allowed to do. It's a decently advanced first aid technique.



Getting the second IP isn't wasted resources. You keep claiming it, but you can't cite any examples, whereas we've got the entire Dumpshock archive proving you wrong. And yes, if the sammie goes down to a spell, it's up to everyone else to rescue him. Otherwise, they're all dead.

That is the obvious implication behind your ceaseless claims that a hacker has money to spare on implants that are not necessary.

I don't need to make dozens of characters to read the rules and see that they're utter shit, completely unusable for a GM just starting out. Same as you don't need a whole steak to notice it's burned.

And? What's there on social skills in this definition?
More than just that, I distinctly remember CGL guys around here claim that a professional is someone who gets paid for their work and that's it.

Are you serious? No archetype requires a single skill. Say, for a shadow, the primary skill is Infiltration. But he is also expected to have a bunch of other skills that are essential for his archetype, from Perception and Climbing to Hardware and Locksmith, and his other resources are spent on equipment and implants that'd allow him to use these skills or boost them.
The same applies to hackers - they don't only need Hacking.

Obvious things are obvious, no reason to spend days demonstrating them.

So did he learn it as all grunts do (same as repairing everything from trucks to tanks as the rear repair base folks learn, which in SR would be covered by Automative Mechanic or samesuch) or did he already know that from his civil life? The latter is hardly characteristic of what the army teaches.

All armies of the world provide first aid training. That doesn't mean that every soldier is anywhere near competent in it (given the breadth of the skill and the necessity of performing it under fire), unlike the squad's dedicated medic.

The entire dumpshock archive of two-IP hackers? That's a very cool story, care to point out the concrete statistics?

They're all dead already, pretty much. But you haven't answered, if the hacker goes down to IC, is it up to everyone else to finish the hack? If the shadow is discovered and ripped apart by patrolling spirits, is it up to the rest of the team to finish the infiltration in his stead?

Responding to implications instead of actual quotes is pretty much the definition of a straw man.

In other words, you don't have an experience with it, but you're going to complain about it anyway.

Finally we're getting somewhere! Characters need a lot of skills to function in 4.5, agreed. That includes a bunch of stuff that doesn't directly apply to their specialty. Every shadowrunner needs to be able to sneak a little, talk to people without giving everything away, and be an asset in combat. That's the bare minimum for survival in the game.

Mix of both, he came to the military knowing some, and learned more there.


Every US Army grunt can start an IV under fire. I know experienced nurses who can't start one under ideal circumstances, and I know doctors who haven't practiced IV's since they got out of med school. An IV is a decently complex bit of first aid, and requires a non-negligible amount of skill.


Yes, that one. Care to provide links?

The team needs to finish the run. If the decker goes down, smart teams will find another way to finish it. Rolling over and dying is for wannabes, the players are shadowrunners.

No, it's actually the definition of the normal human modus operandi, because not every little bit is voiced.

>This steak is burned!
>You have to finish it and ask for more, how else are you going to know?!

It primarily includes the stuff that does apply to their speciality, and out chargen, you're lucky if you can cover that.

Bad shadows are a liability and not an asset. The same applies to bad shots (and especially bad dodgers) and bad faces.

Still fail to see how that allows you to claim that every USMC grunt possesses extensive skills in automotive mechanic that'd qualify him even for Rating 1. The same applies to first aid.

Wait, you claim that you have an entire archive of characters to prove your point, and then suggest I provide links? That's fresh.

Oh yeah, I can totally see it. "Let me just punch through these remote-controlled blast doors while I'm breathing sleep gas!"

A group comprising completely of people who are hyperspecialized in their own field, and can do nothing else to any degree, is going to start falling to pieces the moment one of them start going down, and nobody else can even begin to try and take over with any chance of success. This is one of the reasons that military teams all crosstrain. Sure, the team contains specialists, but if need be, most others individuals will have some level of ability to take over the role in a pinch. They won't be as effective, as the specialist, but they'll be able to get by in most situations.

Now, that is real world. SR is a game world, and arguably I'll grant that in SR (and many other RPG games) the hyper specialist perform better, as they will be rolling more dice. However, the question really is "how many dice is enough to be able to do the job?" and how much Karma/Points do you have to create the character. Answering that question, however, is basically impossible, without knowing details about the individual campaign that a group of characters are supposed to operate in. In some games, the challenge levels will be such that only the hyper specialist will really have any real chance to succeed, but in other games, 10-12 dice will often be enough to get by.

Personally I prefer to play characters that can do more than one thing, but I'll grant that depending on the level of points you start out with, it's often difficult enough to create a character that is really good at just their specialty, meaning that generalists will often end up struggling, due to the way the game mechanics work. At the end of the day though, there is no single answer to which approach is better, because it ultimately depends on the individual campaign.

Just because lots of people use it doesn't mean its not a straw man, or other fallacy.

More like: "Your steak is burned! I can't see it or taste it, and you're in another room, but I know it is because I don't like steak!"

You're not building 4.5 characters right, then. There's lots of ways to make broken characters that are still well-rounded.


Where did I say that? Please quote me on where I said all Marine grunts have that.

US Army grunts *are* trained extensively in first aid, enough so they can start an IV under combat conditions. Look up the Combat Life Saver course if you don't believe me. Can you start an IV?

Translation: I didn't look, so I'm going to call you names and hope no one notices.

I liked SR4 hackers a lot more than SR5 deckers. One of Shadowrun's biggest problems has been roles that are too dependent on equipment, so I see SR5 as a huge step backwards. Ideally, gear should be something you risk on the run, and if it gets damaged, you continue on with some measure of difficulty, then spend part of what you got paid to replace it afterwards. In practice, your deck gets damaged and you are helpless, you bug out if you can, and then you decide whether it is feasible to do dozens of runs to recoup your loss and get a new deck, or whether it would be easier to simply make a new character.

SR4 hackers were also a lot easier to make hybrid specialists out of (hacker/infiltration, hacker/face, hacker/sammie, or hacker/rigger). In SR5, yeah, you can squeeze out wired: 1 or some used reaction enhancers: 3, and cybereyes with a smartlink, if you forego the most expensive deck. But deckers usually use their A and B priorities for resources and skills, so Attributes are typically C at best. Physical Attributes tend to be 3 or less, maybe a 4 for one of them. Skills are similarly tight. Squeezing out pistols: 4 with a specialization will definitely call for some sacrifices. On the other hand, I resign myself to it, because my personal philosophy is that every character should have some ability in combat and social skills. Preferably some sneaking and some basic ability to use a computer or drive a car. And yes, it is hard to do that, and be good at your main role, and to be honest, I would play a one-trick pony, or close to one, before gutting my primary specialty (although I don't have a problem with sacrificing some dice to be well-rounded in other areas).



But back to the original topic from many pages ago:
I would NOT recommend SR5 for a new player. It has too many poor design choices, incoherent rules, and editing problems to be acceptable at this point. It doesn't even have a history/time line for the events of Shadowrun! I would recommend either third or fourth edition. Both of them have FAQ's and lots of erratas, lots of sourcebooks and setting books, and plenty of fan resources - discussions, house rules, character threads, etc.

Eyeballing the SR5 repair rules, it looks like damaging a deck can cripple a decker for life.

I actually preferred SR3 for hybrid deckers. To be a good decker, all you needed was a high Computer skill, a decent deck, and programs. You could easily afford decent all-around stats, good skill at firearms or other stuff, and be reasonably tough. As I recall, there wasn't much of a difference between a combat decker and a light sammie. Because SR4.5 required more skills to function as a decker, and limited you to 4 in most skills, being effective everywhere was much harder.

Sure. But my point is: a runner troupe faces many challenges: facing, hacking, driving here and there, infiltration (whether by stealth or disguises), combat, dealing with magical threats, repairing their equipment, etc. Every character is trained in his specialty, and that's natural. However, it seems strange to me to demand every other character is cross-trained to prepare for combat, and not any of the other of the multitude of challenges the runners can meet, as if combat is be-all end-all and absolutely everyone must be a sammy-grade specialist in it.


Actually, in this case it does. Voicing off every little detail is simply not possible. When runners are infiltrating a facility and the overwatching sniper says "I see two guards" into the team radio channel, it's not a fallacy to assume he's seeing them patrolling the facility, not in a movie or somewhere on the other side of the sprawl.

Right, before you've made a dozen characters using shitty rules, you can't possibly know they're shitty. Have you tried reading them? I heard that helps.

Yeah, and these ways usually start with picking the Magician quality, if we're talking broken. Otherwise, I call shenanigans.

Your backpedalling addiction is getting out of hand.
The only problem is that first aid includes much more than IV. Claiming that knowing how to do that qualifies you for advanced First Aid skill is like claiming that knowing how to restore Oracle sys password on zOS qualifies you for high Hacking.

When you make statements, you're the one who's providing supporting evidence for them.
When you claim there's a whole archive of characters where each hacker has more than 1 IP in meatspace, you're the one providing links and statistics.

no, that's just you assuming that fires starting, sparks flying out, and smoke coming from your cyberdeck is significant damage. unless you crit glitch your repair test, it isn't permanent, and doesn't even cost you any money at all to repair (apparently electrical components in the 2070s are *supposed* to catch on fire every now and then, it's probably part of a good maintenance routine to just take a blowtorch to your electronics every so often if they don't catch on fire by themselves).

Eh, that's less a bad assumption and more the devs putting in descriptions and game mechanics that do not match.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not., However, the repair rules are pretty brutal.


What does that have ti do with all the straw man arguments you've been making?

from what I can tell, you haven't even made one, let alone read the rules. So, you have o grounds to criticize.

Nope. You still have to show where I said "Equal to skill X". Otherwise, you're straw-manning with another assumption.

Where did I say "high" first aid? Starting an IV is a fairly advanced skill, but nowhere did I assign exact numbers, or even a ballpark.

Your straw man is showing.

I have. I've provided an entire archive of them. The onus is on you to show where they don't work.

EVERY Hacker I made in SR4/A had more than 1 Meatspace pass (and my most successful one had 3 meat passes). EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. So, now, how you gonna defend that they just can't do it?

Optimally everyone should have minimum skills within a number of areas, but realistically you can cover a couple of them, and as a group, you should be able to have some basic backup skills on most of the important skill areas. Hacking and dealing with magic is problematic without a real investment in the skillset related to the specialty, but quite a few other areas can be somewhat managed without more than a few points in the various skills, and perhaps some limited equipment investments.

With regards to why everyone ought to be able to pick up and use a gun with some level of competency, I'll argue that this is because in my experience, sooner or later (usually sooner...) everyone in the group get caught up in a firefight, and basic shooting is one of the skills that don't reguire very much in terms of investment, in order to become somewhat useful, when the bullets start flying. AGI 3, Skill 1 + Weapon Spec. + Weapon w/ Smartgun System starts you off at 8 dice. An automatic rifle used right, even at that level, can be useful. 8 dice is not a lot, but with Suppressive Fire or Short/Long Burst fire, still has a chance at hitting an opponent. No, the character won't be all that good against HTR level teams or similar skilled opponents, but basic security etc. can still be hit often enough to matter. No, you won't be putting many bullets into a running enemy, in the dark, at range, but even that target can potentially be hit with Suppressive Fire.

Sure. Shooting is not the be-all and end-all skill, but it has a tendency to be the skill that everyone have to revert to, if one of the other skills fail, because that often means that an alarm goes off and people/drones with guns will be heading your way in short order.

There's an old word for a runner who can't contribute in a firefight : 'Liability'

If the OP has read this far, note that the matrix rules have sucked in EVERY SINGLE edition of SR. Most of the people who claim they understand the matrix rules don't, they are really playing house rules to avoid the overwhelming stupidly inherent in the rules as written. So just handwave it.

+1

Here's the straw man again. Not everyone needs to be sammie-grade at combat, but everyone on a team needs to be able to use a gun proficiently. In the same vein, every runner needs to be good enough at social activities to not screw things up for the face during negotiations, or blow a disguise when sneaking in, or paint themselves orange while screaming during a stealth mission. If you're not at least capable in all those areas, you're a liability, and don't belong on a runner team.

Gentlemen, I'm gonna throw this up against the wall and see if it sticks: how about we split the "more runner than thou" discussion off into its own thread so the OP doesn't have to wade through five pages of posts that don't really have anything to do with his issue? That's assuming, of course, that he hasn't abandoned Dumpshock as a den of unhelpful grognards.