Hello there, Dumpshock!

I have a quick double question for you all. The first is about SR's South America. I'm beginning a game shortly and the GM and I decided we wanted to set the game in Rio de Janeiro. Then we realized that Rio isn't really... a thing anymore, from what I can tell. Dragons went and conquered it and all of Brazil (and then some) has become Amazonia. So my question is: does anyone have any suggestions about where in South or Central America we should set the game? The main gist is my character will be a physadept enforcer for either a gang or cartel, involved in underground fighting and the like. I can provide more details as necessary!

The second is about physadepts in general. I went ogre, Body 5 Agi 5/6 Str 7/8 Magic 6, picked up Boxing (+1 DV unarmed), Muay Thai (+1 DV unarmed), and Tae Kwon Do (+1 DV unarmed). I grabbed the Kick Attack martial arts maneuver for the +1 Reach, and then used gaesa to cut the adept powers down by 25%. I have Combat Sense 2, Critical Strike 3, Elemental Strike: Sound, Improved Physical Attribute (Agility) 1, Improved Physical Attribute (Strength) 1, Improved Reflexes (2), Killing Hands, Kinesics (2), and Sustenance. Among the active skills, I have Gymnastics 4 and Unarmed 6 (+2 Martial Arts). My question is... have I missed anything along the way to making a good unarmed fighter? I've never made a melee character before in SR4 (or a mage, for that matter -- I cannot wrap my head around the magic system -- I may make another topic about that before long), and I want to make sure I'm not heading out of the gate with my shoe laces tied together.

So there we go! Please let me know if you need any more info. Otherwise, thank you very much for the help!

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=21574

This is where you can download the Shadows of Latin America in pdf form, this was a SR3 project that got sacked for reasons.

The pic of Danny Trejo with a cyberarm is worth it alone.

Ghost Cartels is also worth a look for ideas.

Setting a campaign in former Colombia would do. The Ghost Cartels are based out of there so they would certainly have enforcers running around. Since there was a recent war fought over that terrain by Amazonia and Aztlan, there is plenty of chaos to deal with. The book War! covers this but it isn't a very good book so if you don't have it already, I'm not sure I'd recommend getting it unless it is cheap.
As you are playing an adept, you should take a look at the Adepts Way splat book. It offers options to get discounts on most, if not all the powers you chose without having to take a geas.
Don't think you need all those martial arts. With them you are running a base 10DV (8 str/2 + 3 for martial arts +3 for critical strike) for your unarmed, combined with elemental strike, means you can 1 shot most targets. Nice, but not really needed out of the gates. Easy enough to expand that way later on if you want. I'd consider getting some martial arts maneuvers to round out the base art, Watchful Guard being a good one.
The Unarmed Combat (Martial Arts) is a very cheesy interpretation of the rules. Yeah, I know it says you can do that in the specializations but it should have been more like specific martial art, not all of them. Double check if it is allowed by the GM.

One thing your GM needs to keep in mind is that it is his campaign, so he can freely ditch any parts of the (often ludicrous) Shadowrun background that he wants to. If he wants to say the NAN never happened, or say the Tir quickly put down the would-be insurrection, or keep California as part of the UCAS, or say that Texas went it alone and never re-joined the CAS - he can do it.


On making a martial artist, pure adept is fine, as is pure street samurai. In SR4, the most optimal approach is to make an augmented adept, using augmentations for the things that are more expensive (such as muscle augmentation/toner instead of improved Attribute, or synaptic booster: 2 instead of improved reflexes: 2), or that stack (you can get a damage bonus for bone lacing/bone density augmentation on top of the one for critical strike). This is expensive to do, though - you need to get high resources, as well as buy up your Magic only to have it drop a point or two from the augmentations. Such builds tend to be unmatched at their niche, but at the expense of being more limited in other areas.

It depends on the campaign. If it is a game with challenging combats where everyone else has min-maxed characters, you might want to consider going the augmented adept route. Otherwise, if your character is already tough enough for that particular game, I would leave him as he is. Showing up with a character that is too powerful can backfire sometimes, as the GM (who has unlimited resources...) will up the ante to "challenge" the character.

Thanks for the suggestions and advice, everyone! I will look into augmented adepts more as time goes on. It's a solo game so the optimization is directly linked to me. Right now I'm having fun as a pure adept, but we'll see if I dip into some bioware as time goes on!

What about Metropole (the conjunction of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo ) ?
200 (+) Million Residents .Its most of the population of Former Brasil.
Greatest Metroplex on ( Shadowrun) Earth.
The User Apple is having a campaign in Metropole. Maybe you should ask him for Impressions ?
(and there are Rumors for a PDF for SR5....)

With a Dance in the greates Metroplex on Earth
Medicineman