We are going to play in the AGS/ADL/Germany, more specifically, both the Players AND the Characters are going to be based in Hamburg . .
So this immediately makes 2 otherwise completely useless character concepts a bit more viable. The Hovercraft Rigger/Smuggler and the Monster from the Black Lagoon amphibious Ork Street Sam.

I am using Chummer 5 (Priority standard mundane )for this and i have access to the SR5 books in both english and german through the people that suckered me into playing SR5 in the first place, but somehow, looking at the character after everything is said and done (meaning after both priority A Money and Priority B Attributes and Priority C skills are all spent), the characters still look . . pretty much useless to me.
No skill groups at all, no skill above 2, no Attribute above 5 in neither the ork samurai nor the dorf rigger . . Not half the ware one would need/expect in them either . .

So what the hell am i doing wrong?

See if your GM will let you use the Sum To Ten system. It's miles better.

No, already asked, everybody has to make do with priority <.<

Eh. Half the builds in the game don't work with Priority. Especially Technomancers.

I'd recommend building a human character so you can dump the racial priority to D or E, depending on magic.

I KNOW that SR5 is basically magicrun, but i don't want magic or resonance actually.
I am going for a Mundane Cyber/Bio build for both the Rigger and the StreetShark.
The Rigger is a Dorf and the StreetShark is an Ork.

I'd say A resources, B Attributes, C Race, D Skills and E Magic for the Shark (who I assume is some sort of street sam) and then swap skills and attributes for the Rigger.

Yeah, that's what i have. And it simply does not seem to want to work out as i'd expect it to do x.x
Money runs out faster than Essence actually.

D for skills? I guess with the new pricing, A resources is pretty much necessary for anyone who isn't magic. Then again, skills always feel like they should be at A as well.

With Street Sammies, you don't need that many skills. You just need Fightin' skills, Perception and Stealth. Unless you want to multiclass, then you're fucked. You get fucked by a lot of builds in priority.

I swear, Sum to Ten should have been the standard method.

Well, at least I can feel good about folks liking Sum-to-Ten.

Also, I don't know which rules are different in the English and German versions. I remember skillwires are rebalanced for German, but there's got to be something else. Anyone remember?

Which version is your GM using?

The Skilljack, for example, costs 10k in english and 1k in german.
Technically, i was told to use the german stuff . .
But chummer is in english and my brain does not understand the german shadowrun terminology anymore after years of bickering with you lot in english <.<

Darned if I know why SR is still doing this. Games that have both "Character Creation Points" and "Experience Points" are complicating the issue unnecessarily. We just use Karma Points for both - one type of point for everything, and it makes things a lot simpler.

Then you should probably start with Skills A, which gives an insane BP/Karma equivalent (something like 450 Karma for norms)

But then the Money lasts even less than it does now!
The VEHICLE alone costs either 90+k or 140+k PLUS MODS!
Strangely enough, the 12F Military one is cheaper than the civilian version . .

How long do you see this game running? Cause if you want some additional starting power, swapping attributes and skill priority should help a lot with getting better numbers. However, it makes things more karma intensive later, though you should be able to get high mental attributes for the rigger which should help out a lot.
What skills did you grab for the street sam? You might need to specialize a bit more, but that should be doable with those priorities.

im not sure what you're doing wrong, but i'll try to help out a little:

either the Street Sam or Rigger are high resource/gear characters, so Resources at A is suggested. i personally went B skills (36/5) for my Rigger, but you can do as you wish.

ork has a 4 starting Body and 3 Strength.

a Rigger needs a decent Reaction (pilot skills) and Logic (Agility when jacked into vehicle). a good Intuition isnt a bad idea either. they dont need to be 6s unless you want, but you should be able to manage a 3 or 4 in them before cyberware. having a 1 or 2 in your less needed stats, like Strength or Charisma, isnt a terrible thing. you can boost them with Karma later.

a Sam needs Agility (guns and blades), a decent Body for damage resistance, and a decent Reaction and/or Intuition. since you start with 4 Body, thats actually ok. again, its ok to have a dump stat or two. Karma will level the playing field eventually.

truthfully, i would go Resources A, Skills B, Race C, Attributes D, and E magic for both characters. you need the money for Cyber, and/or Drones/Vehicles. skills are slightly more valuable for Rigger than Sam (if you plan to just be a combat-machine with the Sam. you could swap Skills and Attributes for the Samurai.)

using the above setup, my Ork Samurai example has 5 Bod, 5 Agil, 4 Str, 4 React, 3 Will, 2 Logic, 2 Intuition, and 2 Charisma (i didnt want to totally suck at social skills)
my Dwarf Rigger example has 3 Body, 4 Agil, 4 React, 3 Str, 3 Will, 5 Logic, 3 intuition and 2 Charisma.

this gives me 5 skill group points, and 36 skill points to play with, and 450k money.

cyberware: Samurai needs reflexes, preferably at 2. you can afford alphaware if you want to conserve essence. cybereyes 3 with flare comp, smartlink, lowlight/thermo, image link, vision enhance and mag. should have about 15 pts worth of add-ons, use em. you can get cyberarms if you want (max strength and agil, theyll do wonders for your gun and blade skills). muscle replacement if you dont get arms (adds Strength and Agility both). Reaction Enhancers 2 synergize well with Wired Reflexes to give you a little more edge in speed. Reflex recorders are nice for another +1 in skills. maybe a Platelet Factory for some damage resistance. you can easily blow your entire budget here, so be careful. trim the cyber a little if you run low on cash. you can always get more later.

Rigger needs a Control Rig 2, Cerebral Booster for some more Logic, Cerebellum Booster for a bit of Intuition, Muscle Replacement or Toner (Toner improves Agility only) might be nice, you might be able to get Wired Reflexes 1 if you plan to be a combat Rigger in the thick of things. reflex recorders work nicely here, as most of the skills they work on are good for riggers too.

Samurai needs 1 vehicle, no need to get fancy. Harley Scorpion is a crowd favorite.

Rigger is a bit more tricky because youll want an army of drones. the problem is you cant afford them yet. you need a good RCC, the best you can afford. Vulcan Liegelord or better (i actually took Restricted Gear Quality so i could buy the MCT Drone Web for mine). the Steel Lynx is enticing but expensive, get it if you can afford it. to start out though, you might consider a couple of fly-spies, a couple of rotodrones, and 1 or 2 others. recon, firepower, and a couple of miscellaneous. remember to buy the autosofts for your drone weapons. the little things add up quickly. i like the Ares Roadmaster for my main vehicle, but you can also go with the Bulldog. its a proven choice.

Edit: are you playing both characters or trying to make a multi-role guy? or testing both builds to see what works?

Ah, there's your problem.

Starting SR5 sam/decker characters flatly can't afford cars. Period, end of story. At Resources A, you have -just- enough to get your starting gear/ware and a week or two of a lifestyle. Maybe a bike.

Custom vehicles are right out.

Were I you, I'd talk to my GM and see if karma or nuyen is going to be easier to come by in his game. If he's using the book run payouts, buy everything you need at creation and assume you'll just recoup lifestyle and ammo costs for working. Go Resources A.

If cash is going to be available, do the opposite. Go Skills A, get everything you need to know how to do handled, and then buy more and better gear and ware out of pocket later. Just because you can have 5 Essence worth at start does't mean you need to.

Also, calibrate your expectations downwards. You cannot make an SR4 style Best In Class dicepool god with SR5 priority gen. The numbers aren't there. On the other hand, you don't fucking need 19 dice in all your normal functions to be 'viable'.

I find it helps, philosophically, to remember I'm making a starting runner. They may be just a step above street scum, but they have the basic tools and initiative to be a real player in a few hundred karma and hundred thousand nuyen.

Trying to play a hovercraft rigger and a street samurai at the same time is going to be hard, and being a metahuman exacerbates that. You're picking multiple resource-intensive character ideas and combining them, and they don't even really overlap much (except that both want solid Reaction). You want mostly mental stats for rigging (and Essence), and you want mostly physical stats for combat (and Essence), you want nuyen for both, and you want wildly different skills for both.

Well frag you then - Jason Hardy

I think he wants to build either of those...both at the same time is right out, end of story.


For playing just the hovercraft rigger, a privately owned hovercraft obviously is expensive, I don't think that was different in any edition. You could try the Born Rich or In Debt qualities to get the cash required, or pool with another player as co-owner, or maybe haggle with the GM that access to the craft is part of the character's Day Job (and therefore it's company property, so don't scratch it).

Can't afford cars? A normal one is 12-16k nuyen, a fancy one maybe 60k. Since you can start with 500k, I don't see the problem there. In SR1 a ford american was 20k, so can't say prices has spiked so much. The 60k one is described as something a typical shadowrunner can't afford, which makes sense for new PCs who are not focused on vehicles. A street sam who focuses on weapons and 'ware obviously can't, he may have to go for a cheap motorcycle or the cheapest car, while a rigger should be able to spend 100k or more on vehicles.

Yeah, i am trying to build 2 character concepts that i never really got to play anywhere else, because Hamburg just offers the opportunity to actually do so . .
One being the dorf hovercraft rigger(originally i wanted to go with a submarine, because why the hell not, the streets in hamburg are big enough for it)
and the Ork non-space-Marine/Monster of the Black Lagoon. Simply because being amphibious is the best thing to be in Hamburg . .

And i find myself struggeling with BOTH of them.
Having to cut corners basically on money, skills AND attributes!

my above advice will net you a fairly decent starting guy. basically you are aiming for your priority role having at least 12 or more dice (more if the skill is an opposed test, like Stealth vs Perception). this can be done easily with Attribute 6, Skill 6, and a Specialization at whatever you like most. even Attribute 4 or 5 will get you there. dont try to be everything at once. that comes later once you have Karma from runs.

i have not read a whole lot about Hamburg, but since your posts have aquatic stuff, im gonna assume its flooded.

minor changes - get a Samuvani Otter if you can. there are some REALLY nice options in Rigger 5, dropping vehicle cost to as low as 8000 for a minimal water bike as well as a number of aquatic drones. your cyber can include an internal air-tank for underwater work. a submarine is out of reach for a new character.

Furthermore, most, if not ALL the positive AND negative qualities i WANT to give the characters would basically render them unplayable . .
The Shark guy SHOULD, by all rights, have cold blooded. But you try and WALK around Hamburg ANYTIME BUT HIGH SUMMER and you are basically dead weight only . .
Even worse if you were to enter ANY BODY OF WATER to swim/dive in damn it!
And they made, what looks like, about HALF of all qualities simply incompatible with ware . .

I have a feeling someone doesn't understand how cold blooded animals work. Because that isn't it.

Oh no, i know quite well how they work.
But still, 0° Celsius makes a character go into a fucking COMA?
How useless can you MAKE stuff you call QUALITIES?

I think that was more pointed at whoever wrote the silly Quality.

Remember, though, the whole design philosophy of SR5 character creation is that every positive has to have some kind of crippling drawback to be 'balanced'. Unless it's Magic.

This.

Ah, sorry, my bad!

Magic got screwed over too. They are comparatively the best off, but they still have things like higher Drain, rules for interacting with spirits that can make them all but useless, and sky-high background count. And aspected mages are gimped to the point that it simply makes no sense to make one.

Don't get me wrong, they are still better off than augmented characters, who are still better off than technomancers, who are still better off than changelings. I would not recommend SURGE in SR5. 30 points just for the privilege of choosing your own qualities, and the (gimped) positive qualities have to match the (much more penalizing) negative qualities. It's just not worth it.

Every game has its own kinds of optimal builds. In SR3, I liked playing street-level sorcerer skill monkeys, but SR4 did not support that concept as well. SR4 let you make a lot of well-rounded/hybrid characters, but in SR5, they are pigeonholed into "character classes", such as deckers, a lot more. One thing that really seems to help me, in Priority, is to go light on positive qualities so that have a lot of starting Karma to shore up my low-end priorities. In other words, if I have skills: D, I will get three skills at 6 and a skill at 4, then use my starting Karma to buy a bunch of skills at 1 and 2.

I think i figured out part of the reason why i have such troubles building an to me acceptable character . .
WHY THE FUCK DO ELVES SUDDENLY COST LESS THAN TROLLS; ORKS AND DORFS DAMN IT?

because they're pretty?

Because Mr. Hardy owed Harlequin a favour which he called in when 5th was being written up?

Edit: Joking aside, it seems it's down to number crunching and all stats being weighed as pretty much equal, regardless of if that's how it plays.

Elves effectively get +1 Agi and +2 Cha along with Low Light, so 3 bonus points and some nice nightsight.

Orcs effectively get +3 to Body, and +2 to Str at the cost of a -1 hit to Log and Cha along with Night vision, so at 3 overall bonus it really should be on par with elves.
So yeah, I would have had Orks on D with elves, but orcs get no love apparently so up the ladder they go.

Dwarves effectively get +2 to Body and Str, along with +1 to Wil while taking -1 hit to Reaction along with thermo and dice resists so I can see why dwarves do get bumped up one step.

Trolls pointwise get a bit, effectively +5 to Str and Bod with a total of 5 points taken out of a fair spread of stats, but lots of natural stuff on top with some armor, thermo and reach.

So there is some logic to it, but one could argue should Str/Body weigh as heavily as the other stats when things like guns negate str advantage and armor covers a multitude of sins and shortcomings bodywise while the other stats are not so easily replaced short of spells/cyber/bio?

Because
- elves give you three extra attribute points,
- dwarves and orcs give five, and
- trolls give, umm, 8 I think it was?

That elves get theirs in two of the most broadly useful stats, and the others have reduced maximum attributes in places doesn’t seem to matter.

That said, for a lot of builds, human really ends up being optimum. The extra edge is nothing to sneeze at, and not competing for priority really helps.

Probably not your intention, but I first read that as suggesting you could only afford a bicycle. Worst rigger ever.

...I read that the same way

Binarywraith is probably german?
in German Bike rather means motorcycle and not so much bicycle

with a translator's dance
Medicineman

Oh they're called bikes in the US too, but it's more of a slang term that typically refers to a bicycle unless the context says otherwise.
(I mean really, what does a "biker gang" ride?)
It should have been obvious that he meant "motorcycle" in this context, but that's not how our brains decided to process it.

Depends upon their age...

At 5, they are riding Tricycles...
At 12 they are on Bicycles...
At 19+ they are likely riding Motorcycles....

I have an entertaining image of a Pre-Teen Biker Gang all on Schwin's... Makes me chuckle...
Nevermind the Toddler Biker gang, scourge of the playground.

Bratz Corp.
You can maim them without feeling bad.

Totally off-topic ...

But no conventional bicycles! Only this type will do:

http://up.picr.de/8728858uoq.jpg

Heh... Awesome.

Well, this edition just wants to make sure that mundane and awakened characters are balanced.

Nah, midwestern US, but I was referring to motorcycles.

Anyone know what skill is used to pilot a hovercraft?
Is it ships/boats or is it ground vehicle?
Or is it neither? or does it depend wether or not i am on land or on water with it?
that would be stupid, but we ARE talking SR5 here <.<

I am pretty sure it is just groundcraft. It doesn't clarify, but all the hovercrafts are groundcraft and it doesn't say it changes the skill.

A couple days late to the party here but I'll chime in. This is based on posts from the other forum that I am not inclined to track down at the moment. Wakshaani spoke about it at length.

Elves are cheaper from a priority standpoint because they are skinny.

When the developers worked on SR5, one of the issues they wanted to address from SR4 was skinny orks and skinny trolls (and, to a lesser degree, skinny dwarves).

Specifically, the racial minimums for BOD and STR for these races is sufficient for 99% of a PC's life and gameplay. Ork was the ultimate race in SR4 because you could spend 20BP to get 50BP-worth of BOD and STR. Trolls cost 40BP to get 80BP of BOD/STR. That was a steal, especially since BOD 4+ was the magic number to avoid any significant encumbrance penalties. Plus you could spend the BP on your metatype which would then free up BP to spend on other attributes (especially since attributes as a whole had a 200BP cap, but the metatype didn't count toward that). That made orks the most flexible build unless you wanted to play a Charisma-heavy PC.

I'm guilty of it too. I had an SR4 ork mage who spent 20BP on metatype, added nothing to BOD and STR, and then gleefully poured my savings into all my other attributes.

SR5 wanted to avoid the issue of optimizers using skinny orks and trolls. That's why trolls cost B+, orks and dwarves cost Priority C+, while elves remain at Priority D.

Agree or disagree, it's all the same to me, but that's what the devs were trying to balance against when they set the metatype priorities in SR5.

That darn Priority System drives me up a wall. I took one look at it and ditched it. We use Karmagen. Period. Nice and simple, one system of points for everything.

Point build, like karmagen before it, removes the front-loading kind of min-maxing from the table, but it definitely encourages "skinny orks and trolls" due to Attributes having an exponential, rather than a fixed, cost.

What drives me up the wall about it is the metavariant costs, because the people designing metatype costs for point build and priority/sum-to-ten evidently couldn't be bothered to talk to each other. Ogres are more expensive than orks in priority/sum-to-ten, but less expensive than orks in point build. Dryads cost the same as normal elves in priority/sum-to-ten, but cost more than double (90 Karma vs. 40 Karma) in point build.


Stahlseele, hovercraft is a specialization of pilot ground vehicle.