Been playing SR a long time. Recently a character of mine died and I made a new on to take its place. Took awhile to get him all down on paper but he wound up being a better Sam than the rest of the team, as well as a fully competent decker (just not as good as the one already in game, since no karma yet etc).

This isnt the first time our team as seen multi-role and fully competent characters. In fact, most of us firmly agree that single role characters lack the flexiblity and utility to really provide a huge advantage to the team. So more and more characters are coming down the pipes that are able to fulfill 2 or even 3 roles well. It makes the team stronger, and gives the player more to do during an adventure.

But this created its own problem. With 5 or 6 players on a team, and each of them fulfilling 2-3 roles, theres a lot of overlap. Characters lose some of their uniqueness. Especially on things that are essential.

Now obviously people could come up with niches to fill, but theyre not always so useful. So the question put to you is: How many roles are viable for a character to fulfill as their main function, and what are they? If I can consolidate a useful list of 12 or 15 my work here is done, but I can only come up with half that on my own. So help me out with some fresh ideas.

Hmm, Combat Roles:

Vehicle Combat
Melee Combat
Gun(Ranged) combat
Demolitions
Underwater (Often heavily underused)
Magical Combat

B/R Roles:
You can probably fill your 15 roles right here there's so many, and though some overlap, many require specific tools and every player could take one.

Social skills:
Usually best condensed/combined with magician since Charisma is something of a dump stat for non-face mundanes.

Computer Skills:
See above, except that it's the extreme cost of good computer stuff that makes it so hard to play everybody doing a bit of decking.

Going to throw basic guns out, every character should have that in some practical capacity given their line of work; and if not something of reasonable substitute like mana bolt.

Also, Id view B/R more as only two roles. The biggies like electronics b/r are definatly one, and I suppose a character could make a role out of the rest, being a sort of 6th world mcgyver. But I dont think each b/r skill is useful enough in a mainstream way to constitute a role.

Which leaves 9 roles, with a few being more minor like demolitions and underwater. Still a good start ty.

No one in our games ever has an effective gun skill under 5 or 6 dice anymore at starting. The most you can effectivly start with is 8 barring use of adept powers. Having the worst person on the team run at 75% of the maximum possible makes it a throwaway, unless youre trying to say every team needs an adpet tossing 12 dice a shot without combat pool. Ill agree to your logic, but thats more of how you choose to spend combat pool that round than anything inherant with a characters role.

YMMV, but Im trying to come up with a list to use for myself so for that reason its gone. Im trying to keep the list to what can be done at chargen; if you start to allow for karma you open it up to simply saying "well a character could put all their dice there" and call it a role. The idea here was to see how many roles you could build into a team, and then let the character development distinguish each character; given unlimited karma they could all do everything.

Combat and recon and social are the only real roles.

However they need to be achieved in the matrix, on the physical and on the astral.

Recon can be broken down into bypassing security and stealth.

There are also the niches of transport and electronic warfare.

Of cause you need more than one physical combatant so you vary the method to maintain uniqueness. Cyber/bio sami. Phisad, magician, riger. Each of these lends itself to for filing different other roles.

As for max gun skill if you specialise and take enhanced articulation and reflex recorder you can start with a 9 dice before adept powers or combat pool. If every character had 5+ in a gun skill how many had a smart link.

Edward

Breaking and Entering is always a good specialization. Electronics warfare is also often a viable option barring your opponents being lowtech like a street gang or something where they have nothing to wreak havoc on. An often overlooked role, even though it doesn't really directly apply here is the distraction guy.

Stealth
Gunplay
Melee
Spirit Combat
Magical Effects
Decking
Technology
Healing
Vehicles

Actually I would break it down into the following:

All
Stealth
Melee
Range Combat

Specialities
Magic
Decking
Rigging

EDIT: Simply look at your SR3 Rules Expansions and I think you can get the idea.

I go by toturi's method. Don't make things more complicated than they have to be.

Our team:

Rigger: heavy combat support, extremely long range engagement, surveillance/tracking, and all the vehicle-related stuff. Also a pseudo-face and repair person.

Streetsam: Street pseudoface, combat muscle, nonlethal takedowns, physical intrusion.

Decker: reserve combat support, decking/information gathering/security disabling, sexy (don't think this isn't a role if you're trying to distract someone).

~J

Our Team:

Ivan :

-can use most firearms
-make non-lethal takedowns/arrests
-good looking with good 'people' skills
-medical skills
-knows many people

Ramsey :

-very stealthy
-make good silent takedowns
-good electronics skills
-melee combat expert
-knows many people

Nate :

-addicted to kamikaze
-great with assault rifles and pistols
-'high endurance'
-something else I can't quite nail down. If there is a "Clutch Performance" skill in Shadowrun, this guy has it.

Bob

-Halloweeners gang member
-decent sorcery skills
-good conjuring skills
-part-time job at bar provides good 'ear to the ground'

Obviously, we have some holes in the lineup and it doesn't take a lot to see where the core of our team revolves. We do have some good overlap, but also enough individuality to make everybody a valued team member.

Okay here's how I see the major roles in shadowrunning teams.

Entry guy: The guy with the skills to get you into the facility, preferably undetected.

Magical: a magician of some sort to fight magic with magic.

Getaway guy: usually a rigger.

Madic!: the one who patches people up

Face: Team negotiator, has friends, makes sure Mr Johnson pays decently.

Demo tech: for when stuff needs to be bblown up

Matrix guy: the one who does the computer stuff

Quiet killig guy: the stealth combat guy, kills guards without making large amounts of noise

Tactical guy: the tactician who co-ordinates the group and keeps them working like a well oiled machine.

Sniper: the extreme long range killer, for removing threats before you get there, or just to make wetwork easy.

combat guy: this is the standard short range multi opponent combat guy. the "Street sam" if you will.

Heavy gombat guy: This guy IS the big guns, for when the opposition is tough, you have him cover your retreat.

12 basic roles and they can be mixed and matched into a team (assuming 5 man team for this demo)

Entry guy/Demo Guy/ Quiet killing guy
Magical/Medic! (bear shaman with biotech 6 and rating 6 medkit)
Getaway guy/ heavy combat guy/ tactical guy (combat rigger w/ vehicles and drones)
Martrix guy/ combat guy (combat decker)
Face/Sniper (ooh nasty combo here.)

Team I'm currently GMing for:

B&E Adept/Face
Medic/Face
Troll Street Sam
Dog Shaman

It works very well... the three non-trolls can handle any social situation, and the troll helps out when there's combat... between the shaman and the medic they can heal up from anything, and the B&E adept, supported by the shaman, can get anywhere.

JaronK

I always liked a bit of overlap. It helps in case the person you rely upon to generally perform the skill gets incapacitated. You don't want your only 'driver' getting geeked. Or the only medic, or only electronics guy, etc etc.

I usually break things down into major and minor roles, depending on how much of a character's focus needs to be devoted to the role. A major resource requires at least one priority code at A or B, or requires multiple skills, a large amount of resources, and the like. A minor role, OTOH, requires only one skill and a small amount of gear and/or resources, and can be added to a major role with little difficulty.

Major roles would include:

Gunfighter - requires a high skill in one or more weapons, and the cyber/bio/magic enhancements to dish damage fast and either avoid or shrug off damage in return. Good physical stats are a boon here as well. Also requires a variety of weapons, armor, and ammo.

Mojo Slinger - requires at least a B priority all its own, good mental stats, and typically more than one high skill rating in Active or Background knowledges. Also requires much money and Karma for the upkeep.

Driver - requires a variety of high skills, a major amount of essence in cyber, and alot of money for vehicles and other equipment.

Console Jockey - only requires one skill and little cyber, but a vast amount of resources to be truly effective.

Schmoozer - requires many social skills, decent mental stats, and a small fortune in Contacts to be truly effective.

Most of these can be toned down to a minor role, but at the expense of being less effective than a character with a major focus in the same role.

Minor roles would include:

Stealth - really only takes one skill and maybe a small amount of gear to be the stealthy type.

Medic - Biotech and a medkit, pretty much.

Demo Man - yep, one skill and some equipment.

Heavy Gunner - Heavy Weapons skill, and a really big gun.

Melee Fighter - Normal unarmed or a melee weapon skill, and a weapon.

Sniper - Rifle skill and a gun, pretty much.

And I'm sure you can find more minor roles than just these listed, but the key is that these roles do not in and of themselves make a good sole focus for a character concept, but instead would work better as a complementary to one of the major roles. Such combos as Gun / Heavy, Decker / Demo, Mojo / Melee, Face / Medic, and so on. And some combos can mesh more effectively, as they tend to require similar attributes or cyber, or otherwise don't detract from each other - Gun / Sniper, Mojo / Medic, and so on.

When you look at it this way, my crew breaks down like so:

Sin: Gun / Stealth
Tatiyana: Schmoozer / Console
Deadeye: Gun / Sniper
Rogue One: Driver / minor Schmoozer
Darnak: Mojo / Melee
Manx: Mojo / Stealth

I notice "healer" doesn't show up in many people's lists, yet our medic is invaluable... she's a medic/face, and as a result can get her hands on some pretty impressive cyberware, which she can load up into the sammy with nice results (essence reduction is fun). She can also heal the .9 essence sammy, which the shaman can't do, and using first aid prior to the heal spell works great on the rest of the group as well.

JaronK

I had given this topic some serious thought after I had posted previously. I believe that runs can be broken down into 4 basic parts.

At part 1, you want to gather as much information on the job as possible without letting the opposition knowing it.

At part 2, you want to get there and get in.

At part 3, you want to stay alive and do what you are paid to do.

At part 4, you want to get away and get paid.

As long as your team is able to do parts 1 to 4, it does not matter what roles your PCs play.

For example:

1) Legwork/Data gathering - Face or Decker/Otaku

2) Ingress and Entry - Rigger and Stealth or Face

3) Insurance and Mission Objective - Combat(Melee and Range), Magic and Demolition, Computer, etc.

4) Egress and Safe Harbour - Rigger and a Safe House and Face

Depends on the size of the team. We have three players, so it breaks down to the following:

Mage: Anything and everything magical, from knowledge, combat, tactics, anything that could possibly be related to magic.

Sammie: Combat, knives, guns, armor, tactics. Anything that you can hurt people with that's not of a magical nature. Also, should have a few tactical skills and so on.

Decker: Electronics. Everything from decking to electronic warfare, electronic security, communications and generally keeping the team on the cutting edge of the electronic sphere.

First off ... the majority of this thread is mega useful. Kudos and TY.

I was looking for more specific things, because as I tried to state the overlap and uniqueness are the issues I wanted to adress for our group. We game Sunday so I paid closer attention to exactly what we were dealing with this specific round for example.

Ive made up a list of what we had on tap this round trying to categorize from the ideas here. I wanted to see what exactly we had crammed into this team. And more imporantly to identify what was really there as far as viable roles, and where to go next.

We had, this particular time, on a 6 man team:
1 magician, definatly spread a bit thin
5 shooters, dice of 5-8 without pool, all SL-2, all FA capable weapons (all but the mage)
4 silence shooters, similar stats but silenced pistols
1 area-weapon shooter, small rockets and grenades
1 melee specialist, 12 dice without pool (the abidextrous guy)
2 deckers, fully capable of individually hacking orange-hard systems or gathering info
2 pseudo faces, usually complementing each other when able
2 b&e experts able to bypass any reasonable security
3 sneakers, with 12 scanner ruethenium and thermal dampening suits
4 soakers, able to stand in the open against non-fully-automatic small arms fire
1 electronic warfare guy, able to jam or control radios/comms as needed
1 demolitions expert
2 people good at biotech, other 4 just had medkits (skill 3)

Thats about it for capabilites that really stood out, but its still an impressive list for 6 characters to cover. We didnt really plan anything as far as trying to cover anything (we rotate gms/players by the week after that other big thread I made) so we sorta each did our own thing. Were obviously lacking full magical coverage, and have no rigger, but are doing just fine. Being able to turn from a stealthy operations team to a coordinated fully automatic lead hose on a dime helps, but you use what you have =)

Dakrahn, I like the points brought up about minor vs major roles based on the investment it takes to pull it off, and the importance of the role to the character and team, a lot. Thanks.

Tortui, I also like the breakdown of goals because it highlights *why* you need the roles. Its nice to say 'oh we need demolitions filled, its a role' but without the why it doesnt make a lot of sense in the big picture.

Good stuff, if you got more post it =)

I classify each character's abilities as 'primary' and 'secondary'. I class primary as the person in the team who's best at it, and somewhat specialised, while the secondary roles I consider to be the other members who can do it - cross training is a must in my opinion, because if you rely on one person to take out those maglocked doors and that person is geeked or otherwise unavailable then you're screwed.

In the team I GM for, we have a vast base of skills. Some are so good at their character's secondary that they could really be classed as primary. The skill sets in the team break down like this:

Wraith - stealth (including B&E), magic & edged melee primary with decking, driving and ranged combat secondary
Manta - Unarmed melee, vehicles (rigger) and heavy weapons primary with stealth secondary
Flex - ranged combat, cyber melee and decking primary with stealth and electronics B&E secondary
Phoenix - ranged combat and driving (non-rigger) and stealth primary, with biotech and tactics and B&E secondary
Cooper - ranged combat and survelliance primary with B&E and survellance secondary
Sol - edged and unarmed melee primary, stealth secondary
Canis - spirit related primary with magic, ranged and cyber melee secondary

Primary and secondary are relative terms though. Canis could well be considered the primary magic user in any other group, but in this one he's not there yet. Same with Cooper's B&E skills - they'd quite easily be the group's primary provider of that skill set in any other group.

It's a relative term, but aside from a rudimentary stealth and firearms skills, I feel specialisation is the way to go. With enough Karma you can do everything, but you need to find something you're gonna be good at in the beginning to be of use. Course, this is my own personal observation, and others may find things work differently.

So does nobody see a need for drone riggers? Considering the amount of space given to them in rigger 3, I would think they have some use.

I agree with most of these clasifications, espesially the face. I'm running a campaign and attending another, where we had none, and doing legwork and negotiations is a pain without one.

Under my new classification, he's under the Ingress and Insurance.

New group of mine happens to have 3 girls(yes RL girls) on it, and my character.

Elf fem Cinder Face/Mage, A petite girl with penchant for large shotguns and mind bending illusions

Human fem Catherine Face/Mage, pacifist but spec in deep interrogation through spells and mind control.

Human fem Delilah Medic/B&E/Psudo Decker/driver Good with pistols, but a far better medic

My char Ork male Ee-Van (Ivan) Phys Shaman / Sniper / Silent takedowns / Melee / Healer / Spirit Chucker / Tank


Heavily leaning magic group, but in their defense I didn't allow them to know what eachother was creating. They do most of the work, and my char usually steps in to save butts if something goes south.

My more Regular group is heavy mundane.

Jazzy Troll Sam Huge Guns / Melee / Bullet Stopper

SnickerDoodle Elf Speed Sam Dual dikoted cougar fineblade melee spec / Stealth / Pistols

HardTap Dwarf decker/ electronics wiz / B&E expert / part time rigger

Chrome-Lightning Almost Burned out Elf Mage - Uses electricity themed spells, uses a Yamaha tazer, has a cyberhand with a built in tazer, wears nonconductive clothing. You get the idea.

I ran games at multiple game stores recently. There were some non-standard roles.

Berserker -- turns any run into a combat operation
Looter -- gets every last nuyen of value off the bodies
Recycler -- has the best contacts for getting nuyen for the bodies
Faceless -- so many contacts he spends his time on the phone while others work

Thistledown, in most gamers a drone rigger should have a remote operated armored van, and thus be combo of getaway guy and heavy combat guy
I steel lynx drones as they are listed as being able to operate in narrow corridors and elevators

A drone rigger is not necessary. They are just the most effective type of direct combatant in the game. They don’t do subtle very well (well they do with the right spells but then so dose a troll with no stealth and a HMG).

When working out the roles filed in your party consider each roll filled by each drone but remember if the rigger goes down so do all his toys.

Edward

Personally I find drone riggers rather bland overall. Drones arent as flexible or adaptable as people, making them of limited use for anything sensitive or requiring a high level of skill. And in combat, while they can perhaps make more numerous attacks, they rarely have the staying power of a sam. That and theyre expensive and fragile. They do very well at certain types of operations, such as providing escape cover, and gathering intel. But Id hardly call one neccessary.

Edward, that's what the underbarrel grenade launcher is for

Tell me one day why I tolerate your continued existence.

Edward

I believed you once said that life in my presence is never boring

Drones have body of like 2 or 3. Any hit delt out by competent opposition is garunteed death for the drone unless the rigger is jumped in and uses control pool to aid its defense. Sams have body in the double digits, plus combat pool, plus armor. And they can be treated for free with biotech and magic. The sam will take a lot more before going down than any shadowops drone; those with significant armor ratings are not employable in enough typical shadowops to make a comparable substitution for a sam. Likewise, for damage, any sam with SL-2 and appropriate recoil comp is superior to most any drone I can think of. If a rigger is jumped in the comparison becomes a lot closer, but the sam can do things like open doors, operate computers, and soak which the drone cannot typically perform. Thus the drones make a poor substitute except for gross manuvers such as covering fire or patrolling. Their best use is in the intelligence leg of the run, where sensors, area of coverage, and speed and mode of operation outshine almost everything else barring magic.

Drone firing well set-up weapon is comparable in damage potential to a sami. First on a drone it is easy to remove all recoil even with HV weapons. A rating 3 pilot and a rating 3 gunnery auto soft is 6 dice for the tack. For a sustained period a sami will mange 6-10 depending on cyber and combat pool allocation. The SL2 will also improve the samie’s chances. Net result the drone can start with a hire damage code but the sami gets a lot more successes. The sami will probably deal more damage but remember single rigger can have more than one drone active

As to defence. Anything that can hurt a drone will hurt it a lot. This is why I took the risk of overpowering the engine on the Dalmatian I needed it to carry heavy armour. There isn’t a lot around with a base power of 16+ and AV weaponry is also not common. If your facing thee things then only a brick shithouse build was going to soak all the damage anyway. A steal lynx can not be harmed by a panther assault canon without special ammunition. How dose your street sam feal about walking out into that babies line of fire with starting character equipment (or with an additional 100 karma and 2,000k for that matter). The steel lynx witch is availability 2 and 34.5k will drive up to it at point blank range and if it cant kill the thing itself will park in front of the canon so your poor little flesh and blood street sami can walk past safly.

What I m curious about now is how you use drones for information gathering. They don’t interact well on a social level and I don’t think you will have much luck having them fly around searching for an individual at random.

Edward

The smaller drones, particularly the spider and rotary ones make good recon units. They can have cameras which can do a fair bit of surveillance, along with microphones and listening devices. The Condor can cover a LARGE area with it's sensors as well, since it's so high up.

Combat drones I find are useful, but only in certain situations. Ambushes with Steel Lynxes are very effective, and some of the other drones also rock in this respect. Going toe to toe can be a challenge in a drone, but armour is your friend. I will admit the low body does make some drones a little weak in some respects, but if there's AV ammo and guys who can take a HMG at full auto, why ain't you using nukes anyway :o)

If you would like to try to get more than six successes against a Strato-9 flying out at extreme MMG range and using sensor-enhanced gunnery to get fourteen dice rolling at TNs of about 5, you can possibly say that drones underperform vs. samurai.

There's much less point to using drones while not jumped into them, but they will eat a sammy with a good rigger inside.

~J

Arr yes the LS strato 9 cheep easily available and the only way I know to get an MMG as a starting character. And you can fly it own the street without anybody complaining. Shame about the lack of armour but there’s nothing you can do about that without loosing the stealth feature.

Edward

concealed armor, R3 page 132.

The armor's heavier than the Strato can take well, IIRC. With a Strato, you use combat pool to kill what you need to quickly, control pool to dodge what you can't kill, and the vast range you can be at to minimize the people who can attack in the first place.

If you've got armor, you can play out. If you don't, play conservatively. You can still get a lot done.

~J

I would happily overpower the power plant to carry the mass or the concealed armour but that takes CF and the LS-S9 has only 1 available. Not engulf for even a single point of concealed armour (3CF per point for a vehicle customisation).

Even without armour it is a very good drone. I consider it a must have in any aria where loan star operates the police force (and its local equivalent elsewhere). If you could throw a goodly quantity of vehicle armour on it it would be overpowered (at least at that cost and availability.)

Edward

The drone has to use sensor enhanced gunnery to lock on. The loss of actions there is what gives sams the edge if nothing else. Not to mention that if you invest all that nuyen on drone software it only hurts that much more when it goes. Yes, at some extreme range with a rigger jumped in the drone may fare better, but most runs are indoors or in urban outdoor settings and gunfights take place at 200m or less. The only drones capable of going indoors and negotiating the terrain are typically ligter ones. In that setting, sams win.

it feels like cheating, but you can always just load on lots of personal armor. it's light, it doesn't affect handling, and even against anti-vehicle weapons, it still provides 1/2 its rating.