[SR4] Street Samuraizing

Silent Wayfarer · Post by **Silent Wayfarer** » Sun Apr 22, 2012 9:25 am

So I'm planning to make a street samurai with a "grizzled veteran" theme, that focuses on Automatics (machine pistols to assault rifles) and Heavy Weapons (for underslung grenade launchers, machine guns, and various other destructive devices), with Athletics + Unarmed for full defense shenanigans and for some extra flavor.

My first question is about race: Elf gives more Agility, which seems to be the combat Godstat, but it's pricy. Ork gives Strength and Body and is very efficient about it, and both of those help in carrying big guns and armor. Plus, Orks as soldiers seems to fit well. Humans are free and have an Edge bonus, but I don't know how effective that is.

In a nod to previously posted advice about keeping low profile, I'm planning to have most of this guy's ware be bioware, with a couple of cyber bits here and there to represent old war injuries, which adds verisimilitude to the character and also lets me stuff in fun ware. There's also the SINner (Criminal SIN?) + Erased Quality combination.

What other skills do I want? I was thinking of a splash in Demolitions to model knowing how to work with explosives and Armourer because I'm a fan of gun customization, but how much of each skill do I really need?

Also, on an unrelated note, if I could cherrypick SURGE qualities, what would a muggle want in order to deal with mages, or is that more the province of good planning and good luck?

EDIT: I forgot the most important thing...

What practices would veteran shadowrunners follow, besides the tried and true "geek the mage first", "never deal with a dragon", "The Johnson is always out for you" and so on? I'd think a veteran runner who lived in a neighborhood would go out of his way to be a credit to the people who lived there so they'd be willing to take risks for him when the heat goes down. Maybe make a little loss, do a little pro bono work, or maybe just gently advise little Billy that if he can study hard and support his folks and a family by being noticed by a corp, he should do that rather than be a gangbanger or a wannabe runner.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Sun Apr 22, 2012 9:44 am

orks are, hands down, the best in terms of points/effective.

soldier guy skills?
Thrown weapons for grenades goes a long way if you are strong.
well, some biotech to do first aid on yourself and othery might be nice. maybe some etiquette skill or intimidation or something like that? You wanna be the scary guy, use the scary guy image.
as of SR4, most anybody should have, at least, a rudimentary understanding of computer stuff to at least be able to find some stuff on the matrix themselves and to keep their stuff safe from roque hackers . . seeing how this does not need dedicated cyber anymore, it's encouraged even for magical types . .

the surge qualities . . depends mostly on what kind of team you are going to be working with . . if you have magical types on your team, getting the background count thingie will be bad. if you do not have to worry about friendly magics, get the background count thingie and maybe magic resistance, if that is available as a surge trait too . .

shadowrunner practice nr.1: have a plan to kill anyone you meet.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Sun Apr 22, 2012 9:57 am

Get the Background count anyway, then Cyber/Bio up until the Radius is small enough to not bother them. Combine it with arcane arrester. You wont get magical healing is a big downside and forget about not being noticeable.

+1 to Agi is very nice too, since it increases your augmented maxima.

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Sun Apr 22, 2012 11:17 am

Erased is pretty hax as a quality. As in, it's stupid good and the GM shouldn't really allow it. It's a "never get reprisals" card in a game about keeping a low profile to avoid reprisals.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Apr 22, 2012 11:45 am

Something which constantly surprises min/maxxers of Shadowrun is that rolling more dice while shooting people is almost completely meaningless once you have achieved garden variety competence. The reason is because of the "two shot problem". That is: people have a tendency to have 10 or 11 boxes of health, and you get only a single extra box of damage for getting an extra hit on your attack. What this means is that taking someone out with one shot requires five more hits than taking someone out with two shots does (actually more, because edge and wound penalties both favor two attacks over one). You get that, on average, with an increase in dice pool of fifteen fucking dice

The margin of dicepool between reliably dropping foes with two bursts to the chest and reliably dropping foes with only one is fucking titanic. It's more dice than you can plausibly even get. And that's before we get into the harsh realities that there are dice penalties for switching targets between simple actions and it's not even clear what benefit you would hope to get from dropping an enemy with a single burst instead of a double-tap.

What this means is that Agility is not the god stat for Street Samurai. Intuition is. A difference in six or even nine dice in attack pool is quite likely wholly without consequence. The only thing that means shit is getting the drop on people and not getting the drop dropped on you. And you do that by rolling well on your initiative and perception checks.

-Username17

Silent Wayfarer · Post by **Silent Wayfarer** » Sun Apr 22, 2012 12:35 pm

Stahlseele wrote:soldier guy skills?
Thrown weapons for grenades goes a long way if you are strong.
well, some biotech to do first aid on yourself and othery might be nice. maybe some etiquette skill or intimidation or something like that? You wanna be the scary guy, use the scary guy image.
as of SR4, most anybody should have, at least, a rudimentary understanding of computer stuff to at least be able to find some stuff on the matrix themselves and to keep their stuff safe from roque hackers . . seeing how this does not need dedicated cyber anymore, it's encouraged even for magical types . .

So, basic computer skills, as part of the basic life skills angle. What would that include? Local knowledge, medical stuff (I've heard you just need 1 die + Logic + Specialty and then let the Rating 6 medkit pick up from there), a way to not die, a way to see what's going on...

FrankTrollman wrote:What this means is that Agility is not the god stat for Street Samurai. Intuition is. A difference in six or even nine dice in attack pool is quite likely wholly without consequence. The only thing that means shit is getting the drop on people and not getting the drop dropped on you. And you do that by rolling well on your initiative and perception checks.

-Username17

I do notice that the practical limit for shooting pools seems to be around 15 or so dice (Agi 7 Skill 4 Spec 2 Smartlink 2); is this adequate? For that matter, how many dice should I expect to be rolling for good chances of success in combat/noncombat things?

I was planning on an Intuition secondary character this time round because CHA and LOG got stale to me, and I try to have as high a Perception as possible. I imagine that in general, intelligence-gathering is often more useful than actually shooting people in the face?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Apr 22, 2012 1:56 pm

I do notice that the practical limit for shooting pools seems to be around 15 or so dice (Agi 7 Skill 4 Spec 2 Smartlink 2); is this adequate? For that matter, how many dice should I expect to be rolling for good chances of success in combat/noncombat things?

In general, you can count on succeeding at just about anything with 15 dice. You can get more dice, but it's largely pointless. 9-12 dice is enough to be noticeably helpful at a task and essentially never glitch. Less than that and you actually fail at tasks sometimes, which depending on the MC may mean that you do more harm than good.

15 dice on attacks is plenty and more than plenty for what you need to do. Sure, by all means take the Agility of 5 and take 2 points of Muscle Toner to get the agility 7. You can get an agility of 9 or even 12 if you trick yourself out properly, but there's basically no point in doing so.

I imagine that in general, intelligence-gathering is often more useful than actually shooting people in the face?

In the standard sorts of adventures, yes. Your "find clue" roll is more important than your "shoot things" roll. There exist hack-n-slash games where basically all you do is fight, and even in those instances your perception check (the "get to act on the first round of combat" roll) is more important than any attack roll. With some decent reflex enhancers, it is essentially 6 attack rolls if you pass the damn thing.

-Username17

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Sun Apr 22, 2012 8:45 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:The margin of dicepool between reliably dropping foes with two bursts to the chest and reliably dropping foes with only one is fucking titanic. It's more dice than you can plausibly even get. And that's before we get into the harsh realities that there are dice penalties for switching targets between simple actions and it's not even clear what benefit you would hope to get from dropping an enemy with a single burst instead of a double-tap.

Although there is one case where it makes a big difference - hardened armor. I'm playing a character that happens to have a huge pool for sniper rifles (good Agility for Stealth and such, and there are so many ways to boost guns cheaply), and it means that I have a good chance to break hardened armor on vehicles and spirits, even without APSD ammo.

That said:

FrankTrollman wrote: Sure, by all means take the Agility of 5 and take 2 points of Muscle Toner to get the agility 7. You can get an agility of 9 or even 12 if you trick yourself out properly, but there's basically no point in doing so.

Agility 7 is what I have, so I guess I fall into the "reasonable" category anyway.

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Sun Apr 22, 2012 9:05 pm

On the OP:
* Ork is the best choice points-wise. Go with that unless you want a different one for flavor.
* If you're going Unarmed + Guns (and using Arsenal), Krav Maga is a good pick, because of the "Free Aim" benefit. +2 dice to your shooting for free.
* I went mostly Bioware, and it's been working out pretty well. Synaptic Booster, Muscle Toner, and Synthacardium are all winners. Since Cyberwear will be minimal but present, you can take Sensitive System.
* SINner plus Erased? You might want to check if the GM is cool with that, it's like taking Incompetent for some extremely niche skill.
* Other Skills - Perception!!, at least a point of Influence, I find at least a point of First Aid helpful when combined with high-rating Medkits. Other than that, it will depend on who else is in the party.
* Specialize all the things! Or at least many of them. But do it mostly after chargen, because it's effectively cheaper then.
* If you're using Arsenal, look into form fitting armor and PPP. For high-Body characters, it pretty much doubles your armor for not much cost.

Here's some threads I found useful:
http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=21768
http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=96528

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Sun Apr 22, 2012 9:15 pm

right, i forgot about the medipack being the better doctor thing, so scrap biotech down to one and place points into perception(forgot about that actually being a skill too x.x)
if you wanna be the swiss army knife character, invest in skillwires.
and a 4/4 group contact to a warez network for skillsofts.
then get one tricked out comlink and computer/search skill as high as possible.
if they did not fix that hole somewhere, you can make a character that can get every last single skillsoft in 3 days flat and at 10% of list price too . .

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 2:04 am

The craziest thing about the two shot syndrome Frank is talking about is that if anything he's underselling the situation a bit given that even if you get in a head on confrontation your target can suffer defense penalties about as easily as you can suffer attack penalties. For one thing, there's a small but stacking penalty for defending against each attack beyond the first until they have an opportunity to take an action. For another, live targets hit by stick and shock suffer an additional two dice penalty for having been hit with an Electrical attack even if they make their remain upright saves as well as good ol' fashioned wound penalties for any damage they have suffered. Thirdly, Wide Bursts exist and even the three dice worth of recoil compensation that comes stock on a Smartgun X--getting to 5 or 6 recoil compensation is seriously not hard with Arsenal-- means that it is pretty easy to waltz around slashing five dice off of people's initial defense pools and thanks to the previously mentioned penalties people who get hit once tend to get hit a second time.

Anyway, Wired 2 and Muscle Toners are super obvious picks but here's the other two things that just about always make it on my street samurai:

Synthacardium 3: This stuff is either really good and a cost effective way to buff your fitness or crazy awesome depending on whether or not your GM gets all butthurt about letting you have 3 extra dice on your Gym Dodge. Personally, my last GM always started babbling some shit about it being for Athletic Tests and not Defense Tests, but whatever, I kept the 'ware anyway because this stuff and a good Edge pool makes it pretty easy to do action movie stunts.

Attention Coprocessor 3: Remember the bits earlier in the thread where Frank implied that Shadowrun is basically about ambushes and investigations? Well, the AC3 gives three bonus dice to meatspace Perception tests, is totally legal, costs 9k nuyen and 0.3 Essence, which is the chargen equivalent of beer money. If your Street Samurai sheet doesn't have this I generally assume that you're either playing without the Augmentation book or that you were dropped on your head as a child.

Silent Wayfarer · Post by **Silent Wayfarer** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 4:53 am

Lots of helpful info here, especially the catch about the Attention Coprocessor thing. Now I'm wondering how much Edge I need. 2 enough? Or should I get lots more?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 5:09 am

Silent Wayfarer wrote:Lots of helpful info here, especially the catch about the Attention Coprocessor thing. Now I'm wondering how much Edge I need. 2 enough? Or should I get lots more?

How much Edge you need really depends on your MC. One of the ways you are supposed to be able to refresh Edge is by getting an extraordinary success. Which is going to happen about half the time you roll dice if your dicepool is 15+ (seriously). Most games I've seen don't actually do that, leaving Edge refreshes to new sessions only.

That being said, there are really two amounts of Edge: "about 3" and "about 7". If you're using Edge to be Mr. Lucky and take a bunch of skills that you have small dicepools in and Edge them up to worthwhile tests when and if they come up, you need a fuck tonne of Edge. Otherwise, you'll be using it to reroll failures on important tests when they come up bad. I find a "three strikes" system works fairly well.

-Username17

Silent Wayfarer · Post by **Silent Wayfarer** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 6:33 am

Yeah, it's very attractive to go "I must absatively posilutely kill this bitch right now!", but 3 seems sensible.

Incidentally, Willpower seems like an underrated Attribute that would fit well with the concept of a veteran. Worth pumping up?

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 7:55 am

Actually, I usually consider Willpower to be about properly rated given that most people seem to just plonk down a 3 and treat it as a necessary evil. There's pretty much nothing proactive you can do with it--which is problematic because SR4 characters tend to have a hard time affording good tertiary shticks due to skills costing so much--but having just enough Willpower that you can bootstrap your way to a decent resist total via Edge or Counterspelling support or whatever is always nice if unreliable. The other tricky thing is that Street Samurai have three attributes (Agility, Reaction and Intuition) that you can legitimately make a case for soft-capping and if you do that then you're stuck having with dumping a couple attributes as a human or being a "flimsy" ork, dwarf or troll by using their base Strength and Body scores as faux dump stats in order to free up points under the 200 bp cap so you can be more well-rounded. Those options are supported quite well by the math but rarely seem to match up with player sensibilities.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 1:10 pm

Willpower is crap. If you're not a caster, it basically don't do anything. The only reason not to put a 1 in it is if your MC is one of those people who makes magical teaparty effects happen to you if he finds out that you have a minimum value in an attribute.

So:

Willpower 2 gets you the ability to say with a straight face that your character has normal human willpower, something which is important if your MC would otherwise dick you around.
Willpower 3 gets you a 10th Stun Box.
Willpower 4 doesn't get you a god damned thing.

Is having a 10th Stun box worth 10 BP? Generally not, but in some circumstances I could see it.

-Username17

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 2:13 pm

Willpower is the base attribute for the Survival skill (as I recall), but that is more or less useless in the city unless you're playing footsie with the MC under the table.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 2:17 pm

Pretty much. There's a couple of attribute only tests that make use of Willpower but in those cases it's paired with another attribute like Body or Charisma and it's better to pump those instead even if Body isn't really all that hot either. Beyond that, as a former soldier and street samurai your GM probably won't be so dickish as to require you to make composure rolls for standard combat stuff AND penalize you in concrete ways for failing them given that characters are supposed to become somewhat desensitized to fairly routine runner business like getting shot at. The other thing that borks Willpower is that even if you softcap it most mind affecting critter powers use an attack roll of Magic+Willpower or Magic+Charisma while defenders only get to use Willpower, so even as a soft-capped dwarf you're only getting even odds at best when a Force 3+ Spirit busts out the Fear or Confusion powers.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 4:03 pm

Be an ork, they're cooler.

Willpower is also your stat for resisting most magic that will actually get cast on you, something it pays to be at least not retarded in. And I'm with Frank--you want that 10th Stun Box. Because of Stick'n'Shock, the only ammo that matters.

Previn · Post by **Previn** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 6:57 pm

Side question, what books besides the core rules are the must haves as far as Shadowrun is concerned, and which are to be avoided?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 7:16 pm

Previn wrote:Side question, what books besides the core rules are the must haves as far as Shadowrun is concerned, and which are to be avoided?

Street Magic, Arsenal, and Augmentation all get pretty good reviews. I wrote chunks of two out of three of those and stand by the work. Running Wild is hit and miss. Unwired is crap. Runner's Companion is possibly the worst rulebook ever written for SR, but it does have some astonishingly poorly thought out powercombos in it, so you may want to use it anyway. SR2 and SR3 had better world books pretty much across the board than SR4 did. So I'd take Shadows of Asia over Runner Havens and Underworld Sourcebook over Vice. A lot of people actually like Seattle 2072, and consider it the best Seattle book - personally I got bored of Seattle as a Shadowrun location while Clinton was president so that's kind of like telling me it's the least itchy anal plug on the market.

The new stuff... basically requires massive drinking to get through. War!, Attitude, and 6th World Almanac are so bad that they will give you cancer. Cancer of the penis. I haven't even read Spy Games, but back when I was still reading their pitches for it... :shudder:. Man, it would take a lot of mead for me to want to go through that piece of garbage chapter by chapter - it isn't even about anything. There's literally no plot payoff to the whole thing, it's all zero-sum fappery.

Going back in time: the worst books previously were Year of the Comet and Tir na nOg. They were really dumb. Like, "thousands > millions" type retarded. War! puts them to shame.

-Username17

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 7:52 pm

i really wonder what you would think of the newer german stuff O.o

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 8:32 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:
Previn wrote:Side question, what books besides the core rules are the must haves as far as Shadowrun is concerned, and which are to be avoided?
Street Magic, Arsenal, and Augmentation all get pretty good reviews. I wrote chunks of two out of three of those and stand by the work. Running Wild is hit and miss. Unwired is crap. Runner's Companion is possibly the worst rulebook ever written for SR, but it does have some astonishingly poorly thought out powercombos in it, so you may want to use it anyway. SR2 and SR3 had better world books pretty much across the board than SR4 did. So I'd take Shadows of Asia over Runner Havens and Underworld Sourcebook over Vice. A lot of people actually like Seattle 2072, and consider it the best Seattle book - personally I got bored of Seattle as a Shadowrun location while Clinton was president so that's kind of like telling me it's the least itchy anal plug on the market.

The new stuff... basically requires massive drinking to get through. War!, Attitude, and 6th World Almanac are so bad that they will give you cancer. Cancer of the penis. I haven't even read Spy Games, but back when I was still reading their pitches for it... :shudder:. Man, it would take a lot of mead for me to want to go through that piece of garbage chapter by chapter - it isn't even about anything. There's literally no plot payoff to the whole thing, it's all zero-sum fappery.

Going back in time: the worst books previously were Year of the Comet and Tir na nOg. They were really dumb. Like, "thousands > millions" type retarded. War! puts them to shame.

-Username17

Go back in the forum and find Frank's drunken review of War! for a good laugh. Aside from re-killing the evil Jew ghosts in a concentration camp adventure so you can get the magical scalpel that tortured them all (I believe it's in War!) , you have such mind-numbing common sense failures and gaps of logic that it's astounding.

I forgot which supplement it was I gave a long, detailed editing job for the opening text directly to the author when he showed up to defend his work, but it was poorly written. Like, failed fanfic poorly written.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 8:38 pm

One counter-intuitive (or not) thing about initiative passes is that while they're extremely helpful, they're not worth not going first in the game in order to have more. Having 2 IP and a reaction + intuition score in the mid teens will serve you better than 4 IPs with the latter about 7-9.

I mean, the other posters impressed this on you already, but I cannot stress this enough for Shadowrun. You really want to go first, especially if you're doing traditional Shadowrunning, because it's the difference between being able to get behind cover or take out someone before they get an alert or just start a hacking or spellcasting test before you suffer stun or wound penalties.

That said, once you have a good scores in the (roughly descending order of important) 'notice things', 'sneak', 'go first' department, you do want to get some IPs. My personal experience is that 3 is the best number to go for. I've never run less than 2, but I have had occasions in which I really which I had a third IP. But I have had fewer in which I wanted a fourth or fifth one.

The neat thing about going Street Samurai is that unlike a magician you'll have enough points left over to get your Edge score sky high without sacrificing your core competencies. I'm an Edge whore and can't bring myself to make a character with less than 4 even when it's not the most mathematically sound and/or my GM uses the more generous Edge regeneration rates.

Of course, I haven't played any Shadowrun 4E in about 18 months (and it's either been Street Samurai or Magician), so, take my advice with a grain of salt.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Apr 24, 2012 4:57 am

TheFlatline wrote:I forgot which supplement it was I gave a long, detailed editing job for the opening text directly to the author when he showed up to defend his work, but it was poorly written. Like, failed fanfic poorly written.

That would be Attitude. There is a section in which... ah fuck it. Every section of that book is rambling, inconsistent, low-end fanfiction that tells you essentially nothing (and in some cases, less than nothing) about the Shadowrun world, plot, or game.

Classically, Shadowrun books fall into three categories:

Rule Books. These are like the "core" supplements of the game. The main rulebook has the basic rules for playing the game, and then you have supplemental rulebooks that delve into expanded rules and equipment lists for different types of characters. So you have the expanded magic book, the expanded street samurai book, the expanded hacker book, and so on. Historically, most rulebooks have been fairly well received.
Setting Books. These contain descriptions of regions, groups, or social trends within the Shadowrun world. These have been hacked up in different ways (Shadows of Europe was about the European region, while Cyberpirates was about piracy generally and the Caribbean, the Gold Coast of Africa, and the Philippines specifically - Underworld Sourcebook was about different criminal syndicates with a focus on their interactions with Seattle).
Plot Books. These contain some big event and a discussion of the fallout of that event. Each one of these changes the setting to one degree or another. In general, the "bigger" events were more stupid and the "smaller" events were more awesome. Blood in the Boardroom was fairly well received and is about some people shooting each other over criminal and corporate power. Year of the Comet is a clusterfail and is about people turning into furries, a zombie invasion, volcanoes destroying half the planet, and countries conquering other countries without having their population change. Plot books are... extremely hit and miss.

The Catalyst people have created a fourth category called "Deep Shadows", which appear to be about shoddy editing, a basic disregard for the setting, poor writing, no direction, offensive themes, and unplayable rules addenda. I have no idea what the Deep Shadows line was supposed to bring to the line, but what they actually are is a set of sourcebooks that will make you actively know less about Shadowrun for having read them. It's quite an accomplishment, although obviously not in a good way.

-Username17