Shadowrun 4th Ed - Need help building a character.

[Squidgey]

Hello everybody,

I did a search for Shadowrun already and came up witha few topics which mentioned it largely in passing but what I did get was 3rd ed was awesome and 4th ed is balls, which falls in line with what some of my gaming friends down here in Sydney have said. However, a mate I've not seen for a while (he was in Japan doing stuntwork for some movie) is back and is trying his hand at running a Shadowrun 4th Ed Campaign. It's gonna be interesting as he is available sporadically so sessions will be a "I'm free between this time and this time we'll play for these hours at this random place" with times ranging all over the 24 hour scale. Throw in a player base of 17 and rising and this could be interesting...

In any case, alot of players are new to the system, and that includes me. Pretty much everything character wise has been covered and I'd wanted to do apilot but as there are 3 so far well bugger that. What I'd love from you guys and gals is help making a starting 400BP character. Now, I want to be different to the rest of the party at least a bit and well I figure it will be fun to play a Junky character. Severe addiction to multiple substances could be an interesting and quirky player to role play. Maybe he also is able to acquire substances and drugs and toxins and poisons reallyw ell, but I figure I'm not going to be a character that is extremely good at combat, no magical ability (unless it works well) but mayhaps have alot of contacts and be an information chap. throw in a really strong resistance to drugs and it could go somewhere. I've still got to read a chunk of the book and won't have time for at least a week but will get there, so any and all help on builds would be greatly appreciated. Feel free to contribute as much or as little as you like. I have a friend who is playing twins - 2 characters with 200 BP each, so that's also something quite cool.

Anyways, 3:02am here and bed calls, so have a great day and cheers in advance,

Luke.

[frigidmagi]

Okay, I want it clear that I deeply dislike 4th edition and I am against the magic nerfing, decker wanking cyber love it stands for. That said let's move on.

We need to decide what you want in broad terms your character to be. Are you a magic user? A cyberjock? A skill monkey? Something inbetween?

[Squidgey]

Well expressed, if we'd known about 4th ed sucking we wouldn't have picked up the rulebooks when we did, but oh no, fail. I've had 4th ed sitting in my room for 2 years and so has a bunch of other people from a campaign that never went ahead so we want to play and make use of the book.

I don't want magic. I can play that in any of a variety of games and from what I hear most people have magic in their characters with the general reaction of "I can be a gun toting in your face beat stick troll and still blow you away at range with lightning bolts from my arse? HELL YEAH!" fuelling most characters.

I'm thinking I'll probably be a skill monkey. Definitely not a hippy feel addict.

What else do you want to know?

Cheers frigidmagi,

Luke.

[frigidmagi]

Alrighty, see I always ask these questions because you definitely want to have a concept in mind before you make a shadowrun character. It's easy to get distracted and end up sorta, well, lame. So this could get drawn out, sorry about that.

So what kind of skill monkey are you? Are you some kinda unseen ninja thief? A charming quick talking face? Jack of all trades who learn a bit of everything because he's bored? These are important because then we'll know what attributes to have pumped. These also provide guidance as to what qualities to take.

Also some gritty question, what race you wanna be? Your race doesn't have to link into your desired profession (as I like to call it), but I will admit an elf will have an easier time being a face then an Ork and a Troll faces all sorts of challenges trying to travel the path of the ninja.