Overview
Have you ever starting a game with the idea of playing with a street sammy and end with anything but that? Have you ever tryied to plan an original character and ended with something unplayable? Do you like shadowrun pictures? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, you really really should check this out!This guide focuses on making a character that fits you, the different skills are analyzed and is discussed how much you should pump an ability if you wanna be good at it and what things you have to consider when planning a character.You will also find some examples, and great pics!!
First Step, the concept
I recommend starting always with a mental image of your character, it’s a roleplaying game after all so, what do you wanna be? A heavy cibered sammy? A wizard with powerful mojo? A super-hacka? First of all think off that for a second. You have it? Great, let’s move on.
Now it’s time to fit that concept in the rules, but try not to be too greedy; as the game says, a jack of trades is a master of none, and it’s true. As a shadowrunner you have to bring something unique to the party, being versatile is good, but if you spread your karma between too many abilities you will drag the party down. Remember that the AP are limited so if you are shooting you are not casting or rigging, that’s other thing to keep in mind; being a one trick pony isn’t good but having a broad array of mediocre skills isn’t good either, the virtue is in the middle point.
The skills (part 1)
In this section I will comment what we can get from each ability, knowing this is important to plan your character and to know what will be his strengths and weaknesses. Let’s stablish the following traits: Damage, Control, Utility, Stealth, Theme, Resilience.
- Damage: This ability helps to dish out damage during fights.
- Control: This ability limits the efficacy of the foes, negating their actions, increasing the cost of the actions, reducing his accuracy…
- Utility: The ability gives extra tools to use during the fights, you modify the battlefield to your favor or you can give buffs to your allies.
- Stealth: The ability helps to avoid fights during the runs or to get the most out each map.
- Theme: The ability help to gain extra insight.
- Resilience: This ability increases the endurance of the runner.
I also comment what slots the ability will use up (try not to invest heavily in abilities which compete for the same slots). And if you focus on the ability, which other abilities mix well and which ones don’t.
Strengh (Damage, low Stealth): You raise this one if you go for close combat, throwing weapons or if you wanna field a minigun.
- Close Combat (High to Very High Damage, High Control): This ability requires a lot of specialization to shine because you needs extra features to perform well (movement, soak damage, extra Aps…) but the ability to move, hit and drain AP at the same time is amazing, it is a very underrated ability. The 2 subabilities adds %crit and special attacks, you may invest in these or you may go for chi focus (Chi Casting), unarmed combat is way weaker than mele weapons (less control, roughly the same damage and inferior special attacks).
Needs: Weapons Slot. High Synergy: Ciberware, Summonig, Spellcasting, Chi Casting, Throwing Weapons. Low Synergy: Ranged Combat, Conjuring, Drone control. - Throwing weapons (High to Very High Damage – AoE, High Control): Decent ability to complement Close combat, the ability to throw grenades for 1 AP is great for any character who is willing to spend karma here (29 Karma)
Needs: Weapon Slot, Inventary Slots. High Synergy: Ciberware, Close Combat. Low synergy: Biotech, Summoning, Drone Control.
- Ranged Combat (Very High Damage): Firearms are the most efficient and reliable way to deal a lot of damage, specially using rifles, you only needs to stay under cover and shoots. Unlike spells you don’t have long cooldowns so the more actions you have, the more damage you can deal every turn, this ability offers great sustained damage and has the additional advantage of having dodge under the same attribute. The subabilities offers extra %crit and special attacks, raise it is important, but only ranged combat increases the %hit.
Needs: Weapon Slot. High Synergy: Cyberware, Dodge. Low synergy: Close Combat - Dodge (Resilience): Increases the chances to dodge attacks, very useful in general to avoid being stiffed… you know.
Needs: -. High Synergy: Body, Biotech, Ranged Combat, Damage Reduction. Low synergy: Wired Reflexes?
- Biotech (Utility – Improved Medikits; Theme): Biotech gives extra knowledge about medicine, biology, biotechnology and those nerdy areas, going this way you may understand what those laboratory mice are doing. It also gives extra LP when you uses a Medikit, which is great to patch up and keep fighting.
Needs: Inventory Slots. High Synergy: Dodge, Damage Reduction. Low synergy: Throwing Weapons, Drone Control, Summoning - Decking (High Stealth, Theme): In a world where all is controlled by computers and electronic components the ability to mess with them is invaluable; this ability may make your live easier during a run, and also gives you the ability to interact with the matrix. The subability ESP control only gives you better “summons” in the matrix, it’s handy but may be easily skipped if you are spreading your karma between different abilities.
Needs: Datajack, Weapon Slot. High Synergy: Drone Control. Low synergy: Spellcasting, Conjuring. - Drone Control (Very High Damage, Low Stealth): A runner who invest heavily in this ability fight through his 2 drones; the drones, when upgraded (High Drone Combat), are highly accurated and deal a lot of damage, they may also use special shortcuts to make hit and run attacks (seriously, they are retardly good but if you exploit these shortcuts, it starts to reach OP field); however the drones cannot receive magical buffs.
Needs: Weapon Slots, Datajack, Item Slots. High Synergy: Decking, Cyberware. Low synergy: Ranged Combat, Close Combat, Spellcasting, Conjuring.
The Skills (part 2)
- Summoning (High Damage*, Control, Utility): After investing in this ability you may use summons to fight, summons are great and have good spells but this ability relies on buying the summons or finding neutral summoning points on the map, and it drains your character’s APs; so it is powerful but it isn’t as reliable as other options. The totems also gives an spellish-kind of buff, they are really cost-efficient. Summon control (subability) is needed to avoid losing the summon, unless you are going for a creator totem (but in that case you must keep the spirit close)
Needs: Inventory Slots. High Synergy: Close Combat, Conjuring. Low synergy: Decking - Conjuring (Very high Utility, Control, Low Damage): This ability gives access to conjuring spells, these are great to control the battlefield with AoE effects and nice buffs and debuffs (Haste, Blur, Barriers, Slo-Mo…) but his damage output is frankly low.
Needs: Spellbook Slots. High Synergy: Low spellcasting, Summoning, Ranged Combat. Low synergy: High Spellcasting, Close Combat, Drone Control, Decking, Cyberware.
Willpower (Resilience): This ability gives you access to the more offensive magical branch and the chi casting. It also helps to reduce the damage you take from some spells.
- Spellcasting (High Damage, Control, Utility, Theme): This one unlocks the powerful mage’s spells, you will find good single target and AoE attacks and very nice buffs and debuffs. A mage may deal a lot of damage but the AoE spells have long cooldowns so after the initial burst his damage output fall out a bit. Very Powerful and versatile class.
Needs: Spellbook Slots, Weapon Slot. High Synergy: Chi Casting, Close Combat. Ranged Combat. Low synergy: High Conjuring, Drone Control, Decking, Cyberware. - Chi Casting (Utility, Resilience): This ability gives you buffs, some of them with active effects, depending on the kind of character you are building you will benefice more from some of them but in general it doesn’t worth to skill it over 6.
Needs: Spellbook Slots. High Synergy: Close Combat, Ranged Combat, Spellcasting, Summoning, Cyberware. Low synergy: Drone Control, Decking, Cyberware.
Body (Resilience): A must have, you should invest more here if you plan to spend a lot of time in the fire line, but at least a minimum of 6 is advisable.
High Synergy: Dodge, Damage Reduction, Biotech
Magic or Cyberware?
The ware gives you a lot of bonuses to stack on top of your abilities to reach superhuman levels. It makes the characters quite good but you miss the extra utility from spells. Ciberware make the character better in some areas, which frees Karma to being good at more than 1 thing or to specialize. Another key thing of the ware is that it gives a lot of passive or 0 AP bonuses, so heavy cybered character are ready to fight sooner than magical characters who relies on active spells.
Cyberware to all: Adrenal contractor (seriously, that extra AP is amazing, no brainer)
Cyberware for ranged characters: They needs extra %hit (Vision Magnification, Datajack, Auto-Injector Hyper), extra Quickness (Muscle Augmentation, Enhanced Articulation. This suit gives just raw firing power.
Cyberware for Close Combat Characters: Extra %hit (Vision Magnification), extra Strength (Muscle Augmentation or Alpha Cyberarms), Extra movement (Hydraulic Jacks). This extra ware gives extra accurancy, damage and reach. Cyberarm vs Muscle Augmentation: Both are good, MA is better for a ranged character and cyberarm works well in a mele character, but the mele character may also get the MA if the player rather extra dodge instead extra HP.
Cyberware to upgrade Riggers/Deckers: Extra %hit for drones/others runners (Laser Designator), extra intelligence to increase its pets/avatars %hit (Encephalons, cerebral booster…), Extra movement (Hydraulic Jacks). This implants support the team, enhance their %hit and, in the case of the rigger, let him to move a bit better even with the drones active (which is a problem you will find, when your drones are active, you are a sitting duck if you really need to get the hell out of your position).
Cyberware to mages: Some players may choose to play with a burnout even if that reduces his effectiveness or because they really want to mix 2 classes like the mage and the rigger or the Decker. In that case there are a few implants that may be quite good: Extra %hit (Vision Magnification Alpha, Auto-Injector Hyper, Datajack). These might increase its accuracy to specialist levels and also helps with ranged combat so even if your cooldowns are a bit higher you may get a lot out of it. Of course the 0 essence implants are just great for them.
Magic might be your main attack, this is the case of a mage who relies in a lot of nukes or a conjurer who complements his utility spells with an acid bolt. In this case you need an high ratting in Spellcasting or Conjuring. Instead of that, you may opt for use spells which are easier to hit like AoE spells at low range or Buffs, so with only 2-6 levels in conjuring or spellcasting you are set. The disadvantage of a magic character is that you needs time to cast the buffs (and you have to recast it in longer engagements) and as a buffer you won’t peak as much as a cybered character when backed up for other magic users.
But the advantages are a high versatility because you can change your spells to fit with the run, and an the access to amazing buff and effects for their cost; and I mean it, the magical buffs are brutal, for example: Blur II are like 5 levels in Quickness and 5 levels in dodge, Aim II are like 2 levels in Quickness and 2 levels in combat weapons plus a smart weapon for a ranged sammy… Magic might be used on the own caster as a way to increase the combat capabilities of the character at the cost of APs but a dedicated support in the party who focuses the buffs on a cybered character creates a god of death.
As these abilities give access to a broad array of spells, it’s important to know which ones works better in each range. A high level Spellcasting means pain or control because you may get the top tier spells and your spells will be quite accurate, that mean lots of Nukes and powerful control spells which won’t miss. Medium level spellcasting (6) gives you some good AoE spells, decent nukes and the top tier buffs, in this range I rather use AoE at medium-close range and buffs but you can go for directed spells if you want after casting Aim III on yourself. Low level spellcasting (5-) gives you quite decent buffs but your accuracy sucks. Conjuring is more support focused, high conjuring means Haste and heavy cover wherever you want, but it isn’t an offensive branch so it’s better to complement it with low level spellcasting spells, getting some extra buffs; and, if you find the karma, with an offensive ability.
Chi Casting is a weird ability because it works with cyberware and without it. I have to say that I’m not a fan of how it has been adapted because I really like adepts but as the game is awesome I won’t be too rough. Chi Casting is an ability with buffs and actives which boost different playstyles mixed with some useless spells. As it doesn’t help to hit, you need to invest in another offensive branch to use these buffs, so if you invest too heavily here you will find yourself with nice abilities but underperforming due low %hit or low Dodge/Body
Rounding the Characer: The cost effective choices.
There are some abilities which need more Karma than others to work well:
Very Karma Hungry (8+): Drone Control (+Combat), Close Combat, Ranged Combat, Throwing weapons, Spellcasting, Conjuring.
Karma Hungry (6-7): All abilities works well in this range.
Cost Effective (5-): Spellcasting, Chi casting and Conjuring (Cheap Buffs, Heals, Utility spells, AoE spells in close range), Biotech, Throwing Weapons (grenades for 1 AP), Dodge.
Let’s see how to get the max out of magic with a low investment. As said before to do this you have to aim to buffs or AoE spells, se let’s see what it offers in a cheap range:
Spellcasting: Aim I, Heal I (2), Armor II, Aim II, Stunball I, Fireball I (4), Heal II (5) Armor III, Aim III, Fireball I, Stunball II, Manaball II, Fireball II (6)
Conjuring: Air Barrier (2), Fog (3), Blur I, Haste II Lightning Barrier (4), Haste III, Mana Charge II (6)
Summoning: Totem (3)
Chi Casting: Magic Resistance I (1), Chi Focus (3) Stride (4), Martial Defense I, Counterattack (5). Investing more that 6 in this ability is usually a waste. Counterattack needs an high essence but the rest works wonders in a heavy cybered character.
Leveling the attribute and the ability from 0 to 2, 4, 5, and 6 costs respectively 5, 19, 29 and 41 Karma. I think 4 is the most cost effective range but 6 offers and extra spell slot and nice nukes in the case of spellcasting, which may be quite accurate in leylines and casted at low range.
Remember that you can invest here even if you have bought a lot (or a bit) of ware. Some spells are really cheap to get and the benefices are quite high, even if you have so much ware that you can only use them once per fight. Some of them are pasives, the cooldown doesn’t increase with the loss of essence (totem) or have a high duration, so even casting it once it worths. If you can fit the loss of essence to 4 points (leaving you with 2 essence), you may get 1 “extra” spell slot, which means 3 spell slots if you go to 4 levels in one of the magic abilities.
A totem is a no brainer in a lot of cases because they are really cost effective (however if you want to play a more “thematic class”, like a pure sammy it may be skipped), the dragonslayer is great for mele character to soak damage, the eagle to ranged characters and the Bear is a great all rounded totem. The only way that you may go cheap with this ability is don’t investing in Spirit Control and use the creation totem to sustain them; this isn’t so bad because when your % to loss the summon is 100% (which will happens if you doesn’t skill control summon) the summon doesn’t drain AP and the duration is exactly the same as the cooldown, hence it doesn’t cost extra APs and you may sustain the summons idefinitely as long as you are conscient (and it even works with your allies’ summons).
Another option would be using a mele character to summon them in the middle of the enemies and then get the hell out there before the summon go bananas, but i’d call that shenanigan.
Getting 8 in both drone control and drone combat and then reach 9 with the outfit is great because maxed drones are sooo good, but you may take advantage of the drones without investing so hard.
With 7/6 they performs quite well with the 3 APs; but you may go even cheaper, with 5 in drone control you have 2 drones who can use medikits and throw grenades, this is useful if you are not using your weapon slots. The fewest invest you can do is 3 in drone control, it gives you a healing drone that you may activate, get some heal or use a grenade, and then deactivate it. As a rule of thumb, go for at least drone combat 6 if you want to use them to fight, with less than that you use them as supports to use medikits or grenades.
Look at Sir Francis! the knight-king under the mountain with one of his loyal peasants
In general this isn’t advisable but:
Ranged combat might work with few points (5 or so) if you orient the character to cover a lot of support roles like the magic support, face (high charisma) plus the matrix. You may use your magical and technological buffs and debuffs to support the party and then buff yourself (with an Aim III for example) which will increase you from sad to acceptable level; which is more than enough because as you are handling all the support you may go with 3 heavy hitters in the party, if you do that you should try to get a weapon with high damage (like a shotgun) because your low ratting won’t let you get the high end (and high damage) weapons so you will suffer more against medium and high armored targets. But even in this case you could just use those points to pump a bit more one of the magic skills to use reliabily one of the main attack spells (Acid Bolt or Powerbolt)
Going cheap in Close combat is more difficult. When you go mele you expose yourself a lot so it’s an all-in kind of ability because if you are going balls deep, you expect to get something out of it to make it worth the risk. The only saving grace is that close combat with a sword drain AP with critical hits so if you may get a decent %hit plus Chi Focus, you might go for a hit and run tactic to incapacitate oponents, even if your damage isn’t that great.
Building the runner
Let’s do some maths, during the game you will get around 190 Karma, lets say that we got a base of 3 in all characteristics except in BOD, in which we got 6, that’s 50 Karma, so we have about 140 karma to customize the runner. We can say that an ability in 8 or higher is specialist level, 6 is competent, less than that is mediocre at best (which doesn’t mean useless, there are some abilities which works even with low rattings).
Considering those initial values, raising one attribute plus an ability to specialist levels (8) costs 66 Karma, if you want also a subability at the same level you will need to pay 102 Karma, that leaves 74 (38) Karma to round the character. However increase these to competent levels (6) would cost 36 Karma, 57 if you want also the subability, which leaves 140 (83) Karma to finish the character.
As you can see, increase an ability more than 6 is quite expensive but it also make the character really reliable in that field, keep it in 6-7 make it good at it and leave the possibility to open another ability. Also the magical/ciberware/gear bonuses are important here because when we reach that “karma barrier”, each spell or implant which stack bonuses in that area skyrocket the power of the runner.
For example, let’s say an elf sammy who focuses on ranged combat, hard. He decides to go for 9 Quickness, 9 Ranged and 6 Rifles for 105 Karma, sparing the remaining point between Body and Dodge. He also decides to get cyberware to boost his pew pew capacity. He gets 2 Muscle Augmentation (+2Q), 2 Enhanced Articulation (+2 Q, +2 Dodge), a suphrathyroid Gland (+1 Q), A Datajack (smarth weapons +5% hit) and a Vision Magnification Alpha (+6% hit). The datajack and the Vision magnification gives about the same advantages that 2 levels of ranged combat, to reach these potencial without ware he would need about 13 and 13 Ranged Combat (ranged combat gives +5% to hit, Quickness gives +3%), that’d cost an extra 120 Karma.
As you can see the boost on top of a specialized character gives them a superhuman capacity that he could’t reach by just training that area. But this may be seen with other glass, you may use the bonuses to reach not a superhuman but a competent level which free your Karma to reach good levels in other areas.
Summarizing, try to reach at least 6-7 in an ability in which you plan to shine and stack bonuses on top of it to become good at it. Normally you can make an specialist focusing on 1 combat ability and level it plus its subability to 8+ or you may spread your karma between 2 main abilities, leveling both to 6, one of them should be a combat ability, the other may cover other specialties. Of course you may go for other kind of characters but to make a good character out of these formula you have to have a good understading of the game mechanics, otherwise you will underperform in all you try.
Putting all together
With all those info you should be able to build any kind of character you want. In this game almost anything works but I really recommend having some kind of offensive capabilities, after all as a runner you will likely find yourself in sticky situations and even the silverest tongue can’t save you in some scenarios.
Also take in count the slots that are occupied by the abilities you choose, in general try not to invest heavily in abilities that compete for the same slots but take in count that some of them do mix well (like high conjuring with low spellcasting for a support mage).
And don’t be afraid of explore different routes, some character might be odd thematically but if you like it, playing them could be an amazing experience.
Some examples (part 1)
Let’s say we want to make a combat focused caster exploiting each advantage we might get, but one which focuses more in control spells than in hardcore nukes, we know that that will lower his DMG output a bit so we decided to take another offensive route, we choose firearms. So this character will invest heavily in spellcasting, all the way up to 7 or 8, depending on the kind of outfit we want to suit. And then we spare the rest of the points between Ranged combat, Rifles, Dodge and Body. That’s a nice build, but we realize that the spells that we want to use are mainly Confusion, Petrify, Mind Wipe and Aim III so we still have 2 free spellslots to use, we can fill it with other spellcasting spells (like an AoE spell, Flamethrower, Strip Armor…) or as we still have some spare Karma we can invest in Chi casting up to 5 to get Martial Defense I and Counterattack, which will help a lot with our DMG output and will make us stronger; we like how the character is but we cannot renounce to magical healing so we take a Bear totem to save one precious spellslot. Of course we will take the 0 essence ware to buff him even more (adrenal contractor). In the end we have this build (190 Karma)
She knows that he will get a more powerful character focusing just in one of the abilities and leveling it to 8 and using some of the freed spare karma to get stuff like a totem, a healing drone and some chi passives or some levels in biotech, but she made his choice, which is perfectly playable. (187 Karma)
Now we have one player who loves summons, after investigating a bit he realizes that these aren’t reliable for a primary combat skill. After thinking with what he want to mix it (he considered offensive magic, defensive magic, close and ranged combat), he decided to go for defensive magic. He will exploit the fact that conjuring is under the same attribute to get acid bolt as his primary weapon, adding to that haste and barriers plus some low level spellcasting buffs; his high end spellbook will look like this: Haste IV, Haste III, Hellstorm barrier, Aim II; Armor II, Heal II (with totem Coat outfit, without it just Heal I). He uses the rest of the Karma to get extra Body and some dodge to be more tanky and will use a adrenal contractor due to the 0 essence cost.
Some examples (part 2)
Let’s get things a bit more complicated, some player is fascinated by both, the matrix and magic, so he decided to play as a burned mage who dominates both the magical and the digital world. The first thing we decide is the ware we will take, as we are gonna play as a mage, we can’t afford more than 1 or 2 karma. We look at the ware and decided to go for one of these sets of ware: for 1 essence loss (Induction Datajack, Vision Magnification alpha, adrenal contractor, Pain Editor) or for 2 essence loss (induction Datajack, Vision Magnification alpha, Auto-Injector (Hyper), Cerebral Booster, Adrenal Contractor). Probably the 1 essence loss is the bet because it get the job done and doesn’t increase the cooldowns so much but the 2 essence set is also good. Then we look at totems, for this character we can go for some of them: Bear is always a solid choice, eagle is also good, if we go for the 2 essence loss then the wild huntsman or the dragonslayer may be nice… After that we just allocate the points between spell casting and decking, sparing some karma to round the character, for 188 Karma:
Another example, we have a player who wants to play a runner who is a true pro: she doesn’t like the wetwork and things going south, she is a smart gal but she learned by the hard way that being smart isn’t enough; so after getting a few cyber replacements she is ready to go back to work before the bills start to reach dangerous levels. This particular character will try to make things as the pro she is, no alarms triggered, few corpses and a lot of paydata so she will focus on the 2 stats that helps with that: INT and CHA. But as she don’t like being hurt, she will rely on probes and the other runners to fight. After seeing the abilities, she is deciding between a Rigger/Decker combo with medium charisma with some ware (Laser Designator, Encephalon NEXT, 2 Hydraulic Jack MK1, Induction Datajack, Auto-Injector Bliss and Adrenal Contractor)
Or a Decker shooter with high Charisma and some ware (Vision Magnification alpha/Laser Designator, Encephalon NEXT, Induction Datajack, Muscle Augmentation, 2 Enhanced Articulations, Adrenal Contractor). Of course for just 6 more Karma she could have got a totem, but this player isn’t interested in anything magical because it doens’t fit with the idea of her character, so no totem this time. 189 and 185 Karma respectively:
Now a weird one, we have one experienced player who wants to try a close combat character who also uses summons, as the close combat characters are a bit harder than other class he decides to don’t give up any extra advantage. He decides to go for specialist levels (8+) in close combat, but as he also wants the summoning he decided not to invest in mele weapons and rely in chi focus. He invest in chi casting just enough points to get Stride and Magic Resistance, as he has chi casting 4 and only plans to lose 4 essence, he raises spellcasting to 2 (which gives him access to heal I for his last spellslot). Throwing weapons are raised just enough to get that juicy 1 AP grenades, TW is also great to fight early game and when forced to take cover. Our totem will be the creator, we cant afford the karma to raise spirit control. And the icing of the cake, cyberware, lot of it to be a real beast in combat (2 Alpha Cyberarms, 1 Vision Magnification Alpha, Hydraulic Jack MK1, Enhanced Articulation, Adrenal Contractor). For 192 Karma:
Some examples (part 3)
Up to now we have seen some mixed characters, now lets see 2 specialist, these aren’t more easy to build, less versatil but more effective and sturdy. Both are 192 Karma.
It’s basically easy mode, you only have to take cover, pull the trigger and watch them die. Anything out of cover is dead, anything in cover is also already dead (maybe it wastes your time a bit more, but the outcome is the same). You raise STR to 5 to being able to carry a minigun and of course you take the full cyberware range suit (2 Muscle augmentation, 2 Enhanced Articulation, Vision Magnification Alpha, Datajack, Adrenal Contractor)
The reason for the Geek the mage first!! Due the high spellcasting plus the outif (sorcerer’s robes or the lodge one) this guy will be always on point with his spells, with this one you will probably rather to focus on nukes and high end control spells. The spare karma was used to make him more tanky, building more BOD and Dodge.
Final Comments
Well, that’s all, i hope you enjoyed it!
And thanks to the autors for all the great artwork they upload to the matrix, here you have the links to the ones i used:
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