[Talgrath]

So, I'm going to try running a Shadowrun campaign and I wanted to get a foundation by building some characters myself first.  I know a bit about the Shadowrun universe from other media, but this is my first time building a character, my first character, is a former elven special forces sniper named Ravenwind.  Basically, I just want someone to check my process, so I'll lay out the stats and skills then run through the creation process.  An assessment of how effective she might be wouldn't be bad as well.

Stats
Body           3 (5 from Aluminum Bone Lacing)
Agility         7
Reaction   5 (6 from Wired Reflexes)
Strength    4
Willpower 3
Logic         2
Intuition     5
Charisma 6
Edge          2

Essence 3 (-3 from Augmentations)
Initiative 11 +2D6

Limits
Physical 6 (7 with mods)
Mental    4
Social     6

Skills
(Quick note: These are somewhat out of their normal orders because I went through and picked what I felt fit while counting down available skill points and then figured out which groups I had picked but not increased individuals)
Longarms 6 Spec: Sniper Rifles
Pistols            4
Blades            2
Unarmed        2
Con                 4  Spec: Seduce
Gymnastics   5
Sneaking        5
Leadership    2
Negotiation    2
Escape Artist 2
Computer       2
Etiquette         2
Automatics     2
Disguise        1
Palming          1
Navigation      1
Tracking          1
Running          2
Swimming      2

Knowledge Military Service         4
Knowledge Elven Wine               4
Knowledge Smuggling Routes 4
Knowledge Philosophy               2

Qualities
Bilingual (5 Karma) Sperethiel
Quick Healer (3 Karma)
National Sin Tir Tairngire (-5 Karma)
Aptitude: Sniper (14 Karma)

Contacts
Tir Tairngire Commander Loyalty 6 Connection 5
Street Doc                            Loyalty 4 Connection 4
Gun Smuggler                    Loyalty 3  Connection 4

Augmentations
Wired Reflexes Rating 1
Aluminum Bone Lacing

Equipment
Ares Desert Strike scope w/ flare compensation, Thermo Vision, Visual Magnification
(note: there was a whole big discussion on this one, see it here: http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=23151.0)
Beretta 201T
Enfeld AS-7

T-Shirt and Jeans (Clothes, 50 nuyen)
Little Black Dress with matching purse (clothing, 10,000 nuyen)
Sensible Suit with fake "sexy" glasses (clothing, 10,000 nuyen)
Chameleon Suit with Thermal Dampening Rating 2

Micro Transceiver
Contacts
Renraku Sensei
(Quick note: As I understand it, you need something to display ARO notifications, thus the contacts wirelessly on the PAN for the commlink, the Micro Tranceiver is to get communications on the same PAN)
Climbing Gear

2,000 rounds regular sniper rifle ammo
1,000 rounds regular shotgun ammo
1,000 rounds regular pistol ammo
500 APDS sniper rifle ammo

So to run through it again, based on my notes:
For priorities I picked A for Attributes giving me 24, B for skills giving me 36/5, C for resources giving me 140,000 nuyen, D for metatype (elf) and E for magic (none)

2 points of attributes went into Body for 3
5 points went to agility to max it out at 7
4 points went to reaction for 5
3 points to strength for 4
2 points to willpower for 3
1 point to logic for 2
4 points to intuition for 5
3 points to charisma for 6

Moving on to skills I had 5 group points to spend and 36 points of individual skills.

for groups I did
2 points of Firearms
1 point each to Stealth, Outdoors and Athletics

I spent 5 points to on longarms to bring to 6 and specialize in sniper rifles
I spent 2 points on pistols to bring it to 4
I spent 2 points each on blades and unarmed
I spent 5 points to bring con to 4 and specialize in seduction
I spent 4 points each to bring gymnastics and sneaking to 5
I spent 2 points each on leadership, negotiation, etiquette, escape artist and computer to bring them to 2
I spent 1 point each on swimming and running to bring them to 2
Lastly she got 14 knowledge skillpoints (logic + intuition x2) that she spent on her knowledge skills

After adding up all the purchases, I got to 128,660 nuyen for the total, with C resources my sniper has 140,000 nuyen, so I gave her the "high lifestyle".  That means that she retains 1,340 nuyen from her starting pile and gets an extra 5D6 x 500, I rolled well (3 6's!) for 13,000 nuyen.

Finally, after all the qualities selected and everything else, my sniper has 8 points of Karma left over heading into the point of selecting contacts.  She gets charisma x3 or 18 points to spend on contacts.  First she spends 11 points on a military commander contact, her old CO at the Tir Tairngire, they served together and are good friends, so he's loyalty 6, he's also gotten promoted since she served in the military, so he's connection 5.  Next, I spend the remaining 7 points on a street doc contact, I want him loyal but decently connected to get her new and exciting cyberware, so I spend 1 karma and split the points between loyalty and connection.  Last, I spend the remaining 7 points of Karma on a gun runner to keep my sniper well-supplied, 3 loyalty 4 connection.

Overall, as a character, I think this is a pretty decent one and I like the concept.  She's an absolutely deadly sniper, she rolls 15 dice before modifiers with sniper rifles and she is also handy with shotguns and pistols.  Wired reflexes give her quick moves and aluminum laced bones give her good survivability.  Her athletic skills mean she can usually find a perch to snipe from.  She can infiltrate parties or offices using her sexy outfits and if someone gets too handsy she can literally punch their balls off thanks to aluminum laced bones and her above average (for an elf) strength.  On the downside, she's not very bright (2 logic), pretty bad with computers and she can't really treat her own wounds, so hackers and actually being wounded are problematic.

[Hobbes]

5th Edition?  Basic Book only?

You can't spend individual skill points on group skills.  You need to spend the group points and the individual skill points on separate skills.

Aptitude lets you go to 7, you don't need it for a rating 6 skill. 

Chummer 5 is handy for character generation https://github.com/chummer5a/chummer5a

Balance wise, you're heavily combat focused with low to moderate dice pools in firearms and you're a tad slow.  *shrug* 

Er.. this may come off more harsh than intended:

You really don't need 5,000 rounds of Ammo.   Couple clips for each weapon is all you need.
Bone lacing doesn't actually add to body, it only adds to specific tests.
You'll want a fake SIN, you can afford a rank 4 and licenses. 
For AR stuff you need a Commlink and either 'trodes or a Datajack. 
You'll want a vehicle.
High lifestyle actually includes fancy clothes IIRC.
In general you want to max out opposed skills like Longarms  and Perception.  Unopposed tests like Running or Swimming can be few dice.
Combat skills, generally one Ranged skill and one melee skill are all you need.  You can only shoot one gun at a time  : )

Shadowrun is one of the more difficult games out there as far as char gen goes.  Play around with Chummer and check out the assorted build threads for ideas.  If you want specific character advise feel free to ask.

[Marcus]

Your pools look on the lowside,
I'd recommend swapping resources and skill priorities,
Consider which combat skill you wanna focus on, I'd recommend automatics and unarmed.
But any melee/ranged pairing is generally good.
Conceptually i'm not sure what your looking for, but it looks more like a street sam or a weapon specalist then a face to me.
 
Perception is an important skill, and I'd recommend it. Please combine your skill groups, my count is a little funky.

[Whiskeyjack]

Skill pools overall are very poor. Remember that the game is based around teams and characters are not able to be built as effective handle-all-comers solo operatives. You're trying to do too much, and the end effect is being able to do nothing particularly well.

This character reads like it wants to be a Street Samurai, except with not enough ware, and more skills than are valuable.

[Talgrath]

5th Edition?  Basic Book only?

You can't spend individual skill points on group skills.  You need to spend the group points and the individual skill points on separate skills.

Aptitude lets you go to 7, you don't need it for a rating 6 skill. 

Chummer 5 is handy for character generation https://github.com/chummer5a/chummer5a

Balance wise, you're heavily combat focused with low to moderate dice pools in firearms and you're a tad slow.  *shrug* 

Er.. this may come off more harsh than intended:

You really don't need 5,000 rounds of Ammo.   Couple clips for each weapon is all you need.
Bone lacing doesn't actually add to body, it only adds to specific tests.
You'll want a fake SIN, you can afford a rank 4 and licenses. 
For AR stuff you need a Commlink and either 'trodes or a Datajack. 
You'll want a vehicle.
High lifestyle actually includes fancy clothes IIRC.
In general you want to max out opposed skills like Longarms  and Perception.  Unopposed tests like Running or Swimming can be few dice.
Combat skills, generally one Ranged skill and one melee skill are all you need.  You can only shoot one gun at a time  : )

Shadowrun is one of the more difficult games out there as far as char gen goes.  Play around with Chummer and check out the assorted build threads for ideas.  If you want specific character advise feel free to ask.

Basic 5th ed right now, maybe buy some other stuff if we like the system.

Ah, I forgot the line that you can't break up skill groups during the character creation step. 

The idea behind aptitude is that the character can eventually get to 13, though I did think later that I should probably have built that to 7 at the start.

Chummer 5 does look handy, I'll have a look.

I'm curious as to how her longarms pool would be considered low...when I ran her up against some grunts she dropped most with a single hit, unless I'm totally misunderstanding how combat works.  The only improvements I could really find is she could do muscle replacement up to +2 at the start and the aforementioned aptitude boost to 7 which would give her +3 dice, but that's not crazy higher.  Also, the only other real speed options is the next level up of wired reflexes, that's definitely better, but also pretty pricey.  When I compared the character to the archetypes on page 111 she seemed to be a better shot than all of them with her sniper rifle.

5,000 rounds of ammo is excessive, that makes sense.  I was basing the round totals off of real life rather than game mechanics.

You are correct on bone lacing, it adds body to damage resistance, so that would knock her physical limit down a touch.

Forgot to list it out, but she has a couple of fake SINs, one at 4 with conceal weapon permit and weapon permit and another one at 1, usually used while doing something obviously illegal.

Okay, misunderstood that she needs trodes or a data jack, already gave her a decent comm so swap out the contacts for one or the other.

Is a vehicle necessary?  Generally I'd assume the rigger or someone skilled in driving would drive.

I didn't find anything in the lifestyles section indicating what sort of clothing you get, I assumed the fact that clothing runs as high as 100,000 nuyen in the gear section meant you had to buy your own (and 100k would be some really nice clothes...).

What if you can't use a particular weapon in a particular situation?  You can't exactly walk around downtown with a sniper rifle and a shotgun...at least not for long.  I'd assume some back up "small" weapons for everyday grocery shopping and what-not would be a necessity?  Generally my impression is that you need to spread yourself out a bit so that when weird things happen you're ready for it.

[Talgrath]

Your pools look on the lowside,
I'd recommend swapping resources and skill priorities,
Consider which combat skill you wanna focus on, I'd recommend automatics and unarmed.
But any melee/ranged pairing is generally good.
Conceptually i'm not sure what your looking for, but it looks more like a street sam or a weapon specalist then a face to me.
 
Perception is an important skill, and I'd recommend it. Please combine your skill groups, my count is a little funky.

I'd forgotten about Perception when I built the character, meant to put it in.  Conceptually the character is a sniper, thus the focus on longarms.  I'm not sure what else she could put in as far as augmentations without dropping her essence much further, she's only got 3 points spare at this point.  I could bring her Wired Reflexes to rating 2, dropping her to 2 essence...but that seems dangerously low if something happens and she needs a new arm or something.

[ZeldaBravo]

If something happens you could buy a cloned arm, not a cyberarm.
Also 2 essence is not dangerously low, 0.02 is. 2 is dangerously high.





It was a joke.

[Marcus]

If something happens you could buy a cloned arm, not a cyberarm.
Also 2 essence is not dangerously low, 0.02 is. 2 is dangerously high.





It was a joke.

It is a joke but it also has some real meaning if your going cyber. Everyone has their own tolerance for this sort of thing. But if your building cyber you should consider it carefully. 3 is not low though I promise, I like to keep essence around 1 personally. But there are many who think differently, and they have some solid logic. 

I'd forgotten about Perception when I built the character, meant to put it in.  Conceptually the character is a sniper, thus the focus on longarms.  I'm not sure what else she could put in as far as augmentations without dropping her essence much further, she's only got 3 points spare at this point.  I could bring her Wired Reflexes to rating 2, dropping her to 2 essence...but that seems dangerously low if something happens and she needs a new arm or something.

Long arms and sniper is a great concept. Just make sure ya invest in one of the sawed off shotguns to go with it. Packing a big rifle around won't be possible on many if not most runs. For Archtype purposes and after what you said i'd call this a weapon specialist. They do tend to be much lighter on ware then sams, which sounds like it will fit your style better.

You can make this work just fine. I'd just focus down your skill list, as was said let the team handle what they need to handle. You can get everything ya need no problem, and your pretty close to where ya need to be.
 

[Talgrath]

If something happens you could buy a cloned arm, not a cyberarm.
Also 2 essence is not dangerously low, 0.02 is. 2 is dangerously high.





It was a joke.

It is a joke but it also has some real meaning if your going cyber. Everyone has their own tolerance for this sort of thing. But if your building cyber you should consider it carefully. 3 is not low though I promise, I Iike to keep essence around 1 personally. But there are many who think differently, and they have some solid logic. 

I'd forgotten about Perception when I built the character, meant to put it in.  Conceptually the character is a sniper, thus the focus on longarms.  I'm not sure what else she could put in as far as augmentations without dropping her essence much further, she's only got 3 points spare at this point.  I could bring her Wired Reflexes to rating 2, dropping her to 2 essence...but that seems dangerously low if something happens and she needs a new arm or something.

Long arms and sniper is a great concept. Just make sure ya invest in one of the sawed off shotguns to go with it. Packing a big rifle around won't be possible on many if not most runs. For Archtype purposes and after what you said i'd call this a weapon specialist. They do tend to be much lighter on ware then sams, which sounds like it will fit your style better.

You can make this work just fine. I'd just focus down your skill list, as was said let the team handle what they need to handle. You can get everything ya need no problem, and your pretty close to where ya need to be.

To be clear here, I'm not actually running this character.  I'm creating some example characters to get a feel for the system, I'll be GMing.  Generally speaking I aim to have players build a character by concept first, instead of with the idea of powerplay in mind, to make a character that is more than just really good at one thing, that's a big part of what attracted me to the Shadowrun system, multi-faceted characters.  Generally speaking when I GM, if someone is good at just one thing, I will screw with them so they might not always be able to do that one thing.  Looking through the archetypes I saw quite a few characters with 4s, 5s, 3s and even some 1s and 2s for skills, spreading out the points a bit, so that is sort of idea is what I'm running with.  Someone in another thread mentioned the idea of starting skills for a character being limited to 1 6/7 skill, 2 5 skills and everything else 4 or below, that's probably a house rule I'll toss in there.  To be 100% clear, I'm absolutely not looking for power builds here., I'm just trying to verify that this character (and a few others) look correct per the rules and verify that these characters seem somewhat decent, maybe I'm in the wrong forum for that sort of thing.  Chummer seems to be a pretty good verification tool for that, so I think I'm okay, though I did notice that it doesn't tell you how much starting karma you have left.

[Talgrath]

So I tried out Chummer, and it's pretty handy, though I'm not 100% satisfied with it, it makes building a character a lot faster.  Here's what I came up with in Chummer:

== Info ==
Street Name: Ravenwind
Name: Unnamed Character
Movement: 14/28
Karma: 0
Street Cred: 0
Notoriety: 0
Public Awareness: 0
Elf
Composure: 9
Judge Intentions: 11
Lift/Carry: 7 (60 kg/40 kg)
Memory: 5
Nuyen: 4875

== Priorities ==
Metatype: D - Human or Elf
Attributes: A - 24 Attributes
Special: E - Mundane
Skills: B - 36 Skills/5 Skill Groups
Resources: C - 140,000¥

== Attributes ==
BOD: 3
AGI: 7
REA: 5 (6)
STR: 4
CHA: 6
INT: 5
LOG: 2
WIL: 3
EDG: 1

== Derived Attributes ==
Essence:                   2.9
Initiative:                10 (11) + 2d6
Rigger Initiative:         11 + 2d6
Astral Initiative:         
Matrix AR Initiative:      11 + 2d6
Matrix Cold Initiative:    5 + DP + 3d6
Matrix Hot Initiative:     5 + DP + 4d6
Physical Damage Track:     10
Stun Damage Track:         10

== Limits ==
Physical:                  6
Mental:                    4
Social:                    6
Astral:                    6

== Active Skills ==
Animal Handling            : 0                      Pool: 5
Archery                    : 0                      Pool: 6
Armorer                    : 0                      Pool: 1
Automatics                 : 0                      Pool: 6
Blades                     : 0                      Pool: 6
Clubs                      : 0                      Pool: 6
Computer                   : 0                      Pool: 1
Con                        : 5                      Pool: 11
Cybercombat                : 0                      Pool: 1
Demolitions                : 0                      Pool: 1
Disguise                   : 0                      Pool: 4
Diving                     : 0                      Pool: 2
Escape Artist              : 4                      Pool: 11
Etiquette                  : 0                      Pool: 5
First Aid                  : 0                      Pool: 1
Forgery                    : 0                      Pool: 1
Free-Fall                  : 0                      Pool: 2
Gunnery                    : 0                      Pool: 6
Gymnastics                 : 5                      Pool: 12
Hacking                    : 0                      Pool: 1
Heavy Weapons              : 0                      Pool: 6
Impersonation              : 0                      Pool: 5
Instruction                : 0                      Pool: 5
Intimidation               : 0                      Pool: 5
Leadership                 : 0                      Pool: 5
Longarms                   : 7 [Sniper Rifles]      Pool: 14 (16)
Navigation                 : 0                      Pool: 4
Negotiation                : 0                      Pool: 5
Perception                 : 5                      Pool: 10
Performance                : 0                      Pool: 5
Pilot Ground Craft         : 0                      Pool: 5
Pilot Watercraft           : 0                      Pool: 5
Pistols                    : 4                      Pool: 11
Running                    : 5                      Pool: 9
Sneaking                   : 6                      Pool: 13
Survival                   : 0                      Pool: 2
Swimming                   : 5                      Pool: 9
Throwing Weapons           : 0                      Pool: 6
Tracking                   : 0                      Pool: 4
Unarmed Combat             : 4                      Pool: 11

== Knowledge Skills ==
Elven Wine                 : 4                      Pool: 6
Military Service           : 4                      Pool: 6
Philosophy                 : 2                      Pool: 4
Smuggling Routes           : 4                      Pool: 6

== Contacts ==
Former CO (5, 6)
Gun Smuggler (4, 3)
Street Doc (4, 4)

== Qualities ==
Aptitude (Longarms)
Bilingual
Low-Light Vision
Quick Healer
SINner (National) (5)

== Lifestyles ==
High  1 months

== Cyberware/Bioware ==
Bone Lacing (Aluminum)
Datajack
Wired Reflexes Rating 1

== Armor ==
Chameleon Suit                      9
   +Chemical Protection 1
   +Fire Resistance 2
   +Insulation 2
   +Nonconductivity 2
   +Thermal Damping 2
Clothing                            0
Clothing                            0
Clothing                            0

== Weapons ==
Ares Desert Strike
   +Imaging Scope
   +Laser Sight
   +Shock Pad
   +Sound Suppressor
   +Spare Clip
   +Stock
   Pool: 14 (16)   Accuracy: 8   DV: 13P   AP: -4   RC: 4
Beretta 201T
   +Concealable Holster
   +Gas-Vent 3 System
   +Laser Sight
   +Spare Clip
   +Stock
   Pool: 11   Accuracy: 7   DV: 6P   AP: -   RC: 7
Enfield AS-7
   +Gas-Vent 3 System
   +Laser Sight
   +Spare Clip
   Pool: 14   Accuracy: 5   DV: 13P   AP: -1   RC: 6
Survival Knife
   Pool: 6   Accuracy: 5   DV: 6P   AP: -1   RC: 3
Unarmed Attack
   Pool: 11   Accuracy: 6   DV: 6P   AP: -   RC: 3

== Commlink ==
Transys Avalon (ATT: 0, SLZ: 0, DP: 6, FWL: 6)

== Gear ==
Ammo: APDS (Sniper Rifles) x100
Ammo: Regular Ammo (Sniper Rifles) x200
Ammo: Regular Ammo (Light Pistols) x100
Ammo: Regular Ammo (Shotguns) x200
Climbing Gear
Fake License (Firearms License) Rating 4
Fake License (Concealed Carry Permit) Rating 4
Fake SIN (Main Fake) Rating 4
Fake SIN (Obvious Fake) Rating 1
Micro-Transceiver

[ZeldaBravo]

The CO and Street Doc contacts are not rules-legal. You can only spend 7 points on a single contact unless you have a Friends in High Places positive quality.

[Talgrath]

The CO and Street Doc contacts are not rules-legal. You can only spend 7 points on a single contact unless you have a Friends in High Places positive quality.

Re-reading the section I realized I had overlooked that one, thanks, I thought it was a little weird that a high charisma character could spend all their points to start with a connection 12 loyalty 6 contact.

[ZeldaBravo]

 A connection 12 Loyalty 6 contact is something like being best friends forever with the president of UCAS. Not literally but I hope you know what I mean.

[ZombieAcePilot]

I find shadowrun snipers have to play more like a Jason Bourne. You operate in urban areas in a lot of shadowrun sessions. As such you have to worry about social infiltration as much as sneaking. Etiquette is the skill that convinces people you belong. Palming gets you a stolen ID card.

The sniping is actually the easy part, it's all the skills it takes to get to the moment where you can take the shot that is hard. What you need to figure out are the skills you need to have and which ones other people can handle for you. this includes the idea of self sufficiency. What skills would your character not count on others for?

If I were making a secret operative sniper type I would make sure I had disguise (good for disappearing when shit goes sideways). Someone else in the group might have the same skill, possibly better than mine, but I can't rely on them when I'm bugging out after a hit and they are no where near by. Same goes for a lot of social skills. When security is checking you over, you can't put your group face on the phone to try and pass your etiquette test for you.

If your goal is just to kill people, a sniper is actually not the easiest to play. It takes a lot of planning to deal death from afar and disappear like a ghost. It's much easier to kick in the door with an assault rifle. Consider typical scenarios the character would need to contend with and then examine the stats they need to be successful on average. The more points of possible failure the more edge becomes important. It will allow you to use a more diverse skill set and punch lower skills up to par or reroll when the dice are against you.

All other considerations aside I would consider finding more points for edge. Ditch the ware (you can take drugs for combat enhancement). It will also help you for sneaking (since bone lacing shows up on all kinds of detectors). Cut out the expensive clothes and the cyber and pick up only what you need. Try to use a lower ¥ priority. You'll probably have to switch rifles (that one is expensive for what you get).

[Hobbes]

So I tried out Chummer, and it's pretty handy, though I'm not 100% satisfied with it, it makes building a character a lot faster.  Here's what I came up with in Chummer:

Chummer is quirky but helps keep you mostly rules compliant, especially when you're just starting out.

Effeciancy-wise the character could be improved quite a bit with some fairly minor tweaks.  But it's not a character that will see a table so, I'll go about this slightly different.  If you're the GM and you're running normal missions or modules and that is the dice pools for opposed tests your PCs will occasionally fail critical skill checks, but not disastrously so.  And if that character is the Combat Specialist of the group, you'll have some fairly close calls, and some of the tougher fights will result in downed PCs.  Do with that info what you will. 

And Edge is absosmurfly critical for PCs.  Don't leave chargen without at least 2 Edge, personally I consider 3 the min.  5 Edge or more is a literal game changer for a character once you get familiar with how it works.