[Aazen]

So back in the day (3E) I had a Human runner named Doc who was very (Star Trek) McCoy. Didn't like Cyber or Bioware cause it seemed 'Unnatural.' He also thought if the good Lord wanted him to use Magic, he'd been born with it. I made skills his A priority, attributes B, and so on.  I had fun with him. He didn't always go first, but he made sure he went last. Now I was thinking of making a new runner (his kid raised on the legend) who pretty much views the world the same way (thanks, parental brain-washing). Question is, can it be done in SR5? Will he live long enough?  How would you make a Combat Medic who forgoes the personal use of magic, bio, and cyberware?

[Jack_Spade]

Answer 1: All the drugs - you are a doc, you can prescribe and prepare them for yourself
Answer 2: Human with 7 Edge - going first guaranteed
Answer 3: A small army of drones (medical ones included) to stay relevant in combat

Attributes A, Skills B, Money C, Meta D, Magic E would be my recommended array. If you need more money and you play with sum to ten make money B and Meta E as well.

[Hobbes]

Stats A; Skills B; Metatype C;Resources D; Magic E.

7 Edge Human.  "Medic" is one skill, First Aid.  A 1500 Nuyen Med Kit does the job as well as any PC to be honest.  The cold hard truth is that a Mage with a heal spell and a med kit will be a far better "Healzor".  I caution against heavy investment in Medical skills unless the GM is going to through a lot of CSI type stuff at the group.

Edgenomancer builds are quite good in 5th Edition.  They make excellent generalist characters.  Max out Agility, Charisma, Intuition, and Reaction, get Combat and Social skills to be a well rounded runner.  You'll have enough stat and skill points left to be whatever kind of doctor/paramedic/forensic specialist you want. 

College Educated Positive Quality goes a long way to fill in your Academic Knowledge skills. 

Warning "No Ware" and "No Magic" is pretty rough efficiency wise.  You're going to have smaller dice pools and be slower than everyone at everything.  And if you're not a Decker, and not the primary Face your spotlight moments are going to be kinda few and far between.  Just a warning from a GM.  If that doesn't matter to you, rock on.

[Kuirem]

It is playable. As the other said Edge can help. But as an unaugmented mundane let's be real, you will feel quite inferior to all those chrome and magic monsters. Drugs and Edge are nice but the others have access to it as well. And on top of that you want to play Human? Well I won't stop you but don't try to force fight with those superhumans.

Now sadly there isn't really a 'Doctor' build in Shadowrun 5. First Aid/Medic is generally something that a Decker or Mage will take as secondary skills. There is roughly 6 role you can fill and if you are not one of these you won't do much for your team : Muscle, Face, Hacker, Rigger, Infiltration, Magician. WIthout Magic nor Wares you can give up on Magician (obviously), Muscle (you will need to waste half your Edge every fight just to get as much initiative as the others) and Rigger (No Control Rig no jump, sorry chummer). So we are left with Face, Hacker and Infiltration.

A non-augmented/non-magic human face can be surprisingly good. Because you can go EVERYWHERE. Do they have MAD scanner? No problem, Astral Overwatch? Go for it scan me! Your speciality is Disguise and Impersonation. Knowledge skill are always useful for infiltration so don't hesitate to pick a high logic and some Biotech skill to make daddy proud. A - Skills, B - Attributes, C - Resources, D - Metatype, E - Magic. Attribute example : 3 BOD, 4 AGI, 2 REA (with Karma), 2 STR (with Karma), 6 CHA, 5 INT, 5 LOG, 3 WIL. For skills max Acting or Stealth (depending if you prefer Palming or Performance) Skill Group (and the 4 you have left into Biotech) and get Etiquette + Negotiation and don't forget the SSS : See, Sneak, Shoot so Perception, Sneaking and one ranged option. You will even have some leftover for Specialization or to take some other skills. Your money will go into a nice suit (Run & Gun is your friend), car and some gadgets.

For the Hacker I suppose you don't want to go Techno, so Decker it is. There is some nice Ware for Decker but it is possible to use Trodes. Decker need max LOG so you will have good roll for Biotech. Go for A or B - Skills, A or B Resources, C - Attributes. Since you are unaugmented you can often get away with only B Resources. If you go A don't hesitate to get the best Deck on the market and maybe pick a couple of Drones as well.

And the last one is Infiltration. It might looks like you will be behind Wared/Magic Infiltrator but what you can do as an mundane human is be a kind of mixed face. Go for high AGI and CHA, pick some Disguise, Sneaking and Gymnastics and you can just climb into the toilets building, put on your wageslave costum and infiltrate any Corp from the inside. The advantage over a full Face is that you invest less skills into Social and can pick more combat Attributes and be quite good in fight. A - Attributes, B - Skills, C - Resources.

[Whiskeyjack]

Dedicated medical skills are simply not worth the point investment. The game rules go out of their way to hamstring dabbling in First Aid for no good reason at all.

[Tym Jalynsfein]

It is playable. As the other said Edge can help. But as an unaugmented mundane let's be real, you will feel quite inferior to all those chrome and magic monsters. Drugs and Edge are nice but the others have access to it as well. And on top of that you want to play Human? Well I won't stop you but don't try to force fight with those superhumans.

Not sure that I agree with this sentiment, Kuirem.

Personal Opinion and Anecdotal evidence, to be sure but...

I played a Karmagen (750 Karma) Human, No Magic, No Cyber/Bio character in 4A and he ended up being the most useful character in the party. He tended to go first, and he had pretty much any skill necessary to do almost anything. Dp's were ~10 for almost every roll (40+ or so skills, included the group skills) with some at 12+ (Pilot Skills) and my combat skill at 13dp+. It is all in how you play. Of course, it helps that we did not have Insanely optimized characters in the party. High ends for the characters were about 15 dp.

In a game where you have 20+ DP monstrosities, you still would do well, in my opinion. Success is success, after all... if you need 1 net success, it often matters not whether you get 1 or 10 net successes (Except for combat, where each hit adds damage)... And that POV actually works pretty well...

[Kuirem]

Of course, it helps that we did not have Insanely optimized characters in the party. High ends for the characters were about 15 dp.

I think that's the part that helped your character the most. GM try to adapt the opposition to their runners. When you have to face 15+ Perception with a 12 dice in Sneaking that's when it gets dangerous. In your case the opposition was probably set around your dice pool.

Now you make a good point, Karmagen is probably a huge help for such a character. At the start you might be able to pull off someone at least more versatile than Street Sam and Magicians. If the game goes on though the increasing cost of Skills might deter your character progression : for the same karma cost you will use to raise a couple of point in a skill Magician and Adept will initiate and gain even more OP powers and Street Sam will get Deltaware stuff.

Anyway a suboptimal build doesn't mean you can't have fun. If your thing is to play a Jack of all Trades you can do a pretty decent work at that without Ware/Magic. I even gave the 3 build that I think would work the best. After all a lot of the Wares and Magic are oriented toward fighting which isn't the biggest part of the game (unless you go full Pink Mohawk) so there is definitely a place for a super Mundane Joe.

[RowanTheFox]

I've played a no-mag no-cyber elf once before. She specialized in longarms (sniper), and quickly became a terrifying force to behold. IF you ever actually saw her, that is. Her opponents had a habit of having the back of their skulls explode before they ever knew she was there.

"If you hear me take the shot, I missed."

[Aazen]

Hmm. Some thought for food (I'm chewing on it).  Perhaps Doc's kid, instead of saving lives is better at ending them. Sniper/Infiltrator? Black Widow meets Hawkeye?

[Tarislar]

This is my personal build for a regular Joe who is still pretty solid as a Runner.

A-Attributes
B-Skills
C-Human
D-Resources
E-Magic

Unless your GM is just throwing fight after fight at you in a single game session, the 7 Edge means you will likely be moving before anyone in your group most of the time.

Bod-3, Agi-6, Rea-5, Str-2, Wil-3, Log-3, Int-5, Cha-5
Edge-7,  Initiative-10+1d6 (or 5d6)

Group-Influence-5
Disguise-6  (Camouflage or Cosmetic+2)
Automatics or LongArms-6  (AR or Sniper+2)
Perception-6  (Audio or Visual+2)
Pilot/Groundcraft-1  (Wheeled+2)
Sneaking-6  (Urban+2)
Unarmed or some other skill-6

[Whiskeyjack]

Just remember no ware doesn't mean no gear boosts. The mods available for glasses, contacts, and earbuds are awesome and more than competitive with direct installs in cybereyes/ears (I prefer most of those mods to be external even in sams, except the smartlink, because there are better things to spend essence on than eyes and ears).

[RowanTheFox]

Hmm. Some thought for food (I'm chewing on it).  Perhaps Doc's kid, instead of saving lives is better at ending them. Sniper/Infiltrator? Black Widow meets Hawkeye?

"You can not understand how to save a man's life until you understand how a man dies."

Cryptic way of saying you can't know how to treat a man until you know what's killing him and how quickly it is doing so.

[Hobbes]

It is playable. As the other said Edge can help. But as an unaugmented mundane let's be real, you will feel quite inferior to all those chrome and magic monsters. Drugs and Edge are nice but the others have access to it as well. And on top of that you want to play Human? Well I won't stop you but don't try to force fight with those superhumans.

Now sadly there isn't really a 'Doctor' build in Shadowrun 5. First Aid/Medic is generally something that a Decker or Mage will take as secondary skills. There is roughly 6 role you can fill and if you are not one of these you won't do much for your team : Muscle, Face, Hacker, Rigger, Infiltration, Magician. WIthout Magic nor Wares you can give up on Magician (obviously), Muscle (you will need to waste half your Edge every fight just to get as much initiative as the others) and Rigger (No Control Rig no jump, sorry chummer). So we are left with Face, Hacker and Infiltration.

7 Edge is very different than having Edge.  Just sayin.  7 Edge really is a superpower.

And how to combat without burning all the Edges?  Number one, be picky.  If it's a nothing fight against a couple mooks, don't worry about it.  Number two, Blitzing can happen any time.  No restriction on when you decide to Blitz that I can see so you get to your last pass and three more corp sec show up?  Blitz, throw four more dice and get an extra pass or two.  Number three, Jazz is for long fights.  Jazz kicks in at the beginning of the next round, so take it on your last action if the fight looks to be going another round.

I do agree that Face is the best way to play an Edgenomancer build.  But you're still sitting at 5 Agility, 6 Firearm, Specialization, Lasersight or Smart link still gets you to 14 Dice, and up to 21 when you really need to.  Blitzing gets you well into 3 actions, occasionally 4.  Edgenomancers are really shooty if they want to be.  Really what they're good at is burning up the Boss's edge to set up the Samurai or Adept for the kill shot.   

[Glyph]

Unaugmented mundanes may not be optimal, but they are certainly playable.  The archetypes have unaugmented mundanes like the face and bounty hunter, and there are the barely augmented builds like the weapons specialist, the covert ops specialist, and the sprawl ganger.

If you can use sum-to-ten, I would actually recommend taking A for Attributes and skills, C for human, and E for both resources and magic.  10 of your starting Karma will get your starting money to 26,000 Nuyen, enough for all of the basics for starting out - money will come in the easiest once play begins, and you won't have the expenses of a sammie, decker, rigger, or awakened character to worry about.  And 10 extra skill points plus 5 extra skill group points (compared to B skills) is huge.

[Whiskeyjack]

The archetypes

I mean I wouldn't consider that a call to good authority on how to build a character.