[Trollisko]

Hi there,

I am getting ready for a game which takes place in a month and started to draft up a decker for our group. Initially I wanted to go with Techno, but my skill monkey habit got the better of me. If you happen to have a moment to have a look at the below build and let me know if it's viable, I'd appreciate it.

The choices I've taken might seem strange to those of you who have spent more hours at the Shadowrun table (at least that's the impression I got, reading through numerous chargen topics), but this is my first attempt at a character in this system and some habits from previous games (WH, DnD, Vamp) might have carried through.

Priorities I went with are:
A - Skill
B - Attributes
C - Resources
D - Metatype (Elf)
E - Magic

The rest is here https://drive.google.com/open?id=1dkWGzrLE7wnsu08RWoUBzyxC8uCbhAWc

Thanks for any insight you share!

[Overbyte]

The first thing I might recommend is look at this:

https://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=25864.0

It gives LOTS of information on how to build characters efficiently.

To really give meaningful feedback on a character build it is best if you try to share what you are trying to accomplish.
By this I mean are you just trying to be the best decker you can? Are you some sort of hybrid? Decker/Face? Or are you a decker with some solid physical combat. What kinda of decker will you be (primarily)? AR or VR? Do you plan on going in with your team or waiting outside and hacking wirelessly? When combat breaks out will you pull a gun or attempt to shut down others by hacking their gear?

At first glance I'd say there are a lot of things you could make better, but you really need to answer the question (for you and for people you want to help you) who is this guy?

[Trollisko]

I've read through the topic you suggested and frankly, understood bits and pieces of it.

This is my first contact with the setting and system and I would like the character to be able to perform as the team decker, as there will be on one else for that.

We might not have a face (not sure on that though) so I wanted to be able to at least handle some social situations - that would make this char around being a decker with some face capability.

I don't know if this will be more or AR or VR as our DM has not yet ironed out the kinks of his game and what's that gonna be - for the first few games we want to go with ready made scenarios that have been published, but what will this be in the long run, hard to say. That also poses a problem for being able to say if, I will stay behind and be wireless or not.

As far as combat goes, I prefer to shut opponents down since most of the stuff is hackable, but a gun as a backup option is not a bad idea.

[fseperent]

Honestly, so many active skills with ratings of 3 or lower has me concerned.
The base dice pool for rolling your skills is skill + attribute.
You should have a dice pool of 12 or more for your main active skills.
Secondary active skills should have a dice pool of 9 minimum.

Let me see here, your attribute choices look okay, but I would recommend switching Intuition and Logic.

Cyberdeck, the Hermes is okay.
The only programs that will affect your deck are the ones running on it.

Your Bilingual quality says Chinese but your language skills say native in English and Mandarin.
On the topic of qualities, any SIN quality tends to make runners nervous.
A Limited Corp SIN tends to imply your character sold out to a corp.

As for gear, I have a big question.
Why would your decker need 500 rounds?
Is he planning on shooting everyone he runs into?
Leaving a trail of corpses is begging for hit squads to come looking for you.
Gel rounds or Stick-n-Shock will knock a threat out.
An alternative would be a dart gun with darts loaded with Narcojet.

AR vs. VR
AR is mainly used for quick hacks, like unloading a gun, while allowing you to act physically.
VR is for serious hacking.

Hope this helps.

[Trollisko]

Thanks for the info, helps quite a lot.

As for the bullet part, I just went with what I saw in the rulebook on sample characters when going through the chargen section. Reading through what you wrote, I might go a bit more diverse, having a few clips of regular rounds and the rest with gel.

Mandarin is there based on what the rulebook said on current languages in SR.

[Beta]

To add a bit of background about the earlier dice pool comments, because most rolls in SR are opposed it creates a different dynamic than in many other rules systems.

For example, in D&D, each +1 is essentially a flat 5% higher chance to succeed on something, irrespective of how good you are on it.  In ShadowRun, with the opposed rolls and the 'count your successes' system, there is a pretty narrow band of total dice, near the typical opposition level, where the probability of success from adding or dropping a die is fairly flat, but when you drop much below that level your chance of succeeding drops quickly.  And on the other hand many skills care about generating extra net successes, or can trade dice off for better effects (called shots, going for multiple marks in one roll, etc).

What this means is if you don't make the threshold level, you are pretty ineffective in many skills.

Deckers have it even worse, IMO, because they often need multiple rolls to accomplish something ('first get a mark, then re-boot the device' is pretty much best case, but not uncommonly it is often far more than that), so they need to reliably chain successes together in high stress situations.  Throw in  -2 if doing AR hacking (i.e. your body is not a limp corpse-like thing), and -2 if running silently (sometimes you need to do this, sometimes you don't), and the result is that they tend to need some of the higher dice pools in the 5th edition game.

A mage with 12 dice in casting/summoning will still do a lot.  A hacker with 12 dice will struggle a lot more.  Having either 'ware to increase logic, or qualities/'ware/contacts to enable liberal drug use is pretty common with hackers.

[Overbyte]

I've read through the topic you suggested and frankly, understood bits and pieces of it.

Yes. That post is quite "dense" and a bit tricky to fully understand if you aren't already familiar with the system, but it's great that you've at least looked at it. The upshot of a lot of it is this: looking to the future of the character and the way in which Karma (and money) is used to improve your character over time, it is most efficient to have "tall stacks". What that really means is if you have two skills (or stats) it is better (more efficient) that they be Rating 6 and Rating 1 instead of 4 and 3.

This is my first contact with the setting and system and I would like the character to be able to perform as the team decker, as there will be on one else for that.

We might not have a face (not sure on that though) so I wanted to be able to at least handle some social situations - that would make this char around being a decker with some face capability.

If you look around these boards a bit you will see a number of posts and discussions on the "trap" of a Skills A pick. This philosophy does not always apply but it is always worth considering. A decker / face may be a solid exception to this because they are both skills heavy so you may do well to have all those skills, IF you use them wisely.

I don't know if this will be more or AR or VR as our DM has not yet ironed out the kinks of his game and what's that gonna be - for the first few games we want to go with ready made scenarios that have been published, but what will this be in the long run, hard to say. That also poses a problem for being able to say if, I will stay behind and be wireless or not.

As far as combat goes, I prefer to shut opponents down since most of the stuff is hackable, but a gun as a backup option is not a bad idea.

So with all that being said here are a few early thoughts:
Why are you elf? Do you just want to be an elf? Cause its cool? The thing is elves have higher than human CHA and AGI maximums but you are using neither of them. In fact neither of them is even close. One thing that is often overlooked by new players is EDGE. Edge is an amazing stat for getting things done during game play, so if you are not married to being an elf, be a human and have a ton of edge. If you do want to be an elf., make your CHA much higher.

You want your highest stats for the skills you have a lot of. Meaning your LOG should be your best stat. Unless maybe you stay as an elf. And then CHA will be highest. You only have one stat using INT so you can afford to have it be lower (keep in mind you will not use Perception in the Matrix you will use Matrix Perception which is Computer).

Something like: (for elf)
BOD 3
AGI 3
REA 3
STR 2 (bought with 10 karma)
CHA 7
INT 3
LOG 6
WIL 5
EDG 1

Or the same number of points for human which comes out to:
BOD 3
AGI 3
REA 3
STR 2 (bought with 10 karma)
CHA 5
INT 3
LOG 6
WIL 5
EDG 5  <--- this is super good to have because of the re-rolls you can do at critical times

For skills.. going with the same "tall stacks" and focusing on your main goals you could move around some stuff.  Another key point that article makes is that it is DICE POOLS that matter when you are rolling (almost always) not the actual skill.

I'm not sure how you ended up with 6 for Cracking and Electronics? You only get 10 skill group points. You can go with 5 /5 or 6 Cracking and 4 Electronics is OK too (It makes your Matrix perception lower but your Hacking and EW higher).
Once you have those, take 6 in the Face skills you want: Con 6 and Negotiation 6 you can probably skimp slightly on Etiquette if you need to (or go with 6).
Then take Pistols at 6 for your backup option. You could go with Automatics here. This is often a good choice because it allows you the use of Machine Pistols, Sub-machine guns and Assault Rifles in case you want to go big sometime. Also these guns have auto fire options which can make life difficult for opponents since they reduce their ability to dodge and you can use suppressing fire moves.
Having skill in Clubs won't do you much good since melee weapons do STR damage. However, you can use a Stun Baton but your skill will be bad, so just put 1 point in it so you can maybe sneak up on someone and use it.
Don't forget specializations

So in the end it will look like (pools not ratings):

Cracking: 11
Electronics: 11
Automatics (Machine Pistols): 8(10)
Clubs: 3        <-- bought with 2 karma
Con (Fast Talk): 13(15)
Etiquette: 13
First Aid: 7       <-- bought with 2 karma
Locksmith: 8
Negotiation: 13
Perception (Visual): 9(11)
Running: 3     <-- bought with 2 karma
Sneaking (Urban): 8(10)
Swimming: 3   <-- bought with 2 karma

You will notice I bought 4 skills at rating 1 with Karma. This is a commonly used "trick" because your skills points are precious and more valuable than 2 karma at creation time and the skills would cost you 2 karma to get later anyway.

That's all for now, but I definitely have some thoughts on your karma and money expenditures as well.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

I'd argue that EDG is a stat you can't afford to skimp on as a Decker.  Which makes it problematic to play a metahuman decker, but elves aren't that expensive so it's still doable.  But the consequences of a failure tend to be higher for actions that Deckers take than for other types of actions, so having EDG to reroll failures is very very handy.


With regards to how large your dice pools should be: if you're the only Decker for your team, most matrix opposition placed by the GM is specifically just for you.  If the GM is worth his salt, he'll tailor opposition to be appropriate to your capabilities.  But if that's not the case, or if you want to have some sort of impartial baseline consider the Host Rating mechanic.  (See the examples suggested on pg 247 in SR5)  Consider that if you're trying to hack one of those hosts, it's rolling against you with Rating+Firewall, where Firewall will probably be Rating+3.  (see Host Attributes, same page)    So if you want your Decker to have no problem with say hacking a Stuffer Shack, you should be able to blow away a dice pool of 9-11.  Hacking the local Police Precinct Host should involve regularly/reliably beating a dice pool of 17-19.

[Overbyte]

I'd argue that EDG is a stat you can't afford to skimp on as a Decker.  Which makes it problematic to play a metahuman decker, but elves aren't that expensive so it's still doable.  But the consequences of a failure tend to be higher for actions that Deckers take than for other types of actions, so having EDG to reroll failures is very very handy.


With regards to how large your dice pools should be: if you're the only Decker for your team, most matrix opposition placed by the GM is specifically just for you.  If the GM is worth his salt, he'll tailor opposition to be appropriate to your capabilities.  But if that's not the case, or if you want to have some sort of impartial baseline consider the Host Rating mechanic.  (See the examples suggested on pg 247 in SR5)  Consider that if you're trying to hack one of those hosts, it's rolling against you with Rating+Firewall, where Firewall will probably be Rating+3.  (see Host Attributes, same page)    So if you want your Decker to have no problem with say hacking a Stuffer Shack, you should be able to blow away a dice pool of 9-11.  Hacking the local Police Precinct Host should involve regularly/reliably beating a dice pool of 17-19.

SSDR is going to know a whole lot more than me about actually playing a decker, since we (I know its strange) hardly deal with them in our games. This is a hold over from earlier times when they were such a pain. But having a ton of edge is great for just about any char and during play you really see it making the difference between success and failure or life and death. Use of edge to re-roll essentially increases your dice pool by 66% for the roll. So it's HUGE.

However, as part of my additional recommendations I was going to say this:
You might want to specialize in Hack on the Fly, and almost certainly want to take the Codeslinger quality for Hack on the Fly. This could bump you up 4 more dice on your main roll. You'd have more, but you kinda "skimped" on resources so you can't take Cerebral Booster bioware which a lot of deckers do.
If you are not set on being an Elf you could be a Goblin instead and have a 7 LOG which would give you another die.
This could put you at a total of 15 or 16 dice for Hack on the Fly

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

I too largely left Decking to the realm of NPC-dom, since in earlier editions it ate SUCH a huge amount of time that left everyone who's not the decker twiddling their thumbs.  Not to mention the chores involved in mapping nodes (1st and 2nd editions...) it was just easier to have the Decker niche filled by an NPC who just provided info/support as the GM saw fit.

Since seeing how playable the Matrix rules are in 5th edition (something I say unsarcastically) I've dove in and learned a great deal about Decking under this edition.

Some more advice about playing a Decker: 
Get a Cerebral Booster.  The +LOG boost is priceless in value.  It's worth whatever you pay, but it's best to buy at book price in chargen

Remember that the Cyberdeck's meta role in the rules is to serve largely to define your Limits.  Don't gloss over very handy and very cheap programs.. even the illegal/expensive Hacker programs are a paltry 250 =Y= yet they give you bonus dice for certain tasks, or increase your Limits.  Either is worth far, far more than 250 =Y=.

Segueing from that point about Limits, don't worry about the super expensive cyberdecks (either in Chargen or later on with a wad of nuyen to spend) until your dice pools are large enough to capitalize upon higher Limits.  If your dice pool for Hacking is only 18 dice, you don't need to even think about a super expensive cyberdeck that gives you a matrix attribute of 9.  Rule of thumb is 1/3:  If your Limit is higher than 1/3 of your dice pool, it's a waste/luxury (barring EDG, which may well complicate your calculus)

Combat contribution:  This is where I felt the most challenged playing a Decker.  Sure, Deckers are gods and goddesses of the Legwork phase of a Shadowrun, but what do you do when the bullets are flying?  The appeal is great: If the opposition has drones, hijack them and turn them to your side.  If they have cybereyes, edit your team out of their vision just as you would with security cameras.  Make the guns eject the clips or even just straight up brick them.  Unfortunately, this sort of thing rarely has worked out in-play in my experience.  The action economy is just not favorable in needing to spend a complex action to score marks before doing anything "hackery".  This action economy inefficiency is what gives Cybercombat is real relevancy:  Allowing you to score some free damage on scoring marks before throwing Data Spikes to brick lethal gear/vehicles.  Unfortunately, if the GM plays the NPCs smart (i.e. the way players play their PCs) you only have time for 1 Data Spike before the owner spends a free action to shut that device's wireless off and making it immune to your shenanigans.  So if you want to hack in combat, you really might have to get creative.  Shutting the lights in the area off can be great when the opposition doesn't have Lowlight/infrared vision enhancements, and so on.

Combat contribution w/o hacking: As great as 5th ed is for making Decking playable, non-hacking is probably still where you'll be most effective in combat situations.  A common means of being combat-capable with nerdy decker stats/skills is to buy a tricked out cyberarm.  Doesn't matter what your STR/AGI is when your cyberarm has 9s in both!  Just make sure you're using a 1 hand firearm so averaging doesn't come into play.  Of course if you don't have the resources for a tricked out cyberarm after paying for your cyberdeck and your Cerebral Booster (2 first buys with starting resources) there's still other options.  My SRM Decker contributes largely via indirect yet still helpful means:  with my great mental stats I had lots of points for Knowledge Skills, and one I bought deep was Small Unit Tactics to give D20 Bard-style party buffs out.  It also helps to scrutinize the equipment of Shadowrun and be familiar with what's out there. A lot of amazing things have little or no skill requirements.  For example: Directional Jammers let you shut down Smartguns with the push of a button rather than going through the bother of hacking them, and Flash Paks are amazing little toys that give a substantial debuff to the bad guys without much needed from you..technically you use the Throwing Weapons skill to place them where you want, but you usually don't need to place them exact on point.  In fact they work best if you toss them behind you where you're not looking in their direction but the people shooting at you must also look at the Flash Pak!

[Marcus]

Your build looks like the poster child for "Skill A is an epic trap". Your all over the place, and doing to much. I'd consider swapping skills with resources. You wanna skill monkey for real? Get skill wires and a subscription. Any skill in the game is one very quick download away.

When decking with a lower end deck the hot swap trick your best friend, you should get the qualities Over Clock, and Perfect Time. This method lets you, enhance a stat and hot swap a stat twice per turn. There a couple other qualities can improve this, but that's the core of the concept. This is generally done around sleaze, letting you just hide, hack and swap as the situation demands. 

Next you really need edge, so I'd consider going human.  For combat the old Cyberarm method can easily take care of all the combat you need. Pickup a well augmented cyber-arm, put a gun some extra armor and shock hand on it, and your will be solid 2nd string combatant.

[FST_Gemstar]

Shadowrun is a tough chargen system! You built a playable decker, but it could be finessed. 

Things to note as a decker: 

Edge: 
Many of your tests are opposed (variable threshold, but often high), and you often need series of successful opposed tests to do your task. This makes failure at any segment punishing, because it makes you at best, start over, or at worst, trigger security, get IC deployed against you, and just overall up the security threat of a job, etc.   

Because of this, having decent edge is recommended. There is just a lot of variation in Shadowrun action success, and it is easy to have a bad roll (either your own, your opposed roll, or both, and with deckers, several of them along the way of doing your job). Being able to reroll misses a few times can go a long way to avoiding problems.   

Decks: 
You were right not to pick the fanciest of decks. Decks don't make you a good decker, and a lot of the fancy decks are often unnecessary for the ability level of a fresh out of chargen decker. Because decks can be reconfigured, you really only have to worry about the highest two matrix attributes in a deck (or one if you have the Perfect Time quality). Any of the Device Rating 2 decks work fine for a starting decker, leaving more resources for other things. 

Skills A Issues: 
I'm not a Skills A hater, but if you really want to be a skills monkey, Skills B and higher attributes (natural or augmented) tend to go farther. It lets you be even better at your chosen specialty area, and have a higher baseline for your lower dicepool skills. A Logic 6( character is going to default on Logic tests with 7 die, while a Logic 5 character will have to invest 2 points in every logic skill to match those dice pools. The 6( character can get 1 point of a skill in play and that pool goes up to 9. This makes lower importance or low threshold only dicepools much easier to obtain across the board with limited farther investment. 

I'll also note that Skills A forces skill groups, often into your specialty areas, keeping you from more easily taking a specialty in those skills at chargen. You get characters that are generally ok at more things, but as a decker especially, you have to be really good at decking or you aren't much of a decker. So if going to keep skills A, I would probably NOT invest points in Cracking, because you are prob going to want hacking to be maxed with a specialty, and you many not even need any cybercombat. Park that group elsewhere (Stealth and Influence are common and useful choices). 

Qualities: 
The Overclocker/Perfect Time combo is a common (and albiet probably too cheaply priced) boon to deckers. Basically, it raises the top matrix attribute of your deck (ex. 5 to 6) and lets you configure your deck before and after you take a typical complex matrix action (Perfect Time gives you two free actions a turn instead of one). This lets you always be able to put your top matrix attribute where you want it and not really worry about the other ones. It is not required, but it is often hard to pass up. 

That all being said:

My preferred elf decker priority selection is: 

C Elf  (will give decent edge) 
D Attributes (Can get your Intuition/Logic high, everything else can be mediocre or less, and boosted further with 'ware if you want). 
E Mundane (keep it simple) 
B Skills (will get you excellent in everything you need to deck, and let you also cover more runner basics like sneaking, shooting, perceiving, talking, etc.)   
A Resources (When only buying a cheaper deck, you have a lot of extra money to 'ware up! Boost your logic, boost your intuition, get a super-agile cyber arm or muscle toners, etc.)   

You can switch Skills/Resources, but you may find that you actually have lower dicepools on many important things...

[Overbyte]

Just a quick note.
You should probably take Boosted Reflexes instead of Wired. Save you a bunch of money and Essence and is almost the same. You probably won't ever upgrade anyway.

[FST_Gemstar]

Just a quick note.
You should probably take Boosted Reflexes instead of Wired. Save you a bunch of money and Essence and is almost the same. You probably won't ever upgrade anyway.

i probably wouldn't take any at all. Without them, the character has a 5/6 chance of getting two passes. With the wired reflexes, they only get a ~1/6 chance of three passes. Deckers tend not have to worry about their physical initiative so much, and if they are basically always getting two passes without investment, that's fine. A simple Reaction Enhancer will do more for cheaper and less essence (ensuring 2 initiative passes)....

[Marcus]

Just a quick note.
You should probably take Boosted Reflexes instead of Wired. Save you a bunch of money and Essence and is almost the same. You probably won't ever upgrade anyway.

No.
Boosted is NPC thugs only. Wired is essence expensive but its one of very few things that has explicate language for stacking, wired ref + reaction enhancers is good times for everyone!