[Shudnawz]

So, this is my first attempt at a SR character. I have not really pinned the stats yet, so I will only supply the BG-story and the Qualities I have been considering. I'll add some notes at the bottom, check them out.
Also, this is translated from swedish using Google Translate (to make it quick) and then corrected for most obvious faults. Be nice. =)

Have at it!

EDIT
I thought I might explain the concept of the character...he's supposed to be the "go in guns blazing, come what may"-kinda guy. Hardtech is his prefered choice if given one, and he will hopefully be able to handle himself in a fight. The base is a mundane human, tho augmented w/ CW and maybe BW.
Perhaps I can even get some advice as to how to spend my BPs on stats? =)
/EDIT

Frank O'Doyle began life as any working-class kid, watched too much anime and action-sims. He grew up and attended college, while he naturally drank and partied a lot. He eventually became an industrial mechanic at ARES, and with it he became a fully-fledged corporate citizen. At the time he viewed ARES like a warm blanket to protect him against the vicious and cold world outside the mega-corp. As a 21-year-old he met Trace, and they married. Three years later he ran in on Trace with a colleague (Stephan Diego) in bed, and with female sneakiness she managed to divorce him with her honor intact. What Frank did not know was that Trace at the time was pregnant with his daughter who he never met or knew, because Trace argued that the child was Stephen's.

At 28, he met instead Joanna who he married two years later. They never had any children before a series of events was set in motion that toppled Frank's world, turning inside-out to his morals and ethics.

Joanna worked in another department within the ARES-subsidiary, but Frank was trying actively to get her transferred to the same as he was working on. The week before the transfer would go through there was an explosion caused by an "accident" on Joanna department. 13 people died, including Joanna. Frank blamed this on the security officer for the department, the routines for handling of combustible material being substandard, and confronted him publicly and physically a few days later. This ended with Frank getting fired, stripped of his corporate citizenship and SIN number, and was thrown out of ARES. He was now a zero. A SINless without a job, home or social benefits; a perfect starting point to focus on revenge.

Frank spent the next few months to grieve over his fate; he could not protect his wife and then lost everything in a futile attempt to get someone to admit responsibility for the incident. He begins to drink excessively and eventually becomes an alcoholic.

Rumors on the street said that the "accident" was actually an attack by shadowrunners hired by a rival mega-corp, but this could of course never be proven. Frank’s hatred began to grow towards the shadowrunners, but particularly towards the mega-corps of various kinds. These mega-monsters refuses to take responsibility for the common people according to Frank's new view of things, and above all he wants revenge on the head of security Jonas Hughes, who got his wife killed and him fired.

He obtains contacts in the underworld and begins to form himself into a vigilante, a champion of justice (however slightly disillusioned) in the image of his childhood anime and action heroes. He learns how to handle firearms and the Japanese culture's foremost symbol: the katana. He acquires a distinctive style with a dark leather coat and a wide brimmed hat and heavy boots.
With renewed confidence he gives chase to the smaller gangs who harass the neighborhood he has made his home. These offer some resistance, but Frank's "righteous anger" drives them back. He swears to never back out of a battle that could bring him closer to Hughes.

When he tries to take on larger opponents however, he is stumped and almost gets himself killed. He realizes that he needs assistance if he is to get on with his revenge.

Frank instead seeks out the runners, a necessary evil to get access to the manpower and money necessary to help him get to ARES and Hughes in particular. During a raid on MCT he is wounded severely, and a choice is made without his knowledge while he is in a coma; he must get a cyberware torso and right arm, as this was the only available parts at the moment. Frank wakes up to his new reality with the hatred of mega-corps burning even stronger: they have cost him his humanity.

It is now six years since Joanna died, and Frank has grinded to a halt in recent months. Is this I wonder the ride he needs to move forward in its campaign against the ARES and Hughes? Will he see his now 11-year-old daughter?


Frank's views on...
Mega-corps: they are a plague upon the earth and must be vanquished!
Magic: cool tricks that can be useful as a distraction before the big boys takes over.
Meta People: a sad bunch of mutant creatures, but they have some useful abilities. Elves, however, is a collection of tree hugging hippie-wannabes with a God complex.
Matrix: technology is... good ... but how the hell do you use it?
Shadowrunners: according to Frank, he is not one of them; he is driven by revenge while they "only care about money." An outsider would see him as the runner at any time. The power of perspective...


Qualities

Pos:
Ambidextrous
Photographic memory
Toughness
Tough as Nails 1

Neg:
Addiction; moderate (alcohol)
Big Regret (not being able to save his wife)
Lost Loved One (there is not much of a chance to see her again, but perhaps to get the people that did it, and find out who they really were)
Combat Monster
Computer Illiterate (was considering actually giving him the Gremlins Q, but that would be too harsh given that he will be using firearms a lot...)


Notes:

I'm not that sure about the postitive Q's, and was thinking about replacing one/some with Adrenaline Surge, but that is minor tweaking since the stats are not done yet.
Also, I will be giving hime some extra IPs, probably using Wired Reflexes (cheaper, but more essence-costly, yes?) and some augmentations in the CW-limbs.
A hidden CW holster in the torso (in a similar position to a shoulder holster, but hidden) is also planned.
Still, what about the char as a concept? Have I missed something vital in the world mechanics or concept? Then I'd be more than happy to be corrected on the matter. =)

[UmaroVI]

Ambidextrous is a super niche positive quality; it only helps you dual-wield. Dual wield is useful as a sometimes trick with very specific setups of ranged weapons; you can totally set this up as a heavily cyborged character, but you need to go to some effort to make it a useful ability and not silly, and even then it is a thing you only want to do sometimes. It is also useful for a heavily melee-focused character. If you don't plan to do either, you should drop it.

Photographic memory is crap, buy more stats instead.

Toughness is crap, buy more body (+1 to one type of body test... or +1 body, both are 10 points).

Tough as nails is similarly crap, buy more body. Also, if you have cyberlimbs, you'll have plenty of physical condition monitor; stun is more important if you're a heavily armored character anyways.

General concept:

So it sounds like you are leaning towards "full replacement" cyborg, or at least a torso and some limbs. This is totally doable, but it isn't completely straightforward. Check out this thread: http://forums.shadowrun4.com/index.php?topic=4383.0 for some discussion. The long and short of it:

Route A: bomb your Strength and Agility to 1, have low-ish body (you might want a little because having metal limbs doesn't make you resistant to poisons), replace your torso, both arms, and both legs with cyberlimbs, use Customize and Enhancements to have armor and crazy high stats on your cyberlimbs. The end result is you have someone who is pretty dangerous (because you can have an effective 9 agility for shooting people with no problem) and extremely hard to hurt with physical attacks, but it eats up your essence and cash fast.

If you go this route, you do NOT want wired reflexes because you won't have the space; you want to either use drugs (cram or jazz) for extra IPs, or use Synaptic Boosters.

Route B: Get just the torso and arm, or at least just that for now. This is known as the Cyberlimb of Awesome approach. The idea is you have a 9 strength/ agility on that one arm, and you use one-handed weapons to kill people, so that you use that arm's 9 strength/agility. This lets you have low natural strength and agility scores and still be a serious threat in a fight, and leaves you with more points to spend on other stuff. Totally doable.

On the katanas: katanas are not very good weapons, you are better off using guns and cyberspurs, because guns do more damage and cyberspurs are concealable. That said I understand the appeal of katanas and you can certainly be effective with them.

I'm not sure how much you see melee versus range combat being a major thing for this character. If you plan to be serious about melee, and do it a lot, Ambidexterity is worth it because the two-weapon fighting manuever that lets you attack and full defense in melee at the same time is super awesome.

[Shudnawz]

UmaroVI

Thx, that's exactly the kind of hands-on advice I need to get a grip on the concepts and possible routes to take down the winding road of char-gen.

I think I'll go for the B approach, since my char's personality won't really allow for more voulontary CW shopping just yet.
Having read some of the weapon stats in the Core book, I do realise that katanas are not the most awesome weapon of doom statwise, but as with the CW, it's all down to character, baby.

If I know my GM, he'd rather try to keep me alive for keeping true to my character concept than maxing out the stats and being a total killing machine de luxe. =)

Regarding the Qualities, I'll most likely do a full rewrite of the Positives as I get closer to finishing the stats and CW-adds. The Negs though, I feel capture the essence of my chars difficulties. As a matter of fact, I'd like to have some more... =P

[UmaroVI]

OK. So let me give you a little more advice. I would suggest going with Automatics and Blades; with Automatics, use one-handed weapons: SMGs and Machine Pistols. You really, really want a Cyberarm Gyromount; it is very helpful for getting good use out of Automatics. I'd suggest the following configuration at chargen:

Torso: no customization (availability 12 already  )
Slots: 2 Armor [4 slots], 4 body [4 slots], and upgrade to 3 armor later (it is annoyingly Availability 15, but only 900Y).

Arm: customize for +2 body, +3 agility, +3 strength (expensive, but good)
Slot for Cyberarm Gyromount [4], 3 agility [3], 3 strength [3], 1 body [1], 2 Armor [4] for now.

As soon as you can, get Armor 3 for the torso, and trade out the Armor 2 in the arm for a Cyber Machine Pistol. This is largely just better than the cyberarm gun slide; it can't be disarmed or anything, and it takes up less space; it's also a machine pistol. You'll want to use the Arsenal rules to mod the machine pistol; it can't take accessories but you can still mod on stuff; I recommend Gas-Vent 3 [2 mod slots], Firing Selection Change (Full Auto) [1 mod slot], and combined with the 9 Strength in that arm, you'll have 9 recoil compensation which is enough to full-auto people with it.

For weapons you hold, I recommend the Ingram Smartgun X, because it is Restricted (thus you can get a license for it) and generally pretty good and cheap; it comes with a smartgun, a sound suppressor, and enough recoil compensation between your arm and its own stuff that you can long burst/short burst with no penalty which is nice. I also recommend you own a FN P-93 Praetor, getting the model with Electronic Firing. Add on a Gas-Vent 3 system accessory and an external smartgun system. Slap on a stock and you have recoil compensation 1 (inherent to the gun)+1(electronic firing) + 3 (gas vent) + 1 (stock) + 3 (gyromount) +2 (strength 9) for 11. Then you mod it for High Velocity fire. Throw on Chameleon Coating and Extended Clip mods if you want as well. This gives you a really nice SMG for killing people with.

BRB for melee advice.

[UmaroVI]

Actually let me go to 'ware. Torso is 1.5 essence, Arm is 1. You could also get Wired Reflexes 2 but that leaves you without room for Reaction Enhancers or much of anything else; you might also go with Restricted Gear plus Move By Wire 2. I could see the following as all reasonable options depending on where you want to go:

Start with Synaptic Boosters 1, upgrade to 3 after saving up enough money in your piggy bank. This has the advantage of letting you jam in a LOT more of the other nice ware like trauma damper, reflex recorders, synthacardium, etc. It will also let you get more cyberlimbs later. But you'll start with 2 IPs, not 3.

Start with Wired Reflexes 2, upgrade to Synaptic Booster 3 after saving up. Cheaper to start, and you begin with 3 IPs, but you will "stall" on 'ware upgrades until you can afford Synaptic Boosters 3.

Restricted Gear + Move By Wire 2. This means you are not going to get much other cyberware; you'll still have room for a little bioware, but not a lot of room. Also eats a Restricted Gear. However, you don't have the above problem of needing to save up a lot for a big-ticket item, you can instead do stuff like get yourself a nicer Alphaware torso, for example.

I would go with Option 2, myself, but YMMV, depends on how much you value power now versus power later.

Now, melee. You will want Blades obviously. Don't get Dodge, instead get Gymnastics - you can boost it with Synthacardium.

You want to jealously hoard your positive qualities for Martial Arts, because they are really good. You have 2 "paths" you can choose:

1) Balanced path. This prioritizes stuff that helps both melee and range combat and is helpful against almost all opponents almost all of the time.
Get Pentjak-Silat (+1 to Called Shots for extra DV), Wildcat (+1 to Called Shots for extra DV), Sangre Y Arroco (+1 Blades DV), Arnis de Mano (+1 Blades DV). If you want, you can grab Kung Fu for +1 to parry defense tests.

For manuevers, definitely grab Finishing Move, Iaijutsu (note that you can draw a FA firearm and shoot a Full Burst as a single complex action!), Off-Hand Training (better than Ambidexterity because it's 3 points only, and does the same thing for most purposes), Riposte, and Two-Weapon Style.

What this is for: fight with a gun in your cyberarm and a katana in your offhand. If something tries to melee you, you still get your full Parry to your melee defense. Against people who try to melee you, you can fight with two katanas, which in addition to looking awesome lets you hit people for about 10P a shot and also get Reaction + Blades + Blades as defense against all melee attacks. You can also blow Interrupt actions with Riposte and Finishing Move to kill people really fast. The Pentjak-Silat and Wildcat manuevers allow you to make Called Shots at +2 to hit; this means you can go from +1 to hit and +1 DV (by taking a -1/+1 called shot) up to -2 to hit and +4 DV. It works both in melee AND at range which is very nice.

Generally speaking, your offense is better with your gun, but when people try to melee you, you can maintain very good melee defense and also good offense with dual wield katanas. Quite a lot of monsters are melee machines (a lot of paracritters and several spirit types) so this is actually pretty useful.

2) Disarm path. Grab Arnis de Mano 3 (Damaging disarm, +1 Blades DV, +1 with called shots to Disarm), Krav Maga (+1 with called shots to disarm), Sangre Y Arroco (+1 Blades DV), Kung Fu (+1 parry), Karate (+1 Full Parry). Take the manuevers Disarm, Finishing Move, Iaijutsu, Off-hand Training, Riposte, and Two-Weapon Style.

How it works: doesn't help you fight at range, but you can cause people some serious problems in melee. Against people who try to attack you with weapons, you use the Disarm manuever to do a wierd full parry disarm thing, if you succeed, you disarm them, deal damage, and you also parried them, so if they don't die you can Riposte them. Against people who are meleeing you without weapons, you use Two-Weapon Style as above for offense/defense combo. Against people who are using ranged weapons, you use the Called Shot to disarm with Two-Weapon Style, and if you succeed you disarm them, do damage, and then if they aren't down follow up with Finishing Move.

This overall is less good when you are at long range, but it gives you an advantage against gun users in close-quarters fighting because lots of gunfighters don't have a good counter to being Disarmed.

[UmaroVI]

Also, you should probably not just own Katanas. Own a cane sword and some small concealable blades; you should try to always have a blade in your offhand so you can Parry people who try to melee you.

[Shadowjack]

I also recommend a cyberarm gyromount. This is a really discreet way to carry one without lugging a giant harness around in public. I really advise having 1 agility, 1 strength and 1 body and relying on cyberware attributes instead.

[Shudnawz]

Mucho arigatō, mr Dudes (or ms Dudette/mrs Dudemeister for that matter)!

I now realise that I have mostly been overlooking the whole CW augmentation-side of things (silly, really).
Although, I have to ask...are there no ill effects as to having 1 in a bunch of stats (str, agi, bod)? I think I saw somewhere that stun grenades and teargas is rolled against your own bio-body, so that will leave me as vounerable as a schoolgirl to those types of attack? Measures to take against that?

EDIT:
This is giving me a headache... using the arm example up above, I figure that a std CW-limb has 3 str, 3 agi and 3 body for starters. Then we apply 3 agi via customizing (up to 6 now) and then 3 more agi via addons using slots. This brings us to 9, but I shouldn't go lower than 1 agi in my base stats, which combined gives me a total of 10, but as a human, I can't go above 9 in any augmented stats (except edge). Does the base of 1 not count when counting augmented stats?

In the words of Doc Hudson in Disney's Cars:
"Hey, was that floating like a Cadillac, or was that stinging like a beemer? I'm confused." XD

[UmaroVI]

The way that cyberlimbs work is that they replace your base statistics for some purposes, and average in with others.

So for Agility, you can use a 9 agility when doing stuff involving only your cyberarm - such as using one-handed weapons. And this is true regardless of what your base Agility score is. Your base agility factors into Infiltration, Gymnastics checks, etc, so you probably don't want a 1 agility; maybe a 2-3, depending on how much you care about those skills.

For Strength, similarly, you use 9 strength when doing stuff involving only your cyberarm. You probably don't want a 1 strength either, but you should probably do fine with a 2-3 "real" strength score, again, because it's only useful for a few skills otherwise.

Body, on the other hand, you primarily care about your average body score, because that's what determines things like how many condition monitor boxes you have and how much Armor you can wear. So, say you get those 2 limbs above. The arm has 6 body and the torso is 7. Let's say you yourself have a 4 body (this is what I'd recommend).

Then your Body scores are:
Left arm 4
Right arm 6
Torso 7
Right leg 4
Left leg 4
Add them all up and you get 25, divide by 5 and you get 5. So your "averaged" body is 5, and you use this most of the time; you'd still use 4 for some stuff, like poisons.

Now, if you had ALL your limbs replaced with cyber, your "natural" score wouldn't factor into the above averaging, and you'd be using your cyberlimbs do to stuff like run and climb, so you could safely have 1 strength and 1 agility and not care at all. I'm basing my advice around just a torso and an arm.

[Shadowjack]

I'd just like to add: There is something very satisfying about having a cyber torso Hydraulic jacks are really cool too but I chose not to take them this time as they don't fit my character. But I plan to take them on a future character for sure.

[Shudnawz]

Alright, here we are with my first draft at the stats and skills:

Now, the point is that he will be able to use martial arts for much of the sword fighting; riposte/finishing move-combo, iaijutsu+KM advantage to ready both swords and strike with one in a single IP, two weapon style to full defense and still strike (possibly invoking finishing move). Also, I'm currently engaged in a discussion with my GM (who's also new to the system) to be able to use two weapon style for one sword (used for full out parry) and then a semi-auto pistol to engage another target at some range (of course with a -2 mod for multiple targets). Using my 2x firefight advantage, that would leave me just -3 dice rather than -5 and not being able to do a full out parry. Thoughts?

The choice of pistols is not really made yet, but given that I have 9 STR I should be able to cope with the RC without any other enhancers on the 2066, yes?
Also, the thought has crossed my mind to skip the mad STR in my CW-limbs and not use pistols that has a RC, but that would leave me without any proper damage if cought empty-handed.

I have also picked Judas instead of a moderate addiction (he'll still be drinking heavily though ;) ) for a nice plot twist, beginning at the time he was mauled at the MCT-strike (that gave him the CW-limbs). Bwaha!

Body: 4 (5)
Agility: 2 (9)
Reaction: 6 (8)
Strength: 2 (9)
Charisma: 2
Intuition: 4
Logic: 1
Willpower: 4

Edge: 4
Initiative: 12
Essence: 0,3

Active Skills
Blades (Swords) : 6
Pistols (Semi-Automatics) : 4
First Aid : 3
Dodge (Ranged Combat) : 4
Climbing : 2
Inflitration : 2
Perception (Visual) : 4
Survival (Urban) : 2
Tracking (Urban) : 1
Automatics : 1

Positive Qualities
Martial Arts 4
 - Advantages: SYA (+1 DV blades(swords)), KM (Ready weapon as a free action), Firefight x2 (+1 attacker in melee diff mod)
 - Maneuvers: Finishing move, Iaijutsu, Off-hand training (swords), Riposte, Two weapon style
Adrenaline Surge

Negative Qualities
Big Regret
Lost Loved One
Combat Monster
Computer Illiterate
Judas

Cyberwares
Wired Reflexes (Rating 2)
Obvious Torso
+ Armor (Rating 2)
+ Body (Rating 4)
Obvious Full Arm
+ + Body (Rating 2)
+ + Strength (Rating 3)
+ + Agility (Rating 3)
+ Agility (Rating 3)
+ Armor (Rating 2)
+ Body (Rating 1)
+ Strength (Rating 3)
Obvious Full Arm
+ + Body (Rating 2)
+ + Strength (Rating 3)
+ + Agility (Rating 3)
+ Agility (Rating 3)
+ Strength (Rating 3)
+ Body (Rating 1)
+ Armor (Rating 2)

Weapons
Katana
Katana
Colt Government 2066
Hidden Gun Arm Slide
Silencer
Colt Government 2066
Hidden Gun Arm Slide
Silencer


Please, feel free to correct my ignorances. :D

[UmaroVI]

Generally, the best pistols are the Ruger Thunderbolt for lethal ammo (because it has high base DV/AP, innate burst-fire, and can get enough RC to do 2 short bursts) and the Yamaha Sakura Fubuki for Stick-n-shock (much like the Ruger, but it trades some base DV - which doesn't matter for SnS - for better concealability and a bigger clip). Speciality guns include the Morissey Elan (get past MAD), the Ruger Super Warhawk or Eichiro Hatamoto (for destroying drones/vehicles; load with APDS), and tasers (because they are legal). Iaijutsu/KM lets you pull off the amusing trick of carrying several Eichiros or Defiance EX Shockers and firing, dropping the weapon, Iaijatsu-ing a new one, and firing the new one.

[UmaroVI]

I think that, as written, you cannot use Two-Weapon Fighting unless you have 2 melee weapons. Your GM might allow gun and sword TWF, though.

[Shudnawz]

UmaroVI:

Yeah, we're probably going to solve it by making it "specific", i.e. I have to buy it once for melee+melee and then another time for melee+ranged. That won't make it too twinked I hope, as it doubles the BP-cost.
Also there has been some debate as to how much you can stack riposte and finishing move, but according to our latest understanding of the combat turn/IP rules, you can "borrow" actions with interrupt actions as many times as you want in one combat turn (given multiple IP's), but only the first action in the next combat turn. Is this somewhat correct?

There were a few discussions concerning the way armor works in Called Shot, specifically where you aim to bypass the armor. We were a bit confused how this works in practice with CW-armor stacking with regular armor to provide a bigger chunk of dice to be removed from the attackers pool. My char can have about 16 armor all-in-all if he's to avoid any encumberance, and a random dude would have about 13 dice to attack with a pistol. Given that my CW-armor is located in my torso and arms, and the extra 10 would be some kind of vest (just for consideration) that would leave the area of the legs and head totally unprotected. Statistically that would leave an attacker about 35% chance to hit, based on area of target unprotected, but in my example, he simply would not hit at all (or at least not be able to miss the parts protected by armor). Also, if I were to remove the armor vest, I'd still have armor on my torso, but the difficulty would be reduced by 10.
The rules specifically say "target an area unproteced by armor", which makes my GM think that it is the area covered that should be essential, not the amount of armor in any one place.

[UmaroVI]

Yep, that's how it works - you can borrow up through the first IP of the next turn.

Shadowrun armor is really, really abstract and it unfortunately makes for some wierdness with the called shot rules. You cannot shoot to bypass part of someone's armor - you either bypass all of it, and take a penalty equal to their total armor, or none of it. And yeah, wearing 16 armor on your arms and torso makes it harder to shoot your head than wearing 6 armor on your arms and torso. It doesn't really make any sense, but it's not really fixable without lighting Shadowrun's combat and equipment system on fire and starting from scratch.