[RonyoStorm]

Been doing some work on coming up with a sniper build for a new game a friend of mine is working on. Now he has some of the old 3rd edition stuff and is thinking of going that way. I was just looking for some ideas for a 3rd and 4th edition sniper build. Looking to be covering my team when I can but able to set-up quickly for the critical shot. Thinking melee for close quarters but I could go heavy pistol or twin pistols as well. Like I said its all still being worked out just looking for some friendly and helpful insight.

[UmaroVI]

I can't offer any useful advice about 3rd, but about 4th:

"Sniper" should be something you can do, not your role on a team; there are a lot of times when having a sniper is simply not useful so you should be able to do useful stuff aside from snipe. Luckily, it is easy to be good at other things.

In 4th, Longarms are not the way to snipe, which is deceptive because you would think you want to snipe with a sniper rifle. You actually want to snipe with an assault cannon (Heavy Weapons) or possibly a Battle Rifle (Automatics).

Check my sig and look at the Ghost for an example of a sniping-capable runner.

[Neurosis]

I tentatively disagree that Sniper cannot be a valid role.

Also, even if maybe you can eke out a few more DV with an assault cannon or battle rifle, sniper rifles remain a very strong choice.

[baronspam]

Question about the longarms sniper.  Is the objection just that the skill is too situational to justify a high build point investment, and that "sniping"with a weapon covered by automatics or heavy weaopons is a more effective use of the skills?  Just at first glance an 8P -3AP weapon with the best ranged modifiers doesn't seem like a bad way to go.

I agree that being a "sniper" is a limited role.  Many situations don't call for long distance shooting.  Its nice to have someone in the group that can do this for when it comes up but as a character's primary focus its limited.  Its hard to use in a street fight, and many times you don't have the luxury of picking and preping a location and laying for someone.

[RonyoStorm]

Like I said I'm waiting to hear more about the story from my friend but Even someone who can switch to say an assault rifle and still get the range helps to thin out numbers before they reach the dps and tank. Having the long range skills also helps in situational awareness and your aim should only improve the closer you get.

I looked at the heavy weapons, those are some serious hitters and also on the high side of a thick wallet. I'm not sure I would have the bank roll to even purchase one of those weapons to start. A good sniper rifle, even just a modern style idea would be great for cover fire, and also if its semi0auto its good for normal encounter I would think.

What stats and specs would you anyone else here go with for the role then? I got some basics but I find getting a general overview helps to see what trends and best ideas are.

[baronspam]

For any physical combat agility is absolutly key.  I would consider softcaping it (meaning taking it at your metatype max-1), getting a quality called Restricted Gear (this is in Runner's companion, costs 5 BP, can be taken up to3 times, and lets you get an item of up to availablity 20.) and taking Muscle Toner 4 under bioware.  This will give you an  agility of 9 on average, depending on the metatype you are playing.

If you are going in on sniper rifle the skill is longarms, and you can specialize in sniper rifles.  Longarms 6(sniper rifle+2) costs 26 build points.   With a smartllink you  have 19 dice with a sniper rilfe.  In many circumstances it would be reasonable to take aim and do a called shot at -4 to your dice pool with +4 to damage value.  That leaves you with 15 dices and a weapon that is either 11 or 12 P -3 AP. 

I don't know the guns in the Aresenal book off the top of my head, but there are two Sniper Rifles in SR4A.  The Walther MA-2100 has one lower damage value, and can not be broken down in a suit case, but doesn't have fussy issues in close combat and doesn't require another restricted gear quality to buy.

The Ranger Arms SM-4 hits a little harder and can be broken down into a case, but it has an availablity of 16F, meaning its another Restricted Gear quality at char gen if you want it.  It is also more expensive.  On of the downside of sniper rifles is that they are rated F instead of R, so you can't get a permit, even a fake one, for them, and unless  you have a briefcase model they can be hard to move around in secure areas. Of course same applies to assault cannons, however, perhaps even more so.

Supporting skills will likely be things like Infiltration (the basic stealth skill in 4th ed) and some way to fight in medium to close range.  One of the nice things about a very high agility is that with even moderate weapon skills you can end up with a fair dice pool on things, even if its not "the best" with minimal skill points.  Try to get a decent reaction for defence, and maybe dodge.  If you stay away from melee skills you don't have to worry about much strength, or if you grab a melee skill go unarmed and get a set of shock gloves.  Perception is useful for all characters.

Depending on character backstory, if he learned to sniple in the military you would probably have some outdoor skills, but talk to the GM (are you the GM?) about how often this will be useful.  In some campaigns you need a survival/tracking/navigation guy, in others you never see the city limits of Seattle.  Make sure if he drops some points here the GM will give you some chances to use it and it doesn't end up being 30 build points of  flavor.

Be sure to get an extra initiative pass or two, via wired reflexes (the cheapest), synaptic booster (bioware, very expensive nuyen wise but low essence and hard to detect) or move by wire (the cadilac version of wired reflexes). 

Note all of this assumes you are going with heavy augmentation and are not an adept.

[Thermo]

One thing to keep in mind is that going all-in on Longarms can be a very effective skill choice, in that you'll be proficient in both sniper rifles as well as shotguns. Sniper rifles are all Forbidden, but none of the shotguns are over Restricted, and only one shotgun in the whole game has an availability over 12. And it's a fully-automatic shotgun! Going for the Longarms route with both sniper rifles and shotguns gives you the long-range covering fire as well as the room-to-room combat ability of Automatics.

[UmaroVI]

Sniper Rifles are bad because they are unconcealable (like Assault Cannons), Forbidden (like Assault Cannons), have the same range as assault cannons, and do less damage than assault cannons.

Shotguns are bad because so many of the useful gun mods can't be installed on them, so they fill the niche of "like assault rifles, but less concealable and worse."

Going all-in on Longarms is not a good plan, at all, because this leaves you with no not-terrible option for times when you need a concealable weapon. If you want to go all-in on a weapons skill, it should either be Pistols or Automatics.

[Critias]

Unless, of course, you're a guy that's designed around using a Sniper Rifle instead of an Assault Cannon.  Like, y'know, a sniper.

[baronspam]

Sniper Rifles are bad because they are unconcealable (like Assault Cannons), Forbidden (like Assault Cannons), have the same range as assault cannons, and do less damage than assault cannons.

Shotguns are bad because so many of the useful gun mods can't be installed on them, so they fill the niche of "like assault rifles, but less concealable and worse."

Going all-in on Longarms is not a good plan, at all, because this leaves you with no not-terrible option for times when you need a concealable weapon. If you want to go all-in on a weapons skill, it should either be Pistols or Automatics.

I don't think I would call a weapon designed to be broken down and hidden in a brief case not concealable, and sniper rifles do in fact have better range, having 50 meters on the assualt cannon at every range band excepet extreeme.

I am also not sure what the close range combat option for Heavy Weapons is, other than assault cannon to the face, so sniper rife to the face should be just as viable. (although there are some models that suffer possible penaties in close combat, but not all do.)

The assault cannon does hit harder.

As earlier, I did and do agree that if you make sniping your primary option then you are taking on a somewhat limited role, there will be many situations where it just doesn't help.  But if thats where you want to put your points I am not sure that longarms is really all that worse of a buy than heavy weapons.  There seem to be advantages and disadvantages each way.  For the times that you do need to descretly get a long range weapon somewhere a briefcase sniper rifle will be much, much easier to smuggle into a location that a Panther.  I don't know that I would take either heavy weapons or longarms as my 6 skill if I was making a firearms expert, but I don't think its terrible if you do.

I do agree that shotguns sound cool but really are not the way to go.  Except in the very rare situation where  you are fighting mobs of unarmored mooks and you want to clean house with a full auto shotgun, you are probably better off with an automatic, and even then I think a well kitted assault rifle would likely serve better.

Please note, all of this discussion is really from an optimization point of view.  In a more casual campaign you can go with whatever and its playable.  Just make sure you have a good sense from the GM what the expected power level is.  Sometimes you need optimized to keep up, sometimes if you show up with optimized they tell you to tone it down.

[kirk]

A possibility is to reconsider what a sniper is in "reality", and see if that can be integrated.

A sniper is, of course, a long range marksman par excellence. However, a marksman is also a superb recon specialist. That's infiltration and the ability to hide in plain sight. It's a score of tactical investigation tasks (which includes the ability to analyze and determine what matters) and the ability and skill to communicate the key elements back to the people who know.

I'll also point out that while the sniper is capable of the long range shot, what she REALLY practices is getting to the place where she can place the shot that matters when it matters. In some cases that means getting to ranges approaching point blank. While the sniper rifle is still the preferred weapon, in a few cases the range and the conditions require another weapon.

Just points to consider. But that's "reality" and not SR, so it may not work for you.

[UmaroVI]

Sniper rifles do have marginally better range up till extreme, but if you are a sniper you don't care because you can use vision enhancement, and thus only care about extreme.

For non-sniping with heavy weapons, machine guns. They are quite good. They also give you the long-range and concealable grenade launcher pistol.

You can mod the briefcase-breakdown thing onto an assault cannon. It is marginally more expensive (if you want to be cheap, an Ares Vigorous Assault Cannon with powered breakdown and modded to be SA is 8500Y, a Ranger Arms SM-4 (the only sniper rifle with the powered breakdown built-in) is 6200. I'm willing to pay 2300Y more for a weapon that gives me an extra +2 DV and -3 AP, and assembles in 2/3 the time if you care about that. If you want good, and are willing to spare no expense, you can even modify a gauss rifle with powered breakdown although that is going to run you nearly 30000Y.

[UmaroVI]

Kirk's advice is also good. The way that the skillsets work, you can be someone like the Ghost who is good at sneaking into places, spotting, sniping, and closer-in range combat pretty handily, because all of these things depend on Agility and Intuition. This makes you someone who can snipe, but who isn't at all ineffective when the situation does not call for sniping - which, let's face it, a lot of shadowruns do not.

[Cass100199]

Also, something to think about, what is your background? Are you envisioning a former spec ops guy? If so, while a lot of them are sniper qualified and can perform in that role, those guys tend to have evolved beyond that and are bad juju with any weapon. If you're thinking "sniper" that tends to be a more defined, conventional combat role.

[baronspam]

While I admit that heavy weapons have advantages, but if your close combat option is busting out a man portable full machine gun I think you have slipped a bit more to the pink mohawk side of the street that I usually go.  Unless you are in zero zone, a feral city, or a full on combat run where subtle be damed and we are going to make some noise, this type of hardware brings swat teams in v-stal assault craft.  You can't hide a Ma-Deuce under a trench coat, troll or no troll.  And I think a Panther Cannon would be more suitcase portable the briefcase portable considering the size of the thing.

I will say I do agree very much with both Kirk and Your assesment of how to build a good sniper character.  Make sniping something the character can do, but perhaps not the only thing the character is about.  Infiltration is always useful.  Percpetion is always useful.  In some campaigns you may need someone with outdoor skills.  Military training could include demolitions, first aid, etc, as secondary skill sets.