[UmaroVI]

Augmentation, Arsenal, Unwired, Street Magic, and Runner's Companion are all good, although you should think carefully before allowing some of the alternate character concepts in Runner's Companion.

Attitude and Spy Games are mostly fluff of mediocre quality and also have some items, a few of which are neat.

Digital Grimoire, Gun Heaven, MilSpecTech, and This Old Drone all have a few nifty things each, mixed in with fair amounts of cruft.

Way of the Adept is "Adepts, we're so sorry, please forgive us for making you suck, please accept this power boost disguised as a quality."

You can read my full-length review of "WAR!" here, and in all seriousness I recommend using the rules for milspec programs and commlinks so hackers have long-term upgrade options to wish for. It also has a few other neat things and a whooooole lot of borked stuff.

[baronspam]

, although you should think carefully before allowing some of the alternate character concepts in Runner's Companion.

 

Word.  It takes a very special campaign to make a Sasquatch turned ghoul turned cyberzombie work as a player character.  On the other hand, if you want to stat out some npcs or build infected to pc standards, its a neat book.  I also think the changelings are far less game breaking than some of the other crazy stuff.

[Critias]

Honestly, for a newish group and a newish GM (with varying levels of newishness based on edition), Runner's Toolkit is probably your best next purchase. 

[PMC Scholar]

Thanks for the feedback so far gentlemen.   I think I may have dragged the thread a little off topic but input on what books are worth getting is definitely appreciated.  It looks like Runner's Companion and Unwired are probably going to be my next purchases

More on Topic I'm pretty much responsible for making the other player's characters for my group as they don't have access to the rulebook at the moment.  This is because we will be playing online by post with some Skype sessions thrown in if we can find the time.   One of my players is really into hacking after playing Dues Ex so I put together a troll combat hacker for him (hence why Unwired might be a good buy).  My other player is probably going to go with an adept face man who is addicted to Novacoke and uses a laser pistol and monowire whip built into his hand.  I'll probably post these characters up here later once I write them up on the computer along with a sniper I made. 

I looked at some of the character Ideas posted elsewhere on the forum and the characters I've made seem to hold up pretty well but I can't really know for sure until we start playing and I can get a better idea of what the quirks of the system are. 

[PMC Scholar]

Ok here goes the writeup for the Troll combat hacker I put together.  The basic idea for this guy is he's ex military and was trained to be technical support for field troops by providing front line EW capability.  That's why he has combat training and a bunch of offensive cyberwear.  It's also why he is a SINer as he just got out of the military and is trying to find out what happened to an old high school buddy who recently died under mysterious circumstances.   He is a standard 400BP  build.

Race: troll (40bp)
Codeslinger (Hack on the fly; 10bp), Codeblock (Medic; +5bp), SINer (+5bp)

Attributes: 190bp
Bod: 6  Agi: 4(6)  Rea: 3(6)  Str: 6{8}  Cha: 3  Int: 4  Log: 4(7)  Wil: 3  Edge: 3

Skills:  132bp (I may be off by 10bp; I added up everything from my notes and came up with 10 bp so I dumped them here.  Only place I think I could have lost them was in gear.)  Electronics Skill Group: 3, Close Combat Skill Group: 2, Firearms Skill Group: 3, Cracking Skill Group: 4, Perception: 1 (Visual 3), First Aid (Combat Wounds 3)

Gear: 28bp (140,000)
Cyberwear/Biowear: Rating 3 Cerebral Booster, Wired Reflexes 1, Reaction Enhancers 2, Alphawear Muscle Replacement 2, Datajack.
Computer stuff: Transys Avalon commlink w/HotSIM module and subvocal mic (response 4, signal4) with custom OS running Firewall 6, System 6, Analyze 5, Browse 5, command 5, edit 3, encrypt 5, reality filter 5, blackhammer 3, armor 3, biofeedback filter 3, attack 5, defuse 3, track 3, exploit 6, data bomb 3, ECCM 3, decrypt 3, spoof 6, sniffer 3, stealth 3.
Other Gear:  Extendable Baton, Ingram Smartgun X w/ quickdraw holster, 300 EX-Explosive rounds, 300 normal rounds, 10 extra clips and lvl 6 fake license, armor jacket, rating 3 area jammer, rating 6 fake license for wired reflexes, glasses w/ flare compensation rating 3 vision enhancement, imagelink and smartlink,10 frag grenades and 5 thermal smoke grenades, 1 month low lifestyle

Contacts: 10bp.  Haven't decided what to do with these yet.

The main thing I'm worried about is this guy being a decent hacker as I haven't gone over the new hacking rules too carefully.  I've envisioned him as a brute force over technique sort; hence why he is incompetent at medic.  The idea is he busts in the front door of the enemy comm network, crashes it, then shoots them all in the face while they are trying to figure out what happened to their computers.  He's a troll because it's a cheap way to be tough and enemies shouldn't expect "the dumb troll" to be the computer expert.

[UmaroVI]

The troll combat hacker is pretty similar to the troll combat hacker from the Archetypes (see my sig), I'm not sure you saw that already and used it as a starting point or not. If not, take a look.

It looks like you are intentionally going for a slightly lower level of power (such as by taking Firearms and Close Combat rather than just one skill from each, and having high Logic), which is good if this guy is supposed to be hanging out with an unaugmented mundane character. I will suggest that if you are concerned about his actual ability to hack, you should replace the Cerebral Boosters with PuSHeD and Encephalon from Augmentation, if you have that, since Cerebral Boosters don't help you hack whereas those things do.

Program ratings are capped by System, and System is capped by Response. You need Response 6 to run all those high-rating programs. Also, you have to upgrade Firewall and System (thus they are limited to upgrades of 2 more than the OS you need to buy).

You will save your player endless annoyance if you just have programs at 6 or 3.

Stealth 3 is a terrible idea, that is probably the most important program for hacking. Common use programs are so cheap you really should have them at 6.

[PMC Scholar]

Unfortunately the only books I have are the main rulebook and arsenal right now  .  Umaro, I saw what you had put together but unfortunately since I didn't have all your sources  I tried what I could with the base book.  The info on programs should be handy and the advice on stealth is just the sort of thing I'm looking for though. 

Looking back through the hacking rules attributes don't seem to figure into it all all (Which seems a bit odd).  Time to dump the cerebral boosters for more combat cyberwear then in lou of gear from augmentation.   Also time to go back and read the fine print on putting a computer together and get one that actually works...........