[CitizenJoe]

Whatever you do, do NOT use different generation builds. Inequality online = raging.

You know what?  Screw that.  Make things intentionally imbalanced on a build point perspective, but then lump additional responsibilities on the 'better' characters.  Let the players know that and turn them loose with whatever build they want.    Then take the worst offender, straight out of character creation and have him promoted out of the team.     When they complain, and they will, ask them where it says life plays fair.

[bangbangtequila]

You know what?  Screw that.  Make things intentionally imbalanced on a build point perspective, but then lump additional responsibilities on the 'better' characters.  Let the players know that and turn them loose with whatever build they want.    Then take the worst offender, straight out of character creation and have him promoted out of the team.     When they complain, and they will, ask them where it says life plays fair.

This does another excellent job of illustrating GMing 101: Don't be a kid with a magnifying glass. Here's the skinny, and listen up everyone.
The reason you want to make things fair and balanced, having everyone use the same rules and be subjected to the same scrutiny and be damned sure that you don't have to veto things, is because slapping players down and tricking them into slipping up is not what the game is about. If you have to slap someone down, it isn't the fun part for you, it isn't the fun part for him, and really, it just makes the whole damn exercise feel more like work then what i like to do on my days off.

Any roleplaying game is about every party involved having fun. When it comes to a GM, I find the best ones are the ones who want to tell a good story and have a good time with some mates. Not the ones who can surprise us with a TPK courtesy of an aerial drone raid because the kid who saw a masked figure 500 meters away happened to be Errant's son, or who gets my gunslinger killed in a quickdraw duel for assuming he's the best, when he has a 22 dicepool for his revolver.

I think players should be allowed to be the best at things, not just arbitrarily one-upped because you think they're fishy. This brings me back to the Power Value. With karma, it isn't that you're less able to be good at things, since you're just as able to excel under both systems, it's that that rating 7 skill costs a lot more then 7 rating one skills, which means he sacrificed a huge number of lower ranking skills just to be damned good at that one thing.

Definitely allow Initiation and Submersion. Submersion is my favourite, allowing me to take a technomancer, and make him into a gunslinger who can also be one hell of a bad ass!

[CitizenJoe]

Please note that I did not whack the best guy, I promoted him.  Yes, it effectively pulled him out of the game, but if he's going to play someone significantly more powerful than the rest of the group, he's going to be stepping on toes anyway.  And you can be way out of balance using the same point buy system that everyone else does.

Note also that this is a very passive aggressive way of dealing with problem players (and can be used against GMs too).  For example, if you've just made up a character, and really aren't invested in it, you can intentionally walk into a TPK and get wiped out in the first 5 minutes, then go catch a movie, or start a video game or something.  The real loser in that contest is the person that invested the most amount of work into the game, usually the GM. 

Never mind all that.  Take a group of people with different skills and there will be inequity.  The real way to make it fair is for every PLAYER to invest the same amount of care into their characters and each PLAYER is given an equal amount of time to shine.  That guy that makes the same character over and over again really isn't invested in that character and deckers (and to a lesser extent, faces) are spotlight hogs.

[All4BigGuns]

  That guy that makes the same character over and over again really isn't invested in that character and deckers (and to a lesser extent, faces) are spotlight hogs.

Or they're so invested in the character that they keep trying to play the character because of how often games die out in their group (I've personally experienced this one).

As to the second part of this statement, yeah, Faces are by definition spotlight hogs in certain situations, but more than likely the rest of the team won't be all that interested in those situations anyway--otherwise they'd have put some ability for it in their characters. The GM's job is to make sure everyone has their time to shine, so to speak. Hacker characters can hog the spotlight depending on how detailed you get with their hacking, but they're still not as bad as they used to be in my opinion--seemed to me like in prior editions it was practically necessary to run two sessions at once for the Decker to do their thing, three if there was a Rigger too.

[Crash_00]

Deckers needed a separate session to make work well, but riggers were fine in SR3. The other editions are so far back I can't remember how they worked then, but riggers didn't become pseudo-hackers until fourth edition. They ran on an entirely different system and set of rules back in SR3 that flowed perfectly with the regular combat scene. The only real issue that could come up was the mass amount of drones operating on their own, but that is can be just as much of an issue now.

It's the GM's job to give everyone a chance to shine.
It's the player's job to recognize these chances and grab ahold of them.
Shining can occur through roleplay and/or mechanically.

That said, if a player knows the rest of the group's character creation philosophy/abilities and chooses to make a completely unbalanced character anyway that will constantly take all the chances to shine whether tailored to him or not, well that is a problem that is best dealt with by talking to the player, then getting rid of the character and/or player if they don't listen.

[All4BigGuns]

Yeah, the chance to shine can be either RP or mechanically, but if the player more enjoys one over the other, the GM really should use that preference more often than not. And yeah, the player does have the responsibility to recognize those chances, but those chances should be fairly obvious and easy to recognize.

[Crash_00]

Well it's up to the GM to make sure the players know what kind of game he runs sure. I guess I'm from the more RP side of the fence, but I'm up front about it and I give my characters chances to shine based on the story. I'm not going to sparkle glitter on an option and wave it front of their face though, but there is almost always a chance for the hacker, infiltrator, and mage to shine during the legwork and the mission with minimal effort as long as they use that naturally made processor between their ears.

[All4BigGuns]

Well it's up to the GM to make sure the players know what kind of game he runs sure. I guess I'm from the more RP side of the fence, but I'm up front about it and I give my characters chances to shine based on the story. I'm not going to sparkle glitter on an option and wave it front of their face though, but there is almost always a chance for the hacker, infiltrator, and mage to shine during the legwork and the mission with minimal effort as long as they use that naturally made processor between their ears.

Just remember that what is obvious to you may not be obvious to someone else. What you said works and makes sense as long as you keep that in mind.