[Magnus the Great]

Hey, as the title suggests, I'm new at shadowrun. I've done plenty of lurking, so I *think* I have a firm enough grasp on the system. And by that I mean the SR4A handbook and no other books. Well my group is 3 people and I know in a 3 man group, I need to cover the three bases: Muscle, Matrix, and Magic. So here we go:

I have some who definitely wannts to be the hacker. He's also interested in Covington the role of our Face. He desperately wants to be a Technomancer, but from what I hear, a hacker will be better at sub-ing as a face. I wanna tell him to be a augmented hacker, but don't wanna break his matrix-linked heart. Any builds/links that could help me out here? Remember, Handbook only.

Now magic. Im pretty solid on making him a sneaky Mage, with illusion and detection stuff and a powerbol or two. The only problem is the two people who won't be hacking wanna blow s*** up. Any way to make a stealthy Mage exiting?

Now muscle. Im thinking of a big, bad cybered up troll with health out the wazoo and a white-knight, but I may wanna tone him down oh-so-slightly so the Mage doesn't just dream of being the street sam. Maybe he could be some sort of adept instead? I also kinda want to avoid cyber-limbs, unless someone can make sense outta them.

So there you have it. So a) with only the SR4A handbook or one other if i find the need b) without cyberlimbs and c) without making each player jealous of one another, can you help me on this? Any ideas/builds/relevant links will be beyond helpful, and a thank you in advance.

[Henzington]

hackers are only better in the sense they require few skills then technomancers have a third skill group that relates to their sprites in addition to the cracking and electronics skill groups.  Also technomancer have to buy resonance.  Finally hackers are quite a bit less karma hungry as their upgrades are split between money and karma cost like cyberware programs or agents and skill upgrades where as technomancers are strictly attritubes skills and complex forms which all require karma to upgrade.

If your mage went shaman which uses Charisma as its linked attribute for casting he could easily also be a face.  Also mage although not as flashy as a gaint gun can be lethal as spell like powerbolt and manabolt bypass armor.

[groduick]

As a new GM, you should take a look at http://www.chummergen.com/, if you don't know it yet.
Very useful character generator, which makes all calculations by itself (and sr4 is calculation heavy).
Perhaps try to build a few characters by yourself, to get a hang on the system, and switch to Chummer (or another, there's a lot of automated spreadsheets on the net) when you understand how everything fits.

[UmaroVI]

I have some who definitely wannts to be the hacker. He's also interested in Covington the role of our Face. He desperately wants to be a Technomancer, but from what I hear, a hacker will be better at sub-ing as a face. I wanna tell him to be a augmented hacker, but don't wanna break his matrix-linked heart. Any builds/links that could help me out here? Remember, Handbook only.

No. The thing that lets Technomancers be secondary faces is in Unwired, as are many of the thing that make Technomancers good. Core-only technomancers get to be Cyberadept stream, which is the second worst stream in existence (E-scapists manage to be both worse and have a stupider name).

Now magic. Im pretty solid on making him a sneaky Mage, with illusion and detection stuff and a powerbol or two. The only problem is the two people who won't be hacking wanna blow s*** up. Any way to make a stealthy Mage exiting?

It's not overly hard to make a generalist mage. It's tempting to specialize and get a mentor spirit, and then pick all your spells from the same school. This will make you suck because you end up running out of good things and taking crap. Improved Invisiblity, Physical Mask, Trid Phantasm, Extended Detect Life, Mind Probe, Stunbolt, Stunball, Acid Splash or whatever that single-target P-damage spell is, Levitate, Increased Reflexes, and 2 other spells of general use will get you a magician who's good at both fighting and sneaking.

Now muscle. Im thinking of a big, bad cybered up troll with health out the wazoo and a white-knight, but I may wanna tone him down oh-so-slightly so the Mage doesn't just dream of being the street sam. Maybe he could be some sort of adept instead? I also kinda want to avoid cyber-limbs, unless someone can make sense outta them.

Unaugmented (ie, no ware, only magic) adepts are just less good than augmented adepts (those who take a small amount of useful 'ware). Street samurai will be less focused and more flexible than augmented adepts. If you want defensive over offensive, street samurai and cyberlimbs is the way to go.

Hida Tsuzua has a good explanation of cyberlimbs here: http://forums.shadowrun4.com/index.php?topic=4672.msg70364#msg70364

You might find the characters in the first link of my sig helpful as guidelines, but they are not built with SR4A only.

[groduick]

You might find the characters in the first link of my sig helpful as guidelines, but they are not built with SR4A only.

Which might be an interesting work, I'll give it a try if I have time...

[Blue_Lion]

All a group realy needs is to come togther and play, a runner team can fuction wihtout a mage speicaly if you dont throw mage threats at them.  Tecromancers like mages eat up points at none - optimesed  level of game they can serve as a face speialy if they are an elf, but it can be hard to pull off and still be good on the matrix. Steet samies and adepts are both equaly playble and usaly only people that realy know the system make an optimized charter at first.

Truth be told depening on place style and gming style a runner group can work without anything other than the abilty to pull the triger. Using just the stuff in the main book an adept can max out his shooting abilty at around 16 before adding in smart link and increase agilty witch could max out your shooting skill. Elf adj 6-7 spefic gun skill 6-7 (using quality you can increase the level cap to 7) then the abily to increase an active skill is in the main book 3 ranks, add in1 ranks of attriute boost ad.( he may take drain from this) so that makes the skill rating posible 7+7+2+3=19 so if you use atrbut boost for 1 point that places him at 20 to lets say automatics. if you dont use the atribue bounus skill you canat magic rating 4 of  he can still get imrobed reflexes level 2. so that is a decent gun slinger alble to tear down most people in his way. (did the math earler for a sniper adept i made.)

If you are going to GM i whould highly recomend you buy all the core books to the game and any you wish to use. Most have some cool stuff in them.

[Magnus the Great]

Thanks guys. I suppose I will use cyberlimbs, if the need be. Well do a bunch of calcs pre-game to get all those averages done with. And I'm considering searching for a copy of unwired so the techno-talker can be reality. And thanks everyone, all of this has been emensly useful! If I can't get the book till then, I might have to go with a hacker *sigh*

[Magnus the Great]

I have some who definitely wannts to be the hacker. He's also interested in Covington the role of our Face. He desperately wants to be a Technomancer, but from what I hear, a hacker will be better at sub-ing as a face. I wanna tell him to be a augmented hacker, but don't wanna break his matrix-linked heart. Any builds/links that could help me out here? Remember, Handbook only.

No. The thing that lets Technomancers be secondary faces is in Unwired, as are many of the thing that make Technomancers good. Core-only technomancers get to be Cyberadept stream, which is the second worst stream in existence (E-scapists manage to be both worse and have a stupider name).

Streams? Are they kinda like traditions? or are they odd enough that I need the Unwired?

[Tsuzua]

Streams? Are they kinda like traditions? or are they odd enough that I need the Unwired?

They're basically traditions.  They represent a technomancer's outlook on technomancy.  It sets the sprites they can compile and their fade stat.  It's pretty easy to make your own.

[CanRay]

Streams? Are they kinda like traditions? or are they odd enough that I need the Unwired?

They're basically traditions.  They represent a technomancer's outlook on technomancy.  It sets the sprites they can compile and their fade stat.  It's pretty easy to make your own.

Toaster has taught me everything there is about the Resonance and how to work with it.

And I can make toast!

[Crash_00]

My biggest advice is to sit down with them and make sure they really understand the rules from the start. Everything from the ground up. Make sure they understand where each bonus comes from, and how each power, augment, spell, etc. works.

The faster you get them to understand, the more comfortable they will be with the system. Chummer can be good for making characters quickly (or quicker than by hand), but it doesn't tell you any of the rules (because it would be copyright infringement if it did), so I really only recommend it once you have experience with the system. Using a character generator is like using a calculator, it really only works well if you already know how to do things without it, otherwise you don't know when you've gone and messed it all up.

Honestly, to begin with, I'd have them toss together some quick characters and run them through something of a quick adventure. Make sure to tell them it's a one shot. You can make it anything from a meat grinder to a run steal a bunch of rabbits from a guy named Lenny, the key is to make sure they use and understand their abilities.

After the one shot, they should have a better understanding of what works, what doesn't works, and where they want to focus for building their characters for the actual campaign.

I used to do this for my groups, I'd run them through a meat grinder with some really quickly tossed together characters and the second team would be hired to go finish the job the first team botched up.