Why are they not SUMMONING SPIRITS?! If your worried about your mages being board in combat. Mages can't contribute meaningfully to combat?!?! Mages can't contribute meaningfully to combat?! mages can't contribute meaningfully to combat? We made this mistake with a face and a mage once, where they'd take their one turn, and by the time everyone else finished their 2-3, everything was done and over with.Wait. Luckily for a mage at least, this lacking can be remedied pretty easily/cheaply via a sustaining focus. I'm of course assuming that your definition of fighty-type is someone geared wholly for combat, with little skill outside of that, and working on the assumption that all characters intend to contribute to combat meaningfully regardless of their actual specialization. We made this mistake with a face and a mage once, where they'd take their one turn, and by the time everyone else finished their 2-3, everything was done and overwith. At some point you will enter combat, and characters without extra initiative passes just get left behind, and spend half the session bored doing nothing.

I'm just going to go out ahead and say it: It's not -just- the fighty types who this is nearly required for. Another archetype for an experienced player. As mentioned before, when played wrong, he is the weakest character. No, the magic of the Face requires no bullets, no spells, no gizmos, no 'resonance'. He can talk his way into the most secured areas, he gets the gang bangers to forget he was there, Lonestar thinks he is a pretty cool guy, and later, the Exec VP thinks this guy works for him somewhere on his staff.

Played right, this is one of the best character types in SR4. He cannot hack like the hacker or Technomancer, nor can he hop in a drone to shoot his way out. He cannot shoot his way out of a situation like the Street Sams, he cannot whip up a spirit to whisk him out of danger like the Mages. Played wrong, he is the weakest link of the party. Also, everyone should have at least 2 levels worth of pistols skill, if for nothing else, as back up.Īnd now, the Face character. Close Combat and Rifles are good solid secondary choices in hurty skills. Real flexible and cheap, with a ton of customizations available in Arsenal. Your choice on hurty skills is open to debate, but one should almost always favor heavy pistols as your work horse weapon. (Hackers can get around this, but I am not telling you how. 3 is an absolute minimum, 4 is ideal, and also the most you can get. It will save you headache in the long run, and unlike Mages and Adepts, everything a Technomancer can do, a Hacker can do better at start up, with the exceptions of Sprites.)Īs for the fighty types, extra IP's are KEY. (A word on Technomancers: don't, until you have an experienced group. The game uses them, then runs with it to its logical cyberpunk awesomeness. Unlike Technomancers (see below) these guys are a must.Īs for hackers & riggers, they are pretty cool guys, but to really get into the hacker/ rigger, you must understand modern, real world networking concepts. The rest of the traditions from Street Magic are OK, but for newbies, best to stick to Shamans and Hermetics. Never let the caster be a possession mage or a 'home brew' tradition. As for the actual pre-made characters, they are under optimized for their specialty, but they can get the message across to the players (don't be stupid, never get into a running gun battle, always plan out your missions accordingly, never assume your the biggest one on the block, and the countless others they have) so that they can make their over optimized characters later.Ī word of advice from one SR4 GM to another: However, for a 'tutorial' one shot session of SR, they work fine.Ĭharacter creation in SR4 is easy peasy, once you figure out where everything is and what it means. Their numbers are off, +/- 20 points on some of them. Well, I think a couple of them actually did their numbers wrong, and come a couple of points above or below 400.Yep.

4e shadowrun character sheet