[Glaive]

So I was reading up on a few decker builds, and I noticed some people giving advice on building towards a second role. At first I didn't think it was even possible, but after tinkering around a bit, I came up with the following build. Is decking basically a foregone conclusion for a char build like this, or is this actually viable?

RES A
SKI B
ATT C
HER D -- Elf
TAL E

RESOURCES A -- 450,000¥
Installed Hermes Chariot -- 125,000¥, E0.2
Synapitc Boost 2 -- 190000¥, E1
Muscle Replacement -- 50,000¥, E2
Cerebral Booster -- 63,000¥, E0.4
Datajack -- 1000¥, E0.1

429,000¥ Spent
21,000¥ Left

3.7 Essence used
2.3 Essence left

SKILLS -- 36/5
Electronics SG 5
Hacking 6
Cybercombat 6
E.Warfare 6
Automatics 6
Pistols 3
Perception 3

6 points left.

ATTRIBUTES -- 16
BOD 4
AGI 4 (6)
REF 3 (5)
STR 1 (3)
WIL 4
LOG 4 (6)
INT 4
CHA 3
EDGE 1

--NO SPENT KARMA--

So yeah, the character is certainly tight on money, only having 21,000 to spend on weapons, armor, programs, and the like. I imagine that spending karma on cash will be required to make this work, and I can also save another 12,750 if I kick my deck down a grade. I'm also worried about that deck. Sure the premade hacker comes with it, but I can't help but think that I could have bagged something far larger. Another consideration I had was using some grade of Wired Reflexes. If I did WR1, I'd save well over 100,000 that I really wouldn't know what to do with. WR2 would save me 41,000, but take me right to 0.3 Essence! Worth it?

Those skills are pretty tight too. I left 6 points unspent for leeway, and I can pretty much guarantee that 2-3 of those will go towards an auxilary etiquette skill. Are there any glaring omissions I've made? Also, could I avoid close combat altogether? If not, then those last two points will go straight into etiquette and blades, leaving me with a pretty sparse skills list. Am I trying to do too many things at once with only skills B? Should I not be packing some many sixes? Maybe fives in the hacking and automatics, giving me 4 more points to spend elsewhere?

[Solarious]

I'm making a decker/rigger right now

I went for a higher grade deck off the bat and took hits elsewhere because 200k for a new deck down the line is going to be hard to come by.

[Achsin]

it's 5k+deck cost for the implanted deck, not 2k+cost (which is for commlinks).

For the other things, it mostly depends on how you envision your character and what you want to be able to do relative to the rest of the players in your group.

I'd recommend switching to the wired reflexes to give you some more cash for toys (like a car, it's pretty funny when only 1 guy in a group of 5-6 has a vehicle and his vehicle is a motorcycle. Funnier when one of the guys is a rigger with hundreds spent on drones), which level you go with depends more on how much you see yourself operating in meatspace vs. cyberspace. If you drop down to rating 1 you can trade your Chariot up for a Tsurugi which will help out with your primary function though it leaves you a bit further down on combat/defense capability or AR decking potential. You can also probably drop the pistols skill altogether and rely on machine pistols for a reasonably concealable piece. If you are wanting to go with a close combat skill, I'd recommend Unarmed as you can throw on some shock gloves for non-lethal and still use some implanted spurs or whatever for your lethal needs. Depending on how much Karma you have after you decide what you want to spend it on you could drop reaction down to 1 and then buy it back with (25) karma, using the extra 2 stat points to boost your logic or agility (or both).

All in all my reading is that you're building a decent hacker (not the best possible as you're running a lower range deck and lacking some possible dice for logic and skills) who is also pretty decent at shooting people (again, not the best but good enough to beat most gangers or low level corp sec). He would work well in a smallish sized group where most of the characters are also built for multiple roles (like a two man shaman/face decker/sam team), but in a group of specialists he'll be somewhat lacking (all of this depending, of course, on how optimized the rest of the characters are).