[Doublecross]

Ok, so I have lurked for months and only played a few games of this game but I have always wondered if it would even be possible to make a character who has no spells or chrome or drugs and can still fight with some semblance of skill or power when compared to those who do. Ya'll know the game better than I do, way better. Help me out. For the purposes of this exercise it would be best to keep it to just the base book but I'm not picky if you go browsing elsewhere.

The "weapons master" signature character from the core book would have me believe that they are a viable choice as a character to play, but I know better from watching these forums. Let's see if you can do any better.

Gauntlet thrown,
Doublecross

[Tsuzua]

I assume hot sim VR command rigger is right out. 

As for a weapon master style character, I'll go human with lucky and edge 8.  Then you get SURGE II for Metagentic Improvement (Agility) and have a 6 agility.  With weapon skill of choice 6 + agility 6 + smartlink 2 for 14 dice.  With tacnet 4 and specialization, you can get up to 20.  If you really need that extra IP, spend a point of edge.  With Body 5, you can get 13/11 armor which is good. 

You can also be an ork and have an edge of 5 if you want to free up points for other stuff (you're spending 65 BP for +3 edge).  However, edge is really useful for you since you can spend it to go first and to help out any rolls you might need to make.

Regardless, it's playing SR on hard mode.  This character will beg and plead for muscle toner 4 which would be 4 extra dice no questions asked.  An IP booster of some sort would extremely helpful (at least 1 extra IP).   

[Katrex]

So there are the folowing methods.

1: A human with good edge
2: A sasquatch
3: a shapeshifter, tiger or seal
4: a drake

If going unagmented human the main advanttage is you can have LOTS of skills and high edge to make you as good as anyone else for quite a few key situations. Eg electronics infiltrate and automatics
The point is that the last three are disnigned with no augmentation in mind, and while getting adept powers is always a bonus it is not essential for them to be decent.
A seal would get you higest ranged dicepool with an agi of 8 then 6 in the skill smartlink and specialisation you're allready at 18 dice without even touching war!.
A drake lets you fight spirits easily, i'd take oriental drake,  and with +2 body +8 armor on top of a base of say 5 body, you'll have 15 damage resistance which is decent enough, most people are built towards balistic armor so hitting with + 2 str giving you say so you could easily be doing 6 unarmed damage hitting at 1/2 impact armor which is good, Your dicepool will be about  15

[Joush]

A combat specialist that uses combat drugs can work. There's even a quality that gives someone without other reaction enhancement a bonus to it (lighting reflexes, IIRC).

Wear good armor and make up for raw power with cleverness. Make sure to choose your engagements carefully and be aware of your limits. Make sure to control things like line of sight and viability when possible to reduce your exposure to fire.

[Mercer]

Agreed on hard mode, agreed on it not being impossible.  My first character was an unaugmented, non-magical ork and he did okay-- started out as Philip Marlowe, ended up as James Bond.  For me it was all about being skilled, being cautious, and taking a lot of free actions to fall flat.  Once my stats and skills were bought up with karma, most other characters thought I was a starting phys ad, which is not the worst thing in the world. 

Unlike mages, who have to put most of their karma into their magic (initiation, spells and bonding stuff), your karma is just going into skills and stats.  And unlike augmented characters, your money isn't going into internal 'ware, but external gear. 

At character creation, look at where your BP's are going to go.  In the short term, this is the role your character is going to play.  I'll assume you're putting as many BP as you can into your stats.  Since there's no magic or 'ware to be bought, everything left over is going to be divided among skills, gear and contacts.  I like skills, so my feeling would be to take a lot of them.  You're not going to get as many actions as other people, so you might as well be as effective as possible when you do act.  If you want to start with a lot of gear, that's fine-- my take on it is if you aren't spending your pay on foci or 'ware, you'll probably be able to buy up gear later.  This is also a good character type to invest in contacts with, since it's always useful to know people.

My experience is you aren't going to start out as the most effective character in any one role, but you may be the back-up guy in a lot of different roles.  There are a lot of ways to contribute beyond multiple IP's or magic.  With a high INT, Perception and the right gear, your pool to notice things will be pretty good-- and noticing things is always nice.  You can be a decent face without magic or 'ware too.  Good stealth and some technical skills will make you a B/E specialist. 

Qualities, off the top of my head:  Sensitive System.  If you're never planning on taking cyberware it's not a bad one, and without magical ability it's not like you aren't sacrificing for the points.

[Makki]

Infected are off the table?  A Banshee is a nice start with its elf-agility and 2 IPs

and you definitely need 2-3 small drones hovering around you and running a Tacnet. Restricted Gear (Milspec Armor) would be nice as well.

[Glyph]

A mundane fighter can be good - he simply isn't as good as an augmented or magical one.  Magic and augmentation offer - multiple IPs, better ranged and melee dodging, better damage soaking, higher Attributes, higher skills, and often other dice pool bonuses.  A mundane can start out with a high Agility and high skill, which will put him squarely in the middle of the power curve, for his main specialty.

Unaugmented mundanes can carve out a niche for themselves, but non-sniper combat is really not their strong point.  They are better as snipers, medics, intrusion experts, and other support or non-front line roles.

[Thermo]

One way to look at things is this: a cybered character can expect to spend their full 50 BP's on Resources. Your character will probably spend 10 BP's to get the gear, weapons, Tacnets, etc that will make him somewhat competitive. Incremental cost is 40 BP's. A mage or adept will spend between 45 and 55 BP's to get the adept or magician quality plus Magic 5. We'll average them to 50 BP's, all incremental over a mundane.

So, you're looking at having between 40 and 50 extra BP's to spend since you didn't go 'ware or magic. That isn't a ton, considering that it only pays for 10-12 additional skill points, compared to a cybered character that can get attribute increases of +2 Agi, +2 Str, +2 Log, +2 Rea, and +2 IP's, all without getting restricted gear or coming even close to their resource cap. Add in bone lacing, dermal plating, etc, and you're going to have a really hard time competing with them head-to-head. Remember that they're likely to put the full 6 skill points into their preferred combat skill, just like you. An adept isn't much worse off. The additional skill an adept can bring to the table will always give them more dice than you in their preferred skill, and the additional IP's will make direct combat very difficult to counter.

Long and short, the lack of IP's, limits on unaugmented attributes, and the cap on starting skill points will make combat verrry hard for the character. Being sneaky and clever will prove to be far more useful. One thing to remember, though, is that your mundane will be able to get past any kind of security without the slightest scrutiny, assuming their SIN checks out of course.

[Xzylvador]

One thing to remember, though, is that your mundane will be able to get past any kind of security without the slightest scrutiny, assuming their SIN checks out of course.

Weeeelllll, that is, unless they bring all that gear then need to have to be on par with their magical or cybered counterpart.

A melee adept can be lethal, butt naked. Improved Ability, Critical Stike, Elemental Strike, Extra passes. No gear needed but still doing buttloads of Physical damage if/when required.
An augmented human with bioware enhancements can pass through scanners without being detected and still be lethal as hell with Muscle Enhancements and Increased Bone Density.

The mundane human on the other hand, better behave very well.

Magical security of course can detect the bioware and adepts... but there's nothing illegal about being an adept and while they can see "he's magical" they can't see if that magic makes him a melee death machine or just a good dancer and singer.

[Doublecross]

Wow, this has all been actually very enlightening about how to handle situations and what options to take.

Now I propose a new experiment. Using just the core rulebook (and not much time if you don't want to) how would you make an unaugmented non-magical drug-less weapon master character. You can be as complex as you want, or alternatively just give a few lines about what you would choose if you were to stat one out.

I am curious what the masters would choose and how they would build. There has been a lot of good suggestions and options, but now I want to see it put into practice (within reason and interest).

Doublecross

[UmaroVI]

The answer isn't going to be very interesting, because that doesn't really leave much room for options.

Probably your best bet would be a human with Lucky, harcapped edge, and Aptitude, and from there the only really meaningful choice you can make is your weapon, because your character concept is to not use the majority of the options available to you. Of course, "weapon master" in this case means "about as good as a real weapon master for about 3 seconds, then your face explodes" because you'll rely on Edge to win any serious fight.

[Mirikon]

From my perspective? The only bad thing about a completely unaugmented fighter is the lack of additional initiative passes. Skills, attributes, and gear can make you plenty deadly and able to take a hit without dipping into 'ware. Combat drugs are an option for boosting your IP, but that's problematic since they are addictive, and usually at least Restricted if not Forbidden.

[Xzylvador]

From my perspective? The only bad thing about a completely unaugmented fighter is the lack of additional initiative passes. Skills, attributes, and gear can make you plenty deadly and able to take a hit without dipping into 'ware. Combat drugs are an option for boosting your IP, but that's problematic since they are addictive, and usually at least Restricted if not Forbidden.

I agree that the only really bad thing is the lack of passes, but for a combat character that's a pretty big deal. Twice the passes = twice the damage output. Thrice the passes = thrice the damage output. Quite sure that counts for the 4th IP too.
For non-combat, it doesn't have to be that much of a deal.

A super-edge human can do a lot of course:

Spend edge to go first*, spend edge on shot 1, spend edge on shot 2, spend edge to get a second IP, spend edge on shot 1, spend edge on shot 2.
That's 6 edge spent, hoping you don't need to use some on defense. But man, all those exploding dice can be devastating. But you can only do that trick once per run, the augs and adepts can keep going on all day.

*: Recommendation: Get Adrenaline Surge so you don't have to spend edge to be first. But either spend edge or get the quality, it's the only way you'll beat non-mundanes for initiative.

[Mercer]

Most games I've played in have a farily even division of challenges between Combat (that is, problems being with dealt with in Initiative order), Mechanical Difficulties (non-combat things that still have to be rolled over-- technical and social issues, perception tests, and so on), and Fluff (a broad category of things the runners have to deal with without necessarily making any rolls).  Unaugmented characters aren't really that much worse off than anyone else in the latter two categories-- they'll have maybe a couple less dice, but it's far from crippling-- so the only place they're really behind the line is in combat.

I go round and round on this, but for me how much fun a character is to play comes in part in how it contributes to the overall success of the group.  With runners who try to limit their combat exposure, playing unaugmented isn't that big of a deal; if most of the challenges are solving mysteries, using stealth and being subtle you can do that without a lot of 'ware or magic.  When combat comes along the group is trying to get it over with and out of there as quickly as possible it's nice to have those augmented folks, but if relatively small amounts of the session are spent in the Initiative round, it doesn't really matter that you have less IP than most people. 

It's not an especially impressive way to go, but I'd be tempted to throw the extra BP into a couple of skill groups, like Stealth and Influence.  Outdoors is a good skill group in a very small percentage of games, but for those games its very good.  (For characters who never step off the plastcrete it's nothing special, but I still have a hard time making ex-military characters without taking at least a couple of points in it.)  You'll bet he guy who isn't great at anything, but he's pretty good with a lot of stuff. 

The only downside to being a completely unaugmented human in a team of runners?  When the oppo assenses you and sees no essence loss or magic, they'll assume you're a powerful Initiate with masking and geek you first. 

[Mirikon]

Or they'll think you're a technomancer, and geek you first.

But as far as a fighter goes, I'd say you should just bite the bullet and take Wired Reflexes and skillwires or Move-by-wires. Gives you those extra IP, and skillsofts can be a lifesaver if you, say, need to blow up a building, but no one in your group has the demolitions skill.