[Lethe]

Yeah, i agree. He might not be overpowered by having super high dice pools, but the quantity and combination of above average attributes, veteran level skills, equipment, contacts and university degree knowledge skills make him a primerunner++. Far more powerful than normal builds.

But overpowered should always be seen in comparison to what other players in the group have and what the GM expects them to have. You can't judge a single character as overpowered, if you haven't seen the rest of them.

[Sichr]

Ive heard overpowered too many times here. Overpowered comparing to what? GM has teh same rules as players to create his NPCs. If the game could start with team of professionlas, instead of 400BP "One role specialists", it may add much more complexity to the setting and any mission the team would participate.
I dont have Herolabs so far, But it looks like I would buy a copy for myself since it seems it is more Upto date than any new reprint of rulebooks and even errattas for those.

If anyone here owns the program, Id like to ask you for one thing: Try to convert Ghosts or Red Samurai Sample grunts from SRA to karmagen, so we can see what real difference there is...and also we will have a measure for how much we need to improve our NPCs to maintain the same threat level (alůso comparsion to StreetLegends would be interresting )

[Glyph]

The examples of Red Samurai and Tir Ghosts in the main book seemed a bit underpowered, to me - they had some skill groups at a higher level than a starting character could get them, but while they had the breadth I would expect from such NPCs, they also needed to have a few specialist-level dice pools, and they were very light on the 'ware.  I mean, the Red Samurai roll about 12 dice for shooting, after adding their smartlink.  They are tougher than a 400 BP generalist build, by far, but not a specialized one - even the basic street samurai and gunslinger archetypes are a bit better in a stand-up fight.  The only reason either group would win is because they would be the aggressors, they would have better equipment, and they are all built for fighting, as opposed to, say, a group where an adept and a sammie do most of the heavy lifting for a team that also has a healing mage, a face, and a technomancer.  The published adventures tend to have tougher NPCs.


1,000 karma isn't overpowered if everyone else is using 1,000 karma and the GM is scaling the opposition accordingly.  And it may not be a high-powered game.  It may be a game of special forces soldiers, or a game where everyone can explore the oddball characters they always wanted to play, and so on.

[_Pax_]

Ive heard overpowered too many times here. Overpowered comparing to what?

It's not just the GM's NPCs, though.  It's also the other players at the table.

And I am a staunch supporter of "niche-protected roleplay" - that is, I believe every character should have an area in which they and they alone get to take center-stage, and clearly be superior to their team-mates.  If for no other reason than, it gives them a reason to have team-mates at all.

If you have five guys, who can all do everything asked of them no matter the variety of task or obstacle before them with equal applomb and chance of success ... you don't have a team.  You have five guys who are "soloing together".  None of them rely on another team-member to get a specific sort of job done "better than I could do it".  None of them are relied upon for such jobs, in return.  The whole group could take-or-leave any one or all of the group.

I'd've rather seen high-20's or even low-30's dice pools, coupled with a lot of areas where the character had a DP of "only" 6 to 8.  Then, I wouldn't have said "overpowered", I would have said "only suitable for higher-power campaigns".  Because, in a game where a 25-35 die pool would be relevant and appropriate?  Die pools of 6-8 mean "I need allies that specialise in this sort of crap" ... and thus: a TEAM can be formed.

Teams of specialists (at least lightly-specialised, not necessarily 2D or 1D extreme specialists) are IMO required for good RP.

[_Pax_]

Instead of screaming "overpowered" all the time [...]

  Straw man.  I don't "scream" overpowered, nor do I declare things to be overpowered "all the time".

[...] and bolding so many words as though it made any difference, [...]

  Style over Substance; 15 yard penalty.

  Also, I use bold or italics to denote verbal emphasis in the "voice" of the post.

[...] why don't you just accept that it isn't a bad thing for a character to be built with a decent dice pool in multiple endeavours (a specialist in any of those areas would most likely be better), [...]

  Because I think it is a bad thing.  It flies in the face of Niche Protection, the very style of game I have found - after some 33 years of playing RPGs - to be the one most conducive to enjoyment by the largest percentage of players seated at any particular table.

  "Do Anything Man" winds up primarily being "Render The Other PCs Superfluous Man"; such characters tend to trivialise the existance of a team, because instead of saying "oh look, a <insert obstacle type here>; go get the <specialist in that area" .... they simply say "I've got this".  And it's nowhere near fun to always hear "I've got this", "I've got this", "I've got this", "I've got this", "I've got this", "I've got this", "I've got this" .... obstacle after obstacle, goal after goal, task after task.  Nor is it a lot of fun if the GM does the only thing possible to rein that in - and start making it so that the specialists are always the ones to encounter their specific type of obstacle.  Literally, everyone might as well be playing solo, at that point.  Team cohesion is gone, deader than the proverbial doornail.

[...] as such a character could step into practically in role that is missing--[...]

  The problem is, they also step into roles that aren't missing.

  Your character above.  He's a good shooter; why would he ever take back-seat to the gun-specialist in a firefight?  He's also a passable hacker, with those godlike programs of his.  Why would he ever take a back-seat to the codeslinger-specialist when confronted with a lock, camera, or other hackable obstacle?

  Outside of magic, why would this character ever take a back seat to anyone, since he's already so bloody competent on his own?

Then there's the fact that if a role is present, the character in that role may not be present in all situations or may appreciate the extra help that such a character could provide them (it isn't 'stealing their thunder' to assist after all).

  .... spoken like a true spotlight-stealer.

  And yes, I both (a) mean that wholeheartedly, and (b) intend it to be taken as an insult.  I have never heard those words, and had the speaker not be the "I've got this (x99999)" type of player.

[JustADude]

Teams of specialists (at least lightly-specialised, not necessarily 2D or 1D extreme specialists) are IMO required for good RP.

And you're certainly entitled to that opinion, and I'm entitled to the opinion that "niche protected" groups lead to a lot of the group sitting around being bored while one or two people do all the cool stuff for half the session... such as our hacker spending an hour or more of real-time poking at the GM trying to get every last scrap of info out of him that can be possibly be dug up on the Matrix, to the point where I tune out and lose the plot of the job.

... ... ...

Also, what you're saying, essentially, amounts to the belief that that one single person... someone, for example, who has "earned" the title of Street Samurai... isn't supposed to be able to good at sneaking, shooting, and hit someone with an axe, and that no Sammie should be able to open their mouths in front of the Johnson without serious risk of embarrassing themselves.

However, realistically, everyone that's a "serious" Shadowrunner is going to have one or two areas of focused specialization, quite a few areas of general competence, and a handful of spots where they've got no damn clue. It's not a digital CAN / CAN'T switch, but an analogue state.

Generally competent people work with other generally competent people for several reasons... 1) you generally need more than one body to get the job done, 2) having other people who can pitch in and cover the slack if Jimmy takes a stray to the head is a good thing, 3) having more people on your side who can put bullets in the other guys is always better, and 4) and everybody's got a slightly different "special talent"... i.e. the one skill they have at 6 and the area their Qualities are synergized to help with.

Yeah, a Street Samurai built with 1000 Karma might be able to hold their own at a meet, or act as a good wheelman in a pinch, but he's still not going to be as good at Facing as a Face^*, or as good at Rigging as a Rigger, even if they have Influence Group 4, or a commlink and the right software. Why? Because they're not going to be "wasting" Essence on the right bits of cyberware, or Karma on Piloting beyond Pilot Ground Vehicle, or Quality points on getting the "right" qualities to max out their abilities, because that's not where they're focused.

So, yeah, if the GM is putting the GEB (Good Enough Bar) at a level where that extra 4-6 dice difference doesn't matter... yeah, it's going to mean anyone can do anything. However, that just means the GM needs to adjust their playbook.

^*Of course, a dedicated "Face" should be a goddamn Pornomancer, IMO, or stick with being a Slash-Face (aka Mage/Face, TM/Face, etc). Anyone that's got a niche that narrow is just a liability unless they're good enough they can talk their way into an unscheduled meeting with Loftwyr. Getting out, of course, is another matter.

[_Pax_]

What you're saying, essentially, amounts to the belief that that one single person, someone who has "earned" the nickname Street Samurai, isn't supposed to be able to good at sneaking, shooting, and hit someone with an axe, and that no Sammie should be able to open their mouths in front of the Johnson without serious risk of embarrassing themselves.

  Not at all.  What I'm saying is, the Street Samurai should clearly be the best at combat (perhaps tied with a "combat rigger" using his drones accordingly), and perhaps "competent" in other areas.

  But, if you're the street samurai, you should not be nearly as good (within 2-3 dice) at Hacking as the hacker, and nearly as good at social scenarios as the Face, and as good or nearly as good at stealth as the Infiltrator, and .... well, I think you get the picture.  It's one thing to say "X is my primary role, and I can get by pretty well in Y and Z" ... it's another to say "My primary role is to be barely less-good at the entire alphabet than any specialist out there".

[_Pax_]

The majority of the team should be able to hold their own if and when a firefight breaks out, or are you of the mind that only the Sammie should be able to fight, and the others should just hide behind him? If so, what happens if the Sammie goes down? Answer- The entire team dies.

... *sigh* ... another[ straw man.

Yes, the whole team should be reasonably competent.  But the Samurai should be clearly and inarguably superior.  For just one example, at just one power level: most of the team should have Agility ~3, and probably a relevant combat skill at ~2 ... plus or minus one, in both cases.  And maybe their guns have laser sights.  Generally, though, they should be around 4-6 dice for combat attacks.  Meanwhile, the samurai should have an agility of 4+, the relevant combat skill at 4-6, and almost without exception a smartlink.  Their combat skill may even be specialised.  Their die pools should start at 10, and may go as high as 16 or 17.

So you see, the samurai is clearly the primary combatant.  He's got at least twice the DP of the non-combat-specialist characters, probably a shade more.  They're all still competent ... but he is clearly a master.

In the case of the codeslinger, they'll have the skill necessary to tackle the big and beefy systems, the generalist would get fried by higher-end systems.

  Using groups as heavily as you did, they're only going to have 2 ranks more skill than your character does.  Maybe cyberware gives them another 2 or 3, tops.  Anything that would fry you, is still going to seriously singe them.

As to the last, I've never stolen the spotlight, in fact, I'm the quiet one in my group and unless it's necessary, I avoid the spotlight like the plague (will be necessary for me to take it on at least some in an upcoming Song of Ice and Fire game we're planning).

.... you'll have to accept that I'm not going to believe you on this point.  The character build, plus your comments here ... nope.  Someone could try and tell me the sky wasn't really blue, either - but I've got too much evidence to the contrary, to fall for a line like that.  Oh, you may honestly not think you're stealing the spotlight.  But you have been, of that, I am convinced.

[JustADude]

What you're saying, essentially, amounts to the belief that that one single person, someone who has "earned" the nickname Street Samurai, isn't supposed to be able to good at sneaking, shooting, and hit someone with an axe, and that no Sammie should be able to open their mouths in front of the Johnson without serious risk of embarrassing themselves.

  Not at all.  What I'm saying is, the Street Samurai should clearly be the best at combat (perhaps tied with a "combat rigger" using his drones accordingly), and perhaps "competent" in other areas.

  But, if you're the street samurai, you should not be nearly as good (within 2-3 dice) at Hacking as the hacker, and nearly as good at social scenarios as the Face, and as good or nearly as good at stealth as the Infiltrator, and .... well, I think you get the picture.  It's one thing to say "X is my primary role, and I can get by pretty well in Y and Z" ... it's another to say "My primary role is to be barely less-good at the entire alphabet than any specialist out there".

Eh, true enough. It looks like we actually agree on the main thrust of the topic. The main difference seems to be that I believe in starting general and specializing is more realistic and lets you shine the "spotlight" on people during the big, late-campaign missions, while you believe in starting specialized and "backfilling" your other areas to create more "spotlight time" at the beginning.

As for the specific examples you've given:

Hacking is one of those things where CGen sets the bar so low anyone can just about equal the Hacker coming out of the gate. That's the fault of the "Pay To Win" nature of Hacking combined with the starting Availability limits, not any particular form of CGen. The question, then, becomes "Will this guy drop the 500,000¥+ it takes to get his gear up to Rating 10?" Probably not, so the Hacker starts to take center stage more and more as time goes on and they pull away from the generalists... and they can still shoot, but not as good as the guy who used that 500,000¥ to but some maxed out Bioware.

Hacking 4 + Exploit 5, backed by Stealth 5, may not be much worse than Hacking (Exploit) 6 + Exploit 5 / Stealth 5, but what about Hacking (Exploit) 6 + Exploit 10 / Stealth 10, with a Agents making "Assistance" rolls?

As for Faces... Face just isn't a useful "primary" character type; at least not in the games I've played. Not unless they're hyper-focused Pornomancers. Otherwise, someone else should just go Slash-Face.

Ditto for sneaking, really. To me, an Infiltrator is just a Street Samurai with some Infiltrate and Hardware, and RPC-modded armor... and buying Infiltrate up should be high on the To Do list of any Street Samurai or Adept anyway, IMO, since they already need to hard-cap their Agility for their primary role. I chalk it up to the same type of design flaw that doesn't let you play the guitar without being able to sculpt marble statues.

Plus, what you can't see you can't hit. Use an imagelinked sensor with Ultrawideband Radar, a Thermal Smoke grenade, and Chameleon Cloak, and you're going to massively stack the odds in your favor when you go in to gank that security team.

[_Pax_]

I would say the Face should "secondary" in some other role - maybe combat, maybe some drone-rigging if there's no rigger n the group, whatever best suits (and steps on as few toes as possible).

An Infiltrator, to me, would be the stealth-and-B&E first, combat second sort of character.  They would have the skills to sneak around, obviously - but also be good at bypassing locks, sensors, and so on.  Pribably good athletics skills too - to swim, climb, jump, whatever it takes to find "nonobvious approaches" to wherever they need to go.  They probably also have a secondary Combat role - could be either ranged (sniper), or melee ("ninja sword").  They might also dabble in demolitions, since they can sneak in and plant their "party favors" in interesting places.

Which distinguishes them fairly well from the samurai, whose primary focus is along the lines of "shoot people in the face".  Sure, some stealth is useful, so they'll be competent at it.  But not as good as the Infiltrator, for whom "stealth is life is stealth".  The samurai might buy a chameleon suit, or an array of camoflage outfits.  The infiltrator will buy not just one, but possibly several.  Meanwhile, the samurai probably has little use for purely B&E skills, or if he has them, they're at lower DPs and/or more hardware-reliant.

...

Regarding hackers: I think that's one of the biggest failings of SR4.  My first ever character was a hacker, and I was sorely disappointed in how the mechanics of hacking actually worked out.  (I use the optional rule to limit hits to one's Logic; it's too light of a touch on the problem IMO, but it keeps the rest of the mechanics as close to RAW, and thus as simple to remember and use, as possible while still making the attributes of the hacker himself SOMEWHAT more relevant.)

[_Pax_]

Agility 3 and Skill of 2? What the hell? Good luck hitting with drek like that unless you're facing nothing but the lowest of the low ranking gangers. The numbers you give are way low, the specialist in combat should more likely have around 20 to 24 dice. Well that is if they're specializing THAT much. The 17 I can agree with, however.

  So, your example character?  What' his specialty?  Because your best pool is a 17 - for firearms, with a smartlink.  Yet you're suggesting pools of 20-24 for a "real" specialist.

[...] dedicated codeslinger is probably going to have a 6, [...]

  Then why doesn't your example character have any 6's?

  See, I'm just using the very design philosophy you demonstrated ("groups, groups, and more groups"), which would lead to at most a 2-point difference.  You didn't break out the whole Firearms group or Close Combat group to get one of them to 6.  Why should I expect that the dedicated anythign else would do differently, if built by you?

[Mirikon]

Yes, the whole team should be reasonably competent.  But the Samurai should be clearly and inarguably superior.

I'll just point out that if the street samurai isn't as good as the decker in combat, then it could just be a case of the street samurai needing better focus.

[JustADude]

I would say the Face should "secondary" in some other role - maybe combat, maybe some drone-rigging if there's no rigger n the group, whatever best suits (and steps on as few toes as possible).

An Infiltrator, to me, would be the stealth-and-B&E first, combat second sort of character.  They would have the skills to sneak around, obviously - but also be good at bypassing locks, sensors, and so on.  Pribably good athletics skills too - to swim, climb, jump, whatever it takes to find "nonobvious approaches" to wherever they need to go.  They probably also have a secondary Combat role - could be either ranged (sniper), or melee ("ninja sword").  They might also dabble in demolitions, since they can sneak in and plant their "party favors" in interesting places.

Which distinguishes them fairly well from the samurai, whose primary focus is along the lines of "shoot people in the face".  Sure, some stealth is useful, so they'll be competent at it.  But not as good as the Infiltrator, for whom "stealth is life is stealth".  The samurai might buy a chameleon suit, or an array of camoflage outfits.  The infiltrator will buy not just one, but possibly several.  Meanwhile, the samurai probably has little use for purely B&E skills, or if he has them, they're at lower DPs and/or more hardware-reliant.

Again, very good points.

I'd forgotten about those secondary skills since, in my current group, we actually have the Melee Adept and Swiss-Army Samurai bring a drone modded for Special Equipment (Toolkit) and a Mechanical Arm with us, so the Logic-focused Hacker/Rigger can do the Hardware and Demolitions work. Works a treat, more people get stage-time than just one B&E specialist doing the job, and the Rigger can be assisting the infiltration team and the "overwatch" team (aka Mage and "Diversion Specialist"... or, as I like to call him, Sparky McBoomBoom) at the same time.

Of course, my group tends to focus on "teamwork" tactics, so it usually feels like everyone is contributing something to the mission anyway... except for the Matrix Legwork.

[_Pax_]

I'd forgotten about those secondary skills since, in my current group, we actually have the Melee Adept and Swiss-Army Samurai bring a drone modded for Special Equipment (Toolkit) and a Mechanical Arm with us, so the Logic-focused Hacker/Rigger can do the Hardware and Demolitions work. Works a treat, more people get stage-time than just one B&E specialist doing the job, and the Rigger can be assisting the infiltration team and the "overwatch" team (aka Mage and "Diversion Specialist"... or, as I like to call him, Sparky McBoomBoom) at the same time.

  That's a neat approach.  My rigger builds generally include at least one LTA drone - a Stormcloud, or an LDSD-series blimp if I'm feeling nostalgic - as an "overwatch" drone.  It's nice and stealthy, and the fixed, pointed-straight-down MGL-12 makes for a nice "oh crap" cover-our-butts option for when a run goes south.

  But, thinking on what youre group uses ... I might try making one with a winch, so it can be used to lower equipment (in chamelon-netting) to the infiltration types.  Or even lower a smaller drone onto/into a site.

Of course, my group tends to focus on "teamwork" tactics, so it usually feels like everyone is contributing something to the mission anyway... except for the Matrix Legwork.

  Ideally, yes, it works this way.  But for any given scenario, I think there should be one "star" and then "his supporting cast" ... with who gets to be that star rotating as circumstances change.

Agility 3 and Skill of 2? What the hell? Good luck hitting with drek like that unless you're facing nothing but the lowest of the low ranking gangers. The numbers you give are way low, the specialist in combat should more likely have around 20 to 24 dice. Well that is if they're specializing THAT much. The 17 I can agree with, however.

  So, your example character?  What' his specialty?  Because your best pool is a 17 - for firearms, with a smartlink.  Yet you're suggesting pools of 20-24 for a "real" specialist.

You miscalculated. The best pool is 15 for including the smartlink, not 17.

  Which makes it even worse.  You've said the specialist should have more than just those 15 dice (but not a whole LOT more).  So, why doesn't your example have more than 15 dice in something, anything at all?  Or alternately, why does your character have 13 to 15 dice in so very many areas?

Again, the character is meant to be generalist and not specialist,

  ... and sits, what, an average of only 5 dice below the specialists?  Yeah, that's not going to tread on everyone else's toes, not at all!  [/sarcasm]

[_Pax_]

Then it's a generalist that treads TOO CLOSE to TOO MANY disparate kinds of specialists.  That, to me, is just a different kind of "overpowered".

And to be honest, it looks like you went for "generalist" specifically hoping to say "see, no giganto-pools here" in order to deflect accusations of being overpowered.  IOW, it looks to me like a very disingenuous build.