I'm just going to be honest with this post, and I'm not going to sugarcoat anything. I don't really consider this character to be viable, not in any game I've played in. At least not right now as it's built.
Usually Karma Gen is better for Metatypes playing against their role, but the High Body and Strength eat a lot of Karma for this character. (I did try Karma Gen, but it was pretty obvious I was going to be out of Karma early.)
I took Jack of All Trades Quality to help acquire skills It would only take 7 Karma to get Cybercombat Rating 3 for this character if I decided I needed it. Once I get better deck, I would get Rating 6 Agent.
As for Liability to team - Willpower 5 and Intuition 4 will help keep the Trouble Making in check. Besides, the tricks this character would be most likely to do would be very subtle. Messing with peoples commlinks and wireless devices. Hacking someones Feedback clothing to say "I Hate Trogs!"
I wanted a Decker that could hide in plain sight, be a ghost in the Matrix, and have some skill at Social Engineering.
I thought long and hard about how I would approach decking with a very limited budget and small skill set. Smart use of Programs can give one or two point bonus to Deck Attributes. (Toolbox lets you run extra program.) Originally I took Hacking Improved Ability, which I do plan to get with next point of Magic, but then decided on Electronic Warfare . Electronic Warfare is used for Hide Matrix Action, which is very useful when you don't like to fight.
It would only take 51 Karma and a little nuyen to get skill to effective Rating of 14 and Hacking to effective Rating of 8. (Get Magic to 4, +2 to Hacking and +2 to Electronic Warfare, then bound Rating 8 Qi Focus.)
Don't forget this character has Max Edge for his race. That gives me up to 6 times or more a game, depending on how often edge refreshes, to add 6 dice to any test, and deck attributes don't matter for those edge rolls. Makes up a little bit for having Sub par Deck.
Thanks for the reply.
Except you have literally no reason for the high Strength, and very little reason (as a Decker) for the high Body. You could easily drop them to racial minimums and save you a ton of Karma, as well as Attribute Points (depending on the system).
Jack of All Trades is kind of whatever. Also, don't plan on getting a better deck. Unless you mean the very next one up (which is like 100k+, IIRC), they are going to be way too expensive to upgrade to anytime soon. Plus, you are in debt as it is, it will take a long time to get money for anything else.
I think when he means a Liability to the team, he means the fact that your hacking is going to be pretty bad. You have a limit of 4 (possibly 5) on most actions, and that means you are never going to be able to hack a Host. Some Commlinks might even defy you. And heavens forbid someone engages you in Cybercombat. You can't attack back, and if someone link-locks you, you can consider your deck bricked.
If you want a Decker that can do all of that, an Elf is much better situated to that; even a Human is better. Now, I'm not saying that you can't play a Troll, but this build doesn't really fit the description at all to me.
Yes, you can use Programs. Except you can have a maximum of 2 Programs ever. Which 2 are you going to keep? How many are you going to be juggling constantly? Remember, everyone else with a cyberdeck will likely have a better one
and Programs. And you still can't really hack a Host or really high end commlinks with your dice pools and low limits.
51 Karma is quite a bit, to be honest. I'm not seeing "an effective Rating 14", unless you mean all the Improved Ability Powers. Which, I hate to break it to you, but you can only have at a Rating of half your skill level rounded up. So, to get to Improved Ability 4 would require a skill level of 7. Qi Foci are not exempt from that, and having a Force 8 Focus with 4 Magic is a good way to get addicted to Foci.
Sure, 6 Edge is useful. However, Skill > Luck. If you have to constantly spend Edge to do what a "normal" (aka standard) decker can do, then you are going to run out of Edge really quickly. It's almost never a good idea to count on having enough Edge to spend.
All right, things that really jump out at me.
Attributes1 Reaction and 4 Intuition. That means you need to roll a 6 to get 2 Action Passes, otherwise you are only getting one. To be frank, that is a death sentence to you. Most Matrix Actions require Complex Actions, and you are going to be getting 1 Action Pass 83% of the time. Good luck hacking anything in a meaningful time frame, having to deal with multiple devices, or another Decker. Not to mention that you will have very few dodge dice, or Surprise test dice. Body 9 and Strength 8 ... What in the world do these even do for you? I mean, Body 9 does give you more Soak Dice, but you could just be at Body 5 and be fine compared to most other Deckers. Strength 8, I'm drawing a blank. Logic 4 and Charisma 4; out of all the Attributes to max, I would max Logic over Charisma as a Decker. I mean, Charisma 4 isn't doing that much for you, but especially as a Decker, you want that Logic. I don't even know about the Agility 2. That one is always risky, but it's playable.
Magic 2? Really? If you are going to sort of cripple yourself as a Decker by being an Adept, 2 Magic is not going to cut it. A mundane unaugmented Human Decker is going to be just as effective as you are. I understand that you don't have the points to do Adept B, since you went Troll, but maybe you should rethink the whole Adept angle if that's what you are going with.
QualitiesQualities are kind of all over the place. Linguist you didn't really take advantage of, and it's not really that useful. Perceptive 2 vs. Codeslinger or something like Overclocker and/or Perfect Time seems like a strange choice that doesn't help you that much. College Education is all right for backstory purposes. Not so sure about the Trickster Mentor Spirit. Doesn't seem to do much for you, to be honest. Jack of All Trades is a trap for you. You are not a generalist, you are trying to be a Decker. That means, you are going to want to get your skill up, at least if you want to stay in the race with your competition you will. It's going to cost you more than the 2 Karma you paid for it, assuming you are going to try to stay as a Decker.
Low Pain Tolerance is a bad quality. Anything that causes more dice penalties to you than you would already normally have is a bad thing. You don't want to rack up penalties faster. In Debt also seems like a bad choice to me. Sure, it's part of your backstory (although, it begs the question why you are using your loans from school to buy a cheap cyberdeck; or why you are in school in the first place if you are commited to hacking), but you are going to be dry on cash for a while. Assuming you could pay it off immediately (which you won't, it will take probably 6 months to a year at the least), you would have to pay 60,000 nuyen. That's a huge amount of money, which cannot be spent anywhere else. And that's the very best that could happen.
SkillsOh boy. Where do I start?
Let's start with combat. Your only means of combat is Unarmed Combat, which requires you to be right next to people (which is a terrible idea as a Decker), and you throw an amazing 3 dice to hit. Considering that you have 5 dodge dice and you are extremely sluggish for a character, just think about what kind of opposition you might face. If you take a look at page 381 of the Core Rule Book, it shows you the lowest and weakest thugs you might face. They have 6 dodge dice. Shadowrunners pretty much never get paid to run against this kind of opposition. You are more likely to face Professional Rating 2 - 4 enemies, which have 7-9 dodge dice. That's double or triple your attack dice. Even with spending Edge, you can match the number of dice and make it about 50-50 that you hit them. That is really bad.
Since you went Agility 2, there is only one option you can go. That's Automatics, preferably with a specialty and not just one rank. Pick something with Full Auto, and spray to reduce defense dice. That's probably your only chance of actually hitting something.
Perception 2 is an interesting choice. Especially since you have no other means of boosting it. Even with your Perceptive Quality, you only have 8 dice, which is not a whole lot. You probably want Perception 3 (+2 Visual), to at least get 9 dice most of the time. A Ballistic Mask or something with Vision Enhancement would also be beneficial.
Con 1 and Etiquette 1. Well, I mean, your dice pools aren't terrible for a Troll Decker. They aren't fantastic either. You are better off leaving the talking to others still.
You are completely missing Cybercombat, which means you are pretty much dead if you have to enter a Host or deal with an enemy Decker. As for your Hacking and Electronic Warfare dice pools, they wouldn't stand up very well to Hosts, high rating Commlinks, enemy Deckers, or high Willpower + medium rating Commlinks. So, just about 60% of all targets, and 80% of meaningful targets.
Hardware 1 and Software 1. You aren't going to be doing anything meaningful with your Software dice pool. Either increase it or get rid of it. I don't even know why you want Hardware. I mean, yes, I know why it's useful, but your dice pool is so low that you might as well not have it. Repairing your deck will take a long time, and if you get link-locked, well, you aren't getting out of it.
GearI think I kind of covered the whole deck thing earlier.
Armor Jacket (Casual); what does that even mean? Armor Jackets are never Casual wear. Unless you mean something he just wears, but they are quite obviously armored wear, not something you would wear to a bar or anything (unless you were in like Redmond or Puyallup; then again, you're a Troll, so who knows). Somehow you have a Fichetti Tiffani Needler, yet no Pistols skill. How do you plan on hitting anything with 1 die using a Semi-Automatic weapon?
Technically, for your Fake License, you need a Cyberdeck License, not Restricted Hardware (which is way too general, by the way).
You don't have a Gas Mask or Respirator, any Ammunition for your Fichetti (at least not that I can tell; it's a fairly confusing PNG), or any Credsticks to hold money. You also have a Bike that you cannot drive, since you have no Pilot Ground Craft and you default to 0 dice (some GMs might let you get away with it, but you might need to make tests in heavy traffic or if you try to avoid something).
Adept PowersI get that Linguistics is part of your concept, but it seems rather useless to me. As does Metabolic Control and Improved Sense (Vision Magnification). Things like Combat Sense and Improved Reflexes seem much better. I also question the Improved Electronic Warfare over Improved Hacking; you will be using Hacking much more often than Electronic Warfare, as it is more useful.
Basically, I don't see this character working except in an extremely low powered game. Karma Generation would be much better for this concept (you can't really fit it into Sum to 10 easily), and it's not that hard to fit in if you drop the Body 9 and Strength 8. Otherwise, I just don't see him being able to bring anything, really, to a normal Shadowrunning team. Your hacking pools are just too low, and you will run out of Edge fairly quickly.
