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[4E] First character ever. Help needed

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SpiralRunner

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« on: <09-30-17/2349:27> »
Howdy all, this will be my first game, first character and first experience with a new group and a fresh-faced GM. I have an outline of the character I want to make but beyond that I could use any and all help this community can spare.

This is a fresh GM and our game will take place in Seattle with no real focus on hacking or astral shenanigans
I have 750 karma to use
I will be using the core player handbook almost exclusively
Unless recommended otherwise I'm going to blindly guess my chosen weapons out of chummer
I want to make a dwarf street samurai with a focus on close quarters gunplay. I'd like to use a shotgun and machine pistol
I'd like to keep her alive and durable

The character is going to be a gun brawler more or less. A tanky face-first bundle of boomstick intended to eat hits and dish them back out at close range

ShadowcatX

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« Reply #1 on: <10-01-17/0117:54> »
Do you have a copy of the main book? Also, why karma over basic build points if you are sticking to the main book?

SpiralRunner

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« Reply #2 on: <10-01-17/0131:59> »
I can find one easily enough and as for karma. To put this bluntly, I've got very close to no idea what I'm doing and karma was the currency I was told when we where given a date. I don't want to make something useless because of new-player ignorance

ShadowcatX

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« Reply #3 on: <10-01-17/0733:40> »
Karma builds are, by far, the most complicated. I have never understood why people would favor them, especially for new comers to Shadowrun. And this is doubly true when doing 4th edition and build points are so easy and in the main book.

That said your concept is solid. Survivability is very important. Agility > body = willpower > intuition > reaction > everything else is probably where I would start for attributes.

Tecumseh

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« Reply #4 on: <10-04-17/1713:56> »
SpiralRunner, take a look at the archetypes that UmaroVI created for 4th Edition:

http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=4495.0

The closest to what your describing in probably Ronin. Your end result isn't going to look the same because Umaro was using Build Points instead of karma, but the stats and the gear will at least give you an idea of what a decent street samurai will look like.

The next step is to download the excellent Chummer 4, which will help with the math and playing around with the various options. You can do so here:

http://www.chummergen.com/dev/chummer/Chummer.zip

Once you have that, all of Umaro's archetypes are available for download here:

http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=4495.msg238328#msg238328

Again, they won't be exactly what you want since they've been optimized for Build Points, but they'll give you ideas and direction.

From there you can start playing around in Chummer and seeing what your options are. It should be a lot of fun.

You'll probably want to spend 100 karma on nuyen (¥250,000) so that you invest a lot in cyberware, bioware, and gear, which help distinguish a street samurai from a gutterpunk.

Speed kills, so you'll want to invest in cyber/bioware that makes you faster. Look into wired reflexes and reaction enhancers. After that, you'll want things that make you better at the classic shooty-stabby combo for which samurai are renowned. Umaro's Ronin uses a customized cyberarm, which is effective, but muscle replacement (cyberware) or muscle toner/augmentation (bioware) are also valid approaches depending on the flavor you want.

Don't worry too much about picking the wrong weapon. I might suggest going with a submachine gun (the Ingram Smartgun is a good one) over a machine pistol, but that's ultimately up to you. If you're using the core rulebook and the the GM is new then don't worry too much about optimization. You should do well with whatever you select.

That should get you off the ground. Hope that helps.