[Shinobi Killfist]

I'm liking the Runner's Toolkit.  Now I really don't need anything that is in it, but it is still filled with some useful tools.  I especially like the action cheat sheets, they seem like something that would be great to hand to someone who isn't solid on the rules(1/2 the table in my case).  The anatomy of the shadowrun section is pretty cool for both GMs and players to give ideas on how to make/run and play Runs, a great tool for beginners.  I think the PACKS section is fairly slick though I am trying to wrap my head around how Trolls get a discount in BPs, I haven't looked to far at it, I only really looked at the section I playtested.  The compiled tables are really useful, but I kind of think once your compiled tables get that long you might want to look into a new edition.  I'm glad I was able to snag the last one from my game store this weekend.  Sorry about the disjointed rambling, I just kind of spewed my impressions. 

[Crash_00]

If I remember right, the PACKs races are designed so that you buy attribute points (1-6) and then apply all the modifiers. So Trolls cost 40, but they give fifty back (they take a total of -5 to attributes over four attributes) for a -10 total. it's not any different than the normal system really, just a different way of looking at it.

[Shinobi Killfist]

Ah that makes sense since before you just got your attributes capped and they were not reduced, so this is just taking into account the reduced stat costs. 

I think my favorite part of packs are the gear kits.  Gear is something I kind of don't want to deal with on some characters, going through the books and writing down all the basics you need as a runner is a bit of a pain. Some prepackaged lists is really useful, it is the most useful section IMO to use on its own.  The rest of the sections seem geared more to making a full character out of packs.   

[Crash_00]

Ya, I haven't really used any of the other PACKs, but I create lots of gear PACKs of equipment that I commonly take for certain character types. My PACKs tend to revolve around modified gear (so that you don't have to find the modified cost for every character).

[darcdante]

I ordered a copy today. I'm mostly just in need of a GM screen, but I'm interested in looking through the other goodies as well.

I've also been reading through Spy Games since I'm setting my campaign in Denver. That book is priceless for me at this point.

[FastJack]

Just be careful when using the PACKS since they don't take into account Dodge or Perception skills that much.

[Valashar]

And plenty of the gear packages in PACKS seem to ignore the availability 12 limit for chargen. Can't think of an example off-hand, but my group's rigger kept pointing things out to me as he was mining the gear for drones and his rigger pimp bus.

[Shinobi Killfist]

I'll keep that in mind though things like drones and other gear core to a character concept I expect most people to cherry pick, but it does make my job as a GM a bit easier to pick a few packs of normal rigger gear.  and for NPCs I don't care about availability much.  The things I like it most for players are things like the emergency identity kit, the basics, B&E goods etc.  Where I know I want these things but I don't want to spend the time to go through the books to find them. 

As for the skill kits they don;t ave things like perception but I don;t think they are supposed to.  You get a blade expert pack and it will give you a list of skills, qualities etc that are good for that.  It is still assumed you will pick up some points in basic other skills to round out your character.  Now maybe they should of had some skill kits like the runners core skill set  Perception, infiltration, etiquette or whatever.  But I think it does a decent job for what they are.  And I think of them more as GM tools than player tools, even though players can use them.  If I want to have a decent decker harass the team I can go through this and pick out a few kits and throw together a character a lot quicker than building him from scratch.