Azaael's Shadowrun Haven

Ahem, yeah at the rate I update this thing I might as well be actively waiting for the 6th world to appear. <.<

Basically just RL stuff, nothing bad, just busy RL in general. Past few months has seen me with some writers block as well which hasn’t helped matters much; I think I finished my last piece over a month ago but that was already a series started(and not Shadowrun related), and it’s been slow going since then(and in between.)

Finally able to bring something to try to fight past the block, though motivation can be rough I admit since these things get such slow traffic. I sort of want to start a Shadowrun thing up on Blogspot as well but I will keep this running as there are some Shadowrun bits here and there on tumblr.

I am going to try to get this updated more often by utilizing short stories. Like, 2-3 pages at most I’ll shoot for(I made this one longer because it’s been awhile), and this could help me keeping up with writing while still allowing me to RL as necessary. I’ll hope anyone because I do think I could have some stories to tell about these folks!

Finishing his cigarette and flicking it into a nearby grate-the hard rain causing it to fizzle instantly-the huge elf ducked his head under the doorway and stepped into the clinic; it was an older, well maintained building, but  not quite re-purposed for trolls or even taller orks and elves. The primary acting physician, Dr. Douglas, made sure he accommodated those of a larger stature, but he could not do too much about the building itself.

Downfall shook some of the water from his armored longcoat as the buzz of neon died out behind him when the door shut. The smell of the wet leather permeated the air near the entrance, along with the slight scent of some sort of stuffers that someone was eating. In one hand, he held two large cups of coffee; to him, the seemed rather small, though such was life when you were someone of his size.

He nodded at the receptionist-an older dwarf fellow whom he remembered was nicknamed Ranch. He faintly recalled it was because he used to be a farmer from somewhere, but in the shadows, no one wanted to pry. Ranch nodded back, eating some of the said stuffers and watching something on the trid he had behind his desk. Papers littered it; the old dwarf was not particularly tidy, though he had a knack for finding everything he needed quickly somehow. He also didn't blink twice at anyone who came through the door. Even the first time he met Downfall, the sight of an elf around seven and a half feet tall wearing eyeliner and spikes was practically Monday morning for him.

The One Visit Clinic was a fairly normal, albeit small looking clinic; it had a few nurses, a custodian, and Dr. Douglas. It held normal operating hours, and generally just served as a walk-in for various maladies for the people, and it was sandwiched in a B-rated security area of the downtown district; just enough security to be fairly safe.

It did, however, serve another purpose, and three basement levels down was where Dr. Douglas operated his shadow clinic. He kept one of the more respectable ones in the area, though it was not obviously advertised. Dr. Douglas-it was not his real name, Downfall knew, but he did not pry-was an amazing cybersurgeon who worked for a corporation in the past; apparently one big enough to have three A's by it's title as well. He had set up shop here before Downfall had even arrived in Seattle for the first time, and he was put in contact with the team through Spanky, their ever-reliable fixer, after they had proven themselves to be as trustworthy as one could be.

As it would be in the shadows, it was who you knew that helped you survive. There were other shadow clinics to be sure, all of them requiring that you put the feelers out and possibly grease some comps with credsticks, but Douglas had access to some surprisingly high quality stuff.

Today, however, Downfall was not in need of healing or business. He did not have cyberware himself, being an adept and choosing to keep his abilities intact. But he was there to visit someone.

Recently, his team had a rather nasty job of infiltrating and taking down a bunraku parlor; quite nasty places detested by even some of the more questionable shadowrunners. It was only one of many ran by some of the various organized crime rings. They were hired to simply break out several people who were kidnapped to work for them.

They managed to liberate several people-most of them completely out of it thanks to the chips implanted in them-and one of them had been a rather large and heavily cybered elf himself; he stood out compared to the relatively normal looking men and women, most of them human. Most happened to be men as well, which was a rarity for such places.

Only when they released the chips from him, he snapped back partially to his old self and slaughtered every person they were supposed to neutralize before collapsing. It made their job easier, in any case, even though they were told to attempt to be quiet and capturing the organizers alive would have been worth more. They were not about to stop his rampage.

Given the team had some semblance of morals about them, they did not want to leave the people there; so they brought them to various clinics around, under anonymous terms, of course; these people were groggy, unable to remember anything, but able to function.

This final man somehow clung to Downfall as if he were the last person on earth, though he was unable to speak, still drenched in the blood of the people he just massacred. It was decided then they would take him to Dr. Douglas, and see if he could do anything for him; they feared that he had an extra-powerful personafix chip, very high-level BTLs, or something of that sort which potentially fried his brain. They had no idea. Judging by his stature and skills, they had to keep him on a very, very tight leash, as they probably feared this exact thing might happen if they didn't.  

Downfall had been haunted somewhat by his actions. Maybe because he knew he was helpless in his state, but the rest of the people were as well and they were more simply blank or somewhat surprised. Distraught, yes, likely needing therapy, yes, but not like the young man, whom Downfall had noticed was barely a head shorter than him and well muscled like a fighter; between that and his extensive 'ware, and how he utterly crushed the remainder of the criminal overseers there by himself, he wondered what sort of army they had sent to bring him in in the first place or why he was even targeted. He certainly looked like he could appeal to some people with certain fetishes, if ones fetish was for a six-foot-nine slightly gothic looking elf who was cybered to the gills with 'ware made for killing.

Remembering the type of clientele would sometimes visit these places, he didn't think about that too hard. Downfall was no stranger to the messy destruction of his foes sometimes, but this was a completely different situation.

He was haunted so much that he decided, after about a week, to pay a visit. Dr. Douglas had taken him to the back, but he was fairly unresponsive, mostly looking about before turning back over in his bed. He tried asking him his name, among a few other things...but nothing. Leaving, he remembered the doctor's words:

“I've seen types less burned out than him not come back. They had him on some terribly strong chips.” He was sympathetic, though. No, he would not give up on him. He was welcome to stay in the small room down there. He would drink the soy-protein shakes given to him for nutrition from the doc, and water, and he would do typical daily necessities, but he would not speak and he barely did anything else.

The second time, Downfall had come with a large cup of coffee from the nearby Stuffer Shack. As he sipped it, the young man had looked at it with interest; Downfall was quite happy as he handed it to him to let him drink it.

Now he was coming a third time, even though he was still just as withdrawn to the doctor. This time he had brought two huge cups, hoping to bring him out more.

He had no idea why he was so bent on this. But he followed along with it. Downfall was known as the team member with the loosest morals; often earning his money through underground bloodsports, the Tae Kwon Do master had taken many lives down there, and rather messily at that, due to his enormous strength. The rest of this team tended to only go for lethal options if absolutely necessary, which occasionally put him at odds with them. He did not seek to lethally harm his opponents; if they did not come at him with lethal intent, he would not return it. The minute live ammunition or a real weapon came out, however, all bets were off in his mind.

His team was rather surprised that he had developed a rather strange attachment to helping this young man.

Shaking his head to bring his thoughts back around, his heavy, steel-reinforced boots echoed loudly through the dim hallway that held the small rooms. They were recovery rooms of sorts, mostly for people who were no longer in need of urgent care, but were still suggested to be kept under watch. They were sparse; a trid set, bed, sink, desk, and a few other items.

The young man was staying in one of the furthermost ones. A few of them he could tell were occupied on the way, though they did not have more than one tinted window at the top to keep privacy, and were protected with biometric maglocks. Dr. Douglas took the security and privacy of his patients very seriously, as he himself knows what it is like to have to lay low from the wrath of some entity.

Messaging the doctor to let him in from remote once he got there, he slowly opened the door and made sure it was locked behind him. The light was dim, and the young man was lying on the bed, somewhat propped against the wall, staring out into space.

He was extensively cybered. He wore at the moment only a pair of cargo shorts and large combat boots as he lay there, but he had two powerfully enhanced cyberlegs; Downfall did not know if he got these out of necessity or want, but regardless they were clearly greatly enhanced with a ton of strength, hydraulic jacks, and even spikes which shot from the heels, which he had seen him use. His left arm was likewise replaced and heavily enhanced; he knew it housed a spur and hand razors, and he wasn't sure what else. His torso and left arm remained meat, though he had a feeling those were enhanced with some sort of muscle augmentation, as he exhibited strength greater than even a skilled man when he utilized them as well, and possibly bone lacing. They were tattooed fairly well with various Eastern-themed designs, though he was not sure from where. A chrome datajack stood out on his right temple.

He wasn't sure what other cyber or bioware he had besides the datajack and the two chipjacks that were underneath his left ear, as there were many types of 'ware that were not detectable without a scanner of sorts being inside-but his eyes were certainly replaced. Eerily colored, with white pupils, purple whites, and black irises. His skin was exceptionally pale; his own was, too, but that was more due to the fact that Downfall was somewhat adverse to sunlight and had to stay indoors during the day. Metahumans occasionally developed allergies to common items a bit more than regular humans-plastics, sometimes pollutants, soy, or perhaps gold or silver; it seemed random, and he chalked it up to perhaps one of the oddities of the expression metahumans had gone through.

Downfall put the man's age at around his own he guessed, which was his mid twenties. His hair was worn fairly long. His only clothing right now was what he wore, so he was not sure of his interests, style, or anything else.

He hoped to get to know, since that would mean he would actually maybe recover.

The unsettling cybereyes focused on the cups of coffee in his hands. Downfall smiled slightly and handed one to him before shrugging off his longcoat and hanging it up. He sat on the floor, crosslegged; even sitting, he made a huge figure. Taking the top of the cup, he set it to the side; Dr. Douglas allowed smoking in these rooms as they were for recovery of people already mostly healed beyond infection, and he knew many of his patrons had smoking habits and the like. Being a smoker himself despite knowing its pitfalls, Dr. Douglas did not lecture anyone on such things.

The young elf took it, drinking it as he eyed the cigarettes as well. His eyes found Downfall's.

Blinking, he handed him one, lighting it as he slid it into his mouth. He still did not talk, though Downfall was rather relieved to see him coming out a bit more. He brushed his hair back, exhaling.

They sat, drinking the massive cups of coffee and smoking in silence for awhile. The man's face almost looked relieved from the taste of the cigarettes. Downfall could not tell if he had amnesia, partial amnesia, or was simply addled from the massive amounts of BTL that had been used to scramble his brain for who knows how long. But the fact he seemed to remember things he liked was a step forward.

For a moment, Downfall shifted, as the music player he often carried with him was sitting in the pocket of his cargos strangely. Upon seeing it, the man looked interested once again, having put out his second cigarette already. He seemed to want to catch up for lost time somewhat, though he did not ask for a third yet.

“This? I hope you like hard stuff. You ever been to the Black Machine?” The Black Machine was the name of a club that he regulared and even bounced at occasionally that specialized in hard, driving, industrial gothic-metal.

At that name, the man perked up. Downfall looked a bit surprised. He handed him the player, and the man put the earbuds in to listen. As the music emanated from the buds-he had it turned rather loud-Downfall actually grinned, the man seemingly having a lot of his own tastes in things. This was good; it may make it easier to connect with him.

“Newer band from Seattle. Evil sounding.” He grinned.

The man nodded, looking up at him.

Downfall blinked in surprise. “You...know what I said?”

He nodded. “I...stuff's coming back,” he finally said. His voice was a fairly soft tenor and his accent was local. From the Northwest, he figured.

Feeling somewhat relieved, he chuckled. “Do you remember anything?”

He shook his head. “Not...much. Bein' brought here but only in flashes. The first coffee. After that just the doc making sure I was okay. My...words.” He shook his head again, looking somewhat confused. “Dunno why I ended up here.”

“Don't push it. I...should tell the doc I think.” He stood to buzz him on the comm; the man rubbed his temples as he drank more of the coffee.

They sat in silence again as Dr. Douglas came in, a small bag in his hands. He looked partially both relieved and surprised, nodding at Downfall. He started by checking things on the young man; mostly how he responded with both his meat body and his cyberware with certain things.

“Do you remember your name?” the old doctor asked.

He rubbed a hand over his face a few moments, seemingly straining. “T...Talon.”

“Alias is good enough for now,” the doctor said. “Your real name could come in time.” He did not said 'would', as he was unsure how badly his memories were damaged. “Do you remember anything else?”

He thought, sipping more coffee. “Flashes. Did jobs for...certain groups. Others had it in for me.” He thought again. “I was knocked out with gas at some point and then I remember this guy here.”

“Downfall,” he said. “Just call me Downfall.”

Talon looked over to him, smirking slightly for the first time. He nodded, putting one earbud back in so he could hear the music while speaking. “I don't remember nothin' else.”

Dr. Douglas took a wire out connected to a small device. “I need to plug this into your datajack for a few moments.”

Talon cringed noticeably, though slowly nodded. The doctor plugged it in, reading a few things. Nothing adverse happened. “Thank you. I'll leave you two now.” He nodded at Downfall, looking fairly pleased and flipping out a notebook. Downfall smirked, as he knew the doctor's penchant for still taking hard note copies to this day, a lost art in this day and age. Talon absently scratched the skin around the jack.

The two sat in silence awhile more as Talon enjoyed the chip player. He had it turned rather loud. The fluorescent lights buzzed softly, and occasionally there was a door opening; probably the doctor going in and out of one of the other rooms. Downfall had stayed here before himself, though it was for injuries. He had taken shrapnel from a frag grenade as they head out of a building; being the largest one of the team-over a head taller than even Sullivan, the old ork-and by far the strongest, he would often take the vanguard if the group needed to get out at once, and this put him in the way of a frag grenade.

His jacket took the brunt of it, though the doctor had to physically fish a lot of shrapnel from him and patch him up afterward. He stayed for two nights, and to be fair the place was comfortable enough. The doc, given he was fairly well tied to the team in terms of being a longtime contact, took extra care with them if they came with injuries; there were a few people he worked with who got 'special' treatment, though they of course still paid.

He almost chuckled to himself at the look on the groups' faces when he still managed to kick the guy's head in who threw the grenade in the first place even through his injuries. He supposed his near-berserker tendencies sort of came through, and he was particularly resistant to pain.

“You from around here?” Talon finally asked.

He shook his head, snapping back from the strange train of thought. “Tir.” He did not mind telling this, as it was fairly unimportant to his life now if someone knew he was originally from Tir. “Lived here awhile now.”

“Right from the heart of it.”

“You?”

He shook his head, thinking for a moment. “Seattle. Never moved from the hometown. Maybe I should have.” he uttered a dry laugh.

“You never know what's going to happen. Can't live if you're afraid of the unknown.”

“Sounds like you know.”

He had no way of physically showing his abilities, but he tapped his head and made a fist. “I sort of know there are some bizarre things out there.” Most magically active people were connected to things mundanes could not begin to fathom.

“Mage...no, you're one of the other kind.” He smirked. “Look it anyway, whatever that's worth nowadays. And I thought I was big.” As he settled more into his regular dialogue, Downfall could hear tiny bits of cityspeak patois sneaking in, though he wasn't nearly as thick with it as some of the Barrens folks.

Downfall smirked back at him, taking a seated position with his back against the wall. He wrapped his arms over his knees as he lit another cigarette. Talon seemed to be looking over his tattoos.

“Mechanical. Thought you types are into the organic.”

He snorted. “I like the design.”

“Wiz work,” he replied, a small smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. Downfall did not inquire about his; given their designs, they were likely due to working with some sort of organized crime.

Downfall finished the coffee, and went over to the coat that was hanging up, digging around in a pocket. He threw Talon a pack of smokes and a lighter.

“Go ahead. I have more. I gotta run. Doc I think will want to watch you anyway.”

Talon nodded, catching them. “Comin' back?”

Looking surprised, he nodded. “If you want.”

“I kinda want some more of that music.” He handed his chip player back. “And the coffee. Stuff here's not bad, but it's weak.”

He nodded, grabbing his big coat and sliding it on. He imagined it was still raining, making him want to stop by Spanky's before going back to his place in Tacoma, which would take him awhile to reach. He had taken public transit today, knowing it was too rainy to bother with his motorcycle. He had, on occasion, debated putting away more of his cred toward a car; he knew Vallie could likely find him an inexpensive chop-job and refit the seats so it suited his frame. Covered vehicles came in handy during the worst of the Seattle weather.

“Take care,” he said, brushing back some of his hair.

“Hey...” Talon started. He held out his meat-arm to him. Downfall grasped his hand briefly. “Thanks.”

He nodded, turning to go out. He felt somewhat relieved, and even a bit pleased. It was like he felt like after his years of killing in the pits he wanted to attempt to do some sort of good deed, and it seems like he did, though he was not sure what sort of shape this man would be in after he remembered everything that happened, if he even did. He wondered if he would keep on his current path or regress; BTLs were nasty drek.

Passing by the doctor's office, he nodded inside. The doc looked up from his papers.

“Looking over the tests I took. He has a good chance of recovery, though I'm not sure how much of his memory will be intact. Hard to know with these cases. It could even come and go.”

“Guess time will tell.”

The doc nodded. “Are you coming back?”

“With more music next time.”

Dr. Douglas smiled, wandering over to the coffee machine on the wall to get himself a paper cup of it. He fumbled in his coat to procure a credstick which he slotted in. “I have a few patients to attend to. Can I call you if needed?”

He thought for a moment, and nodded. “Guess I'm his closest known person now.”

The doc walked back over to his desk, starting to pore back over his papers as Downfall walked out, shoving the earbuds into his ears on his way. Breathing in as he walked out, the scent of wet asphalt entered his nostrils, though the music drowned out the familiar buzz of neon. Smelling some familiar broth and noodles nearby as he stuffed a cigarette into his mouth, he decided to take a quick detour on his way to the tube.

Guess I'm in this all the way now.

–

A/N: So after eons of absence, I decided to just do a little bit of a story on how perhaps Downfall had started to coax Talon out of his shell, in a more short story format than the background format. It actually went on a little longer than I planned.

I got another commission of Downfall done! This one is from the talented https://www.instagram.com/xwitheringwillowx/  

Go check her out!

Sort of a reference sheet, and done in a different style; he’s more slender here and has an almost dressier jacket. Maybe this was him fresh into Seattle at 20 years old, eight years before, before he had put on his heftier muscle and scars from fighting in pits, and back when he still had clothing halfway between ‘goth metal guy’ and ‘son of a semi-noble elven family.’ Could have even been right before he exiled himself.

He still looks as surly as ever though. XD Not as surly as Talon, though he gave him a run for his money in his younger years.

Always nice to get an OC done! Hopefully I’ll have a little more written. I still have a couple of more extensive backgrounds to write up. I’ve been neglecting this site too much!

Maybe I’ll pick up by writing another short. That might get me moving again.

Hey, check here, it’s a commission I got done of Downfall! This is his calm face. I got it done by https://twitter.com/lonerurouni187 , go check him out!

It looks great. He even has his arm behind him(he fights with a hand sometimes behind him, depending, sort of Jhun Hoon style.) The artist did a great job at reflecting his heavy metal boots.

Hoi chummers!

Since it’s been like forever since I posted I might as well leave an update: yes, I’m good, just busy with family and the oncoming holidays. I am still writing up the last two characters of the group, some NPCs and so on.

In fact, here’s another character that’s in my Seattle! I figured I’d come back to at least post one. I had commissioned this like...wow, over five years ago at least I think? The artist is here still on DA thankfully; I’m glad since I like sourcing stuff. http://priscillakim.deviantart.com/

His name is Samael and he’s a heavily cybered elven gang leader(well, it’s not an elf gang or anything, he just happens to be one.) As we can see he has some extensive cyber, with added horns to keep his sort of ‘demonic’ appearance, as the gang lieutenants are nicknamed after various demons. They are actually fairly cool with Shadowrunners and are known to trade info for info; they are fairly heavily anti-corporate and are almost a sort of ‘underground resistance’ sort of gang. Samael in this picture probably got done tangling with corpsec...or what’s left of them. He probably stands about as tall as Downfall if he stretches out tall, and tends to have some serious gallows humor. Naturally his cyberlegs are incredibly enhanced. Downfall, given his obsession with Tae Kwon Do and training, may get jealous at times if he hung out with him extensively.

(I sorta wonder how Talon would react to him, given he has about the same amount of extensive ‘ware, only he lacks the Kid Stealth legs. Hell, Killswitch has the Kid Stealth legs as well, though he swaps his out as needed. Samael looks like a demon raptor most of the time. You can’t see it here but he also has a pale blue tint to his skin, most likely bioware. Might as well keep the demon look going.)

He’ll probably show up in a story or something at some point. He’s more of a contact, though I could use him as a playable character as well, though he’s fairly ‘prime’ in terms of his stuff.

SR3 House Rules

So I figured I'd actually write up some of the houserules we run with, in case folks around would be interested.

I'll even put a note at the end for some stuff for the later editions, though we don't play them as much.

No Availability Limits at Chargen:

This is a rule we use in all editions, so I'll start with it. The first time we played this game(SR2), with our first GM, we never used these limits, and it stuck. We simply believe 'Buy stuff that makes sense for your character.' If you're playing a Former Company Man or a character with a background that made them loaded(or they simply got a lot of 'ware over time), then get it. Hell, with creativity an unlikely character can have some cool stuff. In our first game, a buddy of ours played what was basically a 50-something year old hobo with some hefty bio and cyberware. Not much in the way of gear(squatter lifestyle, a couple handguns, scruffy armor, cans of soup, a baseball cap, etc.) He was ex-Military though, had a lot of knowledge skills(you had to buy those with regular skill points in SR2), and really you didn't even think about he was stuffed to the gills with 'ware(he hated fighting as well, due to doing so much of it in wars.)

Basically, for us, if you have a decent story for it, or even attempt to write a decent story for it, we're cool. We like to open options, and if that means just taking off Availability limits, we do it. Even if we're doing a lower level game, we just use the honor system, and it works.

Knowledge Skill Points from Cerebral Boosters

Another one used in any game, our reasoning is this: Unless the character got the ware like, five minutes before the start of the game or something, they likely had their Cerebral Booster for awhile, and the nature of such bioware(it's cultured), is not something that's just going to get removed without, well, probably killing the character or rendering them a vegetable, if you look at how it works in Shadowtech and how it's installed. Thus, unlike an Encephalon and other 'hardwired' type of stuff, it's like, never going to get removed, so you don't have to worry about that INT score dropping through those means.

As such, I felt it made sense to allow Cerebral-Booster boosted Intelligence scores to count toward Knowledge skills. It's something that rarely gets abused, if it's even abusable. (A player who wants more Knowledge Skills-like, skills that don't actively help you shoot things better, but help you better make your character a character-and goes out of their way to install an expensive piece of bioware to do it? You don't find that often. If at all.) If someone gets one, it's likely for character purposes of wanting to be smarter for whatever reason. It's worked out pretty well in our games.

Can break Attribute Maximums with cyber/bioware

This happens rarely, to be honest. Basically, each score has an 'Attribute Maximum'-which is usually 1.5 times the score. Generally speaking you can't augment past this, but I rule with Cyber/Bio you can. It's generally pretty hard to do anyway. (To hit, say, a 10 Quickness as a human, you either need to max the stat and take Level 4 Muscle Toner or something, or 3 Toner and a Suprathyroid-in any case, fairly nuyen intensive things. Or you need to get a 5 in the stat and get BOTH +4 from Toner and +1 from a Suprathyroid which is a decent chunk of nuyen and bio index.)

5th Edition actually has a thing here, where a stat can be boosted up to +4. This actually allows a human to get a 10 quickness if they max the stat out(or whatever.) It comes up so rarely that it's never an issue, and it hasn't caused any issue when it has come up, so I just say 'Let it ride, if you pay the nuyen and Essence/Bio Index, you get the bonus.'

Note you can't increase an Attribute naturally past its Maximum still though. (In SR3, you could increase a stat past it's Racial Modified Limit by paying 3x its new stat in Karma instead of 2x. Remember Karma awards trended lighter in the older days.)

As always, have a plan here. It's much cooler if you do this for a character reason rather than 'just the numbers.'

Lower Costs for Cyberlimbs

Ahh, here's a big one, and it's for 2nd and 3rd edition specifically. I've mentioned it a few times. I feel cyberlimbs, especially in the 2050s era(and this might be some of the Cyberpunk in me talking too), are way too expensive. In my mind, augmentations run something like:

-Bioware: Top of the line. For the more well-off/professional folks. -Some Cyberware: Middle of the road; stuff like muscle replacement isn't as top of the line, but it works(though it's heavy on the essence.) Decent cost to performance ratio. (Wired reflexes and stuff are nice.) -Cyberlimbs: High essence cost, low performance. You only get 1 limb at a time and need to juice each one up separately.

Because of this, I feel something inherently wrong with a single cyberlimb with the following: Str+3 Quickness +2 ...and that's it, costs 1 essence, 75k for the limb, 50k for each level of Strength and 30k each level of Quickness. 285,000 Nuyen. Mind you you can get Level 4 Muscle Augmentation/Toner for 180k and 3.2 Bio Index(leaving your Essence at 6.) That's +4 to your own Strength and Quickness.

Hell, if you have a decent score in each(5's in each lets say), 1 level of Muscle Replacement is 1 essence, 20k, and gives +1 to each.

Basically, cyberlimbs being so expensive makes them this sort of high-end thing which I feel takes away the 'feel' of cyberpunk; the gangs who have a cyberlimb or two thrown around, and so on. Hell, I always imagine cyberlimbs being the choice of a middle class person over some sort of expensive type 0 clonal replacement(though maybe if they have a good Docwagon contract that's not so bad.)

So after some fiddling, I decided to vastly lower the costs of cyberlimbs and their augmentations. it took some time, but I discovered a pretty  decent setup I feel.

For base obvious limbs(which still have a Strength and Quickness rating of Racial Average + 1 base):

Obvious Cyberarm: 20,000 Obvious Cyberleg: 30,000 (Kid Stealth variants are 50,000 each) Obvious Torso: 35,000 Skull: 10,000

Strength and Quickness/Level: 10,000: 1-3 points 4+ points: 20,000/level and .2 Essence per point

Which is all considerably cheaper. It's still not *cheap*, but given how nuyen works in Shadowrun(and how much you can get), they had to have a LITTLE bit of a cost. That, and they're fairly affordable in their BASE variant(which I feel is an important thing.)

So here, a human could get 2 Obvious Cyberarms, with Strength and Quickness +3 each(for 7's in each), for a grand total of 160,000 nuyen and 2 Essence. Yes, you can still get Muscle Augmentation/Toner 4 for barely more, but at least with this you can make a somewhat comparable setup. Cyberlimbs are still not optimized(and I don't need them to be), but they're at least something that you can see some more people running around with. If you want to play a lean samurai optimized machine, you'll definitely still want to go with a cyberware/bioware mix, but this method at least keeps limbs more reasonable for how UN-optimized they actually are.

Also, built-in devices do not cost 4x the cost. They simply cost as they do as if you were installing it into your meat, nuyen wise. You already paid an essence for the arm, I don't see why you have to double up.

Can trade your 2 free Level 1 Contacts for 1 free Level 2

Notes: Created with NSRCG 3rd edition character creator, under the BeCKS Karma system, which we tend to use. (He does have a Priority version as well, in case I were to bring him into another game who sticks with Priority. There are some differences, though mostly just in gear.)

Timeline takes place around 2055.

Edges and Flaws:

Exceptional Attribute: Strength(3) Bravery(1) Distinctive Style(-1) Sensitive System(-2) Allergy: Mild, Sunlight(-3)

Attributes:

Body: 5 Quickness: 6 Strength: 7(9) Charisma: 4 Intelligence: 5 Willpower: 5 Essence: 6 Magic: 6 Reaction: 5(7) Initiative: 5(7)+1d6(2d6)

Pools: Combat: 8 Karma: 1

Active Skills:

Unarmed Combat(Kicks): 5(7) Pistols: 4 Athletics: 4 Etiquette(Street): 3(5) Intimidation(Physical): 3(5) Negotiation: 2 Computer: 2 Car: 2 Throwing Weapons: 2 Stealth(Sneaking): 1(3) Biotech(First Aid): 1(3)

Knowledge/Language Skills:

Criminal Organizations: 3 Magic: 3 Industrial Metal/Aggrotech: 3 AK: Tacoma: 3 AK: Tir Tairngire: 2 Underground Bloodsport Rings: 4 Occult: 4 Tir Tairngire Politics: 1 Elven Society: 2 Underworld Politics: 3 English(Cityspeak): 4(6) R/W: 2 Sperethiel: 4 R/W: 2 Japanese: 2 R/W: 1 Russian: 3 R/W: 1 Korean: 2 R/W: 1

[Note: If the optional Martial Arts rules are used, Downfall has Tae Kwon Do: 6, the maneuvers of Kick Attack, Sweep and Kip-Up. He adjusts a couple other skills as appropriate in return. This sheet uses general Unarmed Combat since other tables do not utilize the Martial Arts rules or sometimes utilize them differently, example: allowing purchases of maneuvers with the generic skill.]

Adept Powers:

Killing Hands(M) Improved Reflexes: 1(Geas, Talisman) Smashing Blow Mystic Armor: 1 Improved Strength: 2

[The geas for his Improved Reflexes is a custom-made necklace made from a leather and stainless steel collar, and has a bolt hanging on the front.]

Gear:

4700 in certified cred divided between several certified credsticks. Fake ID Rating 3(Elan Stefensson, bodyguard.) Fake ID Rating 1(Jarred Reynolds, dockworker.) Middle lifestyle paid up for 1 month(Tacoma district, a converted warehouse/basement deal.) Squatter safehouse in the Downtown district paid up for 1 month(cheap flophouse to hide out in.)

Survival Knife(11L damage, conc. 6, compass, glowstick and trauma patch in handle). Ruger Super Warhawk(10M, SS, 6cy, conc. 3(5) w/ Laser Sight, Concealable Holster. 10 AV rounds, 30 APDS rounds, 30 Regular Rounds, 30 Gel Rounds). Browning Ultra-Power(9M, SA, 10c, conc. 6(8) w/built in laser sight, 3 10-round clips each regular rounds, APDS rounds, and gel rounds.)

Steel Reinforced Boots(500) and Hardliner Gloves(300) add 1 to the Power of his unarmed attacks(bringing them to 10M Physical.) The metal that compromises the outside of his boots is all treated with Dikote, giving him an extra point of damage on his kicks(11M Physical.)

Secure Jacket[B5 I3, black leather, motorcycle style.] Secure Long Coat[B4 I2, black leather, bolts, nuts, and chains incorporated into it. Fire Resistance, Insulation and Non Conductivity all rating 2.] Misc. clothing + jewelry, mostly gothic-industrial style. Set of fine clothing. Urban camo full suit(B5 I3), chemsuit-4. Respirator and pressure regulator(designed to be more like a rivethead's gas mask with some other industrial designs to give it a frightening look.) Thermographic goggles(20x magnification, also designed with a decidedly more ‘industrial’ look.)

Wristphone w/flip-up screen, pocket secretary, subvocal mic. Music player, 20 chips of various industrial-black metal, aggrotech, and EBM(bands such as Aborym, Grendel, Hocico, Aesthetic Perfection and the like, with of course including ‘modern’ 2040s-2050s bands).

Large military rucksack, survival kit, climbing gear(harness, kit, gloves, 50m rope.)

Details:

Technical School Education allows only a +1/2/3 defaulting modifier to background knowledge skills instead of 2/3/4.

Friendly Face allows a -1 to TN's to infiltrate unknown groups or meeting new people in new places.

Natural Hardening gives 1 point of Hardening, cumulative with cyberdeck hardening.

Impulsive requires a Willpower(6) test to jump into situations without thinking.

Braggart requires an Intelligence(6) test with 2 successes to not show off while telling a story.

Appearance and Personality: Jolt is the youngest member of the team, at only 18, and still sort of looks his age. He's average height-around five nine, and has a fairly average and wiry frame. He's in good health, and isn't a couch potato, but he's also not particularly the guy that goes out of his way for athletics, though he enjoys skateboarding from time to time. Jolt is Afro-Brazilian, though his parents were both born and raised in the UCAS(his grandparents may have lived in South America for awhile, though not for long if they did; his family is pretty thoroughly and solidly from the UCAS.) He has a long, braided mohawk-usually tied up but sometimes left to go fairly wild, and gray eyes(his eyes are cybereyes, but they're designed to look fairly normal; his natural eyecolor was brown but he wanted something a bit more interesting), his style of dress usually consists of jeans or baggy shorts, high-top sneakers and various punk-rock T-shirts, sometimes with the sleeves torn off. He wears a synth-leather armored jacket is colder weather and throws on form-fitting body armor underneath if he knows things might get dangerous.

He does have some obvious 'ware; he has two datajacks(two on his right temple), and a multislot chipjack down behind his left ear. (The rest of his ware is all internal; headware memory, knowsoft link, smartlink and a Math SPU; after his initial escape and large load of stolen nuyen he had gotten a Cerebral Booster installed as well.) He often wears black eyeshades for style.  

Jolt is a child prodigy; a bonafide genius(he, Vallie and Silver can occasionally use words and discussions lost on the other members of the group), and his cerebral booster allows him to do even more abstract things. He's an absolute whiz at all things math, science, and engineering; though magic is something he doesn't get no matter how hard he tries. He's a tech-nut through and through. Jolt is easygoing, laid back(sometimes outright lazy sometimes), and pretty easily likable and sociable; even the more hard-edged Talon took a fairly fast liking to him(in so much as Talon actually likes people.)

Jolt has a fairly good schooling of the ways of the world, despite his young age. He knows places to lay low, recognizes certain areas as being not too good to hang out in, but where he really shines is matrix topography and all places Matrix. He knows where the Matrix gangs hide, he knows where to go deal with them, if there's a chat room with information he can probably find it if he doesn't already know where it is. He has a fairly decent network of other hackers and pirates(and other people of the cyber world) at his fingertips.

He's probably the happiest in his big warehouse-loft thing he has set up with a computer and electronics shop; he's currently saving up for a full blown facility(there's plenty of room for it.) His living quarters look more cluttered than what might be good, though he can seemingly find whatever spare parts you might need fairly quickly. He has a large trid set up along with other odds and ends(he does some pirate trid broadcasting on his spare time and makes some okay bonus cred from it), a large area for his music collection; punk rock is his favorite, particularly older bands like Black Flag, DRI, The Sex Pistols, The Damned, the Misfits and Bad Brains, though he's quite into some of the newer ones too(if they have a raw edge to them.)

In terms of food he is happy stuffing his face with Bucket-burgers, anything from the Stuffer Shack or whatever; he's not too particular if it's real or soy(and buying soy lets him spend more money on stuff like toys and gadgets anyway.) He's probably one of the least-picky members of the group when it comes to eating, with several of the other members preferring real or at least halfway real fare. He'll even drink soykaf, much to the chagrin of Downfall, Talon and Silver, and he's been known to sustain on a lot of that-along with energy drinks-for those late night gaming or tinkering sessions. His nickname is sort of derived from an old energy drink.

Jolt tries not to kill. He will pull out real ammo if necessary, but he relies mostly on gel rounds or his trusty large stun baton if he has to fight; he's not in bad shape at all but prefers keeping overwatch and handling Matrix duties(he will not think twice about burning enemy decker's decks, and will attack them directly through the matrix if push comes to shove as well.) He tries to remember that a lot of the security are just people, and he's occasionally curious onto the brutality of some of the members like Downfall or especially Talon(given the former will strike to disable if the enemy does not try to kill him first), but he is content with knowing that different people have lead different lives that cause them to react differently.

The team gets on well with him; while they occasionally find his bragging a bit eye-roll worthy and sometimes need to temper his impulsive nature, his general good attitude and computer/electronics skills have saved them more than once, and they all can count on his unflagging loyalty to the group. He always has a positive word and a generally optimistic outlook, which can be a rarity in the 2050s.

Right now his goals are to gather enough money to expand his shop into a facility, customize a deck that can make an Excalibur look slow(his current Kraftwerk has been hacked apart and put back together and highly customized already with a ton of additions; nothing off the shelf is good enough for him) , and he wouldn't mind-on a personal level-to get his parents out of the corporate life, since he knows Ares is not he cleanest of the corps around(well, none of them are, but he really hasn't liked what he's heard of them.)

Getting an even bigger warehouse would be to his liking, as well; he actually sort of likes the Tacoma district and all of the industrial-style things it offers. He also one day sort of dreams about getting his own pirate trid station going full time and becoming a sort of 'anarchist news leader' one day; one of those legends that goes down as the guy who managed to hack insert scary thing here.

Quotes:

“Well someone's salty.”

“'Bootleg' or 'Pirated Copy' sounds so...bad. I prefer to call them 'Imports.'”

“I can do a number on this thing. Easily. What sort of mods ya want? Full mods? Medium? I can even put a pretty wiz anti-theft device on it. Won't even hurt any of the microtronics inside!”

“The first demo is always the best. The latest album, that's usually the one they sell out on.”

History: Brian Bower was born to two Ares employees, Jason and Victoria Bower, in May of 2037. Both of them worked in some R&D department(weapons, to be sure) that he didn't find out what it was until much later. They lived a rather decent lifestyle in one of Baltimore's more expensive business districts(Ares Arms has their HQ in Baltimore, and the city took on quite a corporate bent after that) and Brian grew up not wanting for anything.

Things were looking even more up when he was discovered to be a bonafide genius; his tests were through the roof and regular school quickly got him bored. While he was not magically active he had a strong leaning toward engineering, and he was moved ahead in school rather quickly. He graduated at the age of fifteen and immediately went into technical school; he wanted to go to MIT&T, but his parents felt that it would be better for him to stick in one of Ares' technical schools, given he was likely going to be working for that corp(they were putting him through said school and had already made a deal with his parents to get him into a very high paying position once he turned eighteen.)

He enjoyed technical school, but stuff started feeling more and more 'wrong' to him. Being highly intelligent and curious, he wondered why his parents rarely talked about what they did. He was no fool; he knew Ares Arms were the weapons manufacturing branch of the corporation, but he didn't know exactly what they did(any corporation has anyone from secretaries, to finance specialists, to lawyers, to computer specialists...and yes, to the weapons engineers themselves, which they did.)

Brian let things alone for some time, up until his last year of technical school. Ares brought him in for cybernetic implants; datajacks, cybereyes, headware memory, and such things that would help a decker along. Brian loved decking and did it on his spare time(though already delving into some of the shadier aspects...very much on the down-low, of course), and things just started to feel very funny now, since he knew how much cyberware could cost...and free school, free ware...he had a feeling he was in for a time of 'servitude' to the corp. Brian's more punk-rock attitude(he took a big liking to old punk-rock music of the 1970s and 1980s while surfing old Matrix archives, and also liked the attitude there) sort of chafed at the possibility of being a company man.

What really drove the nail of 'no fucking way' home for him was when he discovered one of the projects his parents were working on-that they helped develop. A weapon that could cause rather large-scale death and destruction. Poking further(he was rather impulsive about sticking his nose into things, and he had the decking skills to cover his trails), he discovered more weapons they helped develop. Feeling like he had been living on blood money his whole life from this, he confronted his parents about it.

The discussion got a bit heated(more on his end...his parents, while caring, were fairly blasé about the whole thing...possibly, he thinks, because they have simply told themselves over the past fifteen years or so that this is how stuff was, this is what they do, and they're not the ones deploying them), and Brian ran off to cool off for a few days, ostensibly at a friends house. Which he was...but he was making his plans to get out.

He had easy access to his money, thanks to a family bank account and his hacking skills, anyway. He had been funneling away money on his own, and he figured a few more withdraws over the days would give him enough. He was looking at Seattle, which he knew, through a few people he knew over the Matrix, had plenty of people willing to pay for his services. He thought to himself that yes, he was probably going to be involved with some dirty business, but it would be to stop things like the development of weapons that hurt large groups of people.

He was able-after some time-to locate a sort of warehouse like place in the Auburn district, which seemed to be as good a place as any to set up shop, and the 'realtor' was a bit of a 'no paper trail needed' type-which was much better for the young man, who was able to set a few things up right over the Matrix. He set up a train ticket with some certified cred(so it had no trail), and then, after unloading a fair bit of cred onto various certified and forged credsticks, loaded a bunch of belongings into a large military style backpack-including his cyberdeck, some of his favorite music chips, clothing and other odds and ends, threw on his leather jacket and disappeared on a late-train for his cross country ride.

Thanks to his well-made fake SIN and the like, he made it cross country without issue; he was getting a bit bored after a couple of days. In Seattle he was able to set up quickly in his new place where he immediately lay low for a couple of weeks, burning as much of his old trails as he could via his own decking skills and his contacts.

Eventually, his pokings around the various corners of the Matrix put him in contact with Spanky, who knew a team who happened to be looking for a decker. While he was a bit apprehensive around the older, more experienced runners, he fit in rather quickly, even getting along fairly decently with some of the surlier members of the group, finding video games being a rather common link between them, of all things. After seeing how much he went to the wall for them on a particularly hairy run(resulting in him having to stay in Dr. Douglas’ clinic for a few days to recover from a nasty Black IC attack), he was fairly set as a steadfast member.

Being young, he doesn’t look ahead too far. Right now he just wants to build bigger and better toys and stick it to several corps while he’s at it. He’s still idealistic; it remains to be seen if the shadows will affect this or not.

Contacts:

Besides the usual crew(Spanky, etc.), Jolt also knows:

Nate is a young ork ganger who looks otherwise human(Human-Looking edge); he's just a particularly big guy. He looks like he dropped right out of a heavy metal band, with his death metal t-shirts and long, brown hair. He's a deadly fellow despite his age though he's defensive against those smaller or less able to defend themselves.

Taris is an elven street cop who is a closet fan of various video games. Jolt gives him tips on how to get better(and even plays with him sometimes), while Taris will give him useful tidbits of information about varied things. He's not on the take, so to speak, but he's a little disillusioned on how Lone Star handles things.

Kyra, the decker who is the huge K-pop and J-rock fans. She's extremely schooled on all things Matrix and chatrooms.

Franklin is his deckmeister, a dwarf who excels at getting stuff that falls off of trucks-and new tech, too. Jolt sometimes helps 'test' some of it. He's often up for a good game of Quake 6.

Details:

Sensitive System doubles Essence losses from cyberware.

Astral Impressions causes people trying to track Silver to gain a -2 to their Tns.

Distinctive Style gives others a -1 to all TN's to track someone.

College Education allows one to default to Academic Knowledge skills at +1, +2 to a specialization, and +3 to an attribute.

Good Looking and Knows It grants a -2/-1 TN on all Social or Etiquette tests the first time one meets someone(depending on their preference.)

Silver has a few magical fetishes; she usually doesn't have them in sight, but will take them out. She has a monocle which functions for Detect Magic, an old token from London that functions for Improved Invisibility, and a die taken from a casino years ago that she uses for Clairaudience.

Appearance and Personality: Silver is a human woman, 26 years old, and clearly cut from more upper-class cloth. Her hair is indeed long and silver(where she got her none-so-creative nickname; however she likes this, as it makes her stand out less...her magical ability tends to stick out like a sore thumb as it is), and her eyes are pale blue. She walks upright, and stands taller than average, at around five foot nine, and slim. She generally dresses in more fine or 'Tres Chic' clothing, and when going out she dresses nicely indeed, alternating between gowns or fine pants suits depending on her mood. While out and about, she actually prefers slacks or designer jeans; anything she has tends to be of a more designer quality.

Despite occasionally giving on the appearance of a shallow rich girl, Silver is extremely intelligent and studious; she keeps a large shelf full of actual, legitimate paper books(often preferring them to electronic, though she has tons of those as well), and she loves nothing more than to be in her study, reading, studying up on magical theories and inventing new spells, or debating with other mages over the Matrix chatting with them about various aspects of magic.

She prefers the finer things in life. Her money-particularly from her past, her inheritance, and her past corporate work-was considerable and it allowed her to set up a rather nice condo in the Bellevue district. It's very well protected and secured-both physically and magically-and she even has a butler-Collings-who has worked with her family for a very long time. She eats well-preferring not to eat soy but she will if she has to go 'undercover' in more average clothing(which she does keep a few sets of on hand to keep up appearances.) Her favorite colors tend to be bold or jewel tones; blue, purple, red. She is fairly sparse on jewelry, particularly when on runs, though usually wears a silver necklace, ring, and earrings. She enjoys various music(particularly symphony, though she also likes symphonic heavy metal music with melodic vocals, in the realm of Nightwish or Avantasia), and her favorite foods trend toward Italian and Japanese cuisine. Her everyday clothing, while higher class, is generally of more utilitarian fabrics, as stuff like silk and satin don't work too well in the damp Seattle weather.

Silver is generally a good person, and prefers to use magics that knock out the opposition; she occasionally finds Downfall's and Talon's methods a bit messy for her tastes, and occasionally thinks Vallie leaves a bit too much co-lateral damage with her demolitions, but she also recognizes sometimes a lethal spell must be used or elementals must be set to wreak havoc to make the world a better place. She takes on a sisterly role with much of the team, getting along with everyone, even if she sometimes is a bit estranged from her higher class upbringing(some of the other don't understand why she runs when she could probably retire and study, but in her mind, it allows her to learn new things, especially when taking magical based runs to liberal magical artifacts and the like.) She can shoot pistols with some competency, and is fairly skilled with a monofilament whip as well, though she uses that only for last ditch efforts. She generally does not spend a terrible amount of time on physical endeavors, much preferring the rigors of study in her nice, quiet library.

Spiritually she leans toward agnostic-dealing with the astral is a good way to get one's belief on the 'I really don't know what, or where, stuff is' level. Politically she is socially inclusive in about any way and very pro-metahuman, though she leans conservative on fiscal and business matters; given her standing and higher class this can occasionally get her in a debate with some of the more 'gritty' members of her team.

She has a variety of spells; she does have a strong array of punishing combat spells, has some spells that can disable enemy technology, heal her teammates and also act as recon. She's socially quite skilled in the ways of the corporate world and negotiations; coupled with her natural charisma and exotic good looks she's a natural face for the party as well. She has some computer skill as well, though she's nowhere near a hacker. She treats her elementals well-she never cared for mages who use and abuse theirs-and they’re nicknamed after four characters from an old fighting game that she had watched Jolt and Downfall play one day(she picked the four best-looking guys in the game.)

She hopes to own a legitimate estate some day; a quasi-mansion of sorts on her own, with some acres, and a massive, actual library-not only including large magical libraries for studying, but other books as well; history, literature and the whole bunch. She has come to appreciate and enjoy her part on the team and does get along very well with them; while she'd love to retire from running one day, she sort of enjoys using it as something to both support herself, to try to right what she felt like were a few wrongs from her past, and to perhaps snatch a few things from corporations that are magical oriented in the process.

Quotes:

“I've been studying magic for sixteen years, history for thirteen and literature for ten. Yet I am still not able to explain humanity's trend toward stupidity.”

“You do realize soykaf is an affront to all six senses.”

“A wise person once said: No one should know too much about their destiny.”

History: Lauren Johnson was born to two rather well-off corporate employees in London in 2029; a healthy child who ended up with top-notch care due to their work. Neither parent was aware of any latent magical genes; they were both computer specialists for the UK branch of Fuchi Industries. They lived in a rather large place around the Estates District; Lauren had top end education and a generally comfortable life. Her parents were often working and busy, though she spent a lot of time with her family's butler, Collings. She had a good relationship with her family, and they were caring, but it was what more than one child knew as a more 'corporate family', where the child was raised by day care, school, or sitters. In her case, Collings helped fill that role.

Her life was fairly typical; she was a bookworm for her years. She wasn't particularly interested in school sports or anything, but preferred sitting down with books or documentaries, occasionally delving into the world of fashion, which she also sort of liked looking at when she was young. When she was discovered to have magical aptitude-thanks to tests that they tended to run on children in the more corporate-sponsored private schools-she was immediately shuttled into new courses.

Lauren enjoyed this. As someone who loved to read, study, and find out how stuff works, this was right up her alley, there was a whole new world to explore, essentially. More than one world, once one counted the Astral. Her high school years were spent in the prestigious school for magically active students; but when she turned sixteen, she had done a bit of research into MIT&T over in the UCAS, and decided this was a place she would have loved to go. She had money, she knew she wanted to continue her magical studies, and finding work would be easy afterward.

After talking it over, they would happily accept her; she could pay the full tuition and had excellent marks. Within a few months, she had many things packed up, a large condo set up in a ritzy part of town(though she planned on staying on campus as well; she wanted to spend time with people who were into her pursuits). She planned on traveling back and forth on breaks, and her parents were pleased with how things turned out.

She went on well with her parents gone; one of the benefits to having had a rather distant life from them was it was fairly easy to move out. She missed them, and especially Collings, but she quickly got on with some of the new young men and women she met, being fairly charismatic.

Halfway through her time there, she got news from her parents that they would be relocating to Japan, to be working for the home headquarters of Fuchi. It seemed rather sudden, and they said they would probably wish to sell off their place, of course giving Lauren a rather hefty cut of the money to get herself set up over in the UCAS if she wanted...or back in London. Collings would go wherever Lauren wished.

The money made from selling their property would give her a very, very handsome chunk of nuyen to set herself up indeed, and she was already lined up for some corporate work-not a mega, yet, but an A-rated corporation that dealt heavily in magical research-as soon as her studies were done. Her parents' communications with her became very sparse, as they had seemingly been put on a very top-secret project.

She requested Collings' presence in the UCAS, which he gladly took. He was concerned about the situation with her parents, but nothing much could be done with it. Lauren simply buried herself in her studies for the next two years, graduating with high honors and moving directly into the corporate life. (Her parents contact her with email every so often even to this day, though it's not common.)

She worked diligently in the magical research and security department for three years; however, after this her and several other mages were put on a project that was more secretive, and as time went on, a couple of people discovered some of the stuff they were working on was actually sort of nasty. None of the people on the small team much cared for this, and after one of their kind mysteriously disappeared(he was caught up with later, burned out from what they did), so they started to sort of hatch their own plans to bail.

Lauren worked quickly; using the certified cred that she had kept-just in case, Collings had suggested-she set herself up with an apartment in the Bellevue section of Seattle(after discovering it was cross country and about perfect for what she wanted to do.) Sending Collings ahead with a load of the certified cred, she began to ship her things there discreetly and covertly; eventually ditching the condo she had on the East Coast and heading out under cover of darkness with the rest of her things.

She laid low-separate from her butler-for several months in Seattle, living off of her fairly decent nest egg, as she made sure to secure a strong fake SIN. During this time she tried to find some of this under-the-table work that she knew about; being ex-corp, she knew about shadowrunners. After some snooping, she discovered a bar called 'Goal!' which seemed to be less seedy than some places. It didn't take her long to secure a spot on a team; her corporate graces, social and magical skills was worth far more than her inexperience; and within some months she found herself a regular part of her current team. (At the time, Jolt had not joined and they did not have a regular decker; Talon, likewise, had not joined yet.)

Spells:

Manabolt

Stunbolt

Stunball(E)

Analyze Magic

Clairaudience(F)

Detect Magic(F)

Heal

Stealth

Improved Invisibility(F)

Lightning Bolt(E)

Armor

Sterilize

Contacts:

Besides the commonly found contacts of the group(Spanky, Mama, etc), she has:

Collings: Collings is her family's longtime butler. He ended up coming to the UCAS to be a caretaker of her Bellevue penthouse after her parents had to go work in Japan at Fuchi HQ. Collings is a confidant to her, and while he suspects something is up and she isn't actually just a magical office drone, he doesn't say anything. Collings sometimes drives her transport around.

Duncan is a dwarf Johnson that's affiliated with Saeder-Krupp. Silver did a great job on a run of his one day and they kept in touch. He's mostly for work, though he doesn't say no to a glass of whiskey.

Kyra is a decker, and a friend of Jolt's, who is a great ear on the street and in the Matrix. She is obsessed with K-pop and J-rock and any prettyboys associated with such. She stares at Talon a LOT.

Yay, I have two more character writeups, and I even did a character sheet! I’ll do sheets for all of them, but I wanted to finally get a couple more of these things written up. Whew, this took long enough.

‘Elo all!

Been a bit slow around here still, I know-like I said, been hella busy.

But working on some more of those write-ups, and I think I’ll be including some full bore character sheets. I mean why not-might make for some cool overall pages(for those folks curious of the numbers.) 

I’m toying around with more fiction as well as well as some random blog chat. Like revisiting some old 2e stuff for retro sake.

While as usual, I'll be focusing on the older editions for this-it can easily copy over to the newer(given that the same basic generation systems exist.) I will touch on differences, of course, when applicable. Mostly this is for 'Hey, I hear 3rd is awesome, I wanna play.'

I'll go over the ups and downs of each generation system before moving onto the tips section.

Okay, so first we have Priority. The classic core rulebook method(and the 3rd edition rulebook takes you through it nicely).

Priority can be summed up as:

+Clean and simple

+The fastest method(note: 3e chargen can take awhile anyway but this part will go a bit smoother)

+Fairly generous for the high areas but not completely terrible for the others either

-Sometimes you just can't pick the 'right' priority

-Can be limited if you play a meta/mage due to forced priorities

-If you use Edges and Flaws they have to cancel each other out since there's no points to earn with Flaws and nothing to buy Edges with

Okay, so what do I mean by some of these disadvantages?

My own character-Downfall-is an elven adept. He's made with BeCKs(Karma system, which I'll go over too) since that's what we use now, but his original incarnation was made with Priority.

So how he worked, B and C were taken up. Elves/Trolls have to be taken priority C under the book system(Dwarves and Orks D), and Adepts are priority B Magic. (Full mages/shamans are A.) This left A, D, and E for Attributes, Skills, and Resources. Well, Priority E resources was only 5k; not quite enough(I have made 5k work for a street shaman and a sprawl ganger, but this guy's got a bit more.) 1 million was far too much(his parents were millionaires but he's long been separate from them.) 20k felt right. He REALLY didn't need the 50 skill points offered from A, but the 18 attributes of E were far too little, so it was Attributes A and Skills E. I didn't really need all 30 points, and I'd have liked a few more skill points, but all in all, he worked out. I was happy.

But Karma allowed me to tweak him to drop a couple attribute points, grab those extra skills and even a couple thousand more nuyen, making him more balanced and about perfect.

Now this is just one example; I've built many successful characters using the Priority system, and you can too; but it does have that drawback. One biggie you see is money. Sometimes you need a big chunk(Riggers, Samurai, and especially Deckers), but you blow through like...550k or so. That's more than the 400k, but way less than the million...so you start inventing shit to do with money. (Deckers just take priority A resources 99% of the time anyway. And yes, they blow through it. ;))

It does a good job with Attributes and Skills I feel. Skills to 50/40/34/30/27, and Attributes 30/27/24/20/18. It's a good spread, and you're bound to find something that fits.

Again, simple, but you might find it stifles you in regards to money, forcing you to take too much(or scrap.) The last point with Edges and Flaws, if your table uses them, is minor; you may see your character with a flaw but don't feel the need to take an Edge, or vice versa, but you have to with this method(unless your GM devises a houserule for taking care of this.)

Point-Buy

Featured in the Shadowrun companion, this is where you get around 120 points(3e)-the example in the book gives 123 build points and that's what I personally use-and you purchase your things that way. Metatype has a cost, you pay for skills 1 for 1, Attributes 2 points for 1, and money you buy in chunks(like, 1m for a certain amount, then 650k, 400k, 250k, 90k, 20k on down to 0 points for 5k and you GET 5 points if you take only 500 nuyen-fun fact: this used to be Priority E in 2nd edition.) You do need to pay for having magical ability(depending on full mage, adept, etc.)

There IS a maximum of Attribute and Skill Points you can purchase(30 Attribute points and 60 Skills), but it's pretty generous.

Benefits and downsides are as follows:

+More customization(you can have odd numbers of points and the like)

+Generous maximums(you can really make that skill nut with 60 points!)

+Money has a bigger spread, allowing some of those big gaps to be filled in with more amounts

+Edges and Flaws can be taken independently(Flaws to gain more points, or you can spend points only on Edges, or offset the two either way.)

-Can lead to more number crunching

-Brand new player may find it more overwhelming simply due to more choices

-Some archetypes have a blatantly better time under it

Okay, so its a lengthier list, but I'll go over it. It does open up customization. Basically when you can take numbers like '26 Attributes' and '42 Skills' and such, it allows you to be more freeform with your builds, and it's really welcome to have those 650k and 250k nuyen 'price points' in there for people. It gives a much wider array of money and prevents having to take the million for spending 500k, or to take 400k for wanting to spend 150k and so on. It's also nice to be able to take Edges and Flaws independently(you pay for them on a one-for one basis, so a 3 point Flaw gives you 3 points, and a 2 point Edge costs 2.)

Now it also has some more downsides. Giving more stuff means it's a bit tougher; new players may feel a little overwhelmed with choices, and more experienced ones may take more time to crunch numbers, taking from here, adding to there, and so on. Now I do some number crunching myself, I don't mind it, but it's something you might want to be mindful for if you're the type that does.

There is also that last thing mentioned; some archetypes get noticeably more powerful under it than the Priority system...while others a bit less so. Take a human sam. If I were making one up under Priority, I'd probably take nuyen A, Attributes B, and skills C, for one example, giving me 1m, 27, and 34.

Under the point system? All that just cost me 30(Money), 54(Attributes, 27x2), and 34(Skills), or 118 points total. Even using the 120 Build Point allotment, I have like two more points to spend on more skills. If we use the 123 Build Points used in the example, this un-named sam would have 5 more points to play with beyond Priority(I could use it for Edges if I wanted to as well.)

Meanwhile-take my main dude-my adept. He's already 35 points in the hole with Magic and Race total, and even if I used 27 Attributes(54), and 27 Skill Points with the 20k nuyen(5 points), he's up to 122 already. He could get 28 Skill Points. But he's actually less adept than his Priority build, where he at least got 30 Attribute points to offset the lower skills. Some characters can get even hairier under this system. (an Ork Full Magician who happens to take A Magic, B Resources, C Attributes, D Race and E Skills-a completely legal and non crunched character-would end up having spent a whopping 130 Build Points.)

(In any case, whatever you decide to run at the table, make sure for this reason that characters all use the same system. It ensures they're balanced against each other.)

Sum-to-10

This is an interesting system based on the Priority system, and first popping up in the Shadowrun 2nd Edition Companion(and it was based on the original 1e method of chargen, too.) So what happens is each Priority has a number attached: A is 4, B is 3, C is 2, D is 1, and E is 0. You can pick and choose any of these to add up to 10. It didn't appear in 3e(though folks used it, given a lot of old sourcebooks were interchangable), and returned in 5e again as an option.

A quick rundown:

+Decent customization

+Still fairly fast for new players

-Power levels can vary greatly depending on humans or metahumans

-Still has the edge/flaw issue

So like Priority it allows you to pick and choose, but it has a hair more customizing since you can say, go, 4,4,2, or 3,3,2,2, or 4,3,1,1,1, and so on. Humans cost 0, being mundane is 0, so a mundane human, as you can see, has their pick: a human sam could have A Attributes AND resources, and still get 34 Skills in 3rd edition. Or a human can take Attributes and Skills A and still get 90k. Or they can go with mega nuyen and skills and still have solid attributes(24, which used to actually be priority B in 2e.)

As usual people might end up crunching more with Metahumans and magically active folks. To use again my fellow, he needs Adept and Elf(which is 3 and 2 points respectively.) But it does give me some leeway; I could go 4(Attributes), 1(Resources), and 0(Skills)...and he'd end up exactly how he was over the basic Priority system. Or I could go 3,3,2,2,0, if I wanted a bigger chunk of nuyen; however, if I made him under this system, I'd probably go 3,3,2,1,1. This would give him 3 more skill points above his Priority build to play with, and given his Karma build uses 28 attributes anyway, the 27 + the bonus point Edge would work out just fine.

Someone making a human combat mage might be 0(human), 4(Full magician), and maybe opt for the 3/3/0 spread(Attributes, Resources for 3 each, and Skills for 0, opting for someone with decent magical skills, a couple of good combat skills and then a small rounding of others.) It's a neat system that's easy to understand, but again, if you're a table that runs into numbers issues, you might be wary of it, as mundane humans can end up pretty crazy.

Karma(called BeCKs in the older days, you can see the original PDFs here: http://www.nerdprideradio.com/Content/Downloads/BeCKS.pdf )

So Karmagen(which I'll call it now), got its start back in BeCKS, or Bethyaga's Complete Karma System, and it dates back to the 3rd edition. It was a set of houserules that were widely adopted, very well received, and finally moved into the official rules for 4th edition and up(though used in companion books, rather than core rulebooks.)

To give an example of how it works, in 3e, 450 Karma is given. You then proceed to make your character as if you were advancing them with Karma. A Body of 3 costs 10 Karma(1 comes automatic since you have to have a 1, a 2 costs 4, and a 3 costs 6, for 10.) And so on. Skills go by their book costs(again, see the chart.)

Karmagen rundown is as follows:

+Easily the most customization, from start to finish

+The creation method is the same as the advancement method, which cuts down on minmaxing

+Encourages spreading out rather than hyperspecializing

+Edges and Flaws, like the point system, are separate and you can get extra Karma with flaws, spend Karma on edges, or however you want

-Can be lots of number crunching(though not minmaxing, will explain)

-Can be very overwhelming to new players

-Can take awhile

So, going down the line-you can see from the descriptions, and the PDF, that its very number intensive and takes awhile. Simply put, if you want fast generation, you're not going to find it here. But the degree of customization is unmatched(you buy Nuyen by small bits), and a huge thing I like is that the creation method is same as the advancement; so you don't feel it necessary to minmax.

What I mean is this. In Priority, or even point-based systems, its usually cheaper to start with your specialities very high, since they cost more Karma to raise. For example: say you're making merc, for the hell of it. In this case you took Priority B Skills and are filling them out.  You want them to be good at assault rifles and pistols.

You probably eventually want a 6(say you don't want to specialize, you might even want higher, but let's say six for now.) So you have the chargen choice of two 5's, and use those two points to get, say, a Computer skill of 2 to round out the character, or two 6's.

Going from 5 to 6 in game with Karma costs 9 points(its New Skill x 1.5, assuming your attributes check out and aren't too low, remember they're linked.) So raising both of those 5's to 6's would cost you 18 Karma in game. That's...quite a bit.

That computer of 2 though, that only costs 4 Karma. 1 for the first point, and 3 for the 2. HUGE difference. This makes people lean toward more frontloading, since that 14 Karma could easily go somewhere else. Under Karmagen, though, all the costs are the same at the beginning as they are later; you advance the same way. It puts less emphasis on total number squeezing(though it does lend itself to crunching, since it's just a more math intensive system.)

All in all it's why we really favor this system.

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