One of the things done in Shadowrun 1st edition was that it presented a set of 'Archetypes' for use as player characters, although there were also rules for generating characters entirely from scratch. Actually, 'generating' with its connotations of dice rolls to 'see what your character is like' was replaced entirely by player choice character creation. In Shadowrun, this was done by assigning priorities to 'Attributes', 'Skills', 'Resources', 'Being Magical (or not)' and 'Being an Elf/Dwarf/Ork/Troll (or not)'; and the higher priority assigned to each area, the more of it the character got.
However, although having archetypes was useful, the actual archetypes weren't necessarily all that great. This was for a variety of reasons, but can be divided into:
A. Mistakes in making the archetype's skills, attributes or equipment not match up with the priority rules (i.e. the character is illegal).
B. Conceptual mistakes in not equipping, whether figuratively or literally, each archetype to contribute appropriately to the game.
Of type 'A', the errors in the Former Company Man were probably the most egregious, which is why I dealt with him separately here. However, several of the other archetypes seem to have some similar errors in there.
Type 'B' is more interesting in a way. Characters in Shadowrun need to be able to contribute to several 'phases' of each mission or adventure. They need to be able to find out information through some form of information-gathering, whether social, physical, technical or magical. Each character on the team should be able to act covertly. Each character on the team should be able to contribute to the combat power of the team. And each member of the team needs to contribute towards the extraction of the mission objective (in whatever form that is), although the skills for this will largely overlap with the reconnaissance section.
To take an easy example: the Elven Decker (i.e. Hacker) has a Firearms skill but no actual firearm. In this edition of the rules, decking does not really have a combat function unless the adventure is set-up in such a way that the decker has to engage opposition deckers at the same time as the other characters are fighting in physical and/or astral (i.e. magical) space. The decker therefore needs to be able to fight physically in instances when there is no hacking to do that would matter tactically. In this case obviously the immediate remedy is easy: just buy the Elven Decker a weapon. But that invites the question as to whether the archetype has been sufficiently optimized for those very common situations.
What bases does a Shadowrun team need to cover, and by derivation, what do the individual archetypes need to cover?
Combat skills: normally Firearms will be the best choice, but Rigger can choose gunnery. Melee combat should be less important, but seem to be iconic for Street Samurai. Magicians do not strictly speaking need combat skills since their magic can serve.
Physical skills: Stealth is obviously key for any characters needing to sneak around; so everyone except Magicians (if they use a magical alternative) and Riggers (only if they will not participate personally in covert action). Athletics might be useful for certain character builds.
Technical skills: Computer is the key skill for a Decker. Electronics is useful for more sophisticated breaking and entering, and Biotech (i.e. Medical skills) is generally useful, mainly for combat but also for other activities (sometimes information-gathering, sometimes post-mission recovery).
Magical Skills: Both Sorcery (casting spells) and Conjuring (calling up spirits) are key for magicians.
Social Skills: This category includes Leadership, Interrogation, Negotiation and Etiquette, with the latter having various exclusive sub-categories. Of these skills, Etiquettes were somewhat under-developed and Leadership totally undeveloped mechanically, leaving Interrogation and Negotiation. The latter comes up in lots of the published missions, if only to increase the reward level (which are often absurdly low for the risks and expertise involved). Interrogation is more problematic: it could be a very useful skill, but often very lazy adventure writing defaults to the opposition being nearly invulnerable to Interrogation, or sometimes actually invulnerable to it.
Vehicle Skills: These are divided as one might expect into Cars, Bikes, various types of Aircraft & Boats and so on. It is important that someone has a high Car skill at least, as should anyone who wants to do any important mission-related stuff in vehicles. Riggers will need additional skills for controlling drones. If characters are just using vehicles as basic transportation then lower skills are fine - although there doesn't seem any point in buying skills at under the Autopilot level in any case.
Build and Repair skills: Many of the skills have a mirror 'Build & Repair' skill. So a driver will have 'Car' skill, a mechanic will have 'Car(B/R)' skill. These are not generally mission-useful, they are more designed for pre- and post-mission activities - and thus are not really necessary skills. They can always be replaced by paying an NPC for the service.
Knowledge Skills: Include such things as Computer Theory, Cybertechnology, Biology, Physical Sciences, Sociology, Magical Theory and suchlike. Some of the skills are more like background skills, others have uses but like Build & Repair skills, they are more use pre- and post- mission in order to reduce costs of stuff, basically. Some of the skills could have more uses, but things like Military Theory, Psychology and Sociology etc. weren't really developed enough to be generally worth it. If in your game, Military Theory skill works to trump 'Reaction' or somesuch then it would be a must-have but if it doesn't, then it isn't.
Language Skills: I can't remember this coming up, except for Irish Gaelic and Sperethiel. Each character should get some free additional language ranks but there isn't usually a case for using character generation or experience points to get more.
Special Skills: Anything else. The ones that come up with Archetypes are the Music skills that the 'Rocker' archetype has. One of the supplements (Shadowbeat) has rules for using these, which run basically off a performance skill and a writing skill.
In this edition, taking high level skills (maximum of 6) during character generation is very important, because the costs at character generation are linear and the costs to develop them by experience increase exponentially. This also applies to Attributes, so it is generally better to take very low attributes at character generation in non-crucial areas rather than stint on important skills. For example, increasing Firearms from 1 to 2 costs 2 points, and 5 to 6 from experience costs 10 points; whereas increasing Strength from 1 to 2 costs a single point and from 5 to 6 costs 5 points.
In the rules as written, characters with additional Reaction will move first and move more often every turn. I have removed this latter characteristic from my own games, but it is still very important to go first, so characters should prioritize going first and getting cybernetic (or magical) assistance to achieve this. They should also prioritize Quickness and Intelligence, since those attributes determine base reaction.
Generally speaking, it is only worth being a metahuman (Dwarf, Elf, Ork, Troll) if you want to take advantage of any of the Racial Maxima - otherwise, what is the point? For most characters, Intelligence & Quickness are the most important. Strength is very rarely important unless you want a character specializing in close combat. In this version of the rules, 'Body' is only marginally important, since Armour is so effective: for my own games, I have slightly modified the Armour rules, which makes Body more important. 'Willpower' and 'Charisma' have some uses, particularly for Magicians but also other characters who specialize in social interactions. One last thing: there is no point I can see in having just below average Quickness and Intelligence - rather than do that, just take very low attributes, on the basis that if you are going to go last last, you can't go any laster...
So, to sketch out what our archetypes should be able to do:
Magicians (both Mages and Shaman) need Sorcery and Conjuring. They need Firearms unless they have a couple of good combat spells and Stealth unless they have Invisibility. A reaction boost spell is also useful. All attributes are somewhat important except Strength and Body.
Player character Deckers need Computer, Firearms and Stealth. Having a good cyberdeck, Wired Reflexes and a Smartgun Link are also very useful. Quickness and Intelligence are the key attributes.
Street Samurai need Firearms and either Armed or Unarmed Combat, plus Stealth. Wired Reflexes are a must. Additionally, the Street Sam should have Etiquette (Street), Negotiation or Interrogation or similar to contribute to legwork.
Riggers need Gunnery and Pilot skills for whatever vehicles they have. There might be a case for the Rigger to have Build & Repair skills too since equipment costs are probably quite key to this character in a way less likely for the others.
The Burned-Out Mage is quite a tricky Min/Max build, working out the various balances between Cyberware and Magic. One very useful quirk in the priority system is that this character is likely to have a decent chunk of resources and a good number of spells.
The Mercenary isn't really viable as a useful independent character concept unless Leadership and/or Military Theory do something mechanically useful in the game, otherwise the Street Samurai will be better at almost everything vital, from having more Cyberware. On the other hand, if they are better than having quicker Reflexes, then there will be relatively little reason to be a Street Samurai.
The Former Company Man has a niche being similar to a Street Samurai but perhaps with Demolitions and Interrogati0n and getting rid of the melee skills. Otherwise, similar comments apply to the Detective and the Tribal Warrior as to the Mercenary: how are whatever skills and attributes you give them going to overcome the relative lack of combat speed compared to a Street Samurai? Why the Detective archetype was not given Interrogation as a core skill is quite a mystery to me.
Rockers are mechanically under-developed in the core rule book and not worth taking. Even with Shadowbeat, the rules aren't quite there, since the archetypal requirement to use 12 points of the skill budget to get musical skills are rarely going to be worth it.
As a reminder, low-level skill are much cheaper to develop later than high-end skills, so there isn't loads of reasons to take any low-level skills in character generation. The same applies to attributes, except more so. Starting archetypes should generally make use of metahuman attribute advantages or just be humans.
Incidentally, I am strongly inclined to allow every character to have 3 points in Etiquette in addition to the skills allowed by the priority rating. All characters in the game should have some Etiquette skill or other, and not at the expense of something more generally useful. I think that the next priority step is to define more usefully what some of the other skills, especially Leadership, Etiquette and some of the Knowledge skills actually do game-wise.
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