Black Rain in the Shadows of Seattle, 2060

Game Master Tilnar

Danny is a Physical Adept, so presumably not intended to be squishy...

Physical adepts are great but have some challenges; they really do wind up playing like a monk in D&D/PF:

* Unless you are a gun adept, you must close with the enemy, which presumably means running cover to cover until you get around behind their cover to get into melee with a guy who has a gun
* You have Body + armor to absorb damage, but likely don't have cyberwear improving your soak
* You can take powers that let you reduce pain/stun dice penalties, but they're expensive (Danny doesn't have Pain Resistance, so taking damage or stun hurts his effectiveness)
* You can take reflex-boosting powers that improve your Reaction & initiative dice, but they're expensive (I see Danny has Sixth Sense, which only affects surprise, but doesn't have Improved Reflexes, which gives you bonus Reaction + initiative dice)

This means your combat cycle, unless you have range (like distance strike, bow adept or gun adept), is run cover to cover, skirmish an enemy with melee, take that enemy down with killing hands, repeat. If you get shot, you are in real trouble.

Samurai usually come in two flavors.
1. Heavy armored troll samurai who tanks everything with Body + armor + Dermal Plating.
2. Super-fast striker who shoots enemies before they can act, usually with a high-damage burst weapon like an assault rifle.

I'm working on a samurai just to see what I can come up with, but I can make... well, anything, really. :)

Unless Tilnar is running an unconventional game, a hardcore samurai may be important. Being able to suck up bullets and survive combat is a necessity if you are going to ever get into a fight. Just fighting a small group of gangers when your whole team is softies is gonna get you all killed.

Shadowrun comes out of an era of game design when it really wants you to cover various roles for your team, and there's a bit of an expectation that most teams will have a samurai, a spellcaster, and a decker, and everything else is negotiable unless you have a specific mission profile need (e.g. you are doing drone intercept so you must have a rigger).

And Jay is none of those things.

Danny is a Physical Adept, so presumably not intended to be squishy...

IF it helps, I've always thought of Danny as a darn good damage sponge. :-)

Yep, one of the other SR campaigns that I play off and on has a character who is a non-cybered private eye, basically a noir detective. Whoever's running has to do some hoop-jumping to make adventures that fit the character thematically and don't involve using typical enemies that would just explode his head.

A lot of it comes down to how Tilnar runs the game. If you are expected to geek some 'weeners to get physical access to a trunk line that lets you hack a server, you probably need a samurai and a decker to do that. The more your characters move away from the specific roles that most shadowruns expect, the more you have to make custom 'runs that the characters can accomplish. (Or, if you're the kind of GM who does the 'here is the world, it's up to you to figure it out', you just throw the players in the deep end and let them flail around because they don't have the tools to solve the problems).

Ok, I have a small folder of candidates.

• Veronica T. Hartley, alias NOP, whom you've previously seen. Human decker, mechanical hobbyist. Friendly, upbeat, intelligent. Not a great fighter, mostly brings computer skills to the team.
• Genevieve Arc, alias Winter. Human budget samurai. Terse, perceptive, tactical. Former corporate bodyguard. Can take a few hits and has facility with submachine guns.
• Marina Garcia, alias Cyan. Human dolphin shaman. Some spellcasting, a small amount of face ability (high Etiquette), has a subspecialty in underwater work. (In over 30 years of playing SR I have seen underwater combat come up exactly once, so this is probably not a big thing.) Ebullient, mellow, naughty.

I don't have a strong preference one way or the other. I am not sure whether Tilnar means to run a game with the "you better bring some guns and a hacker" style or a "I read your character sheets and assumed that the fixer picked you for jobs that match your skills" style, so I can't recommend one over another. Cyan (the shaman) probably has the most skill points in things that are unlikely to come up (diving, underwater combat). Winter (the budget samurai) is the best for having someone who can suck up some damage, while of course NOP is in case the party wants their own decker.

Open to questions/opinions.