I'd like to get a critique of my character. The concept is an ork ganger adept, based off the adept gunslinger sample in the core book. I've modified the skills and qualities and a few other things.

Please pardon the formatting, I listed the +sheet in-game and copied it here.

---< Termi >-------------------------------------------------------------------
---< Personal Data >-----------------------------------------------------------
Metatype: Ork        Age:  17 Sex: Male   Nuyen:          0 Karma:   0/  0
Lifestyle:              Street Cred:     Notoriety:     Public Awareness:   

---< Attributes >--------------------------------------------------------------
Body: 5             Charisma: 2         Edge: 4       Init. Pass: 1 (3)
Agility: 5            Intuition: 3         Essence: 6 
Reaction: 5 (7)   Logic: 3             Initiative:  8 (10)
Strength: 4        Willpower: 4       Magic: 5

---< Condition Monitor >-------------------------------------------------------
Stun Damage Track: 0/10                 Physical Damage Track: 0/11

---< Active Skills >-------------------   -----< Knowledge Skills >---------------
Dodge                          3 Rea        Barrens                         3 Int
Unarmed Combat           2 Agi         Gang Identification         2 Int
     Martial Arts + 2                         Safehouse Locations       4 Int
Etiquette                      1 Cha        Triad Territory               3 Int
     Subculture + 2                          Action Movies               3 Int
Pilot Ground Craft           1 Rea        Cantonese                      N 
     Bike + 2                                   English                         2 
Athletics (G)                  3 Str             Cityspeak + 2                   
Firearms (G)                   4 Agi                                         

---< Qualities >---------------------------------------------------------------
Adept 
Ambidextrous 
Uneducated 
High Pain Tolerance II

---< Contacts >----------------------------------------------------------------
         Dazzlin' Dave Oakfield (Bartender)           Loyalty: 2     Conn: 2   
         Erin Coolwater (Weapons Fixer)             Loyalty: 2     Conn: 4 

---< Magical Resources >-------------------------------------------------------
Adept Power: Improved Ability: Combat Skills (2) Note: Pistols
Adept Power: Improved Reflexes II (1) 
Adept Power: Combat Sense (2)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I don't know, I made a version of Emilie Autumn as my character.

One piece of good news is that SR4A lowered the cost of improved reflexes II to 2.5, so you have another .5 power points.

In terms of overall uberness, I give this one a C-.  Needs a lot of work.

For one thing, you've got Logic 3, and not one single logic linked skill.  That means if you have to do a Logic task, you have 2 dice.  You've got such a high chance of a critical glitch at that point, you shouldn't even try.  That 3 logic is a waste of 20 points that buys you nothing.  And that 3 intuition is a huge liability -- that gives you a gimpy initiative and a gimpy Perception score.  Speaking of which, you forgot to buy Perception.  That's a skill you need.

Your biggest mistake is Firearms 4.  That's 40 points, almost 25% of your resources, being devoted to being skilled with every kind of gun.  You don't NEED to know every kind of gun.  That's a huge waste of points.  Pick one kind of gun, make it your specialty.  Give it a 5 or a 6, you'll be more powerful and have a LOT more points left over.  If you're feeling shooty, buy two gun skills.  Pistols and Automatics are good compliments because one is concealable and the other is powerful.  But don't buy them all -- a gun is a gun, and you only need to know 1 or 2 categories to kill at maximum efficiency.  Anything more and you're wasting points.

Your next biggest mistake is Athletics.  That's a lot of points for skills you don't need.  You don't need to know the Running skill to run, it just helps you run a teensy bit faster.  You likewise don't need the Swimming skill to swim, it just lets you swim a teensy bit faster.  And I have never once seen a run that actually required Climbing to pull it off -- tbh, the only people who ever want to climb are noobs whose first suggestion is to try the roof   The only part of Athletics you need is Gymnastics, and even that isn't 100% required.  Instead of wasting 30 points on all those skills, buy gymnastics, or just skip the whole thing.  A powerful build can't afford it.

With the points you save from dropping the skill groups, pump dodge way up.  Or if you want, drop dodge entirely and replace it with Gymnastics, which can work in its place.  If you go for Gymnastics though raise Unarmed -- you'll need it to defend from melee combat.  Also use your extra points to buy Perception and Infiltration.  You're practically useless if you don't have either one.

Drop High Pain Tolerance.  It's not worth the points.  Take a full 35 points of flaws -- there's no sense pulling any punches on a sheet.  If you want to be good, you should go after every point.

You seem to be set up to dual fist pistols -- that is useless in SR4.  You can't fire two guns at once without splitting your dice pool, so having two guns at once is pretty much the equivalent of having one gun with a bigger clip, since you can go longer without reloading.  Not that worthwhile.  The only reason to carry two guns is when you've got two cyberhand gyromounts -- that lets you carry two SMGs and fire two long bursts per turn, which you couldn't do with just one.

The real problem with this Adept is that he's not cybered.  If you don't want to make a sucky physad, you'd better take some cyberware.  The #1 thing to get is muscle toner.  It lets you cheaply pump up your agility, which vastly increases your combat power.

Conceptually, you have no reason to be an Adept.  What you are is a really really shitty version of a street samurai.  Adepts should exploit the powers available to them to do things that streetsams can't.  As far as gun adepts go, there's not much to recommend them.  They can get up to +3 to their gun skill, but that's not very far ahead of the streetsam who can get +1 already from reflex recorder.  Not to mention that streetsams have no qualms about cybering their agility up to 10 or higher, while an adept struggle to start with a 6.

One reason to make an Adept is to throw well.  Using power throw and missile mastery, you can throw things as hard as a gunshot, which makes you pretty useful and also stealthy, since you can enter somewhere unarmed and still rock.

Another reason is to use critical strike and distance strike to have a super powerful punch.  It's not that great of a reason, because punching is generally a silly way of fighting against people with guns, but at least it's an ability sammies don't do better.

My favorite reason to be an adept is the skill adept, especially the Dodge adept.  Combine Combat Sense with Improved Physical ability, and you can net yourself over 20 dodge dice.  That gives you a serious edge as a combatant.  The Stealth adept is also great -- improved physical ability plus traceless walk, with some Combat Sense thrown in to help you surprise people better, and you're on a roll.

The gun adept only makes sense if you combine it with cyberware.  Using adept powers, *combined* with cyberware, you'll end up having a better offense pool than a mundane.  You'll be a lot less versatile because of how many points you'll have to spend on magic, but at least you'll be good at fighting.

That's a lot of very useful info. I haven't played with SR4 much, and it's been a long time since I've even been able to play Shadowrun. I'll go over all that and see where I end up. Something else I wasn't sure of was how useful an adept focused around hand to hand combat was, but most of the times I've played, it's only been useful in games where the enemies were tailored to physads. I've always preferred guns, myself, as most things usually can't hit you if you shoot them before they get in range.

Thanks, Tear!

As a note, that sheet is practically identical to the gun-adept in the book the suggested character. Race, phsyad powers, pretty much everything.

Which is why it needs a lot of work.

Seeing as you're looking at 13 dice with pistols... it could be better.


There are plenty of times 13 dice will be enough, but there will be a LOT of times it won't be near enough, especially with vision mods, movement mods, cover mods...

As another note, you don't have to have cyber to do it well, but you need to ditch combat sense and pick up attribute boost Agility, so you can throw on the switch and actually be really dangerous once in a while. 13 dice with a base 5DV weapon is just... not that scary in the end. You're going to average 3-4 hits at best, which will be knocked down by 1-2 by defenders reaction (If not outright dodged completely) which will be only 6-7DV. Most people wear an armor jacket or a lined coat at least, which means your gun will be doing stun instead of physical damage (Which isn't necessarily a bad thing) but even average person with 3 body and a lined jacket is going to knock that down to 3-4 stun damage... not very threatening.

Another big mistake is taking Firearms skillgroup at 4. You want pistols to be your focus, MAKE pistols your focus. Drop the firearms skillgroup, put pistols to 5, specialize in heavy pistols for +2 dice and all the sudden you're looking at 5 Agility + 5 Pistols + 2 Specialization + 2 Smartlink + 2 Improved Pistols Power and you're at -16- dice, which is -lots- better. Without needing any cyber at all.

That leaves you with 18 points to push automatics and heavy weapons up a little bit too. Like 2 each with a specialization in assault rifles for when you need the extra kick. Anyways, there, one skill tweak, and you're no longer sad town.

Yep, hand to hand combat is fairly silly.  It has its uses of course -- nobody can disarm your hands, and if you're a truly kitted out Adept you can cause mayhem with them.  The best part about Adepts is that Killing Hands allows them to bust past spirit Immunity to Normal Weapons, so a fist adept can punch spirits to death easily whereas guns have a hard time.  The best compliment to melee is ultra stealth -- you need it if you actually expect to close into hand to hand range without being shot.  If you can surprise people with melee though, you can execute silent takedowns, which is cool.  The problem is, it's not that much better than just having a silenced gun, and in fact is a bit worse because the gun can also attack distant targets without having to sneak right up to them.

IMO, adepts have essentially one reason to exist:  to pump their favored skill up through the roof.  The way they get an edge over mundanes is with higher dice pools, plain and simple.  Not only do they have Improved Ability, they have quite a few other powers that give bonus dice, as well as Centering and Attunement.  Once you learn those metamagics and start to hit a high initiate grade, you'll be leaving streetsams in the dust as far as dice pools go, even if you'll never match them in terms of raw physical attributes.

Thanks for all the replies. I'm still working on my character, using as much advice as I can. Just a couple of questions, though.

If I were to get cyberware/bioware, what would be the most bang for the buck? Muscle toner was mentioned, would anything else be worthwhile?

Using stealth, would it be best to focus in infiltration, or work with the whole stealth group?

Edit: Forgot to add - sorry for the slow response, the forums here are filtered at work so I had to wait until I got home.

Muscle toner is super important.  You could also go for a Synaptic Booster, rating 1 if you have to, or rating 2 if you want to combine it with Biocompatability.  Basically, stuff that raises your attributes without costing a lot of essence is useful.

As far as Stealth, Infiltration is the most important skill.  The rest of the skills can be useful, but are pretty conditional, making them questionable.  Definitely don't buy the group -- you want Infiltration to be high, if you take the other stealth skills you want to save points by leaving them lower.

Based on that, I believe I'll switch to a stealth-based character. I've seen some ideas for a character based off of using throwing knives and using knives for a melee weapon. But a silenced pistol would probably do better, and wouldn't have to carry so many freaking knives.

Doesn't seem like I'll be able to fit in the Booster, at least at generation. Not without going over 1 essence - is that where the Biocompatibility comes in? I tried it with used alpha grade, just to test it out.

Don't forget that bioware/cyberware hoses your magic too. It drops Current -and- Permanent, so you're essentially throwing BP's at something you can do with power points... but that's just me. A Physad doesn't have to by cybered to be cool.

...says the guy who made a cyberarmed gun adept.  The fact is, if you want to start out good, you need the cyber.  You can use cyber to start out on a higher level, that'll leave you a lot of room to grow via magic, but without starting off like a wussy.

That's what I meant. It'll knock down two magic, which isn't such a huge problem because I can still fit in Improved Pistols, traceless walk and combat sense.

I'll post up the new version after work, so I have time to get it cleaned up.

Yeah, as far as I'm concerned, Improved Ability and Combat Sense are *the* gun adept powers.  Traceless walk is cool too, but none of the others are essential to the concept, and none of them give you the shot in the arm that cyberware can get you.  Also, if you start with reduced Magic, it costs relatively little to raise it back up with karma (compared to if you started with a 5 or 6, that is).

Okay. I changed the concept and went with a semi stealth-based character. Very dependent on unarmed combat, but also carries a silenced pistol for those targets he can't get to.

Human Adept (5 BP)

Attr: (275 BP)
B:4
A:5(9)
R:5
S:3
C:2
I:3
L:2
W:4
Edge: 3
Magic: 6 (5)

Skills: (106 BP)

Unarmed/MA: 6(8)
Infiltration/Urban:4(6)
Perception/Visual:2(4)
Etiquette:1
Pistols/Semi-auto:2(4)
Gymnastics:4
Pilot GC/Bikes:1(3)
Locksmith:2

Positive Qualities: (30 BP)
Martial Arts 4 -20 Ninjitsu and Muay Thai for Infiltration, Gymnastics, and +2 DV
Restricted Gear - Muscle Toner

Negative Qualities: (-35 BP)
Sensitive System
Criminal SINner
Records on File

Resources: 85,000 (17 BP)

Adept powers:
Improved Reflexes 2
Killing Hands
Critical Strike 4
Elemental Strike: Blast
Penetrating Strike 2

Bioware:
Muscle Toner 4

Took 4 maneuvers for the martials arts - Full Offense, Set-Up, Finishing Move and Disarm.

I don't see any glaring flaws, other than he's not really equipped for a gunfight, but should do fairly well with stealth and quick, quiet takedowns. As always, open for critiques.