I'd like to know whether this sheet will work for a Hacker, why not, and what could be improved, please?
He's a rather fat couch potato-like hacker, and, while sober (which is more often in the evenings, because then there's a point in being sober) a moderate talker.

-------------------------=[ New Seattle -=- +sheet ]=--------------------------
---< Churchill >---------------------------------------------------------------
---< Personal Data >-----------------------------------------------------------
Metatype: Elf        Age:  24 Sex: Male   Nuyen:          0 Karma:   0/  0
Lifestyle:              Street Cred:     Notoriety:     Public Awareness:   

---< Attributes >--------------------------------------------------------------
Body: 4             Charisma: 4         Edge: 4 
Agility: 2          Intuition: 5        Essence: 6 
Reaction: 2         Logic: 5            Initiative:  7
Strength: 2         Willpower: 3       
---< Condition Monitor >-------------------------------------------------------
Stun Damage Track: 0/10                 Physical Damage Track: 0/10

---< Active Skills >------------------------< Knowledge Skills >---------------
Blades                         1 Agi     Art                            3 Log
Dodge                          2 Rea     Cryptography                   2 Log
Pistols                        2 Agi     Data Havens                    2 Int
Perception                     3 Int     Dutch                          4 
Con                            1 Cha     Legendary Deckers              2 Log
Etiquette                      2 Cha     Russian                        3 
Negotiation                    3 Cha     Surveillance Techniques        2 Int
Artisan                        3 Int     Visual electronic arts         4 Int
Computer                       4 Log                                         
Cybercombat                    3 Log                                         
Data Search                    3 Log                                         
Electronic Warfare             2 Log                                         
Hacking                        3 Log                                         
Hardware                       2 Log                                         
Software                       4 Log                                         

---< Qualities >---------------------------------------------------------------
SINner, Standard 
Home Ground (Own commlink)
Infirm 
Addiction, Mild (Alcohol)

---< Contacts >----------------------------------------------------------------
            Melody Jefferson (Bartender)              Loyalty: 2     Conn: 2   
             John O' Brien (Newbie Cop)               Loyalty: 1     Conn: 1   
             SnakeMouth (Program Fixer)               Loyalty: 3     Conn: 2   
              Jody Bartlett (Paramedic)               Loyalty: 2     Conn: 2   
          David Krantz (Information Broker)           Loyalty: 1     Conn: 4 

---< Cyberware >---------------------------------------------------------------
 ID   Name                                    Rtg Ess  Note
14609 Datajack                                    0.1   
14617 Touch Link                                  0.1   
14618 Handblade                                   0.25 
14662 Auto-Injector (Reusable)                         
14706 Cyberears rtg 1                             0.2   
14708 +Ear Recording Unit                         0.1   
14712 +Audio Enhancement                       1  0.1   
14713 +Damper                                     0.1   
14714 +Spatial Recognizer                         0.1   
14707 +Sound Link                                 0.1   
14709 Cybereyes rtg 2                             0.3   
14710 +Image Link                                 0.1   
14711 +Eye Recording Unit                         0.1   
14720 +Vision Magnification                       0.1   
14718 +Thermographic Vision                       0.1   
14717 +Flare Compensation                         0.1   
14716 +Thermographic Vision                       0.1   
14715 +Protective Covers                          0     
14719 +Vision Enhancement                      1  0.1

Looks like your Essence hasn't been adjusted.  Are you working as a hacker? If so, welcome aboard, tons of us around to help with anything you need.  Sheet doesn't look too bad, personally, but the min/maxers around here might disagree.

You won't get anywhere as a hacker except on serious cakewalks.  It's a toss-up whether you can hack a rating 4 sytem, and anything higher, forget about it.  You are, in fact, about as good at hacking as a rating 4 Agent, which anyone can buy in chargen.  You can be replaced with a piece of software that doesn't demand a cut.  That should make you think.

Part of the reason you're so weak is your skills.  You have Blades 1, Agility 2.  That's exactly enough dice to stab yourself in the eye.  I'm not even kidding -- you are in danger of getting a critical glitch and stabbing yourself if you *ever* try to use a blade on *anyone.*  You're a little better with pistols, if you add a smartlink you probably won't shoot yourself, but it's still hardly worth it.  You're only going to have enough dice to shoot a feeble, malnourished bum, and why not let the streetsam take care of those kind of enemies with his little finger, instead of spending your own chargen resources on it?

You have also plowed a horrendous number of points into social skills.  It would be nice to have those skills, sure, but make sure you're good at your specialty before you pick up a side gig.  All those charisma and social skill points should go first to hacking, and only go into social after that's locked up.

You also forgot infiltration.  Nothing will make you into a drag on a team as bad as the total lack of infiltration.

Now, you do have an asset that I think is good for a hacker, and that's Logic.  Logic is a stat that almost every character neglects because, frankly, it sucks.  That's not to say that it's useless, but it doesn't help your survival.  It still comes in very handy though.  Thanks to high Logic, you can learn useful skills that nobody else is likely to have, such as First Aid, Demolitions, Hardware, Software, Armorer...  If you want to be a technical skills guy, those are often in demand and rarely available.  Grab a cerebral booster and go nuts.  If you don't want to be a technical skills guy, then you are blowing tons of useful BP on Logic, which is barely doing anything for you.

And now, the bad news.  If you don't want to be a joke as a Hacker, you need to crack open Unwired and take advantage of all the fun toys in there.  It's complicated to wrap your head around exactly how all that stuff works, but if you don't, you will be noobzilla.  You'll be laughed off the net by the real hackers.  All the other hackers on grid have dipped their paws in the Unwired pie, giving them a serious advantage over you if you're just using the core book.  Of course, I don't know if you have used Unwired because you didn't post your gear.  But if you didn't use Unwired, you need to, on top of buffing up your hacking credentials.

Tear is probably right, especially about the rating 4 system... Seeing as I've never even seen a rating 4 system on the few runs I've been on.  I've seen rating 6 systems with 6s in all the other stat areas... I take that back, the system I used wasn't straight 6s... But the rest?  Yeah, all 6s.  Either that or it's just me that seems to go up against the rating 6 node having corporations.


And don't worry, I'm a complete drag on my team on runs.  I'm a 'hacker' myself.  I hack code and leave the sneaking about to the team members that do that sort of thing.... Then give them the grenades, first aid kits, and whatnot that they decided not to get.  Speaking of which, I need to buy another flash pak and some more trauma patches.

Well, thanks for the nonlethal feedback.
I do have some things from Unwired, but not a lot. Which ones are the most useful?

And I think I should mention that my character hasn't had much experience in actual hacking or cybercombat... certainly not the four years of 'professional' experience the book suggests for a rating 4. He is, after all, a newbie at 'running and the general life of crime thing. Which means he shouldn't have rating 4 hacking. A similar logic works for the weapons.
Which makes me wonder how I could make a newbie shadowrunner work? Obviously, not every shadowrunner began a shadowrunning with 4 years of shadowrunning experience. In fact, I'm pretty certain none of them did. But what I read from your post, rating 3 just won't keep you alive.

To be honest, your skills will keep you alive, but only in the... less lethal runs (if there is such a thing).  The GM of whatever run you find yourself in should be able to look at your sheet and tailor the run to meet your character's need, at least to some extent.  There are several 'new runner' types out there right now in fact, and I'm sure they aren't going to suddenly go back and redo their sheets based on someone who may or may not have suggested that you min/max your character sheet to 'fit in' and 'not be worthless'.

First, you want to run the maximum of Ergonomic programs.  Without the Ergonomic option, your commlink just can't run all the programs it needs at one time.

Second, you want to Optimize your commlink.  It's not expensive, and it gives +2 to a program of your choice.

Third, you want to consider Simsense Accelerator cyberware (from Augmentation) or the module that does the same thing (with a similar name) from Unwired.

There's probably other stuff, but I don't remember it all.


The question is, do you like to play the game?  If you do, then you ought to try and make a character who is able to do that.  If you make a terrible gimp, your ability to play will be compromised.  Fluff has to follow fun, IMO.  Is it fun to suck?  Not in my experience.  You have to keep in mind that people might not want to run noob runs just for you, the runs might be for more advanced characters, and you have to build a character who can work with that.  Plus, there are already four other hackers on game (five if Turtle fixed up his sheet) who are all pretty leet.  Those are the people you're competing with for runs, and if a team has one of them, they will not need you.

Of course, I'd also like to rebut the notion that a sucky character is somehow realistic.  It is not.  Sure, everyone started out as a newbie.  But all the newbies who were bad and terrible DIED.  They had to be at least a little bit good before they came into Shadowrunning, otherwise they wouldn't have made it.  The Shadows are a dangerous place, and that means that by and large if you want to survive there, you need to be a dangerous person.  A guy with your character's skills would not have any good reason to enter the shadows.  He could make a pretty decent living in a legit or semi-legit profession, and he would be a huge liability to any team that took him in.  So how would he even get started as a runner?  Who's going to say, "I don't know you, and you don't seem all that impressive, but OK you can take a cut of our pay."  Only a team of similarly newbish runners, which as far as I've seen, doesn't exist on New Seattle at present.

And finally, I urge you to consider your fellow players.  The nature of a MUX is generally that whoever shows up gets included on a Shadowrun.  If you show up voluntarily gimped, you are going to siphon off other peoples' karma and nuyen, providing nothing in return.  And not only that, you're sucking up their RL time with your poses, unless you're a very fast poser, or you're such a great RPer that it's worth it.  You can never be too good at your job, unless you're so good that you can solo a run without any help (and when that's the case, you should bow out and let the noobs have their fun, since it wouldn't make IC sense for you to be on the team).  But you definitely can be too bad at your job for it to make IC sense.  If you've got no skills, and no street cred, how do you expect to get included in a run that isn't specially designed for raw noobs?  You shouldn't.  So  unless you're ok with all that, I would seriously consider redesigning your character.

I have to intercede here because I do not want new players to feel that they must subscribe to any particular norms in order to have a playable character. While many of the suggestions listed above are good advice for your character, ultimately you should be preparing one which you will enjoy playing. The warnings I'm seeing against "gimped" characters and being a liability to a team are overstated. Most characters currently on the grid  are not as min maxed as is implied above.

It's good to help new players. It's not good to tell them they have to do anything in particular to create a playable character.

Thanks for the equipment advice. I'll follow that.


I disagree about 'fluff following fun' mostly because I get my fun from playing a character with interesting fluff, no matter the crunch. Sucking isn't that horrible, especially when it's done interestingly. And the lack of non-noob runs has a solution. I can check if I'm likely to survive a run. If not, I don't join it.


That's not what I said. What I said is that making a newbie with a rating of 4 in a skill is unrealistic because a newbie can per definition not have those years of experience. This is especially true for criminal skills, because you can have spent years doing some legal hobby, but illegal things are usually not hobbies.
If my character dies, I'll spent fifteen minutes to half an hour mourning and make a new one.

Yes, you're very right (though I'd certainly hope spending time on your hobby isn't that much of a chore). But, people can always not give me karma, and the characters can ICly refuse to work with mine, or give him a smaller cut. Hell, we know he's an easy target, they can shoot him and eliminate out share, if they're not into the honour among thieves thing. Alternatively, they can claim my 'running education is my payment.
Additionally, those who suck too badly can bow out, too, like those who can solo the run.

I'm okay with all that, since that's what a newbie is: someone with low skills and no street cred.

Sorry if I don't sound like I appreciate your advice, I do. At the very least, I have an idea how good (or bad) the character is now.

My character sucks, when compared to what I grew accustomed to.