Hi all.

I'm cooking up a close quarters combat (CQC) specialist with a side of infiltration. I'll try out some of the martial arts from Firing Line, which weren't available the last time I went through 6E chargen. In terms of ranged weapons, most likely going to focus on Athletics rather than Firearms.

I'm in full-on "analysis paralysis" mode, some of which is fueled by the fact that my knowledge of 6E is theoretical, not practical.

Also trying to decide on the ratio of adept-to-augmented. It could be all adept, all augmented, or somewhere in between. And behind that, of course, is the age-old question of do you start out stronger but with less room to grow, or do you start out more diluted but with a more defined path for development.

Anyway, excited to hear what else people are cooking up!

Finally have some time today to sit down and work out my character.

Ex-cop, more investigator than door-kicker (Ill leave that to our A_CC), but also I'm going to try to squeeze some Face into the stats.  We'll see how it shakes out in the points, no promises aside from making some one who knows their way around a pistol, a cop shop, and a crime scene.

It's been awhile since I sat down to the Sixth World so this should be fun (my last SR game was back in 2003, so it's been an age).

Playing a pretty straight forward Decker with ability to switch from subtle to loud depending on the situation.

If I may add my two cents about cyber to adapt ratios, it is my opinion that if you are part adept then sacrificing more than 1 Essence/power point to cyberware is not worth it. The main difference between the two as far as cost to availability goes is that it is easy to get more bonuses to reaction and initiative dice/more minor actions as an adapt. Adapt also has more thrown ranged weapon options. Cyberware is good to boost your other attributes such as strength, agility, reaction, logic, and body for less cost over all. Usually with a close combat expert the main question is what is your primary method of bringing the pain: unarmed, weapon, exotic weapon (monowhip).

One thought if your going with melee and Athletics ranged aka throwing or archery, is the adept power that lets you throw anything such as a sword/axe.

My observations were much the same. Adepts also have the higher ceiling (unlimited, really) in terms of DVs due to Critical Strike. They also have the clearer path for advancement, since it's easy to keep adding on foci and initiations. Mundanes... usually start with everything that they're going to have.

It also comes down to what's fun.  You can dump Strength and still be very effective as a striker. Or being strong is fun too, and Grappling is pretty potent. At this point I'm focusing on Unarmed.

At this point, here are the skills I'm trying to cover, in descending order of priority:

1) Stealth
2) Close Combat
3) Athletics
4) Perception
5) Engineering (Lockpicking)

I have added a character sheet template to each character. You should be able to edit the sheet and start building your character when ready

Is the Stolen Gear quality available from No Future?

It's poorly worded and entirely unclear whether it grants you karma (like the In Debt negative quality from 5E) or costs you karma (increasing the value of each point of karma you spend on nuyen).

I always thought it was the former but the only consensus seems to be, "Ask your GM."

In reply to Adept_CloseCombat (msg # 11):

I read it like In Debt in 6e, except instead of owing money to a loan shark you took the liberty of extracting those funds from someone who has the wealth and desire to hunt you down.

So for each point of karma you SPEND you get 10,000 nuyen to spend on gear instead of the normal 2000/point or 5000/point with In Debt, but the drawback is that you start with a heat of 2 and are currently being hunted by a person or organization who is likely to appear at the most inconvenient time.
This message was last edited by the GM at 01:49, Wed 23 June 2021.

Hey cool cats,

I'm the other Adept(?) that plans on focusing on guns. I'm going for an equilibrium, John Wook (that's Wick and Woo) vibe. I'm not sure if going Adept is the best way to go about that, but it seems fun. Really, to focus is on using firearms as an extension of their body.

I'm guessing that it would be more suitable for my character to try and focus on more mid/long range than close, but I'm more about the concepts and story building than party balance. However, I wouldn't want my preferences to end int he demise of your own lovely individuals.

Like our other Adept, I'm a little bit on the "Analysis Paralysis" perspective, but I'm sure things will work their way down soon.

I've only got the core book and Firing Line, but hope to get more soon just for this game.

Pleasure meeting you all btw :)

Luckily in 6e both short and long range guns all fall under the Firearms skill. Just gotta have a gun to do it which luckily even tricked out guns aren’t too expensive. I would suggest adept because of Increased Reflexes and Wall Running (which can help you get into position).

In reply to GM (msg # 12):

Ok, so I'm re-reading Stolen Gear and also looking at how it is used in the Genesis character generator. In the Genesis character generator you can select up to 20 karma points of Stolen Goods, this immediately converts in Nuyen in the character but the you do not spend the karma from your character.

So in this way it acts like a Negative Quality, in that it adds karma to your pool, but this karma can only be used for generating Nuyen and not on other items. Reading Stolen Gear again this does line up. However if you chose Stolen Gear you can't choose to spend normal Karma on Nuyen (either normally or through In Debt).

So we will use it in this way:

You may take up to 20 karma in Stolen Goods, this karma will immediately provide you with 10,000 Nuyen in cash per point of karma. You do not spend karma from your pool to generate this it is part of the benefit of the Quality.

@GM
Thank you, that helps. Not sure if I'll use it but nice to know how it works.

I know about Genesis but I haven't used it before. If that's what you're using then I'll check it out.

@Adept_Marksman
There seems to be some consensus on how to build a good gun bunny:

- Max Agility
- Max Firearms + specialization
- +2 initiative dice, +3 is nice but don't break the bank for it, +4 is overkill so spend your resources elsewhere
- Edge 4
- Earn 2 points of Edge your first initiative pass. Use Anticipation. Earn 2 points of Edge your second initiative pass. Use Anticipation again.

Most people go with Elf for the extra point of Agility. Plus it's fairly easy to have a high Charisma and a few extra points of social skills to make yourself a secondary Face, get some extra contacts, and have something to do outside of a fight. It's a pretty solid build. Whether the Agility and initiative come from 'ware, magic, or drugs doesn't matter much.

There's less consensus around close combatants. You want Agility and Close Combat and martial arts to boost your DV, but after that it's less defined. I think fewer players pursue it because they're mostly smart enough to not bring a knife to a gunfight.

@GM thanks for that, boss.


This was all actually super helpful. Good looking out, bud. :)

I'll make more headway later tonight.

EDIT: Also I've always wanted to do an Adept-CQC myself, unarmed at that, with 5e. But for some reason, 6e, guns just SPEAK to me XD
This message was last edited by the player at 20:00, Wed 23 June 2021.

So for my Decker, I will obviously have high Cracking and Electronics. I want to have one ranged combat skill but I’m having a hard time choosing Athletics with throwing stars and a crossbow or firearms. I know as a Decker I shouldn’t be as concerned about combat, but I do still want to be able to contribute. Then do I go with stealth or pilot to drive the team around?

For Athletics, a crossbow + injection bolts is a potent combination. If you can hit someone with Narcoject and have the (base) bolt do at least a box of damage (after the damage resistance test) then it's "goodnight" because there's basically no hope in soaking 15S from Narcoject. The downside is that it's expensive: 50 nuyen per shot for the Narcoject alone. But if the decker is a brainiac then maybe a chemical attack is more appealing than brute force kinetics.

The collapsible crossbows from Firing Line are pretty nifty.

I downloaded Genesis last night and started using it. It is very helpful but I had several "does it really work that way?" moments. Evidently the developer is struggling about how to make it work when the English and the German rules don't align. I don't speak German but I know several players who do and the consensus seems to be that the German rules are clearer.

I made a decent PC who is mundane. I also made a burnout adept who is superior in almost every way; the catch is that the burnout version depends heavily on Stolen Goods. I have to decide whether the mechanical benefits outweigh the narrative risks.

As for the dice roller, the GM is right that the RPOL version can't handle exploding 6s nor a Wild Die. (Other online dice rollers, like Orokos, can handle exploding 6s.) These will probably have to be rolled separately/manually.

Another thing to be aware of is that the RPOL dice roller uses 4E rules, which are that glitches occur if half (50%) of the dice are 1s. The threshold in 6E is more than half (51%) of the dice need to be 1s for a glitch to occur. For that reason, it's important to check the "Record Each Die" box so that, in the event of a glitch, we can count the 1s to see if it's a real 6E glitch or a fake 4E glitch.

In reply to Adept_CloseCombat (msg # 20):

I agree with your comments. If you look at the bug list on Jira for Genesis-Shadowrun there are a number of items that are based on interpretation waiting on official errata. We'll wing it where we have too.

I will add the >50% item to my request to Rpol development for a Shadowrun 6e dice roller. Not sure if they will be able to get to it with the focus on the new UI.

I'm using Genesis also to try out builds. Adepts do get fairly sick. I have an Ork "Barbarian" Level 3 Adept (yes, he's called Neil) who'll run AR 11 Pool 16 DV 10 on 10+3d6 Init with an Axe and AR 10 Pool 18 DV 8 with a pair of knives. With the martial arts techniques and Edge if he get's the drop and can attack multiple opponents he's potentially adding more dice to the pool and attacking all opponents with max dice. That combat will be over in hurry.
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:40, Thu 24 June 2021.

Neil! XD

And btw, Genesis has been an absolute godsend. I always forget how intense Chargen is for this drekking game I love.

Really, it's the translating to RPOL that's the biggest "ugh', but I see an end in sight.

I was going to go John Woo, then thought we needed some Long-Range support, then I thought you only live once and Long Range combat opportunites in every game I've ever played have never been a thing. SO went back to John Woo, and figured I could still get a rifle just in case.

Hope you're all doing good too :)

Well, as Glitch said, the difference between Long Range and John Woo is just which gun you use. Since Firearms covers both, just buy two guns. Pretty easy, really.

Chargen is intense, although for me the worst part of it is gear. I can usually knock out attributes/skills/qualities in a matter of minutes, and spells/powers/augmentations doesn't take much longer, but gear is so fiddly that I sometimes prefer low-resource characters just to avoid it.

I feel that.

And sure it's a matter of just getting one of each gun, but it's the flavor. Two heavy pistols? One heavy, one light? A holdout in case? A rifle? And a light? Is Burst worth it?

And in addition, like you, the fiddly bit of resources screws with me. But we'll be right.

Okay, made a lot of progress. I'm 95% done with the mechanics. I went with a mundane elf.

I basically did everything I said I wouldn't: lots of 'ware, lots of gear, lots of contacts. It's going to take me a long time to plug it all into the sheet.

Primary competencies are Close Combat, Stealth, Perception, Athletics, and Lockpicking.

Secondary roles are Influence and Con. He's not a primary face but he's got some backup in case he needs to go the social infiltration route.

Some questions:

1) If you're pretending to be someone else (like a maintenance person), what specialization of Con does that fall under? Acting, Disguise, or Impersonation?

2) Is there an expectation around fake SINs and licenses? How many, how good?

3) Can anyone drive and/or did anyone get a car?

4) How's everyone else coming along?

In reply to Adept_CloseCombat (msg # 25):

In regard to your first question:

If you want to look like a maintenance man then it's disguise. Once you look like a maintenance man and you want to act like a maintenance man, for example really look like you're servicing a piece of equipment and not just hanging about listening to a conversation, it's acting. If you want people to think you're Bob the maintenance man who regularly maintains their building it's impersonation.

Not sure with the other questions. Are you trying to get an idea of what the other players think in regards to these matters or are you asking from "how do they apply in game" perspective, especially in regard to the question about fake SINS?

Thanks for the clarification about Con. That's helpful.

For the SINs/licenses, it's partly about the tone of the game. GMs often offer guidance about their expectations for how shadowy they want things. So a black trenchcoat game might have you rotating through SINs and commlinks on a regular basis while a less stringent game might check to see if you have them for fluff purposes but not involve them very much. Do we all need a good R4 fake SIN? A handful of disposable R1 and R2s? Both, neither?

@ACC Congrats on the progress, and appreciate you updating. I think you've got a cool concept coming online, and the idea of a Geared out Elf sounds pretty sick :)

I had just spent all my karma and cash on what I think I want, and came on here to start popping the sheet up. But now that I see you're going into face skills...I'll probably sub mine out then for more cranial and martial enterprises.

Certainly didn't have the loot for a car, but I kinda thought it was fun to not have one. Though, I did go with Middle Lifestyle.

I've only got a SIN 4, and figure I'd use whatever new cash flow comes in to second a second garbage one.

Same here, R4 SIN and licences. Think I'll have to bite the bullet & go middle lifestyle too, since I have the snooty S-K Swagger. Man, this is gonna get pricey :D

Slammed into the wall of "how much nuyen do I really need" and "still pinning down Elf Face or Troll Face".  Elf face is "easier" in some ways, but Troll face is easier when the SHTF and we need to use judicious amounts of violence to solve a problem.

Also, I keep leaning Troll Face because no one ever does that but my munchkin streak demands a CHA of 7.

Bah, a Face can totes make do with a CHA of 5, right?  Right?  And no one expects the Troll to sweet talk them, so it's doubly sneaky.




And I've been working late all week so my time is not as free as I'd hoped so far.  It'll be fine once I've ironed out the last of the Char Sheet.