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Other than Willpower and the Spellcasting skill under it, it's really just personal preference from there. You can get away with just using Powerbolt for normal attacks (like when your spells are all on cooldown) if your Willpower is high enough but that shouldn't stop you from investing in a Firearms skill if you want to shoot people in the face with more traditional means (but if you're playing a mage, where's the fun in using plain-old bullets? :P). Same deal with melee.
One thing I can recommend is investing in Charisma and the two Spirit-related skills - they can be a potent backup to your spells and you can always use them as an expendable teammate. If the loss of an Action Point gets you (you take a -1 AP penalty while you have a spirit on the field), just bring a Shaman along who can cast Haste on you. And the extra Charisma doesn't hurt outside of combat. My troll mage managed to get Charisma 6 (the max for trolls) pretty easily and it just felt cool to bluff my way into places. Who expects the eight-foot guy built like a fridge to have a silver tongue as well?
Again, though; you've got a fair bit of freedom outside of the spellcasting if you go a mage. Not sure how much Karma you should invest in Body, Quickness or the like, though. Most of my characters have been trolls so they're pretty resilient naturally.
Give yourself 4 points body, quickness and dodge.
Then, look at your gameplay style. I suggest for first playthrough:
Decker + Rigger hybrid. (Aim+Mark is easy).
For your second:
Shaman + Mage. (Haste + AP Bomb)
If you want a mage, you need Intelligence - Wisdom - Charisma for different spells.
Ignore the Chi Spells, and focus on Conjuration + Magery. You can use Stunball + Haste effects to quickly take control of a situation. Racoon totem is great!
Trying a non-decker made me realize how much I like playing a Decker :P
Blitz, the Decker/Rigger is probably going to be in most of your parties anyway:
Dietritch can haste him giving him 2 drone strikes, and 2 smg shots a turn. He isn't great in the matrix, I only took him in once when I ran into trouble.
All the skills you need fall under Quickness (except body), so you have good cost synergy. Quickness, Ranged Combat, Dodge, <Weapon>, and unrestricted access to Cyberware (losing essence increases cooldown time on spell casters)
You can take a couple different weapons or focus on a single weapon.
Rifles: long range (13-19) high damage. Some support burst fire, some are sniper only.
Sub Machine guns: medium range (7-12), always fire 2 shots for 1 action point, good damage, most combat is at medium range.
Pistol: Medium range no reload required at level 4, good damage, and I have seen some unique pistols, like tasers, and a shotgun pistol (with spread, and presumably free reload)
Shotgun: Short range (1-6) but even though they lose accuracy at medium range, they gain spread to hit adjacent targets. high damage.
Or you can look at Strength and melee skill set. Weapons do Strength score plus weapon value and I believe most weapons do AP (action point) damage to enemies (NOTE brass knuckles are considered unarmed combat, not melee). And knives/Shuriken are as effective as guns (they also do STR + weapon damage). The downside is dodge is still under Quickness.
On the downside you may lose a number of conversation options by taking a combat focused character. Charisma opens a ton of conversation options, with Decking a close second.
No matter how you build your character I highly suggest a bare minimum of 3 body, prefereably 4, and more if you are doing melee. The rest I suggest you FOCUS in an area. On my one complete game I got 182 Karma to spend (plus the 3 extra for being human), so figure around that ballpark if you really want to plan out your spending.
If you want some good speech options go to Charisma 6 (not all at the beginning, but by the end of a few missions) and I recommend getting Gang > Socialte > Security for your Ettiquetes (dialog options) as those three have the most uses. I think the only other Ettiquete used is Corporate, but I could be forgetting something.
EDIT: Also Acedemic is used at the end of the game, but I doubt it'll influence anything aside from the dialog
Decker - the NPC one that is available is, eh, *minimally* capable. And there are alot of things that can be bypassed with a Decking check.
Then probably Shaman as a combat skill. Its not as 'fun' as, say, a Physical Adept (with heavy investment in the melee/unarmed lines) but you get the Etiquittes while simultaneously boosting you CTH with the Shaman's magic attack. Plus they have some tasty buffs *and* you can go into summoning and functional virtually identically to a Rigger.
Haste, Haste, Haste - as much of this as you can load - Glory with 5 AP is a tornado filled with razor blades.
Get Security as an Etiquitte early - you deal with plenty of guards that can be spoofed. Beyond that, Corporate is a mixed bag - it doesn't come up often but when it does its damn useful.
If you've got some points to spare put them in Will/Spellcasting (up to 2) to get Heal.
Get Physical Adept 2 to get the 'light cover vs magic attacks passive'.
Rigging helps a little also - there are several challenges where Rigging allows you take control of turrets or drones. That's nice to have but not all that neccessary - maybe do this if you don't want to get the PA passive mentioned above. With this - either choose Summoning *OR* drones if you're going down this route. You're not likely to have the AP to run both efficiently.
You're not going to be the primary damage dealer but you'll have the widest range of non-combat options thanks to the Etiquittes, Intelligence, and Decking stats, be able to support your fighters, and be able to handle anything inside the Matrix.
SRR is far to have as many dialogs choices from attributes and etiquettes. A few charisma check brings a bit more money but nothing huge. So I'd say don't bother too much for SRR, eventually charisma to get 2 etiquettes and that's not bad. Dragonfall is another matter but play SRR first and for Dragonfall some previous posts provide many hints.
For combats in SRR, again don't bother too much, because you have a lot of mercenaries choices hence you'll have many options and could try different tactical choices during combats.
So I think the best is more to choose as you feel it. :-)
However eveything can be pretty good, Best bet might be to dabble a bit into Shaman powers to get Haste + Spirt summons can be awesome, then go range or melee combat.
alot of things are nice but the most None thinking option would be to make just a brute with high body/strength or such. it will work but you'll miss out on some diablog options
Mages also have a heal spell - it can bu used *during* combat and heals your most recent damage. Of course the game likes to hit you with a couple of 20 point shots and follow-up with a 2 pointer, of which the heal spell will only heal the last 2 points you took.
With a street samurai protagonist, you can actually experiment with what you like by bringing mixes of support/additional damage on missions, because I promise you, a samurai is good in every mission; this is not a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none deal; if you have the points in rifle, you can go wherever you want: people still gotta die between you and the end of the game, and a rifle's a good way to go.
Then, if you play the other story, or any other subsequent stories, you have a better idea as to what you liked from your previous playthroughs.
A note on Deckers: in the Shadowrun: Returns story (Dead Man's Switch), they will *always* give you a decker that's more than sufficient for the challenge on missions where a decker is *required*. There's arguments about Blitz's capability in Dragonfall, but if you were going to make a Decker, I'd go with Dragonfall as your first story to run them in.
A note on Summoners: don't. Just don't. Ever. It's not worth wanting to throw your computer out a window when your spirit turns around on you.