Decking, Drone Control, or Stick to My Guns

[Motown20]

Hi All,

So, I'm currently working my first "real" play through of Deadman's Switch. I say "real" because I've invested several hours in the game with other characters but I finally found one I want to stick with. In this case, I've played the furthest I've ever been (just entered "After Hours" following the NTSB warehouse throwdown) and I'm pretty happy with my build. I'm not looking to powergame; I'm simplyjust happy with progressing through and enjoying the story but I'm not entirely familiar with all of the "end game" options out there.

For the above reasons, I was wondering if I should go with decking or drone control as an alternate skill. I'm currently playing as a female street samurai and got to a point where I can either focus on just being a kick butt death dealer or embracing a little side skills.

What I'm wondering is what's best to invest in for the sake of involvement in the storyline (not making an uber-ultimate charater). Drones seem the most beneficial but decking seems really cool to. Are there options later in the story that will allow me to take advantage of having decking skills?

Here are my current stats:

ST: 3 (C/C: 3, M/W: 3, T/W: 3)
QU: 3 (R/C: 3, Pistol: 3, Rifle: 3)
IN: 3 (Biotech: 3)
WI: 2
CH: 4
BD: 5

As you can see, my character is pretty balanced. So, like I said, I'm at the point of either specializing or grabbing a cool side skill. What do you think?

[iamaneviltaco]

Decking is useless, don't bother. Deckers are my favorite character in the pnp version, but in dead man's switch *literally* the only 2 times decking actually matters, they'll take over and make you use an npc. My decker runs *circles* around every decker in game, but I'm about to delete him because almost no ugc uses deckers, and the main campaign literally won't let you play your own character if you use one. Even better, instead of my rank 3 program having 6 in every skill self? I got to play someone with the same deck as me, weaker programs, and *she didn't even have every program slot filled*. That annoyed me so much I had to stop playing. "We know you built your own decker specifically to kick butt on the matrix, but here. ride shotgun with this guy, then we'll make him solo. Then later, you can use this girl, who doesn't even have all of her programs yet. LOLDECKERS."

I wonder why the devs felt this was ok, but didn't feel the urge to tell people "no, you can't play your mage. This guy has to cast the spells now because plot". I almost wish they hadn't included it, for how badly they neglected it. Not to mention the fact that the few things that do use the decking skill as a side-quest thing? Just roll the number and give you a tiny reward, or you immediately find a non-decking solution a minute later.

Drones are pretty boss, though. I did a rigger/gunslinger in some ugc. The ugc was flat out terrible, only one I've quit since I started playing, but the character was a *blast*.

I'm gonna be one of I assume the only people who's not going to tell you that buying 2 ranged weapon skills is a gigantic waste. Seems to be the consensus, but I loved my shotgun/rifles playthrough.

[Poor Dick]

I completed a play through with an orc physical adept, focusing on unarmed and pistols. I had tried different combinations of skills previously, but, honestly, I don't think you need more than 1 combat skill, and ranged seems to win over close combat. Rigging seems pretty nice, as do a few spells. Note: shaman summoning appears to be inferior to rigging.

Edit: Decking and Etiquettes seem unnecessary.

[happyscrub]

DON'T get decker. Worthless class.

[Jormundgand]

Ignore happyscrub -- apparantly he thinks Shadowrun is a class based system (there is no decking class).

My answer is: YES! The game is very foregiving about what you choose to do. Essentially you will like to dabble a bit in everything and you really just have to figure out which weapons you want to use (pistol, shotgun, smg, rifle, unarmed, melee, spell). If you want to do as much as possible, make sure you have decking ~6 (decking 6 gives you some extra cash if gotten early enough -- other than that it's not much use) and a primary combat skill ~6 as well. Drones and summons are perfect replacement for combat skills but you will prolly want to have a high combat skill and either rigging or summoning.

The key to mastering shadowrun is to combine machine, magic and man.

[Death_Adder]

I agree that the Decker is under utilized in Dead Man's Switch. I did create a character similiar to yours Motown that was a Jack of All Trades and had Decking up to 4 to meet text requirements much like Charisma and Etiquette. Other than that, I wouldn't have even put Karma points into it at all much like Strength which I never use.

[Brewskin]

Having a blast with a Decker build in my current game, bit past the halfway point.

Initial stats were: Body2/Quickness3/Ranged3/Rifle3/Dodge4/Intelligence3/Decking2

Getting ready to start the Renraku run, stats are now: Body5/Quickness6/Ranged6/Rifle4/Dodge6/Intelligence6/Decking6, with 23 extra Karma, over 5k in nuyen, and all of the best gear available, except the Fairlight deck. Not sure if I'm going to pump Intel/Decking to 7, or maybe invest points into some Mage spells.

Outside of Quickness/Dodge, and maybe a means of dealing damage, I don't think you can go wrong with a build for DMS.

[happyscrub]

Originally posted by Brewskin:

Having a blast with a Decker build in my current game, bit past the halfway point.

Initial stats were: Body2/Quickness3/Ranged3/Rifle3/Dodge4/Intelligence3/Decking2.

That's more of a samurai

[*****_falloutnewvegas]

Greetings.

I played on Normal difficulty with dekerd and did not see it difficult. The final characteristics are:

Saludos.

Yo lo pasé en normal con el dekerd y aunque apurado en la final no lo ví dificil (la final la pasé del tirón) Las características finales son:

Image:

http://personales.ya.com/txibi/Dibujos/shadowpasado.jpg

[Brewskin]

Originally posted by happyscrub:

Originally posted by Brewskin:

Having a blast with a Decker build in my current game, bit past the halfway point.

Initial stats were: Body2/Quickness3/Ranged3/Rifle3/Dodge4/Intelligence3/Decking2.

That's more of a samurai

Why, because he has stats outside of Decking? Body, and Quickness for Dodge are stats any build benefits from, the no-brainer chocies. Every toon needs a means of dealing damage, or at least buffing other toons, some sort of contribution in the Meat World.

I'm guessing you never played PnP.

The points in Ranged/Rifle could easily be dumped into spellcasting, melee or rigging, along with all the extra Karma I have available; but I wanted to check out rifles with this build.(which btw, I now think are the best fiream overall, range+great damage).

Next run through I'm going Decker/Shaman, dumping all those points into Charisma to grab all of the best Etiquettes, and carry a rifle for backup.

Edit: There are a lot of opportunities for Deckers, they're just not necessary to advance the storyline. But, if you don't begin the game with Decking skills, I wouldn't sink points into it later.

[Vaylor]

If you're going to do decking, you need to start out with it I feel. Or else you miss out on half of the decker only things. There are a few missions where your main char needs decking skill to unlock something during a battle, I wish there were more. The other plus of making your main a decker is that they're actually pretty strong in the matrix. Ever get sick of firing 6 times and missing all the shots, that won't happen with a well built main. I did a decker/rigger together, which makes the most sense.

Personally I really like shamanism if you're planning a small subspec. Just getting the basic totems even can be a big help to any char. And you can summon low level fetish's to help out, or use the ones you encounter during missions for free. It doesn't take a lot either to do just these basics.