Character creation tips?

[george constanza kinnie]

I'm about to start playing this soon and was wondering if you had any tips on what to focus on or not for a first time playthrough

[red255]

you have a variety of team members to fill the other rolls of the squad. your leader probably should be designed to kill things because he'll be good at it.

generally by shooting things until they die.

of the weapon types rifles are assault rifles and sniper rifles and are generally the best type but the others have been buffed to be not as inferior in this version.

couple things to note.
1. if you start with a point of drone control or decking you get a free data jack....I can't recall if you get a free drone dunno if you want one but its free (less the essence cost)

2 points in biotech allow you to see enemy hp, 3 points in spirit magic allows you to get a totem, one point in cyberware affinity can get you some decent bioware for your arms to increase weapon accuracy dramatically

charisma is for talking your way out of things and non violent solutions. new ettiquette every 2 points.

a low ranking chi casting allows you to get a spell slot for a passive medium cover vs spells which noticably reduces incoming spell damage.

which seems like I'm all over the place, you should generally spend your major focus of your karma in your archtype which i'm suggesting to be street samurai, but minor expenditures in non class skills can yield good results too

just the bulk of your points should go into Quickness, ranged attack, dodge, rifle and body.

[Tenbux]

Your available crew actually covers the basic requirements for a team already. Two heavy hitters (one ranged and one melee), an okayish decker, a support shaman, and a rigger with an incredibly good unique drone. You can safely run just about whatever you want and still be
quite effective. Play whatever character concept you think sounds interesting.

Ran a decker for my first character. I'm not a big fan of the crew's existing decker

Random advice:
Pistols arent nearly as bad as people seem to think.
The only weapon type I'd advise against is shotguns. They dont hit hard enough to justify their short range.
If you have a datajack, guns with smart-links offer improved accuracy.

Money is pretty tight. Take a thorough look around any time you're in the matrix for paydata. The extra cash really makes a difference. Thankfully your teammates upgrade their own equipment at no cost to you.

Completing optional objectives usually gives you extra karma.

Talk to everyone.

[Zadok]

Focus on immersion. Play a character you like and can identify with.

[ErzPaladin]

1.) Don't play a pure Decker. It isn't worth it. Rather play a Decking Rigger and therefore I'd recommend looking for a guide

2.) Physical Adept may be one of the best tanks/dmg dealer ingame, but also it's one of the easiest classes you can cripple-skill yourself (cause some ppl invest into Close Combat, Melee or such?). So, if you want to play it I recommend looking for an Adept Guide/Build.

3.) Some classes/builds afford a lot of karma (for example Physical Adept, Cyber Melee, Rigger/Decker, etc.), so think about what you really want and need. You can't have everything, but some things are easier to accomplish (for example totem-bonus) than others.

4.) To give you a direction: calculate with ~170 karma for the main campaign (There's more possible. There's lesser possible. But the direction for a 1st playthrough is pretty realistic)

Originally posted by Tenbux:

Ran a decker for my first character. I'm not a big fan of the crew's existing decker

Isobel is good enough for everything. She gets that nice Killer-programm for free (which is normally a consumable?) and can buff ToHit. The Tarblaster-Upgrade grants her a nice AoE-Skill which does good dmg and binds enemies. Also, the hitrate isn't ToHit-bound (similar to the Mage-AoE Spells), but range-bound: the further you place the TarBlaster AoE, the lesser the ToHit, but the closer it's almost 100%.

The only flaw she has is that she doesn't get 4 AP in the matrix. But, as long as you grant Isobel the TarBlaster-Upgrade then you shouldn't have too much trouble.

Originally posted by Tenbux:

Random advice:
Pistols arent nearly as bad as people seem to think.
The only weapon type I'd advise against is shotguns. They dont hit hard enough to justify their short range.

I could say the same about Pistols. Regular Pistols aren't that awesome vs heavy armor, either.

The main problem is that you don't hit hard while enemies stay in cover. While in cover your dealt dmg is reduced by 50% and you lose your crit-rate.

That's one of the reasons why Rifles (but also SMGs) are pretty handy, cause they can kick enemies out of cover stance. SMGs have a skill which you can use once per round, while rifles do that with Full-Auto Mode permanently (but Full-Auto always uses 2 AP, takes a lot of bullets and doesn't crit).
Later on Rifles are incredibly strong (especially the Ares HVAR when you've an Armor Stripper in your party, cause the Ares HVAR does a bit lesser base dmg, but +2 Attacks on Burst- and Full-Auto-Mode for free)

Shotguns have a high base dmg, but you mainly sacrifice your crit-rate to hit multiple grouped targets on longer ranges.
Later on some Shotguns gain the same Burst-Mode which Rifles can gain over skills, which grants a high crit-rate while shooting in Burst-Mode. Still, it's more reliable on Rifles, cause of their Clip-sizes: Shotguns have awful clip-sizes. That's one of their main disadvantages.
The higher your Quickness/Ranged Combat is the better you hit with Shotguns. Gunners always aim at least for 9 Quickness/Ranged Combat (if not for 11 via Cyberware Implants) and considering that Shotguns aren't much different in hitrate than others guns. Rifles in Full-Auto can miss, too.

I'd rather evade SMGs: SMGs are all in all the weaker version of Rifles. They pretty much fill in the same role as Rifles, but there aren't many strong SMGs and Full-Auto has no CD while the SMG-Skill can only be used once per round. SMGs are playable, but why playing SMGs when you can go for Rifle?

In my playthrough as Gunner I started with a Grenade Launcher, cause I wanted a weapon which does AoE-dmg.
What I didn't know was, that on lower Quickness/Ranged Combat (~ 6-7 ranged combat) the Grenade Launcher misses way too often - at least for my taste. It misses compareably to the miss-mechanic of Isobel's Grenade Launcher: you hit the enemies in way too many cases over adjacent tiles and that halves the dmg output.
Later on it's ok, but by reaching that point grenade launcher suffers from heavy armor a lot - especially when you only hit over adjacent tiles. Unlike Isobel's Grenade Launcher with Strip Armor Evolution the regular Grenade Launcher simply loses its AoE edge halfway through the main campaign.
It's still playable, but I was pretty happy when I could switch on Rifle.