Budget Samurai

"What are you gonna need that stupid fuckin' rope for?"

Here's what I want you to do. I want you to pull out that armored leather jacket with the Anarchy symbol on it. I want you to spike up your hair into some foot long liberty spikes. Then, grab some mirrored shades and load your Ares Predator, because today's our first official Shadowrun blog post. This was totally going to be a completely different inaugural post, but while discussing that post, I got another idea. While it's much less important a milestone, this will ALSO be our first post giving direct character building advice.

Basically, it's a dominant strategy when building a Street Samurai to immediately assign "the Million" and start spending money like you're a disenfranchised, trampled-upon thug far below the poverty line who just won the lottery. That's a fine way to build a character, and fun as hell, but today we're discussing budgets. Specifically, we're going to talk about the minimum our samurai needs to be good at combat. With "the minimum" in place, you can then go into a whole lot of directions, even building a "hybrid" who's got two jobs, like an insertion decker.

First I'm going to go into my design philosophy a little bit. Firearms are inherently cheaper than creating a melee character, so we're going with that. The differences between the two are quite obvious and it's simple to alter the build to fit melee: Simply take two or more points of Muscle Augmentation bioware, and ignore the Smartlink. This build can also EASILY be improved upon and taken in many different directions, even when talking about pure mechanical effectiveness. Treat this as me saying this is the basics of what you need to start with, like a Lego starter kit...only probably less expensive. Obviously, I'm going to discuss honorable mentions and add-ons too. There's a lot of those.

CYBERWARE

Wired Reflexes I, 2 Essence, 55k Nuyen
Dermal Sheath I, 0.7 Essence, 24k Nuyen
Smartlink II, 0.5 Essence, 3,500 Nuyen

So yeah, this one is obvious. Initiative is all-important in Shadowrun, and Wired I is a must. None of the other, cheaper alternatives will give you such a bang for your buck. There's a reason everyone takes Wired Reflexes. Next up, Dermal Sheath will give 2 points of body, letting you capitalize on one of the Samurai's few remaining strengths that physads didn't take: Raw stat value. A human with this build will easily hit a body of 8, which is my "minimum" for calling someone tough. Finally, Smartlink II is an immense numbers advantage in a very small package, so you'd be foolish not to take it.

BIOWARE

Enhanced Articulation, 0.6 BI, 40k Nuyen
Reflex Recorder, 0.25 BI, 25k Nuyen

Something you need to know about Shadowrun in general is that bonus dice are nice. It's the reason Physads are so powerful and a beginning Physad can easily reach six bonus dice in a single combat skill. When speaking solely of combat skills, the Samurai can reach two: Enhanced Articulation, and Reflex Recorder. Enhanced Articulation is our second most expensive item, but it's another item that gives a LOT for its budget: It's a bonus die in any physical skill(including some you might not realize, like Electronics) and a point of reaction. We took a reflex recorder simply to maximize our two bonus dice in a combat skill: This time, your firearms skill of choice. There are no other stackable sources of bonus dice for combat skills in our toolkit.

So before we discuss honorable mentions and really-should-takes, let's go over our budget. We've spent a total of 147,500 Nuyen, and our boy has an Essence of 2.8 and a bio index of 0.85. A ton of room for other stuff, made even wider if you choose to buy Alpha versions of Wired I and Dermal Sheath. Wired I will be your first choice for Alpha ware given its cost to essence comparison.

So now we're going to talk about some of the important, powerful benefits of being a Street Samurai that aren't necessarily required for combat effectiveness. We're only going to discuss things that a starting character can reach, so while Tactical Computer is obviously one of the most powerful things a Samurai can buy...it's outside of the purview of the conversation.

Datajack and Chipjack. Being able to interface with basic technology is extremely helpful. In addition to that, the cheap chipjack opens up to use some skillsofts: Knowsofts and Linguasofts do not need skillwires, and neither do things like maps which can be viewed on a display link. This also lets you "check" any chips you're stealing or being provided by a Johnson without having to bring a separate device.

Cybereyes. This is another place that you're going to get a lot of value for your money, and another place you want to strongly consider Alphaware. Vision Magnification can help with firearms, though inside a building engagement distances are usually going to be well inside short range anyway. Microscopic vision is immensely helpful: Between this and Enhanced Articulation, you're going to end up an electronics badass without even really trying. Finally and more obviously, thermo or low light reduce vision penalties, and are very cheap.

Bone Lacing. I'm only mentioning this to point out that it's well within the rules to take Titanium Bone Lacing as well as Dermal Sheath III and stack a ton of points of Body. Your ability to stack raw stat values is one of your strengths over a Physad. It also provides a little bit of something a physad can't take at all: Ballistic armor.

Trauma Damper and Platelet Factory. While I'm mostly talking about Trauma Damper, both of these items add a severe amount of toughness by directly removing boxes of damage. You end up taking slightly higher wound penalties sometimes, but it can be mitigated with either edges or other bioware like a Pain Editor or Damage Compensator.

Synthacardium. This is also a general note for all athletics related gear such as the balance tail, balance augmenter, move-by-wire or erythropoietin. This is the one area you can stack MORE bonus dice than the physad if you're a little careful. They have a restriction of their skill rating when it comes to bonus dice, but a samurai does not. Do not discount athletics, for it's one of our major strengths as well as an easily overlooked skill. There's a lot of insane stunts you can pull to lose a tail, gain cover, or bypass security. Despite the fact that things like hydraulic powered digitigrade legs exist, not a whole lot of buildings will design their security assuming an intruder can leap a hundred feet in the air.

Mnemonic Enhancer. Okay, so this one is last for a reason. I want you to remember it. This is your shining holy avenger. Your light in the darkness of being in the physad's shadow. Each of its three levels gives some amount of helpful knowledge and memory related bonuses, but also reduces Karma costs for buying skills by one each. Seeing as how this is 90% of what you're going to be spending your Karma on, it's fucking invaluable. Make room for this item in your budget. Period.