Chris Hulvey at Polyhedren Game Store invited me to come play with his Tuesday night group he wanted me to watch then give him some pointers after the game was over about how he did. He said it was a street level campaign set in the Seattle Sprawl, So I decided to build the following a cyber-armed Orc Ganger adept: I guess this might become my preferred build. I will be reporting twerks as the campaign progress. I have one week form today to make him work out.
A: Ork (or Dwarf)
B: Attributes
D: Adept
E; Skills
C: Resources
Atts: Max Intuition, softcap Agility, Reaction, and Willpower, get Body to 5. get Charisma to 3, Dump Logic and Strength. You can get Edge 4.
Skills: Max and spec Swords, put 1 or 2 + specs in Sneaking, Perception, Con, and Etiquette.
Ware: Get a standard cyber-arm with maxed custom Agility and Strength, well as added Agility and Strength Enhancements. Fill the rest of capacity with fun goodies. If you have positive qualities to spare, you can get bio-compatibility cyber-ware just so you can get a very useful data-jack.
Gear: Get a rapier, or another one-handed bladed weapon with a high accuracy (add a Personalized grip too). Turn it into an R1 or R2 weapon focus (it will help you hit things like materialized spirits and up your dice pool a bit). With investing karma into nuyen, you can have more than enough cash for more than just basic starter gear.
Adept Powers: You can have 5 Magic: I would just get a combo of Improved Reflexes (2 or 3), Combat Senses, and Improved Ability (Blades).
Qualities are pretty personable. Jack of All Trades will help pick of a point or two of skills in play (and Agility 9 arm goes a long way with a lot of 1 point skills). A Mentor spirit is always nice (Stag give Blades bonuses).
Character is pretty one-note mechanically. Basically just really good at hitting things hard with swords (20+ dice and high damage). Customize more with knowledge skills, negative qualities, and contacts. Elf version would flip Attributes and Meta priorities (B: elf, A: Attributes). Human would prob go (D: Human, A: Atts, B: Adept [for a few more skill-points]).
Update to add to this: September 12, 2017; So the arm didn't help as much as I thought it would after playing him in a new campaign, on nearly any non combat agility based skill. He was very hard pressed to argue even Palming, and that is the most likely skill I can see as a downside to this build. For the most part the arm didn't help much on skills, making them still rather dangerously low.
I honestly don't see much to recommend getting a single arm in this case. With the bioware agility our Orc can actually be good at melee skills, He can wield two handed blades if he wants to and if he wants to wield a one handed sword it opens up martial arts options for using two weapons like two weapon style attack which is just free damage and accuracy. I personally would go back and do over with Orc B attributes A, he loses a bit of augmented strength you don't really need, and some edge which does hurt, but in exchange our Orc can be decently good at stealth, climbing, and have a higher move speed which is important to a melee character. At that point thematically you are playing an arm with some flesh attached to it. The Orc is getting to the point where my character is starting to make very little sense and be more a stat block rather then a living breathing entity. (Sigh) The other issue is our Orc will effectively be ending up with less armor by going with a cyber arm. Stacking armor is based on strength, you have none. While the free armor on your arm seems cool, it is costing us just as much or more armor on his body.
Update to add to this: September 19, 2017 As noted above, character is pretty one note mechanically. Its primary function as a shadowrunner is to hit things hard with a sword. It is accurate enough with enough edge to one-hit lots of targets if needed, and to survive a tough encounter. More customization comes from knowledge, qualities, and contacts.
A single, very strong arm is useful for lots of things. An unarmed attack (can take unarmed 1 + cyberspec for a hidden built-in weapon with functional use). Throwing stuff (combine with Hawk Eye and be fairly accurate at far distances with things like grenades). Palming. Lockpicking. Grapple Gun. Gripping Stuff (with magnetic system).
An arm also lets you squeeze some more 'ware into it with its capacity. Future growth includes further updating the arm, getting modular arms, in addition to magical growth.
Game mechanics do privilege higher Agility, particularly in conjunction with Agile Defender, but it can be boring. Agility 5 is usually plenty for movement and as a base general Agility stat. Especially if mixed with a single level of .25pp Agility Boost (it can be taken at chargen or grown into or as a R1 Qi focus). Giving an average of 2 additional hits to an Agility test when needed that you can't use with Muscle Toner.
The build can up strength more if desired (likely taken from Willpower or Body), but Strength 3 (base for an Ork or Dwarf, as recommended metas for the build) is enough to fit lots of armor.
In all though, It leaves a lot of space to build a character around, and many options for growth. Melee weapon adepts are generally kind of blah (as opposed to gun or unarmed adepts), and I think a cyberarm can make the playstyle a bit more fun for me....
Yours Captain Hedges
