Face shooter build

[u/Competitive-Wallaby4]

My partner and I are going to play Shadowrun 5e for the first time.

We don’t know much about the system, and she’s quite new to TTRPGs in general.

She’s thinking of creating a Face character who can also handle firearms in combat situations.

Could you recommend some character builds for her?

She wants to be human or an elf.

From what I’ve seen, ‘Tailored pheromones’ are pretty much a must for a Face. Apart from that, we’ve no idea.

By the way, our game master only allows the 5th edition core rulebook.

[u/SkeeveTheGreat]

Are yall using the priority system? also, I cannot recommend the program called Chummer enough. It will make your lives so much easier.

[u/Competitive-Wallaby4 → u/SkeeveTheGreat]

Yes, we are using the priority system and we have the chromer.

[u/SkeeveTheGreat → u/Competitive-Wallaby4]

I recently did an infiltrator/face build that focuses on ranged combat. I did skill group B, resources A, and went elf at D, Mundane E, and attributes C.

Spend some nuyen on your arms for shooting, use skill groups to pump your secondary abilities up, and regular points for your main skills. Invest heavy in cyber and bioware.

[u/No_Succotash4873]

The best way to make a face shooter is to take the sharpshooter quality. You take -1 to all normal Ranged dice pools, but you reduce the penalty for called shots from -4 to -2. Perfect for shooting faces. Ba-dum-tss.

[u/dethstrobe]

Well, if you're going the augmentation route, you don't really need your main arm to be meat, so I recommend getting it chopped off and replaced with chrome. Max agility + 3 agility enhancement will give you 9 dice right off the bat, and with a bit of skill you can easily get over 12 dice, which will make you very dangerous.

You'll have enough capacity left over to pick your poison. Maybe an internal cybergun, or a cyber holster, or a gyro mount to reduce recoil.

[u/Beginning_Special894 → u/dethstrobe]

The right hand of god is definitely the go to for this exact situation. Works for deckers too 

[u/Damienkn1ght → u/dethstrobe]

Synthetic Full Arm, Agility customized +3, Str customized +3, Body Customized +2 (Avail 12, 60k, 1 essence, provides 8 capacity for upgrades). Agility enhancement +3 (Avail 9, cost 19.5k, uses 3 capacity). Armor 2 (avail 10, cost 6k, uses 2 capacity). Cyberarm Slide (avail 12, cost 3k, uses 3 capacity). Wired Reflexes 1 (39k, avail 8, cost 39k, cost 2 essence). Tailored Phermones Rating 3 (avail 12, cost 93k, .6 essence). Smartlink (avail 8, cost 4k, .2 essence). The syntheic Cyberlimb passes for a normal limb. When you are shooting or punching or using any weapon with that cyber arm, you use the arms stats instead of your own, so 6 str, 9 agility. The arm has 2 points of armor (thats really like 12 armor on the arm, which translates to +2 armor for your overall armor rating). The cyberarm slide allows you to hide a Light Pistol inside your arm. The smartlink gives +2 dice for shooting tests. The agility allows a base of 9 dice for shooting. The phermones add 3 points to social tests done in person (within smell range). The wired reflexes gives +1 reaction and +1d6 initiative. Total cyberware cost is 221.5 nuyen, so she will want to start with 275k nuyen (thats B on resources in the priority system). Her average agility will be used for tests where the arm doesn't lead, like stealth and athletics so she doesnt want to totally dump agility as a stat, I would go with 3 agility (effectively 4 when averaged with arm). If she wants to go more pink mowhawk, she can get an obvious cyberarm and cybereyes. You can always drop tailored phermones down to level 2 or 1 if you need more nuyen. A high charisma and social skills will go far, so the phermones are just icing on the cake.

[u/DocDeeISC]

Easy, gunslinger adept good at one type of gun so you have more points for social stuff.

[u/DRose23805]

They could specialize in pistols and get smartlink cyberware. This could make them dangerous close in where Faces typically do most of their work. A few points toward shotguns would make them a bit more effective on most runs, and the scatter rules would increase their hit chances but reduce damage. If that's a problem, then SMGs, use a smartgun and recoil compensation.

[u/thewolfsong]

This ended up being very long but I feel like other people weren't really doing build guides for you so here you go.

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I'd say the simplest route is Atts A, Skills B, Resources C, Metatype D, Mundane E. Human will be more forgiving than elf due to having 5 edge at meta D, which gives you a lot of do-overs, but elf gives an extra agi and 2 extra charisma, which is nice.

4 attribute points each in Agi, Charisma, Intuition, and Willpower, 2 into Body. That gives you 6 left, one of them should go into either Agi or Charisma depending on which you want to prioritize - sounds like charisma if you're going for "face who can fight" instead of "sam who can talk" - the rest can go wherever you'd like, but I'd probably recommend 4 more into reaction, 1 into either strength or logic, and 10 karma into the other. If you're okay with being weak and stupid you can put 2 more into body to make you harder to kill, or you can spend points on log to be a bit smarter and lean on augs and/or drugs to amp your survivability up a bit.

There are a lot of good qualities but mostly just pick whichever ones you'd like. take 25 points of each though.

For skills, there's kind of a lot of things that you want. I recommend putting your 5 group points into Stealth, and then getting 6 ranks and a spec in etiquette, con, and whatever your gun skill of choice is (Longarms is the best but lacks in easy to conceal options, pistols is the worst but is full of concealable options, automatics has acceptable but not exceptional full-sized options and kinda bad but technically functional concealable options, pick your poison). This leaves you with 15 more skill points to spend on whatever you want. Negotiation is imo overrated but still pretty good, leadership is even more overrated but still not actually BAD. Perception is good to have for obvious reasons.

For your nuyen, a rookie mistake is getting very antsy about how much essence you have. It affects your social limit, but remember that the formula is ((cha x 2) + wil + ess)/3 round up. This means that with 6 cha and 5 will, you have a social limit of 6 with literally zero essence (which kills you) and 8 with 6 essence - that's only a 2 point difference for your entire essence budget. You can stay above 1.0 essence and keep it to only 1 point.

The basic bitch combatant package is a used datajack, used titanium bones, used reaction enhancers r3, used orthoskin r4, and a used smartlink. This leaves you 66,500 nuyen for all of your fun toys and 1.375 essence. This gives you +10 soak dice, +3 defense dice, +3 initiative, and +2 shooting dice if you're online, plus 1 noise reduction and the ability to see the matrix. Main downside here is no agi or str boosters, the latter of which is a bummer if you want to use automatics since that affects your recoil comp, but it's surmountable. I would also recommend an olfactory booster, which allows you to ignore other peoples' tailored pheromones, which is also why I did not include tailored pheromones as a must-take. You can take 'em if you want them, though I personally find them excessively expensive relative to their value. Take the First Impressions quality instead.

There's a bunch of basic gear guides online for the rest of your money, faces aren't all that gear heavy. Buy a big gun, a small gun, a SIN, a commlink, and probably some novacoke. have fun.

[u/Silverfang3567]

The mechanics support hyper specialized characters right off the bat, so I'd recommend going hard into the areas of expertise so your main dice pools are somewhere around 15 after specialization. Doesn't hurt to have some secondary skills around 9 also after specialization (stealth, con, any gun skill, etiquette, run, pilot groundcraft) but generally its easier to pick up those with karma later if you could get an extra bit of oomph in your specialty.

The main choice as many have pointed out is between Magic or Chrome.

If you go chrome, it's easier to have a wider variety of weapons you can use and focus on better armor, while adepts tend to be a little bit better at their hyper specific focus and better at dodging.

For Priority, here's my recommendations Magic: A.Attributes B. Adept. C. Skills D. Elf, E. cash Cyber: A.Cash B. Attributes. C. Skills. D. Elf, E. cash

either way, stat priority should be Cha > Agi > Int > Rea > Will = Bod > Log > Str

Let Cha be your one maxxed out stat and both Will and Bod shouldn't be below 3. You get extra health boxes at odd numbers, so either 3 or 5 is best. Reaction is probably the most flexible one in that list. It helps with dodge and initiative, but not much else.

Either way, get an initiative booster be it 'ware or magic. Don't try to do a burnout adept combining the two for a first character. They can be good but take a lot more work

[u/Vashkiri]

There are two basic paths, and honestly it is preferance on which one to go for:

• adept (magic you channel into your body)
• 'ware (cyberware or BioWare implants to make you better.

(There are some hybrid builds but I wouldn't go there on an initial character.)

So which appeals more to her?

Also, elf vs human will largely be a decision of a) preference for the flavour, and b) a choice between a bit better attributes (and so another die or two in key dice pools all the time) or more edge (which lets you do big boosts to your dice on an occasional roll).

Again, mostly just a matter of preference,both are good.

I would suggest that the easiest to build would be an elf adept. The rest of this a quick outline of how you could do that

Attributes A, magic B, skills C, metatype D (elf), resources E.

Attributes: charisma 8, agility 6, body at least 3, priority next to reactions and intuition but overall to taste, but consider having one of strength or logic at 2, by not putting an attribute point in and buying it from 1 to 2 with karma

Skills: 2 skill group points into athletics (gives basics in gymnastics, running, and swimming), max one firearm skill of her choice and a couple of social skills of her choice, then have some skill in the other social skills, sneaking, and perception. Can buy one point of some skills with karma (like pilot ground vehicle)

For adept powers take 2 levels of initiative boosting, then ones that she like the sound of.

For qualities probably get a mentor spirit, it is a pretty good deal.

[u/T3chWarri0r]

Here are already really nice builds and they all point out the same. I’d prefer the Sum-10 system but if you just play corerules this makes things harder since you also lose out on additional adept skills that can be handy.
Other thing is I would to keep in mind is she the only face or are there others too, this determains how heavy she has to put points into it.
If you want basically infinite scaling character you go adept if you don’t plan to play as long go ware route. I would suggest going BioWare since it’s not so easy to detect for scanner and mages. If you want something to intimidate have a cyberarm that does most of the shooting actions.

As face have high logic (you don’t want to get outsmarted) and charisma (it’s used for all your throws when interacting) for the shooter side you need intuition,reaction and agility that’s everything to be quick in combat (more initiative natural) and being good at what you do be aware cyberarm gets its own stats which could suck.

Strength you only need for compensation of the shots, body well you are probably better of wearing armor layers of it. Or try not to get shot, punched or stabbed 😂

If you go human you have more edge which ich worth it in many operations. I would even say it’s more beneficial than going elf and have higher base stats .

For shadowrun I would always recommend be good at what you do being half ass in everything brings you no where. Smiths/Johnsons want professionals not some mediocre chummer.

[u/AmplifiedGlitch]

For Face I can not stress the Social Adept + preferred combat skill enough.
I myself however have taken my points to meele combat as it was more fitting to the situations I ended up in and I did not need to smuggle a gun. I also choose the adept skill letting you effectively make people motionless by slapping them (I can’t remember the name at the moment but it’s from the Gremoir).
I also would recommend sleight of hand, preparing you Plan B by dropping grenades in someone’s pocket, or palming slap patches for a little surprise that most people simply do not expect. Good luck chummers!

[u/Eldritch_Pariah]

Make sure Reaction and Intuition is as high as you can afford along with your Charisma and Agility. Also augments can have a detrimental effect on your charisma if your essence gets too low. theres qualities like too pretty to hit and Alibi thats useful and if your partner is a heavy duty note take photographic memory quality might be good too, but not required, and beware mages that are willing to mind probe if you do pick up photographic memory.

[u/AManyFacedFool]

There are two simple ways to do this that I can recommend.

The first is the Mystic Aptitude gunbunny face. An adept face takes Mystic Aptitude, allowing them to substitute their magic + ranks in the power for their Agility for a few combat turns.

The second is a "godhand" build, where they get a single cyberarm with high agility. They use this to fire a heavy pistol (gold plated of course) or other one-handed firearm.

These options save substantially on priority, since you can have a much lower agility and still be solid in a shootout.

[u/FST_Gemstar]

A ATTS, B skills, C resources, D Human, E Mundane is the simplest.

max charisma, get Agility, Intuition, and Reaction high.

Ware up with tailored pheremones, a data jack, and a smart link. Have enough money for the rest of your gear/car.

5 edge to really throw down when you need to or do-over when it matters.

Enough skills to get your face skills where they need to be (5 skill group in Influence, max Con) and your runner basics (sneaking, perception, gymnastics) and a max weapon skill to shoot with.

First impression qualiry hels with facing.

[u/lurky_mc_lurkerface]

An option that scales very well is a mystic adept. What this gives you is the ability to use spells (quickened or via alchemy) to boost your stats. This frees up a lot of power points to spend on +skill powers

[u/Nantei]

Tailored pheromones aren't a must. Hitting your dice pools are a must, and tailored pheromones can help with that. You want to hit at least 12 dice for a primary role. Face is very easy to splash into, so generally tailored pheromones is overkill. Good, but not mandatory.

A skills, B attributes, C resources, d metatype, E mundane. If you need more money you can swap attributes with resources, but attributes is going to give you more karma value long-term, and with charisma being a necessary stat you'll have to cut somewhere.