PaG's GUIDE TO SAMMIES

For the second installement of my "Guides", what was more natural than to talk about the most popular archetype (according to an informal survey I did on this very page), the Street Samurai (affectionnally called the sammy by some people (including me)).

Why a Sammy?

This is almost a rhetorical question since they are so popular... Anyway, the sammie's role is often perceived as the firepower of the team. He's the one generally responsible for fragging people that needs to get fragged and take down those that must be took down. Sadly, lots of player don't understand the "needs to" and the "must" parts of the previous sentence. Basically the sammy makes sure the other members of the team come out alive of confrontations with angry third parties.

The sammy gets his power mostly from cyberware -- he's a runner whom got cybered up to become able to do his job well. All in all, people who like the combat part of shadowrun should like the street samourai archetype.

Why not a Sammy?

First of all, the originality-savvy player will avoid making a sammy because everybody do them -- playing a street samourai (in the purest sense of the word) can be seen as boring by some people. Another point to consider is that if you are playing in a group where battles are frown upon and munchkinism is seen as a bad thing (as it should be) then playing a sammy might be perceived as a bad idea by others.

These technical details ironned out, let's talk about the sammies main weaknesses. A major problem with these archetypes is their tendency to be so focussed on fragging people that they loose all their other capabilities, making them absolutely pointless if there aren't too many people to kill. How many sammies have I seen able to withstand a shot of panther assault cannon, but getting totally stopped by a simple locked door or getting their brain fried by a very low level mana bolt? Too many sadly...

Another problem is their tendency to unbalance gameplay: since sammies often have awesome initiative, they act much more often than others in combat, therefor making combat totally focused on them at the expense of other characters. Since combat is long in Shadowrun, that can frustrate many players.

Finally, another major problem is their very low essence. This causes them all sorts of trouble: mages can spot them incredibly easilly in astal space, cyberware detection systems (pretty common) must be avoided at all cost and they're a pain to heal by the local magus.

I'll play one, what now?

Creating a new street samurai character can be long and painful experience if your new to shadowrun and your GM's got many books at your disposition to choose stuff from. Since the sammy is a character that is pretty much centered on what he owns (syberware, etc.), spending your money can be pretty long.

The first part of character creation is pretty important: decided what kind of sammy your gonna play. From the japanese yakuza hit-man to the revolutionnary mercenary, there are many ways to play the rather broad sammy archetype. One important thing to remember is: don't make a walking kill-o-maton. Nobody like those, trust me.

Once you've decided what you're going to play in a more specific way, it's time for character creation per se. Contrary to what seems to be a very popular point of view, a sammy doesn't need the million at character creation to be a good characterm I've made very acceptable sammies with only 400k or 650k (or even less!). Taking a lower priority on those makes it possible to avoid the common weakness to sammies which is the over-specialization on combat over everything else -- walking tanks that can't tie their own shoes are boring to play. For that reason, attributes and skills are about on the same level of importance, their priority will vary accroding to how you envision your character.

Buying your cyberware is a very important thing for the sammy: when those 6 essence points are gone, they're gone (except with treatements for sammies with suicidal tendencies). Therefor, I would reccomend getting the expensive stuff you absolutely want at character creation (while there isn't street index and avaibality to get in your way), but keep a little essence (at least 1 or 2 points) for future use. Often sammies start as very strong characters that stay at that level of power without much amelioration throughout its playing time because there isn't any more room to put stuff in. Don't make that mistake: keep some essence!

I'm in there, what do I do?

Now you've got fresh sammy ready to roll! What you must now do is make him an interesting character -- give him an interesting personnality and life of its own beyond only being centered on his gears. An important thing not to forget when it comes down to personnality is the reason why they're called samourais in the first place.

Samourais were warriors, yes, but were so with a very strong sense of personnal honor. That last aspect is often forgotten and the characters become mindless killing machines, great warriors with no honors (if we can call that great). This aspect can make characters much more interesting and life-like. Other personnality traits could include the sammy who doesn't really likes what he's doing but is hiding it behind the mask of a cold face, or the paranoiac one that consider everybody as his ennemy.

As I've been saying for a while now, getting goals for your character and sticking to them makes them immensely more interesting and rewarding to play. A street samurai's personnal goals migh be to retire rich, to become an urban legend, to take revenge against somebody or to prove his worth in front of his ancestors. There are lots of possibilities with this, try to find what suits you best.

Even though some people consider them as simple mindless killing-machines, the sammies can be truly interesting living and breathing characters. If one doesn't fall to the sleeping munchkin inside him that is...