For the previous post in this series, click here.

Roles
Few, if any, shadowrunner teams, have enough members (remember, the more members a team runs, the more conspicuous they are, and the capture of one may lead to the discovery of the rest) to dedicate a member to each role below.

Combat
‘Runners must always be prepared for a fight—the nature of the work and the non-permissive environments in which it takes place means that, even for those runs where violence is not an intended goal, any number of unfortunate events can spiral into chaos and bloodshed at a moment’s notice. While every ‘runner is expected to be able to carry his weight in a fight, every team needs at least one person dedicated to bringing the pain in the most direct way possible.

Trolls and Orks often gravitate to these roles, where their natural toughness and strength makes them terrifying combatants. Combat specialists from all metatypes are found however, with Elves often focusing on speed and grace over raw strength, Humans making good all-rounders, and Dwarfs having toughness of their own.

Combat-oriented team members may specialize in particular types of combat, the most common of which are close-combat specialists highly skilled in unarmed and armed hand-to-hand fighting as well as close-range firearms and long-range specialists providing sniper cover for the rest of the team.

The most often thought-of combat specialist is the Street Samurai, followed by the Physical Adept.

Weapons Specialists, who bring a wide-array of knowledge and experience in various forms of violence to create a highly-adaptive approach to combat, focus first on their skills and natural abilities, adding augmentations as they’re able to supplement their arsenal of weapons. Weapons Specialists often have high levels of skill with all firearms, all types of close combat, demolitions and explosives, and in heavy weapons.

Some shamans or mages prefer to focus on a combative role, summoning spirits and casting spells to wreak as much havoc on the enemy as possible. Their exposure to the consequences of Drain can deprive them of the sort of steady reliability or long-term staying power of other combat specialists, but, chummer, can they ever bring the hurt in sudden fits of overwhelming force!

Riggers may also serve in a combat role, directing one or more armed drones in place of meat bodies.

Of course, there are also plenty of combat specialists who defy any easy categorization.

Hacking and Technology

The Sixth World is a place of hyperconnectivity between devices—your refrigerator can order you groceries when supplies run low; your pistol will tell you the temperature of its barrel and the number of rounds remaining in the magazine; the flick of a (virtual) switch may change the color of your clothes (or even your hair!).

No shadowrunner team is complete without a specialist in modern tech, particularly one with the capability to hack in support of the team, whether opening locked doors and disabling security in a target facility or bricking a ganger’s Predator VI before he can open fire with it.

Modern computer systems, particularly those managed and protected by the megacorps, require both expensive equipment and high levels of skill to successfully hack, making this role one of the hardest for other team members to dabble in or cover for. Technomancers, still largely feared by society, also fill this role—their Awakened (or pseudo-Awakened) status means that they also require a large amount of resources devoted to their service in this role.

Magical Support

Threats to shadowrunners are rarely limited to the physical and technological worlds. Both mages and spirits are used to defend corporate assets, and even some street gangs are comprised entirely of wizkids. Gone are the days when junkyard dogs were the fiercest animal you might encounter when breaking and entering; these have been replaced where possible by Awakened alternatives—fire-breathing hellhounds and the like.

With magic, it usually takes fire to fight fire, and a good shadowrunner team needs at least one member well-equipped to deal with other spellslingers, summoned spirits, and all other manner of supernatural threat. Magic-users are “force multipliers” in many ways–there’s a good reason the advice “geek the mage first,” remains relevant.

Further, astral perception and/or projection can provide information about targets and enemies otherwise unavailable to the team.

Full magicians or shamans are typically preferred in this role, but their rarity means that substitutes must sometimes be made. Aspected magic users can address most threats (and often have the ability to cover in other roles), even if they don’t have the breadth of magical approaches of a full mage.

Physical adepts with the Astral Perception ability and other powers that cater to direct combat with spirits and other astral entities may also fulfill this role.

Mundanes with the right knowledge and equipment (which isn’t in the current book) can sometimes serve in this capacity, but the risk here is much higher than it would otherwise be.

Transpo

There’s nothing more embarrassing than finishing a run and having to make your getaway on public transport—nor a more surefire way of getting caught.

Those who most excel in this role are Riggers; if a team doesn’t have a Rigger, this role is typically handled by one or more team-members as a secondary role to their other functions. By their very nature, a team’s Rigger is almost always required to run primary on this role, though the Rigger may also have substantial surveillance or combat duties fulfilled through the use of drones and is likely the team’s resident mechanic.

Face and Acquisitions

The nature of shadowrunning makes anonymity a difficult-to-achieve but highly-desired aspect of the life. Only under rare circumstances does a whole team want to meet a Mr. Johnson; everyone—especially the runners, are better off when the employer doesn’t have much information about those he’s hired.

Additionally, many runners are pretty sorry fraggers when it comes to social situations, and a good working relationship can mean the difference between being hired for multiple jobs or placed on a corporation’s “cleaner’s” list.

Those teams whose idea of professionalism means keeping a body count to a necessary minimum also find it useful to have someone who can finesse through certain situations rather than resorting to violence and direct action.

A team’s “Face” fulfills all of these functions. The Face is only as valuable as his social skills and network of connections, where a competent team member can drastically reduce the difficulty of legwork performed before a run.

Often, a Face also fulfills a role as a covert operator—add the ability to mimic others, blend in, and sneak past security systems and you have a versatile runner able to insinuate herself into situations and locations where she can do the team the most good.

Protection is also a concern for a Face. As the most forward member of the team, the Face is usually the first one to feel the brunt of an ambush or double-cross. Even with a team well-positioned to respond in the event of such a likelihood, a long-lived Face probably has some combat skills or good means of escape for when things don’t go well.

If any position on the team is likely to be relegated as a secondary role to one of the members with no runner having a primary responsibility for the role, it’s likely the Face. Such an approach is one of necessity, however, not one of best practices, because a good Face opens up possibilities, both for employment and for approaches to problems, unavailable to those who only dabble in the role.

Many faces rely on their natural social skills to serve in this function, but there are a number of augmentations highly attractive to those in this role, especially if the ability to disguise appearance when acting as the public representative of the group is highly desired.

Magic-users may sometimes find themselves well-suited to this role, particularly shamans who tend to be naturally charismatic anyway. But an over reliance on magical skills to serve in social functions often means a brute-force approach (using Mind Probe and Control Thoughts spells, for instance) over finesse. Even if successful, such strategies have a habit of making enemies.

Some Physical Adepts find that their magical abilities are especially suited to the role of Face—these often follow the Speaker’s Way.

Surveillance and Investigation

Rarely is something in the Sixth World what it seems, and even if a run isn’t primarily an investigation, it’s likely that some amount of investigation and surveillance will be a necessary part of the legwork for the run proper. Add to that that runners often find themselves in the midst of mysteries and conspiracies that threaten their lives, and it should be clear why a dedicated investigator and/or surveillance specialist is a great boon to a shadowrunner team.

The augmented, with their heightened senses and access to sensory apparatuses unavailable to the unenhanced, often make good investigators—but there is no substitute for tradecraft.

Awakened team members may also make excellent investigators, with magic-users having access to modes of inquiry unavailable to mundanes and physical adepts often possessing super(meta)human senses themselves.

Riggers, while sometimes overlooked, can provide an excellent source of investigation and surveillance, combining the use of drones for physical surveillance with electronics skills that naturally lend to signals intelligence.

Covert Operations and Security

Like combat skills, almost every runner is expected to have some ability to act stealthily. Rare is the run that does not involve tailing someone, infiltrating a secure facility, or otherwise evading detection.

But there is a difference between the person who can occasionally move without being noticed and the person who is well-versed in the fieldcraft of the spy, who knows how to use dead drops and brush passes, how to infiltrate a place without leaving a trace, and who knows what techniques to guard his fellows against.

Like the Face, some teams seem to think of this as a secondary role without any need for a primary member in its place.

The augmented, specifically with those enhancements decreasing visibility and increasing agility and speed, are well suited for such a role, as are Physical Adepts with similar abilities. Some infiltrations may be conducted by a decker or rigger without any team member getting “boots on the ground” in the target location, but modern security countermeasures make such scenarios rare, at least when dealing with governments and corporations of means.

Likewise, just as they can sometimes operate as adequate Faces, magic-users may also provide some options and approaches in such situations that their mundane counterparts are incapable of—particularly if the team member is also skilled in physical techniques of breaking and entering. Given the adaptability of the mystic adept, this may be an especially fitting role for them.

Support

This catch-all term goes to the heart of those seemingly minor but essential tasks for a shadowrunner team—logistics. When possible, a team will use its network of contacts (and its Fixer(s)) to acquire new gear or necessary services that they cannot provide in-house, but the cost of looking outside the team for such assistance should not be underestimated.

When team members have their own networks for acquiring, repairing and modifying their gear, this allows the team to take innovative approaches to their runs, to avoid embarrassing equipment failures, and to maximize their profits.

Often, support tasks are tied to other roles rather than being made a role of its own—the combat specialists are expected to perform weapon maintenance, the rigger is expected to be able to repair vehicle damage, and the decker is expected to be able to modify everyone’s commlinks.

Thinking About Roles When Designing a Character
It is tempting, particularly if you’ve viewed the Archetypes in the book, to highly specialize your character into a particular role. Ignore the book’s Archetypes, both because they’re unreasonably min-maxed and don’t make for well-rounded characters.

The resources you’re given to build a character in Shadowrun are not sufficient to build a runner who’s at the top of his game. Even with the extra 50 Karma mentioned for creating “Prime Runners” (which, honestly, is a joke), you probably won’t be able to build a character who can single-handedly go toe-to-toe with the higher Professional Rating enemies (I’m looking at you, Tiers 6 and above—who knew DocWagon personnel were so hardcore?).

Your character is a runner who’s not been doing this for very long or who’s just entered the shadows. Knowing this, give yourself permission to (a) not stress about making a perfect character and (b) start with an interesting backstory and work forward with two or three roles in mind (preferably prioritized).

Allow yourself to build a character who will grow into his full potential over time, and who isn’t so min-maxed that he’ll actually survive long enough to realize that potential.

Shadowrun is fun when played as a cyberpunk version of D&D, but it reaches its full potential only when it takes into account the drama and grit of social systems that make shadowrunning seem like a better choice among alternatives and accentuates the difficulty of “the life.” The same goes for Shadowrun characters—the more real they feel, the better the idea you have as to how they got to where they are, the more fun they’ll be to play and the better your game will be—your GM will thank you!

Also, it’s nice to have a reason your character isn’t an expert in all forms of combat known to metahumanity from the get-go. Or stealth, or other aspects of breaking the law for a living. Unless your character came from a military background or was raised on the streets, in a gang or “in the life.”

For the next post in this series, with general advice on character builds, click here.