When my home group opted to run another Shadowrun game, I was a little disappointed. I had never enjoyed the time-consuming character creation process in that game, and I had already exhausted most of the pre-gen characters in the books. Some regular SR players are probably cringing right now to learn that I had played any of the pre-gens, because they don't have reputations for being well built characters anyway. I went hunting online. Despite hours of searching, I failed to find ANY pre-generated characters for 5th edition on the web. Perhaps my Google-fu is weak, but there genuinely seems to be nothing out there.
I did find a few 4th edition characters that I was able to port over using a conversion document from the company website. Surprisingly to me, this method resulted in characters which *not* book legal. Well, it's good enough for concepts from which to built, I guess. I selected an elven technomancer pre-gen from a user called Umaro VI, and I started tinkering with it.
Two weeks later, I finally have a character which I think is a book legal starting character. One of the concepts that Umaro used was equipping this character with only unrestricted gear, thus not running the risk of being caught with cheap fake licenses. There seems to be no way in the 5th edition rules to buy legal licenses, so this is a legitimate concern. Some of the gear like the industrial sprayer to mount on his drone became restricted in 5th edition, so I switched that out with items that are currently unrestricted: a flash-pak, a grapple gun, and a micro-flare launcher. With these items mounted on the Nissan Dobberman drone, this robot will not be taking on any tanks, but it does have adequate armor for escorting a teammate into the battlezone and offering the technomancer (who is still hiding under cover) eyes on the combat.
Another trick that Umaro used is adapting the Dobberman drone to use as a vehicle. If there is such equipment to do this in 5th edition, I didn't find it in any of the books that our group possesses. Instead, this technomancer is sitting in the car or behind a corner as much as possible. In the first game I used her, she actually hid in the trunk of her own car.
Another change was that Umaro had maxed out his character's charisma. I am unsure why he did that. Logic or Intuition would have seemed to be more useful. I gave her some more balanced attributes.
I admit that her skills are not perfectly selected. There was some rules confusion when I was converting, but my GM caught the mistake. I fixed them enough to be rules legal (I think), but I never bothered fixing them enough to be a perfectly tuned munchkin beast. They're good enough.
As a very unusual weapon selection, I picked out a piece of non-weapon gear. The myomeric rope is a wonderful piece of equipment and surprisingly affordable. It seems that a robotic rope which moves on its own and a character who mentally controls machines would be a perfect match. I don't know why other players don't use the combination more often.
Her general methodology is this. When hacking, she hits hard and fast by combining complex forms, sprites, skills, and her generous edge points to hack locations and devices quickly. She can weave complex forms one after another and then hand them off to her sprites to manage. She gets what she needs and then covers her tracks or else jacks out before things get too bad. Her matrix defenses aren't all that they are cracked up to be, so she avoids cyberspace duels when she can. Similarly in the physical world, she will hide when combat erupts. She will send out a drone or her myomeric rope holding a cheap camera to scout for threats. With virtual eyes on the enemy, she then hacks them to brick their equipment or hijack their vehicles. She provides tactical information available to her teammates with augmented reality. She leaves the killing to the teammates.
Shortly after gaming starts, she will need to begin compiling and registering sprites. There seems to be no way to start the campaign with sprites already registered, so getting them set up is a priority to be accomplished with her very first downtime period. I also suggest quickly picking up the Quick Healer talent for 6 karma to help compensate for all of the stun damage that she gives to herself by performing resonance actions. Until these things are done, she probably won't be very impressive or useful except as a second-tier rigger. After those basics, I suggest investing in better body armor and a heavier vehicle which can transport the Dobberman and provide better armor. I also suggest using any additional karma to quickly boost her skills which are 1s to 2s and 3s. After these upgrades, however, she just might be able to deliver (with a lot of luck) on the promised character concept of the technomancer being the mystical character who can hack anything.
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