Character creation has three options, which basically boil down to "Template, Roll, or Point Buy".
There is a nice little flow chart walking you through character creation with links. For some reason Complete Package has less steps than the less detailed versions. Each page after this has little tabs to help you navigate through character creation, its a nifty little quality of life improvement. Still has a quote where Johnny hits on a 16 year old girl. #Metoo didn't happen in the cyberpunk world.
Like in the last game, there is a lifepath system that lets you "roll or choose". It seems kind of pointless to have rolling if you can choose given that you can just choose to roll. The language selection seems to contain a lot of minority languages (like Cree, Hausa, Creole) and they removed "blackfolk"
. No eubonics as a first language. Wokeness has ruined the game officially.
Next is a three word personality statement, then clothing and hair, then accessories. Stuff from the old game. It keeps going with motivation, how do you feel about most people, who do you value, prized possession, and I'm pretty sure its just a carbon copy of the last game's lifepath. And it continues into family history. Most of it won't make sense if you randomly rolled. Friends, enemies, lesbians eying each other in the side picture, and wrap up. I'm pretty sure they didn't change anything in this section aside from presentation
New to the lifepath system(I think), each individual Roll gets its own special life path. So the Rocker details what kind of entertainer they are and if they where in a group or solo, where they did their gigs, and who wants to kill them and/or their group. The rest get similar layouts, some asking if you have a current working partner. Like in the life path some are clearly meant to be chosen and won't make sense if you roll randomly("Alright, so your Media is a Blogger. Now roll the next...Your Media is a Blogger who works on a mainstream news channel"). Some have morality questions, either for you or your organization. Which will almost certainly get akward if the entire team randomly rolls. Exec gets a sidebar about how Coropos/Cops fit into a cyberpunk game (it uses "Punching down" lol). Nomads can now be land, air, or sea. One of the options is "Air Pirate". Nomads are rad.
Add with an easter egg in the corner. I'd eat it.
Stats looked like they got changed quite a bit. Attractiveness got dropped, we've now got a total of 10: Wisdom, INT, COOL, EMP, REF, TECH, LUCK, BODY, DEX, MOVE. I think some of their SHORTHAND got changed in this version. It looks like they moved some of the redundancy, Cool is now the only charisma stat while EMP is just your cyber points.
The Template sheet is basically what I saw when I looked at the Exec's minions, essentially confirming my suspicion its mostly meant for NPC generation. There is a roll involved to get a random line of stats.
Roll to state is a bit different than I was expecting. Essentially they have the same template as above, but you roll for the stats individually based off of your class. So your Solo will always have either 6, 7, or 8 ref and you roll to see which one you'll get. It does seem to remove a lot of the randomness, but you could theoretically have higher than normal points I guess.
Point buy has BIG BOLD WARNINGS that it might not be for novices and that you should start your character at the start character level. Default is 62 points max 8 min 2.
HP is based on both Body and Will, averaged together. They've got a chart so you don't have to do math to figure out your HP. For a starting character max HP is 50, min is 20.
Humanity is 10 times EMP. They have a chart just in case you can't do basic math. You lose one EMP for every 10 Humanity points. Max starting is 80, min is 20.
Skills work on the same principle as before, stats + skill. No handy chart if you can't add
. Each only really gets a sentence of description. Some silly ones like "Riding" in case you wanted to play a cowboy, Autofire takes twice the EXP of Handguns and rifles, and Personal Grooming is still a school despite Attractiveness getting cut (as is Wardrobe and Style). You have to spend at least 2 points in a long list of skills, but you get 86 skill points to spend and max out at 6. At 26 "must have" you get 60 to spend. Class restrictions are in place only for the Random Roll route, if you chose complete character creation than your characters can choose any skill. It looks like they figured out nobody really took the flavor skills
.
Max at any skill at character creation is 6+8 = 14. For those wondering why I'm doing max calculations, its so I can see how a standard minmaxed character would function later.
Or now, because we're going into a weapons list! Not really anything surprising from the weapon stats. Standard damage, rate of fire, concealability, price, and how many hands you need. Its just a generic weapon list at this point, but it does give us some idea of how strong they are. The weakest gun does 2d6, so the weakest character would take average three hits to take down while the strongest starting would take eight. Average rocket launcher does 4d8, average 28, so the squishiest get insta-gibbed while the strongest can eat one but die on the second. The rate of fire on every gun except the two lighter pistols is 1, the pistols both get 2, but some of the others have auto fire rules that haven't been explained yet. Current examples are naked, armor might make people less squishy and crits could ruin things (as will headshots).
Exotic Weapons for some reason get a less generic version, but most are just normal weapons with some bonus and quirk like "Shotgun/Grenade launcher with ROF 2 but you need BOD 11+ to use". I missed where the starting fund was located, they probably should have put that near the gear. Going back, you get $2550 to spend on equipment and $800 to spend on Fashion (as above they probably figured few people are going to spend big on flavor things). The most expensive normal weapons are $500, for both ranged and melee, so you shouldn't have problems getting some weapons. Bullets are $1 each basically, grenades and rockets are "We'll tell you later". The Exotic weapons are either super cheap or absurdly expensive depending.
Like in the last game, Armor lowers your ability to move and fight. It looks like armor just subtracts damage from each attack, with each attack also reducing the armor's ability to protect. Light jacket is $100 for 11 SP and no penalty, Flak is the strongest starting armor at 15 protection $500 -4armor penalty, Metal Gear is the strongest listed armor at an absurd price and 18 SP. From what I understand this means the average pistol/heavy pistol shot will get eaten by a light jacket, while Metal Gear should be able to eat an average-damage assault rifle or shotgun bullet. At 11 SP, a 5d6 will average 6.5 damage, going up by one every hit, so the weakest character in obviously the most practical starting armor can take (20-6.5-7.5-8.5) 3 rounds to take down, while the max dude gets down in 6. In other words one or two three round bursts. With decent armor you should be able to survive military grade equipment, but your dudes are going to have to bypass it if you want to have fun with handguns.
Next is a list of non-weapon items. Runs from fluffy to practical items, with prices jumping around not necessarily related to their practicality. Notably poison does as much as a handgun but can ignore armor. Next is clothing, almost entirely fluff but you basically get it for free. Munchkins will probably attempt to get expensive clothing and sell it if you let them. You'll have living expenses that you have to pay later, $1,100, enough for two assault rifles. Which seems like a lot given the lifestyle is said to be cheap and kibble is $10 in the list earlier.
Putting the cyber in cyberpunk, next up is cyborg parts! The game notes that the GM can arbitrarily remove humanity points for non-cyborg related reasons if he feels like being a dick and having you watch people eat babies or something. Which is 6 humanity points if you where wondering. They used baby eating as the example. A new(?) rule says that if you are crippled by birth or otherwise you can get a medical-grade cyberwear that has zero humanity cost, presumably to avoid suggesting that this world's cripples are slowly becoming psychopaths. Same thing for trannies! Body sculpt all you want if it affirms your real gender! If your table's munchkin manages to convince you they identify as an attack helicopter, then they can graft machine guns into their arms no problem. Apparently its only a mental problem if you cut off an arm that works perfectly fine.
With those new rules, fashion ware is also humanity cost free, likely as part of the ongoing campaign to get people to choose fluff options. Most just give small bonuses to Personal Grooming or Wardrobe and Style, if anything.
During character generation, Humanity loss is static (Probably to avoid the old Things Mr.Welch problem of making a character that has CyberCS at the start of the game). Afterwords it is random as in classic.
Since there are a lot, I'll just list some of the weirder or more practical ones:
Kerenzikov: +2 int, 14 humanity loss, $500
Sandevistan: +3 int, $500, 7 humanity, has a cooldown period and must be activated as an action. Doesn't stack with the above.
Olfactory Boost: Lets you track things like a dog. 7 humanity, $100.
Contraceptive Implant: Don't get people/yourself pregnant. $10. 0 humanity.
Cybersnake: Esophagus mounted heavy weapon.
Grafted Muscle and Bone Lace: +2 Bod (max 10), 14 humanity $1000.
Midnight Lady/Mr. Studd: 7 humanity, $100, no actual effect lol
Subdermal Armor: 11 SP, $1000, 14 humanity. Doesn't stack. Does protect the head if that becomes important.
Popup Grenade Launcher: $500 (same prices as non-pop up grenade launcher), 7 humanity, 2/4 Option Slots (arm)
Superchrome: $1000, +2 Wardrobe and Style, 0 humanity.
Artificial Shoulder Mount: You get 4 arms. 14 humanity $1000.
Implanted Linear Frame Beta/Sigma: They've learned! It increases your BOD to 14....but it requires that you have a BOD of 8 and Grafted Muscle to work. So you can't just dump stat and buy your way into super strength. $5,000 and 14 humanity. Sigma goes to 12, must be 6 with grafted muscle, 14 humanity, $1000. You could start with sigma.
Multi-optic mount: You can have 5 more cyber eyes. If you want to. For some reason.
Its mostly the same ideas and equipment as the original game. Most combat oriented cyberwear costs 2d6/4d6 humanity, so each Empathy point is basically one or half a decent piece of cyberwear. Nothing on the list went over 14. The game has promised there will be ways to increase Humanity, but it is unclear if that will also raise Empathy back up. If it does it might end up a dump stat. If it doesn't than anything under 10 Humanity points is still basically free.
Overall you should be able to get a decent weapon, some ammunition, some OK armor, and some cyberwear within your starting budget pretty easily. Like in the first game, you can get a bonus $1500 to spend on cyberwear if you choose some of the backstory options. Given that this is just over a month's rent in a shipping container you're getting ripped off. The "catches" that come with this are things like "They can kill you with a word if they want", "They can make you go crazy and kill everyone around you", "they can just make you explode". Still there arn't any mechanical effects so it basically boils down to the GM deciding how big a deal this will be.
Thus the end of character creation!
