SR5: Smuggler Template complete?

Time for another installment where I analyze the templates in Shadowrun, Fifth Edition Core Rule book to determine how ready for play they actually are.


If you frequent theaters or pay much attention to movie trailers, you're probably aware the next installment in the Fast and the Furious franchise is coming. Must admit, I really have not seen any of the movies of that franchise to completion. Watching the trailers has me itching to play a crackshot driver such as depicted in those films. In Shadowrun terms, the classic vehicle rigger.


The Fifth Edition book doesn't include a vehicle rigger template...


But wait... aha! The Smuggler template is practically the classic vehicle rigger in all but name.


So how ready-to-play is it?


Brief sidenote: I miss how the templates would break down the priority codes, which if I recall correctly, they did in third. Could be wrong though...


Priority codes:


A - Resources, it is a rigger...
B - Race - Troll.
C - Skills, more later
D - Attributes
E  - Magic


Skills - Based on the skills listed, the Smuggler is missing a skill group. The template also has one extra skill point. So Karma must've been spent. It's also missing two points of free Knowledge/Language skills.


Attributes - Karma must've been spent to raise an attribute.


Karma spent - After taking Positive and Negative qualities into account, the Smuggler has 19 unspent karma. Since there's two extra points of Contacts, two karma were probably spent there. Another 14 were probably spent to raise Logic by one and to pick up navigation. So that leaves 5 unspent Karma.


Resources - I had tallied 423,000-ish nuyen of goods before I realized I may have goofed on ammo. Still, even if one accounts for an extra 1,000 nuyen, the Smuggler has roughly 26,000 unspent nuyen. Considering a PC can only save 5,000 nuyen  past character creation that's 21,000 lost nuyen! Yeah, it's this sort of nuyen balancing is why I prefer Awakened characters with low resource priority...


 Verdict - The Smuggler is virtually ready to play. One just has to pick a skill group as well as another language or knowledge skill or two. The five unspent karma could be used to pick up some more skills or banked for character advancement. My focus would be on raising Edge... Resources is probably the biggest pain as one will have audit the template's ammo. The Smuggler is missing a Fake Sin or two as well as Fake Licenses. So that would probably require some accounting work. I'd consider the Smuggler pretty much ready for quick one-shot but in organized play such as Shadowrun Missions you will be exercising the free first module tinkering rule else that's quite a bit of nuyen left on the table chummer.


Happy gaming chummers!