Shadowrun/Skills and attributes

Attributes

 * Body: Your HP is ten times your body attribute.
 * Charisma: Determines number of shadowrunners you may be with. The number is half your charisma, rounded down.
 * Magic: Your MP is ten times your magic attribute.

Balancing HP and MP
In the beginning, HP is at a premium and cannot be recovered well. Therefore, it is a high priority to boost your body stat (up to 5 before Caryards and around 10 at Caryards). Once you acquire the Heal spell, things start to change. At first you will not have enough karma to boost your spell to 6 and also increase your MP capacity. However, it is wise to do so when you can. The heal spell is by far the most useful spell in the game, so do not worry that a level 6 spell will drain your MP, because you'll use it for little else. You also experience increasing returns with each spell level. That is, each level adds more HP healing capacity than the previous level did.

Here's where the balancing act comes in. A level 6 spell heals 90 MP, therefore, late in the game, it is usually to boost your magic attribute instead of your body attribute, even if your body attribute is not maxed out and you have karma to burn. For example, suppose you have 15 body and 10 magic. You can burn 15 karma for a 10 HP boost, or you can burn only 10 karma for an extra 90 HP of healing capacity. Which is better, 10 HP or 90 HP?

This is not to say that it's worthless to boost your body stat a bit further. Doing so allows you to sustain damage longer before needing to cast the spell. If somehow you had only 10 body and 10 magic, it may be wiser to boost the body because you only get maximum value out of a level 6 heal when you have 10 HP or less, which is be dangerously low. If you have trouble healing yourself in combat, you might be better off getting your body attribute close to the max before you start boosting your healing capacity. An average or better player should need only about 15 body near the end, although you might want more when it's time to fight Drake.

Skills

 * Leadership: Determines how long shadowrunners remain with you.
 * Buy it at Dr. Maplethorpe's office.
 * Negotiation: Reduces cost of shadowrunners.
 * Buy it at the arena in the caryards.