I made a shaman yesterday, and because I only put karma points in charisma and shamanistic skills. This resulted in me surviving the intro battle with only one hp left, even though I played on easy!

Now I've recieved my first karma points since the beginning of the game and because I want to avoid unnecessary reloads I've decided to better my survival. One point in body to raise my hp, but also should I put a point in guns as well to be able to actually hit things with some kind of reliability? Or will I shaman just damage foes with conjuration attacks (I didn't have those in the intro mission but maybe I'll get some before next fight)?

The in-game help doesn't say anything on how a shaman should damage foes and there is no manual. I could of course search walkthroughs and guides but I don't want to risk reading spoilers by accident.

hi, as far as i know a shaman doesn't even have real damage spells, only buffs and debuffs, and stuff like barriers that do damage if foes walk into them.
A source of great damage however, are spirits that you can summon, they do good damage and have powerful spells.
You can summon them with items or from objects that are placed around the runs you go on, so keep an eye out for that (if you have a shaman character enable a symbol will be on top of the location that allows you to call a spirit)

TLDR: yeah, you need a gun

It is my experience that you should start with 3 in body, regardless of how you play. Anything less and a stray bullet or two could kill your character even when fully healed. I played a shaman, and found that you also need a little bit of proficiency in guns early on: I opted for a shotgun, but I only allocated a few karma points.

Ok, now I have 3 body and grasp the basics of ranged combat and pistol. I have 1 + 2 + 3 points invested in conjurations, also, bad if the barriers only work as traps. I mean, a lot of enemies shoot at you and you can't always predict which cover they are going to run behind. Which they do during the first turns of the combat, when I use my haste spell and eagle totem and maybe a medkit if I get the lion's share of enemy fire before I get to act. The haste spell is very, very, nice though, is that also a conjuration? If so, maybe conjurations aren't so bad after all. Also, do enemies see barriers and act accordingly or are they invisible traps? And can you take cover behind your barriers?

Thanks a lot for your advice, and thanks to Zumbs as well!

Haste is conjuration.
However the ALSO part is wrong, summoning doesn't use the conjuration skill at all, it uses spirit summoning skill and spirit control skill.

Your basic character will have the following:
Body - raises your HP
Quickness - make enemies miss, required for dodge
Dodge - make enemies miss
Charisma - make nice in conversation, required for conjuration
Conjuration - haste spell

To the above shell you then add offensive capability:
Adding spirit summoning to this requires buying up 2 skills, spirit summoning and spirit control.
Adding arcane damage spells requires buying up 2 skills, willpower and spellcasting
Adding ranged weapon to it requires buying 2 skills, ranged combat and specific weapon.
Adding melee/unarmed requires buying 3 skills: strength, close combat, melee weapons or unarmed.
Adding drones requires buying 3 skills: Intelligence, drone control, and drone combat. (worth noting that drones are superior to spirits without any drone combat, and get ridiculously superior to anything with it).

Ultimately which is best is entirely dependent on the campaign or UGC... since all the skills are useless without access to something. Guns, melee weapons, killing hands chi spell, regular spells, regular guns, fetishes, summon points, drones, decks, programs... with the exception of body and dodging all skills are useless without being able to buy the tools they need.
I have seen some bizzare choices there, like making spells cost 10x and making them be a lot rarer... making them in essence useless.

Chi casting is just bad (except for level 1 for an unarmed person), no matter what you are you should be dipping elsewhere first (ex, getting haste 4).

Decking isn't an offensive capability but a secondary utility thing
It should never be taken in the main campaign. In UGC it varies widely on whether you should take it or not, in some its a must in others it is pointless.

Here is a wiki article that shows the tree:
http://shadowrun-returns.wikispaces.com/Characters#Attributes, Skills & Specializations

So... Spirits are worse in-combat than drones not optimised for combat, AND spirits can turn on you, which drones cant? Also, the only conjurations really affected by charisma and conjuration skills are the barriers, which are situational in their use. The rest of the conjuration spells, like haste, always work the same way as long as you can equip them, right?

Seems like the shaman is rather lousy, then?

I have these stats right now:

Body: lvl 3
Quickness: lvl 2
Long range combat: lvl 2
Pistol: lvl 1
Charisma: lvl 6
Spirit summoning: lvl 2 (never found a single spirit point!)
Conjurations: lvl 3

Intelligence, Willpower, Strength: lvl 1 (the minimum you start with)
Totem: Eagle
Ettiquettes: Academic, Corporate, Socialite (never used those, but then again I've been mostly to lower-class areas this far)

Any good ideas on how to develop my character? IMPORTANT: I DON'T WANT SPOILERS TELLING ME WHAT I'LL RUN INTO OR A GUIDE TO BREAKING THE GAME BY MIN-MAXING, I JUST DON'T WANT TO BLINDLY PUT POINTS INTO POORLY EXPLAINED SKILLS.

Nice game, otherwise!

I'm not sure if they try to dodge it, but they definitly walk into the barriers sometimes, even if they could avoid them.
I don't think you can take cover behind them, they also do friendly fire.
I also think Haste is the best spell for shamans, it's really really good.
Also the bear totem seems really really good, it can heal all teammates, including yourself, within an AoE, and it also has a very short cooldown.
the barriers can also be really good, on some runs you have to defend a position against incoming opponents, coming through doors for example.
As you can imagine this is a dream scenario for those barriers.

Another very useful shaman skill (in my oppinion) is shadow.
It creates a zone where you can't be attacked but also can't attack others.
it is useful for moving your team through a door, but also to make opponents move.
just throw shadow on them and they will walk out of it, wasting their AP and being vulnerable to attacks.

I didn't play as a shaman though, just hired them for my runs.

Edit:
Spirits are much more powerful in combat than drones, but as you said, they can turn on you.
However you can always choose to banish the spirit if the chance of escaping becomes too high.
You need to keep in mind that the spirits have tons of powerful spells, drones can just use attacks.
there is already a spirit summoning spot in the very first combat (the flashback scene).
if you aren't a shaman the orc shaman lady can summon it.

Worth mentioning that both are conjuration spells not spirit summoning. So if you go for haste you get those 2 anyways.

I found barriers to be far to situational to be worth using. And even then there are usually more effective things to do.
And shadow just doesn't make sense because it hinders you and your opponent equally. You are better off using your AP to kill an enemy, run into cover, or cast a spell like blind that only hinders the enemy.

Of course they are situational, but that's why they are fun, and POSSIBLY makes them very powerful.
if you enter a new area and encounter several enemies close together you won't have many AP left, giving them many shots at you.
if you have shadow however you can just throw shadow onto them, OR on the area you used to enter the room.
in the first case they will run out of the shadowed area, wasting tons of AP.
Of course you should only throw the shadow onto them after using up your teammates AP.
You could also use it to protect one of your squadmates, or stifle 2-3 enemies, while leaving the others vulnerable.

I agree that the barriers are kind of meeeeh but the shadow is definitly powerful as ****

How do you have an eagle totem with spirit summoning 2? it unlocks at spirit summoning 3.
I personally think eagle totem is better than bear because bear heals damage -3, allies are never too bunched up or they get grenaded, and the arcane heal spell heals full damage.

You are actually doing fairly well. The only wasted karma point I can see MAYBE that 1KP in pistol. I would probably switch pistol for another ranged weapon but it isn't a must.

Regardless your issue is that while you don't have wasted points, you have under leveled your primary combat methods to overly focus on secondaries that you should have gotten later on. I would raise up your ranged combat to 4, then raise body to 4. At which point raise conjurations to the min amount needed for the best haste you can buy (and keep on doing so whenever new haste is unlocked until you max out at conjuration 6) while raising your quickness, body, ranged combat, and specific weapon skills to 6 as well.
At some point dip 3KP into getting spellcasting 2 to get arcane heal spell.
Then keep on raising ranged combat and specific weapon skill.
If you desire it, its also not too late to switch into primary spellcaster either. You can use that AP to cast a fireball killing them all or, or to just duck around a corner and know they will waste all their AP following you to be butchered. Also, you should time entry to new areas so that youn only use up 1AP to enter.

Plus, the enemies will most likely miss me anyways since i put points in dodge

That being said, shadows require no extra KP beyond what I already invested to get haste. So you raise a good point there, it is a useful spell to have if you are playing a gun samurai with haste instead of spellcaster with haste. A spellcaster with haste has only 6 slots for spells from all its classes which makes it harder to justify giving up a slot for shadow.

If you bring another spellcaster, or just grenades, you can do almost everything you said and still put shadow onto them afterwards.
So I agree with you completly, it is not always the best option but it is very nice to have and doesn't even require any extra skilling.

You raise good points. I didn't even think about allies because I usually solo.
But if you bring in allies you can time it so that everyone attacks and then for the last action in the round you place shadow. Then enemies waste their AP running out of it on next turn

Thank you - and everyone else - for the advice and the discussion! This is a good way to see pros and cons without getting the game spoiled - and it still lets me play the game myself instead of getting specific "build".

I actually put a point in pistol as I only had one karma point when I understood I was I dire need of being able to hit anything at all. Being able to do the aimed shots once in a while (and otherwise spending action points on my accuracy raising totem, haste and a medkit if needed) seemed like a good idea at the time, even if it was a short term investment. Either way, with the rest of my "long range" karma spent on quickness and general long term, I guess I can try out all the different types of guns before deciding which one I should focus on. If I can find them without paying for them.

Btw, I think I'll go with team mates. You don't seem to divide the xp and both totem and haste work better if I'm not alone (I'm not the best damage dealer myself, so why not haste someone doing the job better?). Also, I'd like to try out all different things - hacking, drones, etc - and I suppose having a team is a good way to do that ? That was actually one of the reasons I choose to focus on charisma, being the protagonist I figured out that it was best if I was the one who with social ettiquettes.

The way it works is, each point of quickness gives +3%p to hitting with a ranged weapon. (and an unknown bonus to dodge)
Each point of ranged combat gives +5%p to hitting with a ranged weapon.
And each point is a weapon's specific skill (guns/SMG/shotgun/rifle) gives a bonus to your weapon damage scaling.

Damage scaling is influenced by the weapon type, as well as crit chance and enemy armor.
For most weapons the default scales are 0.5x, 1x, 1x, 1.5x, 2x damage multiplier
Those are damage multipliers. If you get 0.5x it will say "weak". 1.5x and above will say "critical" when you get it.
SMGs have the highest listed chance of a crit but their scaling is 0.5x, 1x, 1x, 1.5x, 1.5x and they seem to get crits less often and weaks more often than a shotgun (basically, the crit numbers are misleading)
Also SMGs basic attack is a burst that consumed 6 bullets and to fire 2 bullets. So if your SMG says it deals 6 damage its actually 6 damage per bullet (before applying scaling multipliers like 0.5x weak strike or 1.5x critical strike).
Not accounting for crit chance, the base damage for 1AP attack is SMG > Shotgun > Rifle > Pistol.
In the official campaign at least, I have seen custom guns in UGC that completely throw this comparison.

The figure on the AoE indicates how many squares away you need to be to increase blast radius. that is, a shotgun has an AoE value of 6 on basic attack which means if you are 6 squares away it will hit adjacent enemies (or allies so be careful). leveling it up unlocks a skill that lowers that to an AoE of 3 meaning it hits adjacents after only 3 tiles.

SMG spray and pray also deal AoE and in fact increase your crit chance by 2%p and don't have any other effect compared to basic attack. So with SMG you should use spray and pray as default attack, only switching back to regular default attack if spray and pray would have accidentally hit an aly.

Rifles have the longest range and the best to hit chance at range.

All weapons gain % to hit the closer you are, but the loss per square you are away from the varies by whether the weapon is close range, mid range, or long range.
At point blank I found shotguns have 2% more hit chnace than SMG and rifles. But shotgun hit chances fall fastest, then SMG, then rifle last longest.
Not really sure about pistols, they deal too little damage compared to others so I haven't experimented with them much, they might surprise me but so far I wasn't too impressed when I used them with NPCs. (Best NPC weapon choice I think is the shotgun; it requires the fewest points invested to be useful)

PS. %p means percent point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percentage_point

How do assault rifles work? Can they combine the adventages of rifles (long range usefulness single bullet shots) with the ones of shotguns and SMG's (bursts doing area damage at close range)? Are they SMG's or rifles? Rifles seem rather cool; having the aimed shot feature already at the first skill level would also mean rifles get useful early on (sure there is a cooldown, but I use AP for my totem and haste spell also). The only reason I choose pistol over rifle is that I was afraid that rifles had reduced chance of hitting at close range (realistically as they are clumsier, gameplay-wise to balance out the weapons). I deemed short range accuracy to be more important than hitting things at long range, as those close to my shaman has proven to be most life-threatening so far.