Emo Samurai's dedicated character page. Options

[emo samurai]

He's not angsty, though. He'll preach, but he'll preach out of Thus Spake Zarathustra instead of the bible.

[emo samurai]

Back to my Shen character; I'm thinking of making him a SINner. That way, he'll have easy access to a small house with an awesome yard in Salish-Shidhe and its Awakened forests for the sake of finding focus materials. His base lifestyle will be Middle, and he'll be allergic to unnatural foods. Severely allergic. My question is, how legal is doing things like binding spirits and collecting spell materials in Salish? And would Middle be high enough to cover a really small, one-room, environmentally sustainable house in the middle of a 2 acre yard in Salish? And how hard would it be for him to get citizenship in Salish-Shidhe? I was thinking that they would have a "merit based" system where they let you in based on what you can do for the nation. I would assume it would be easy for a magician todo that, since they make up .1% of the population and their services are valuable. I'll also give him a shamanic initiatory group and maybe even a Wicca one. The shamanic one would probably help him a lot.

His original SIN will be Manchurian. How much would it help an investigation if his blood was found at a crime scene? Manchuria, as far as I know, deals with the megacorps and has nothing to do with the UCAS. His family wouldn't want to publish his SIN and everything because they want him to be taken back home and made a local messiah, not put in prison. Would Manchuria share its databases with Lone Star and Knight Errant? Keep in mind that his family would have control over said SIN.

And more about his family. His family were kindly peasantry before the fall of the PRC, and my dude was one of the first elves born. They knew they were descended from nobility, but they saw that as an "in the past" sort of thing. His being one of the first elves, of course, would help with people thinking he is a messiah along with his superintelligence and his healing magic. After Manchuria became independent, his family was all too quick to claim the mantle of nobility and become a bunch of social-climbing assholes. They want to hunt him down by hiring mages, and may even put out a bounty on him in the shadow community. They also want to keep it within the family as much as possible.

[emo samurai]

Here's my character sheet, with Flaw caps removed and the new focus-oriented ones put in place.

[ Spoiler ]

Shen, Male Elf Shaman (30 BP)

Attributes(220BP)

Body 4
Agility 2
Reaction 2
Strength 1
Charisma 5
Intuition 6
Logic 5
Willpower 6

Special Attributes (60 BP)

Magic 6

Edge 2

Active Skills (170 BP)

Spellcasting 6
Counterspelling 6
Ritual Spellcasting 6
Summoning 5
Binding 5
Banishing 5
Assensing 4
Perception 4
Enchanting 4
Etiquette 2

Knowledge (33 Free BP)

Magical Theory 6
Personal Philosophy 6
Native American Culture 4
Cooking 6

Language Skills

Chinese N
English 6
Japanese 6

Edges (20 BP)

Astral Chameleon
Magician

Flaws (+60 BP)

Sensitive System (15)
Spirit Bane (Chinese Ancestral Spirits) (10)
Hunted, Family (10)
Incompetent, Pilot ground vehicle (5)
Allergy, Severe, Artificial Food (20)

Contacts(24 free BP)

Leggy Starlitz, International Fixer Extraordinaire (3 loyalty/6 connection)
Bear Paw, powerful Native American Shaman, landlord, and sponsor for immigration(5 loyalty/4 connection)
Smokey the Bear, Forest Ranger who lets him gather plants in peace (4 loyalty/2 connection)

Spells (27 BP)

Physical Mask
Trid Phantasm
Heal
Levitate
Shapechange
Lightning Bolt
ManaBall
Improved Reflexes
Mind probe

Equipment(43350 :nuyen: 9BP )

Armor Jacket(900 :nuyen )
2XFake SIN 6 (12000 :nuyen: )
Super-contact lenses (450 :nuyen: )
Middle lifestyle 3 months (30000 :nuyen: )

508

What do you think of my character not having many social skills? He's okay with talking to people and coming to understanding them; he's not much of an intimidator or a social engineer. I envision him as relying more on his expressiveness than on any sort of premeditation, and he's essentially a pretty trusting guy. Is "infirm" okay? I don't envision him needing those athletic skills. If he needs to climb, he'll levitate or summon an air spirit. If he needs to swim, again, he'll levitate, or summon a water spirit. And so on.

[Seven-7]

Thats 95 points for Special attributes, and did we forget the rule about skill rating caps in chargen?

If you're really not gonna use the book rules, why bother with BP? Just give him what you want.

[Dranem]

There's the Shadowrun rules and world concept, and then there's Emo's world... the two are only marginally simular.
In all the threads I've followed, Emo tends to have a lack of understanding on what most people consider the normal guidelines for the game Seven... to him, his character is perfect. But then that's also why he GMs as I don't know any GM's I've gamed with that would accept any of his character concepts.

Emo lives in an anime fantasy, that much is clear.

[Grinder]

That's a perfect summary of emo samurai and his SR-world :D

@topic: i would lower body by 1 and raise agility by 1.

[James McMurray]

The question is, how many tentacles are in his anime, and is there anything resembling "virgin power"?

[emo samurai]

No. There is no virgin power or tentacles, there is only awesomeness.

All I've done is remove skill caps at chargen, allow people to max out stats as much as they want, and allow for all manner of debilitating flaws. Not handled correctly, this many flaws could kill most characters. My character now has to pay, like, 5 times normal for his food, live under a ward, wear a physical mask 90% of the time, and take Drain for summoning an air spirit whenever he wants to get anywhere. All his downtime will be spent making foci. He is well within any BP system. And I think that having his parents be power-hungry nobility isn't that much of a problem.

His life will be hard, hard, hard. The very grittiness that you think I'm betraying with this OMFG powerful character is what makes it hard for him to get natural foods and the prospect of becoming a slave messiah to the unwashed a very real possibility. I think he's fine.

[Seven-7]

Well within an...What sort of crack are you inhaling boy?!

Also, when do mages use air elementals for transportation?

I'd also like to note, that since the common food is actually /soy/ and soy is a real thing, not artificial, I'd hardly say he'll pay 5 times as much.


...But thats applying logic.

[emo samurai]

It's a psychosomatic problem. If food tastes fake, he'll cough it up, along with some blood. And if the problems given by flaws can be quantified, then I say that quantity may be pushed as high as possible.

[Seven-7]

Then simply stop giving free BP after -35BP. Now you have a lot of drawbacks without breaking the laws of logic, and SR4.

[Dranem]

[emo samurai]

Bah... I'm letting all my characters do this, so I'm letting myself do this, too. MUHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!!

I'm sorry about the "psychosomatic allergies thing"... I never knew I could offend anyone by making a fictional psychosomatic allergy, but here I go.

[James McMurray]

Geez! Now you'll know better. ;)

[emo samurai]

Does my character being hunted by his family offend anyone?

[James McMurray]

Worse things have happened in human history.

[emo samurai]

*gasp* I'm worse than Hitler!!!

[Dranem]

Get a grip on yourself.

If you had bothered to read the book when it talks about Qualities (they're not called Flaws anymore, learn the lingo) you would have read that Allergies have to be defined and somewhat realistic. 'Artificial Food' doesn't sound very realistic, and as a GM I would require you to define such - as would any half decent GM. Then again you've never been big on realisme, so this doesn't really surprise me..

[emo samurai]

Pretty much anything that isn't what it's supposed to taste like. Such as airplane food, McHugh's, and 80% of the food on the market. It's a taste issue. He'd have better luck with a genuine habanero pepper than a soyburger.

Plus, he was raised in China. While his parents were farmers, he, of course, ate farm food. While his parents were nobility, he still ate natural food. Nowadays he pays out of his blood for it.

[Glyph]

To be fair, "artificial food" is something that will probably affect his character more than another character's allergy to silver or gold. I think severe is a bit much for a psychomatic allergy - mild I could see, but severe is a bit much. Maybe you could change it to an actual allergy to a common food additive such as MSG, something that would be common in most "processed" foods.


On his background, I think you need to lose some of the self-contradictory things. Either make him a cynical manipulator with an anarchist bent, or make him a somewhat trusting soul who finally rebelled against being manipulated by his parents. The lack of social skills beyond basic etiquette is fine, but not if you want him to be someone who was considered a wise man/religious figure. It would make more sense if, for example, his ambitious family set him up as some "wise man", and he finally had enough of it and fled. His high Charisma and basic etiquette would let him fake it if someone else was more or less feeding him lines, but it's not enough for him to set himself up as a cult leader or the equivalent by himself.

Honestly, I would consider toning down the "messiah" thing to wise man/guru - I said earlier that your character didn't look like a Mary Sue, but the whole "The simple villagers considered him to be a messiah" thing practically screams Mary Sue. Now, if his greedy parents set him up as the front for a mystic cult that they used to rip off the peasantry, that would be more plausible.

The other problem, though, is that mages aren't that rare. Maybe his intelligence and healing abilities would be something early on in the awakening, but they wouldn't matter as much in current SR4. And if his parents can "hire mages" to hunt him down, why not simply hire one of those mages to be their new religious figurehead? I need to understand why they are hunting someone halfway across the world. Do they insist that their puppet be "one of the family"? Is it pettiness? Vengeance? What is their motivation?

[Crusher Bob]

My personal favorite allergy is some sort of pollen I never identified. I'm sitting, working on my computer, when the wind shifts, and ARRRGH!@ IT BURNS! IT BURNS! Thankfully, that was only the first wave of pollen, or something, and I just had to deal with mad itching everywhere for the next week or two.

[emo samurai]

Hmmm... Yeah, just a wise man. I was exaggerating it a bit, and I was visualizing him as more of a wise man. Which would be covered under Etiquette 3. The thing is, he's good at what he does, giving advice and helping people. What with his magic, his mind-reading, and his ability to understand people. It's just that, what he said didn't stick, and his parents represented everything silently oppressive about the social order and the general feeling of human desperation. His parents were smart enough to know that anyone self-serving enough to impersonate him couldn't do his job. If he goes, so does much of their moral authority.

It's like the church and the state during the Middle Ages. The state took your money and your life. The church took your money, but it gave you hope. It also made it look like someone kept the classism in check. Except with my character, he actually did try to make a difference. He was just powerless, and he felt like an opiate of the masses. He didn't help people find themselves, he just helped them fool themselves into thinking just that. Kind of like rap or emo, it doesn't encourage rebellion, it just makes people feel as if they're rebelling. His leaving his homeland would help the people wake up to the general feeling of oppression and railroading. Which is the general philosophy behind his Flying Spaghetti Monster cult.

[Dranem]

[emo samurai]

Keep in mind that the SR China is nothing like the RL China. At least in its early days, it was very back-to-the-field. I'm not saying that that's necessarily the answer to modernity by any means, but it lacked many of the general malaises that Seattle, for example, does. And it certainly wasn't the "family first" circle-jerk it is now. Maybe I'll make him allergic to MSG. Organics shouldn't be that hard to find in the NAN; much more so in Seattle. Would MSG allergies extend to free glutamates that naturally occur?

And with skill/edge/stat caps and max-out costs removed, how isn't my character valid? He lived in a Neo-Confucian society, and he had a philosophical objection to it that was strong enough to get him to leave. How isn't that valid?

[Dranem]