Doublecasting NPC: Carey, Death at her fingertips Options

[bibliophile20]

Alright, in response to Moon-Hawk's comments over in the stealthy mind control thread, I came up with the following NPC (and, honestly, I think I'm going to use her):

Name: Carey
Metatype: Human
Sex: Female

Attributes:
B 3
A 5
R 4
S 2
C 2
I 5
L 2
W 5
EDG 5
M 5
ESS 6
Init 9

Qualities:
Magician: Hedge Witch
Mentor Spirit: Lilith (Dark Goddess)
Geas: Touch Range Spellcasting only (cannot cast LOS spells; can only cast on self or on someone she's touching)
Expert Aspected Magician: Sorcerer Aspect (I use the suggestion in the Tweaking The Rules in my game)

Skills:
Unarmed Combat 5
Spellcasting 5 (Spec: Combat)
Counterspelling 4
Stealth Group 4
Influence Group 3
Medicine 3

Spells:
Death Touch
Shatter
Knockout
Decrease Willpower
Heal
Increase Reflexes
Increase Charisma
Combat Sense
Improved Invisibility
Diagnose

Force 6 Stacked Focus (2 Heath Spellcasting/4 Health Sustaining)
Assorted other gear

Building her on the SR4Chargen excel sheet, she comes out to about 500 BP (465 with this, but, hey, who's counting?)

So, normal battle tactics would be to sneak in close on her target, using Improved Invis, and engage in some direct damage dealing via the following:
Unarmed 5 + Agil 5 + Touch Attack 2 = 12 melee

Assuming that she manages to touch the target, first comes a Force 4 Decrease Willpower; her base spellcasting pool is 10, so let's give the spell 5 dice... and add in 6 more for the mentor spirit bonus, the focus and the expert aspected magician quality. Rolling that against the average 3 Willpower gives her three or four hits to the target's 1, reducing him to 1 or (ouch) 0 on willpower, giving him little to no defense against the other spell being cast--a Force 6 Death Touch.

Death Touch gets the other five dice from the spellcasting pool, and then another 6 dice for the mentor spirit, the specialization in combat spells, and the Expert aspected magician. So, again, 11 dice... against, at most, 1 Willpower. If she Edges the roll, the target is toast, almost guaranteed.

Drain on both spells:
Decrease Willpower: 4
Death Touch: 2

A one trick pony? A bit. But she'd make a fun and very, very dangerous contact to have--considering the Dark Goddess' disadvantage

[Moon-Hawk]

Nice. I know I kinda shot down this strategy in the other thread, but you got the bonus dice to really make it pay off. Well done! :-)

[Tarantula]

And this is why shock frills are a samurais best friend. Not only do they give you taser damage on unarmed attacks, but people who touch you get zapped by them too! And with her body 3 + will 5 she'd be hard pressed to make that threshold 3 test not to end up on the floor incapacitated for a while.

[bibliophile20]

[bibliophile20]

[Tarantula]

Average sam with armor jacket + helmet = 8 impact. That drops you to 4 dice, and they get reaction + unarmed/dodge for defense. You won't hit doing that.

[bibliophile20]

[Tarantula]

Arguably, if shes incapacitated, then she can't cast the spells.

[bibliophile20]

[Tarantula]

I'd say she has to actually contact the samurai to cast the spell. Which means the frills would hit her first.

Yes, and as I said, its a great touch deterrent for samurais. Almost all of mine pick it up, no reason not to. You wanna punch me? Fine, get zapped for it.

Quickened armor spell? As long as you take any damage from the shock, you're likely going to drop incapacitated. (Body + Will (3) test to not be incapacitated).

[bibliophile20]

[Tarantula]

Doh! Forgot about half impact to that test. Either way, a sam without his mage would just as easily fall to a manabolt. With less fancyness to boot.

[bibliophile20]

[Tarantula]

Because rather than multicasting, she could just dump it all on the decrease willpower, and drop it to 0, then slowly stab the sam to death with her salad fork. Once any stat is decreased to 0, the fights over, and it doesn't matter how you kill them.

[bibliophile20]

[NightRain]

Some thoughts. It might be worth giving her a sustaining foci so she can sustain that invisibility when in melee without a dicepool penalty, as that will make her job that much easier.

And don't dual cast spells go off at the same moment? That would mean as well as only needing on the one melee attack to touch the target with both spells, both spells would go off at the same instant, meaning that the targets willpower would not have dropped. She'd have to drop his willpower with one action, then survive long enough to touch him again with the death touch spell to get the advantage of the lower willpower

[bibliophile20]

[NightRain]

[Fortune]

[bibliophile20]

[DTFarstar]

Since all you have to do is touch the target not maintain any sort of contact with them, I would definitely rule that the spells go off no matter what happens with the shock. Seems easiest to me. I dunno, just saying it makes sense that the touch is the culmination of the spell not the beginning.

Chris

[Glyph]

I'm really don't think you would get the full mentor spirit and expert spellcaster bonuses to both spells - you should be splitting the entire dice pool, although the focus and specialization bonuses would apply more specifically.

I also don't see why she would really need the Decrease Willpower spell. It's counterproductive. You get a hit about every three dice, and a hit takes away one of the target's dice. That's not a good trade. Plus, if it does go off first, you will be suffering a sustaining penalty on casting that death touch spell. If you're going to overcast the death touch anyways, then overcast it at Force: 9, giving you the same physical Drain of 2. You're rolling 16 dice, with successes capped at 9 dice, and any net hits add to a base 9 damage - even someone with a Willpower of 6 will get, on average, 2 hits to your 5, and unless they are a better than average troll, they will be going down.

If you do use this combo, it actually works better with stun touch, since the decrease Willpower not only takes away resistance dice, but lowers their stun condition monitor.

[Fortune]

[DTFarstar]

removes the problem of casting a manipulation spell and a combat spell and getting half the bonus from the Sun mentor to the manip spell.

Chris

[NightRain]