Please, pick on my character, I love it Options

[Bearclaw]

[FrankTrollman]

OK, there is no category of "physical skills" other than the "physical active skills" presented on page 113.

However, since you want people to pick on your character, why the heck would you invest actual character points ino Dodge after you already bought unarmed combat?

When attacked in melee, you add your highest of Dodge and Unarmed Combat to your defense pool.

When you take a full defense action and want to defend against melee and ranged attacks, you add your highest of Dodge and Gymnastics.

So... any points you spend on Dodge are a waste of time since you have Unarmed Combat and could just buy Gymnastics instead. The fact that you have Enhanced Articulation, which adds to Gymnastics but not to Dodge just makes it even more obvious of a choice.

-Frank

[Squinky]

But I don't think he agrees/understands yet that enhanced articulation simply does not add to combat skills...

[Bearclaw]

No, I'm with you.
I don't like it, but I'll go along.

Anyway, about the dodge, I'm dropping enhanced articulation, but I guess if gymnastics and dodge are the same thing, it would be silly to take dodge. Must re-read section.

[Feshy]

There are only two types of skills in SR4 (maybe three) -- Active Skills and Knowledge Skills (possibly language skills as a third category, as the book is a bit vague on where they fit in.)

Within Active Skills are several Subsets, such as: Combat, Magic, Physical, etc.

However, for whatever stupid reason, the book uses the fully qualified name in the section headings: Physical Active Skill. This is just for clarification, it is not a separate category. There is absolutely NO mention of a "physical skill" group that would include firearms. There is the overarching "Active Skills" grouping, then there is "Physical Skills" underneath that. It's pretty clear to which enhanced articulation provides modifiers.

Now, I'll attempt to confuse things with an analogy:

There are three groups of cars -- compact cars, mid-sized sedans, and luxury cars. One of the mid-sized sedans is a Ford Taurus. If I listed colors of Ford Taurus's, I could do so under a heading like this:

Ford Taurus Mid-Sized Sedan:
metallic Pink
metallic Green
Flat Grey

Now, if I sold a product that stopped Ford's cheap-ass paint from falling off of the taurus after a year like it has on every one I've ever seen, and I said it worked on "All Ford Taurus's with metallic paints", which of these would you assume ("you" in the general sense, not "you" as in bearclaw, who agrees with the interpretation):

1) The product works on metallic Pink Ford Taurus's and metallic Green Ford Taurus's.

2) The product works on metallic Pink Honda Accords, because "Mid-Sized Sedan" appears in my heading as it does for the heading of Honda Accords (even though my product never mentions mid-sized sedans.)

This is the logical parallel to applying enhanced articulation to "combat active skills" based on the fact that the section heading reads "physical active skills."

-- back on topic --
Asside from the addiction and super thyroid, it looks good. You can't have addiction to smoking because no shadowrunner ever dies of cancer ;)

[Bearclaw]

So you missed the part about please moving the discussion, right?
I guess it doesn't matter. I've made changes, and I'll repost the whole thing.

As a former smoker, I know exactly how much of a pain in the butt nicotine addiciton can be, but I can take a generic "stimulants" addiction instead.

[Feshy]

[ElFenrir]

As much as a pain that smoking/caffiene is(im a smoker/caffiene addict myself), I think they don't allow it as an addiction(for points) anymore(they used to i believe, becase i remember a character with a severe smoking addiction i made, and had to change in the SR4 conversion), because you could technically just slap 'the patch' or something on, taking away the disadvantage of having to 'light up' in the middle of a run. Same with caffiene, which is highly addictive but too easy to get around. It's much easier to slap a patch on if you fail the roll mid run than it is to slot elf porn BTL and go to town.


As for the character, I think he's cool. Good all around, but not too overpowered or anything. Not a one trick pony either. and the thyroid wouldn't bother us in our campaigns, as we ignore starting Availability rules anyway. (Before jumping on us, we do so because we counted so little pieces of equipment that have too high availability anyway, we didn't think it was such a big deal. And the fact that a couple archetypes are 'illegal' under these rules anyway. And of course, we play with the 'if you can get it, so can they' mentality, along with 'take the panther cannon, but it's on you if you carry the damn thing down the street.')