Character Critique, Rip it to shreds....i dare ya.... Options

[Abbandon]

(basic info is she is an elf "face/gunslinger" archtype)

[Abbandon]

damn it i hate how these forums squish everything to the left. Some things look like crap without the spaces in there.. sorry if its hard to read...

[ShadowDragon]

Looks good. I don't know what you mean by it being hard to read. Shouldn't it be pushed to the left? That's how all forums work, and it's the default on word processors...

A few points:
1) You're missing fake licenses for your guns - infact the gun licenses should include ammo and the internal smartgun; it's silly to have separate licenses for them.

2) If you're going to go all out on the commlink hardware and OS, you should buy some programs - at least some of the common programs like analyze and encrypt, and maybe an IC with appropriate hacker programs to defend yourself with.

3) Why so many months of low lifestyle? It's just my personal preference, but if you can afford that much rent, shouldn't you move somewhere a little nicer? I'd think a nicer lifestyle would fit better with your "pampered" background.

4) Your knowledge skills. As a GM it would raise an eyebrow - I wouldn't give you any advantages to your influence checks. It just seems a little munchkiny to have seductive body movements and Seattle etiquette as knowledge skills. Those should be active skill specializations: Con (seduction) and Etiquette (street).

[GrinderTheTroll]

I never understood why you'd have Pistols 5, Improved Reflexes 2 and Combat Paralysis. IMO, you've spend a lot of magic points and BP on things that might be dead weight.

[ShadowDragon]

Something else that just occured to me. For a face you sure do have a lack of contacts. Maybe you should lower some of your attributes and get a variety of contacts. And speaking of attributes, that edge of 1 is going to HURT.

[JonathanC]

[removed]

[ShadowDragon]

I'm not sure if it's OK to post your character here, but in other forums it's called "thread hijacking." You might want to PM Abbandon first.

But I really don't see anything wrong with you just starting a new thread. This forum doesn't move all that fast anyway.

[ornot]

First a comment on your choice of knowledges. Seductive body movements? I don't see how that is a knowledge skill. Etiquette (Seattle) is too broad for a knowledge skill and again, not particularly appropriate as a knowledge skill. Adept training? What does that even cover?

I'd agree with Shadowdragon and Grinder about all their points.

Your backstory for her having such a high pistols skill is rather weak, an accusation I could also level at your development of adept powers.

Your backstory is also not really reflected in your skill choices so far as I can tell.

She has a lot of very specialised running gear. It's all very well to say that she left home with a handful of expensive toys, but why would her family have a pair of hidden arm slides? Also, shouldn't she have a SIN? There's no reason in your backstory for her Tir SIN to have been deleted. Her relationship with her father is also very odd. What happened to make him throw his previously beloved daughter out on her pointy ear? He used to take his little girl to the shooting range on a weekly basis. I've not got the Tir Taingire supplement, but are guns even allowed there? As far as I recall it's more of an isolationist police state, and I'm uncertain that guns are even all that common or legal. Perhaps someone with one of the Tir supplements might have a look at the crime and punishment chapters all the old books used to have.

Sorry if you feel I've been to harsh, but you did ask for Die to be ripped to shreds.

[Taki]

Abbandon, I just find so strange that a super highly combat trained person could suffer from combat paralysis.
It doesn't make sense to me, because part of combat training is to acquire combat reflexes (something your character surely have with both her skills and reflexes).
And with reflexes you don't need to think, thus your mind can't block your body.

you should consider lowering your pistol skill to a max of 2 I think, and lower your improved reflexes as well ... Or drop the combat paralysis !

EDIT : by the way, I would't call your character a face archetype, she looks a bit more (more bp spent) like a gunslinger to me, while being a mix of the 2 archetype.

[Abbandon]

Jonathan Yeah i dont think you should post your character on my thread. these forums are slow and people easily get sidetracked and my character would be forgotten maybe and that would make me mad hehe.

About my knowledge skills. Knowledge skills arent active skills. I took Seatle etiquette because she is originally from the Tir and i wanted her to know the customs and vibe of seattle. I wouldnt try to augment any social tests with my knowledge skill. Seductive movements, being an adept and one that already prefers to manipulate people she has knowledge of how she can move her body to affect others. It just gives her a background or flavor of how she manipulates people. She is very graceful in her body movements. The adept training knowledge sill is just to say that she knows what it takes to train beyond her normal limits or more effective so that it includes regularly infusing mana into her workouts and stuff.

She is hardly a combat expert. She has no melee, no melee weapons skills, the only thing she knows how to do is fire a pistol. She wouldnt even be good at firing another type of weapon. And i view newbie runners as already have been living in the shadows a little bit and doing small runs. Which would reinforce her need to practice with guns.

Programs for her comm, she doesnt even have computer skill. Its just an expensive comms for her to use.

I said she left home with some toys but i didnt mean everything she had she had gotten from home. The comm and the car definately, the other stuff was just aqcuired when she got to seattle.


Her Tir SIN? I dont see why she would ever use it. She knows enough that it could become tainted and if she ever wants to go back...

He contacts are lame.. I just dont have the BP to spare. Cripes i barely have any active skills and i took half the money for gear i usually take and i blew like 75bp on being an elf adept. Isnt it logical since she is in a new place?

Why did her dad kick her out. Yeah she was his little princess but then she became a teenager and the shit hit the fan. She started going out to parties and getting into minor accidents that would probably set normal people back quite alot of money to fix and she was just out of control. Eventually that kinda behavior stops being cute and innoscent.

Her apartment....i mean its one thing to come from a rich family but its another to provide for yourself. I guess it would make a better story if she got some ritzy place and after having to actually pay for it herself she gets kicked out on her hoop. I think she is smart enough to know its better to have a place for 6 months than to have a ritzy house for 1.

Those are my counter points. give me more feedback and I might reconsider some things. I mean to me it seems like i have reasons for everything lol. I especially wanna hear feedback on my knowledge skills. Im not trying to augment anything im just trying to have related knoweldge.

[ornot]

First off, what knowledge category does "seductive body movements" even fall under? Not street, not academic, you might get away with trivia, but it just doesn't even seem to be a knowledge to me.

Seattle etiquette is simply way too broad a knowledge skill for my tastes. And at 5 it suggests she has been in Seattle for a very long time, hardly a new place in that case.

How exactly did she learn adept training techniques? Again it seems too broad for my liking, as adepts can train in many ways. More specificity would be good.

TBH your decision to take adept powers seems motivated by a desire for certain dice pool bonuses. I don't see Kinesics being developed during the kind of workouts you have described, and improved reflexes simply smacks of a desire for more IPs.

You say she is not a combat character, but in that case why does she have such a high pistols skill? A rating of 5 is suggestive of a national athlete. That sort of rating suggests that her life all but revolves around her gun. Hardly the wild party girl you suggest.

You complain of not having enough BPs, but you have spent a lot of money on a useless commlink. These could be used elsewhere much more effectively. In my role as uncharitable GM I'd think you intended to mooch a bunch of programs off the group hacker as soon as possible.

If you want to suggest her pampered lifestyle you'd be better advised to improve her lifestyle. After all, a smart runner doesn't want to spend long in one place anyway and 6 months is plenty of time for your enemies to pin you down.

Speaking of being pinned down, she still technically has a SIN. Her biometric details are on file in the Tir and to get into Seattle she would need to go through passport control. Whether the Tir would give her details to the UCAS authorities is debateable, but she would still be on file as present in Seattle. Unless you were suggesting she smuggled herself across the border...

Her father throwing her out still doesn't make a lot of sense. There would, in all probablity have been less drastic measures he could have taken, but then, there's a limit to what I can say about that part of your backstory. It'd just make more sense if he had been more distant when she was growing up.

[Schaeffer]

I agree with the Knowledge skills being shaky as well as the Pistols skill. I think Etiquette (Seattle) would be easily fixed by sharpening its focus, or even switched to something else entirely, like Etiquette (Tir High Society/Nobility). The switch makes even more sense if you buy into the idea that the ownership of personal small arms is highly regulated in the Tir, and Die's family would have probably been in the higher echelons of society in order for her and dad to go target shooting.
An alternative to Knowledge (Seductive Movement) might be knowledge of specific types of dancing, their histories, and so on. Heck, I guess you could even develop Knowledge (Lap Dancing) and say that Die not only knows how it developed but also the names and histories of famous practitioners (like Elizabeth Berekely)... Okay that was a poor joke, but I'm sure you get the point...
Also, if you want to have Adept Training Techniques for a knowledge skill, you may also want something like Gunfighting Techniques to reflect and/or compliment Die's high Pistol score.

Anyhow, good luck to Die and running in the Shadows!

[Abbandon]

-Knowledge skills. Maybe i just dont unferstand what makes good knowledge skills. I think they should be related to active skills.

Seductive body movements. Interest/profesional. The way a stripper moves and dances is different than the way a drunk wage slave chick would move. I was gonna say cultural dance or club dancing but i decided to go with just sexy movements instead.

Seattle etiquette. What if this was Seattle culture. She had to study her surroundings to fit in right.

Adept training. Ok fine its retarded. What would be a good knowledge skill to have for an adept? They religiously work out and train there bodies or skills.

- Bp's and contacts. Yeah if i ditched my car and my comms and my apartment i could probably get 5-7 more to spend on contacts. Of course thats only 3 1/1 contacts with an extra point someplace. Doesnt it make sense for her not to have alot of contacts?

-SIN. I really dont see why her Tir SIN should matter. Whoop T do she gets pulled over by some cops for speeding and they check her fake SIN, yay it matches the info she has given, she gets aticket and goeso n her way. Its not like they stop and check her discription against every person in the entire world. If she gets busted on a run i dont even know at what point they would find out she is from the Tir?

-gun skill. Geez its not even rating 6. It is allowed in character creation so why does it have to be explained so thoroughly? Not everyone who is good with a gun has been in the military or competes in sports. Instead of this chick using her adept powers to augment melee abilities she is using them to augment a specific firearms. Maybe she trains with the guns religously like an adept does. Theres a billion reasons why anyone has a good gun skill why cant her be because she trains it out of fun???

-adept powers. Yeah your damn skippy i took improved reflexes for IP's. So what? I also paid for the powers with BP so why cant I have them? Your acting like its breaking the balance of the game or something. She is an adept, therefore she has adept powers. She got them by doing what adepts do, training, excersising pushing themselves.

If she did not have combat paralysis would all these problems go away ?? I think if you have watched professional fighting or know about training military personnel you should know that training how to shoot a gun or use melee skills can be very different than actually using them. I have seen examples of people who are training to do things lock up when it comes time to actually use the skills they learned just because its entirely different. This chick has that problem currently, SINCE THIS IS THE BEGINNING of her life in the shadows. It will eventually go away as she gets more and more use to combat.

-her daddy. Ok when she was little he hung out with her all the time and spoiled her and got her into target shooting with pistols. As she got older he started climbing the career ladder and grew more distant while she became more spoiled and more uncontrolled. Around her teens she was always partying and getting into trouble and when her father tried to crack down on her it was to late to change her behavior and so there was concflict until they had a massive falling out and he kicked her out, gave her some money and told her dont come back.

Is that a little clearer?

-her apartment. What enemies does she have to track her down already?? What kinda runner walks around going hey if you need to contact me mr fixer i barely know here is my address, give it to any johnsons if you think im ok for the job.

Her spoiled nature would have been quickly crushed after being kicked out. She may even be paranoid about not having enough money so she doesnt end up on the streets.


I dont know it seems like alot of these objections are because they are not how you think they should be. "You cant have that skill because you said your character likes the color blue. Everyone knows those types of characters like the color green. "

[James McMurray]

[Abbandon]

Sweet.

[Schaeffer]

Oh, I'm sorry... but I thought we were asked to critique the character? Sorry for the confusion. Since that's not the case, then Die looks just fine. :D

But all sarcasm aside, I do appreciate your use and explanation of Combat Paralysis with your creation of a rookie shadowrunner. Not many folks I run with would take that, so good job. :cyber:

[X-Kalibur]

If I were you, I'd try to talk the GM into doing the seemingly popular house rule of CHA X 4 free contact BPs.

[Abbandon]

What if i changed her single contact from a fixer to a smuggler and put 5 into connection 1 into loyalty.

[Grinder]

Yep, that worked fine in my games.

[Abbandon]

What the heck. I must have erased part of my last post when i edited it.

Sorry for being argumentative i just dont like to lose. Even if im arguing though im still listening. I just feel like some comments are unfair and that there isnt enough effort to understand where im coming from. The backstory is just a rough draft. When i make a character i first decide what skills i want them to have, not how they got them. That usually comes last. I hold off on knowledge and contacts until the end so i can "try" to weave everything together.

Anyways ignore my defensiveness and just argue back. I'll take everything into consideration but in the end it is MY character. I understand how clunky and disjointed my backgrounds are though lol.

[ShadowDragon]

I'm inclined to agree with the points the other posters are bringing up.

Gun skill - look at the chart on page 109. She is an expert with pistols on par with SWAT and elite military forces. You can't really get that good just with weekly target practise as a kid. Either lower her skill to 1 or 2, or add something to your background to explain how she got so good.

Contacts - it makes no sense to consider your character a face without a number of contacts. The face in my game has 10 contacts with 4-8 points invested in each contact. He uses those contacts for the very important task of legwork. If you don't want the contacts, rename your character to gunslinger and fix your background to reflect that.

SIN - take the SINner flaw and be done with it. You need the BP anyway right? :P You can (and should) still use a fake SIN. If you don't want a real SIN, add the detail to your background.

Commlink - I don't think you should ditch it. It seems like something your character would get from her daddy. Just add a nice analyze and encrypt program to go with your high firewall. You don't need a computer skill to know how to use computers, you're just "untrained." Plus, analyze and encrypt are self-running.

Knowledge skills - Clubbing and Seattle Culture make a lot more sense. Maybe tone down the ratings and add a couple more knowledge skills. Again, look at the chart on pages 108-109. I can see her having a 5 in clubbing, but if she's new to Seattle she shouldn't have higher than 1 or 2. I don't see the big deal with Adept Training.

Daddy - just add those details to your background. I'd be fine with that.

Powers - add more detail to your background about learning those powers. Maybe she went to an adept school? Just add something to explain how you got those IPs. I don't blame you for wanting more - every IP multiplies your effectiveness in combat. I encourage my players to increase their IPs.

[Lagomorph]

I think you're definately missing out on contacts, even if she's fresh off the plane, a character like the one you've made would have friends all over seattle just by their nature of being a charismatic, sexy, extremely social elf.

Guns, why would your character need them anyway? just convince bruno over there to do the shooting for you! But I know you want them so, maybe daddy was a General or something, or you've got a brother who's a SWAT sniper and you picked up a lot from him.

Or drop the skill by a few points to 3 or 2, drop the improved reflexes to 1, and pick up the improved skill guns. That way it'll be cheap to raise with karma later and you don't lose out on skill, you'll only lose 1 IP. I think trying to justify 1 IP is easier than 2 IP with your back story, and it doesn't hurt you all too much. You'll be faster than most.

[Abbandon]

Ugh...... how would an adept discover their powers. I dont know where in her background to stick the adept section. Would she have had it as a kid? Is it like magic and it only activates after an event or something. If she started working out would she discover just how fast she truly is or would it get better with training.

[spiderjones]

Hmm, I think you may have gotten a Fake SIN of too high rating for a new PC, Availibility max 8 for new PCs (see errata), and Fake SINs have availibility of 3 x rating (see errata here also), making a Fake SIN rating 2 the only one a new PC can get ahold of (since 3 = 9 availability).

[ShadowDragon]