Recruitment: Vengeance of the Heavens, Looking to start a new game Options

[Redjack]

In an earlier post, Karaden noted his character name as Hads.

[Cthulhudreams]

There is an unfortunate mistake on my character sheet, I've got a chemical gland implanted that produces psyche, but Whipstitch has pointed out to me that is not a technically legal option.

I will provide you with a corrected sheet (I will tweak my cyberware slightly) as soon as possible.

[Karaden]

Yes, that was me. Was rather late when I sent that in and I hadn't thought about the fact that you wouldn't know my name based off my e-mail.

[Ezeckial]

Why do I get the feeling that I'm going to want to modify my character when Arsenal hits the street.

Martial Arts rules, cool body armor, and some crazy weapons. (And my home game character is itching for more drones).

Dual Natured Demon Martial Artist with weapon focused cyber spurs GO! :lick:

Sorry, I'm bored at work and am itching for some Yakuza smackdown. Running out of forums to browse and things to post.

[Ezeckial]

Okay, something actually quasi important to post.

If we're going by

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=20183

Then I'd have to redo some math on my karma expenditures, as I was going by the Base/Augmented magic we had decided on earlier instead of the "loss" that was decided on in that thread. In which case I've got a few more karma to throw around (and balance out parts of my character that I wanted to balance out). 12 more karma to be exact (just checked the spreadsheet I have at work).

(I obviously make productive use of my work time)

Any suggestions on what I should do with him? He's in a spoiler a bunch of posts back, and I'd appreciate some feedback, especially since I haven't played that much sr4 (or even sr in general).

[Cthulhudreams]

Stick with the augmented magic methodology, because Budda clearly expressed his preference for it when confronted with the options, and hasn't reversed that position?

I'd suggest that as an option ;)

[Ezeckial]

That option is fine with me. I like the character a lot and spent a bunch of time on him. I'm just super bored atm and one of my hobbies is tinkering with characters in different rules sets. Would still appreciate opinions on him and such, always like to hear what people think.

[Karaden]

[Ezeckial]

Yah, my intent wasn't to cheese it with a magic rating of 1. I started with a magic of 5, reduced to 4 with under 1 essence worth of bio/cyber, and then boosted it 4 points with karma. I'm just worried that doing a melee shaman I've spread myself too thin.

Either way, I think the character is really cool, and I hope I get a chance to play him.

[Karaden]

[Ezeckial]

Ahhh, good old physics. I remember the days.

As for the character, his back story is pretty much a latent awakening. As he used to be a bodyguard/enforcer for a korean crime syndicate, and he only awakened while he was on the ground bleeding out. However, latent awakening part way through building a character would just be messy, so I decided to ignore that fact and just build him right after he'd awakened (the 400bp part). And then advance him past that point to where he is now (300 karma part).

[Dirtz]

How does latent awakening effect the magic score of a character that already had essence loss due to augmentations? Are you still considered a mundane at character gen or does your aura give away your latent ability? Do you plan on using the virtual (augmented) magic score taking into consideration the magic you would have loss due to implants when increasing your magic attribute and max rating?

I told a player he would have to use his virtual magic attribute and we got into an arguement over how can someone have a negative magic score. We got into the whole "How does my character know I'm magically active and should invest karma to increase my magic if I can't see any effect if technically I have a magic score of 0 I'm still considered mundane?" I told him I didn't like the cheese factor and he walked away. He made a gun bunny with 3 points of essence loss then wanted to add a magic template overtop of it with the latent feature. I was happy to see him go it would have ruined the game for everyone.

[Ezeckial]

See, that's why I didn't do it in the case of this character.

If I remember latent awakening however it's GM decision when and if the character ever awakens. So you could always say that the cyber/bio in his body makes it much more difficult for him to awaken. And potentially the way in which he awakens could cause negative qualities to be attached to the character. A phobia or an allergy, or even something like buggy ware or cursed could all be attributed to a late awakening in a situation like that (and would be good rp'ing hooks).

Latent awakening let's you awaken POST character gen.

(At least as far as I remember, I'm at work with no books :rotate: )

[BishopMcQ]

Per RAW, Latent Awakening allows you to awaken when the GM decides. If you have essence loss due to cyberware etc, you still begin with a Magic of 1. The natural cap (normally 6) is reduced by your essence loss. The character must then spend karma to increase their magic.

As the awakening is dependent upon the GM, it would need to be a one-off discussion with Buddha as to whether or not you could go the Latent Awakening route with Cyber/Bio and increasing your magic through Karma.

[Karaden]

[Ezeckial]

I agree with Karaden, by raw and advancing it while playing is no problem in any way. In a game where you're starting with a bunch of karma it can get messy.

But that doesn't get to the real point.

Karaden promised he'd look at my character and he hasn't yet!

[Karaden]

[Buddha72]

Ok final list that I will be picking form tomorrow for the 8 spots for this game.

Bakatare played by Fenris - human hermetic chaos mage
Spider played by Sponge - elf ex-dancer/martial artist
Dvalinn Runar played by Cthulhudreams - dwarf Jungian humanist mage
Godzilla played by Redjack - elf mage
Vance played by ? - dwarf mafia made decker/hacker
Rayne played by BishopMcQ - human physical adept
Krossfire played by Dirtz - troll street sam
? played by ZenZen - sneaky assassin type
Munkir played by Ezeckial - human mundungu
Hads played by Karadeb - human heavy weapons expert
Vice played by Blackhat - human mage
Haze played by Whipstitch - elf druidic shaman

So I have quite a few characters submitted and I've decided to start the thread with 8, it's been my experience that we'll lose a few in the first month or so. I'm going to post the wait list of characters as well that if a spot opens up I would love to have join the game if the players don't mind the wait. I'll be posting the lists tomorrow.

As to the latent awakening question, that is for certain something I would want to have happen in game and I love the idea of it. If the character did indeed awaken but already had cyber or bioware they would start with a Magic of 1 and their cap reduced by 1 unless of course their essence was lees than 1 but I'm going to assume the player would avoid that since they picked the merit in the 1st place. From that point on I would go with the augmented attribute we're using so if they raised their Magic to 2 with a cap of 5 (assuming a point of essence loss from implants) and then put another point of essence into implants their new score would be 1 (2) with a cap of 5 and so on.

[Ezeckial]

Uggg, I had a big long post I'd been typing about my character and why I'd built him that way (for karaden cause I was enjoying the conversation) and how I perceived his weaknesses and what his strong points were. And then my comp crashed at work before I could post it.

And It was de-stressing me from the stupid caller who couldn't get it into his head that he was doing something wrong, and it wasn't our fault.

Grrrrr.

Long story short. He possesses himself with his ally, and tears things to pieces with his weapon focused cyber spurs. Due to having to spread himself thin he's short on knowledges and languages (which annoys me). Moving some points to English would probably be key, I'm not quite sure what #'s equal what level of fluency.

High attributes (physical from possession, and magic from initiating) are ment to boost his dice pools up to more respectable levels.

Oh, and my math on the essence (0.74 from bioware + 0.5(0.48) cyberware = .98). Could be wrong if the spreadsheet I was using for char gen is off somewhere. (you might have missed the alpha ware cyber spurs which are also weapon focii).

[Karaden]

I'd kind of guessed that is what you where doing with the ally spirt as I've heard others talk about it on the boards, but like I said haven't read the rules from street magic much. Your right, I did miss the spurs. Should have remembered them considering your specialty in them, but ah well.

As for fluency levels... well that partly depends on your logic. I think a DP of 3 represents barely able to speak it (Generally able to recognise simple phrases and speak slightly better then that) a DP of 6 represents generally being able to follow the gist of a conversation, and being able to say what you want most of the time. DP 9 is reasonably fluent, accents, dialects, and advanced/obscure subjects may trip you up, but otherwise you should be ok. 12 would be basicly fluent, you may have an accent, but can always follow conversations unless they are on obscure subects, and even then you can usually get it. 15-16 would likely represent someone who can actually impress most native speakers, and quite likely knows more words then the average native knows.

Of course this is just sort of my gussing based on average hits, buying hits, and what the various threshholds are. Someone with a 16 DP could buy the hits for obscure subects for example, and someone with 12 DP could hit obscure more often then not.

Given your logic of 2 I'd say getting your language skill up to at least 4 for a DP of 6 would be good, otherwise I could definetly see you having trouble getting around without a translator. That or our tactics will have to be something along the lines of "Go there, kill stuff, come back." in order for your character to get them. Perhaps you could convince Buddha to let you buy a matrix language subscription or something so you can get that +1-4 bonus for AR spesificly mentioned for languages. I'd assume this is access to some fancy Language 1 to Language 2 dictonary, possably with a mic on your commlink so it can pick up words and auto look them up for you, without you having to guess how to spell them.

*edit* Wow, language is intuition based? Who's bright idea was that. I'd always assumed it was logic since that makes more sense to me, and because Mnemonic Enhancers give you a bonus to it, as well as memory (which doesn't deal with intuition at all)? Well, anyway, in that case I suppose your fine with a skill of 3, unless you can bump it up to 6, or maybe a skill of 4 with a 2 point bonus from the AR stuff. I'd say go for landmarks of 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 15, 16 for language DPs.

[Whipstitch]

Languages are linked to intuition.

[Karaden]

[Ezeckial]

So, just looking up the chart, it looks like I'd want to be able to buy 3 hits to effectively communicate all but the most obscure subjects. Which means with an intuition of 3, AR of 4 (at best), I'd need 5's in languages. I was just going off of the sample characters which had a dice pool of 5-8, with the street sam and covert ops having dp's of 6 (what munkir has)

Full AR would be a dice pool of 10, which isn't bad at all. And that wouldn't require me to change anything on the character. Would just require me to spend the money on it. And I can't find how much it'd cost......

Or I could scrounge up the essence to get a datajack (alphaware and I think I can do it without any modifications) and get some Linguasofts and Knowsofts (or trodes + sim module now that I think of it).

Edit: Alphaware the datajack and the reflex recorder and we're gold.

[Karaden]

Well, buddha will be the one that determines what kind of a bonus you can get for what price. I'd think it would be based off linguasofts, but maybe on a subscription basis. Like perhaps you could get the bonus at 500:nuyen:/year/point or something like that. Well, up to him, but I don't think it would be really expensive or everyone would get linguasofts instead.

Oh, and I would think you could get the jack at delta or some such, since it is so cheap. 5k isn't all that bad.

[Redjack]