Help me stat something up., Players from Greenhorns in Seattle stay out. Options

[imperialus]

Last chance Seraph, Joel, Mickle, Dusty and Nigel. Seriously don't click the spoiler tag, this has some metaplot stuff your characters don't have a clue about yet.

[ Spoiler ]

Hey, wondering if I could pick the collective brains of Dumpshock to come up with an NPC Technomancer for my PbP campaign. She's a DM-PC because the players don't have a hacker or rigger of their own and it's their first time playing Shadowrun so she's also around to serve as a way to insert advice from a more experienced runner. As such she doesn't necessarily need to follow chargen rules. That said though this is my first serious attempt at creating a TM so I could use some advice from people who've used them before. I'm looking more for a set of stats that I can use as a general guideline of her capabilities than necessarily something I need to roll constantly.

Couple things. She has at least a little bit of cyberware. The PC's have already seen her handrazors so that means she has some essence she can spend without damaging her Resonance further. I'm leaning towards some boosted reflexes at the moment. The initial description of her went like this:

As Tinman speaks a young and very attractive looking elf woman approaches the table and pulls a chair up at the end of the booth. She is wearing bluejeans and a vintage armoured combat biking jacket with the logo of the now defunct Fuchi Cyber-Knights combat biking team on it. A motorcycle helmet is cradled under her right arm. Her jacket is unzipped and underneath she is wearing a black suit of form fitting body armour, though it almost seems like it’s more of a fashion statement than anything else. You also notice an Ares Viper strapped to her thigh. Her hair is cut into a multi coloured mowhawk laying flat down one side of her head. Her right scalp has a tattoo of an old school datajack on it. She sits down at the end of the table and puts her feet up on the seat beside Loki, and you think she might have just winked at him. Tinman’s eyes narrow slightly as he looks at the new addition.

(snip)

She waves her hand with a flourish as razorblades extend from under her fingernails. “Sybercat at your service! Hacker, rigger and razorgirl extraordinaire.â€�

Basically what she needs to do is hack, rig, and engage in cybercombat primarily but she also needs to be capable enough in a firefight that the PC's don't need to worry about her. She mostly waits in the teams van and provides matrix overwatch and the ability to make a quick getaway but she'll cover their retreats if necessary too. Average combat capability is all I'm looking for though. I don't want her to outshine the PC's in the meat world. She needs the firearms group since her 'oh shit gun' is a modified AK97 with an under barrel shotgun. She hasn't used any drones yet but the PC's know she has at least one rotodrone (though it's in need of repair) so the ability to use drones to a limited degree would be useful.

One last thing to keep in mind is that the PC's don't know she's a TM. They think she's a hacker, presumably with an implanted comlink. If the campaign survives I plan on eventually running them through Emergence, at which point she will become a plot device/(meta)human McGuffrin. If there are any suggestions for how I might be able to forshadow that she is somehow 'different' than a normal hacker without giving it away that'd be awesome.

Thanks in advance everyone.

[paws2sky]

[ Spoiler ]

Yeah, I've been passively following that IC thread. I was wondering about her...

Its entirely possible she's overstated her abilities, especially with regard to the "razorgirl" part. Rigging and hacking she can do without a problem - she is a TM after all. Maybe she just has a set of hand razors and maybe a a couple other things totalling less than 1 Ess.

Her combat skills might be limited to gunnery, blades or unarmed, longarms, and automatics. Not that she'll have to use them much. Most of the time she ought to be controlling her drone(s) and riding VR shotgun with her living persona.

[imperialus]

hrm... Try a different tack here.

What's the TM build in the BBB like in play? If I upped the stats a bit to give her some better combat capabilities would she be a pretty decent TM?

[Jaid]

hrm... Try a different tack here.

What's the TM build in the BBB like in play? If I upped the stats a bit to give her some better combat capabilities would she be a pretty decent TM?

no, not really. honestly, if you want decent, give her a resonance of 4 (cap of 5 until she initiates) assume she has most of the CFs you always need (armor, attack, edit, browse, exploit, etc) and a decent set of skills with software. she won't be nearly as good as a chargen hacker, but you do want to allow some room for a chargen hacker to show up and not be totally schooled i assume (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) for cyber, i'd say give her an autoinjector with some combat drugs in it (poor man's initiative booster), maybe some skillwires, and give her decent combat skills (if she has a decent agility, she'll only need 3-4 in her combat skills).

but really, if you want a technomancer who can handle all of those areas competently (or even near competently) she's gonna be way beyond chargen limitations... she just still won't be all that impressive. you really need to min/max to get anything out of TMs worth their cost.

a better solution, imo, would be to just make her a regular hacker/rigger/razorgirl who at one point had AIPS, but is not actually a technomancer (even if she is suspected to be one). this means you can still run the team through the events in emergence, but leaves you with a much more plausible NPC in terms of what they can do... it is entirely believable for a hacker to be a rigger on the side and have some decent combat skills. a technomancer is pretty much just a technomancer, and may even be limited to just one aspect of being a technomancer... trying to also be a combat character is just really hard to believe, imo, since they have to be so focused on technomancering just to be good at what they do. but either way, it's your game... play it how you like.

[Crusher Bob]

[ Spoiler ]

Another option is to have her be missing a hand, and have a hand shaped drone riding along on her stump. This allows her to to have 'hand razors' without taking a hit to her resonance, and you can weird the group out a bit when her hand scurries off and cuts some guys face off.

If you don't have a hacker or rigger in your group already, you can see if they are interested in switching to Frank Trollman's alternative matrix rules, which take long steps toward making technomaners playable

[Fortune]

Nice! I might just steal that. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[imperialus]

Very cool idea.

Still, I'm leaning towards Jaid's idea ATM. I've played more than a few hackers so I'm a bit (a lot) more familiar with them. I actually have a combat hacker statted up for a previous campaign that I can modify without much trouble.

Thanks for the suggestions though.

[Cain]

No reason why you can't do both.

[ Spoiler ]

Even better, make her an adept with a ton of Improved Ability dice. If you're dead-set on making her into an otaku, then give her a Cerebral Booster 3, skillwires, and specialize her in summoning. She can conjure sprites and have them run her body via skillwires. Voila, a posession-based otaku.