Help me make a better character, Character help Options

[daddystabz]

The only thing that needs to be changed is drop critical strike down to 4. I re-did the character, check him again. I also freed up 3 more bp due to better adding skills when it's not late at night (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) .

I use this: http://www.shadowrun.us/sr4/calc.php. I hate downloading programs.

Thanks man! You are awesome!

[daddystabz]

Infiltration dp: (7 agility + 4 infiltration + 2 Adept power + 1 Reflex Recorder + 1 Ninjitsu): 15, soon to be 17.
Unarmed dp: (7 agility + 6 unarmed): 13, soon to be 15. You hit with 6p, ap -3. Your hands are better than a heavy pistol. You can attack 3 times a combat turn (two complex action and use Finishing Move for a third). You always go first in the first initiative pass.
Dodge dp: (6 reaction + 2 combat sense (+2 gymnastics)(+6 unarmed in melee): It's pretty good. Your Watchful Guard maneuver lets you ignore the first -1 penalty from being attacked previously.

Did these dice pools change any in your final build, Octopii? I haven't been through it all to check yet. I copied it all down and pasted it into a word file so I can translate it all into my fillable pdf sheet so I haven't gotten to check the total dice pools yet.

Thanks again!

[Octopiii]

I changed them with everything else. You have two less DV in unarmed for example. My adivce: Get 30 karma, go to Magic 6, and pick up Critical Strike 1, Improved Unarmed Combat 1 and you have .25 for something else.

[daddystabz]

Would you like to take a try Octopii at making this character even more of a melee machine that can hang even with a troll? Feel free to change his race or anything else and I would just have to have the minimum of what I would need to be able to be effective at B&E. Maybe a Street Samurai that has good B&E skills and some infiltration or something.

[Cthulhudreams]

Make him an Orc by taking 10 points from strength and 10 points from body.

It's a straight up power upgrade. Troll may be even better again but meh.

Change pistols for long arms or automatics. Pistols main advantages are good for close in work and highly concealable - but in that situation you can just punch some sucker. However when people break out heavy machine guns you need something to do and long arms is better for that (get a sniper rifle).

If you still want a concealable gun automatics is better because you can buy a machine pistol for when you want to conceal it and an assault rifle for when you don't.

Going to the next level with that, cashing in some strength and getting Synaptic Boosters II is a long term power upgrade. Knocking your magic down with cyberware now makes it easier to advance later.

[daddystabz]

You want to try adapting your changes to Octopii's build and we can see what you come up with?

[Cthulhudreams]

Not really, takes ages to punch it into a character sheet to do fine tweaking. You could do it - the changes are pretty obvious except what to jettison when you lose another point of magic.

[daddystabz]

I would love to get my dice pool for unarmed up to around 18-20 or so or maybe that much in guns.

[Dumori]

Ill get in to this soon see if I spot any thing.

[Shinobi Killfist]

I would love to get my dice pool for unarmed up to around 18-20 or so or maybe that much in guns.

I would love to get my dice pool for unarmed up to around 18-20 or so or maybe that much in guns.

go with level 4 muscle toner as i suggested earlier then

[ Spoiler ]

Human
B: 4 [30]
A: 5 (9) [40]
R: 5 (6) [40]
S: 3 [20]
C: 2 [10]
I: 4 [30]
L: 2 [10]
W: 3 [20]
E: 2 [0]
M: 5 (4) [40]
(240bp)

Skills:
Unarmed: 6(specialize ninjitsu)
Stealth Group 4
Etiquette 1
Perception 4
Intimidate 3
Athletics Group 2
Pistols 2 (Semi-Auto)
(126 bp)

Qualities:
Adept
Ninjitsu (+1 to infiltration)
Watchful Guard
Finishing Move
-35 bps of negatives
(+6bp)

Cyber:
Muscle Toner 4 (.8 Essence, 32k) 5BP in restricted gear
Reflex Recorder: Infiltration (.1 Essence, 10k)
Reflex Recorder unarmed combat (.1 Essence, 10k)
(16 bp, 3k left over)

Adept Powers:
Improved reflexes 1 1.5
Critical Strike 4: (1)
Penetrating Strike 2 (.5)
Combat Sense 2 (1)
26bp left over for more contacts/equipment.

9+6+2+1=18 Agility, skill, specialization, reflex recorder

[Octopiii]

Well, you're not getting 20 die in unarmed and guns both (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) .

Shinobi's build is good (except he forgot to take the restricted gear quality), but i'd change some things:

[ Spoiler ]

Ork (20)
B: 7 [30]
A: 5 (9) [40]
R: 5 (6) [40]
S: 3 [0]
C: 2 [10]
I: 4 [30]
L: 2 [10]
W: 3 [20]
E: 4 [30]
M: 5 (4) [40]
(250bp)

Skills:
Unarmed: 6(specialize ninjitsu)
Stealth Group 4
Etiquette 1
Perception 4
Intimidate 3
Dodge 4 (ranged)
(114 bp)

Qualities:
Adept
Ninjitsu (+1 to infiltration)
Watchful Guard
Finishing Move
Restricted Gear (Muscle Toner 4)
-35 bps of negatives
(+1bp)

Cyber:
Muscle Toner 4 (.8 Essence, 32k) 5BP in restricted gear
Reflex Recorder: Infiltration (.1 Essence, 10k)
Reflex Recorder unarmed combat (.1 Essence, 10k)
(16 bp, 3k left over)

Adept Powers:
Improved reflexes 1 1.5
Critical Strike 4: (1)
Penetrating Strike 3 (.75)
Killing Hands (.5)
Improved Infilitration 1 (.25)
13bp left over for more contacts/equipment.

So, you now have 7 body, killing hands, 4 edge, a better full dodge pool, a slightly better infiltration pool.

I just made him an ork, and dropped the athletics group and pistols skill, gave him dodge 4 (Ranged), and dropped Combat Sense 2 for for Killing Hands, Improved Infiltration, and one more rank of Penetrating Strike. Then I gave him more body and edge. In 30 karma you buy your magic up to 6 and learn Improved Reflexes 2 for one more power point.

[Cthulhudreams]

You need to know more about your game. ditching athletics etc is focusing more and more on making him a finely honed killing machine.

[daddystabz]

What do you mean exactly cthuludreams?

[Cthulhudreams]

Well, whats the set up. If you go for 20 dice in unarmed, you'll lose capability in other areas. So we need to know is a diversity of skills or super focus more important. Basically here is a generic list of things that happen in SR:

Cast Healing Magic.
Use a Medkit.
Kill Things.
Operate heavy machinery.
Stealthfully enter restricted areas.
Fast talk themselves into restricted areas.
Successfully fight a force 8 spirit by themselves.
Spy magically.
Spy electronically.
Spy optically.
Control escape routes with their mind.
Collect information from the Matrix.
Track down restricted equipment.
Bypass doors.
Destroy entire installations.
Triangle Button cars. (i.e. steal them very quickly GTA style)
Smuggle PCs into/out of various countries.

What are you doing from that list?

[daddystabz]

I will be the covert-ops B&E guy but I also want to kick ass as much as possible in combat.

[Octopiii]

Oh god, the list again. Tell me again why I need athletics? Because to be honest, it's a pretty useless skill group. You can default all of the skills, and the areas they influence don't require more than a trivial amount of dice, unless you feel like climbing a building with no equipment.

[Cthulhudreams]

The reason he wants it is because if you've got unarmed skills, running, jumping and climbing are fairly essential to any B&E Guy (particularly climbing, even with gecko gloves our DP is 2 for climbing a wall), and it's cheaper to boost gymnastics than dodge with cyberware and adept powers, making it a better choice if you want a big dice pool- usually. I'm not saying you need it though, for a mage dodging is generally better.

I will be the covert-ops B&E guy but I also want to kick ass as much as possible in combat.

Call out specific tasks.

Octipii's last build is pretty good - but Currently your guy has a DP of 2 for climbing, meaning that even with equipment he will be unable to climb brick walls and will be limited to the effects of just his equipment alone, and he has no disguise skills or ability to beat voice and palm print locks.

So really, what do you want to do? Is that important to you? I don't know. You need to less us.

[daddystabz]

The main areas of Athletics that would interest me are just being able to dodge well and to climb, for the most part. If I can do those things just as well without the Athletics skill group then I'm cool with it. The way I see this character is as follows: I do not have to put TONS into my character to make him a badass covert-ops guy. B&E stuff with some Infiltration should not require huge amounts of dice for the most part. So I see this guy as basically a Street Samurai who is also good at covert-ops style stuff. I will be relied on by my group to be the covert-ops buy for B&E missions but I don't want to have to specialize so much that I suck or are mediocre in combat. This is my dilemma. This makes me want to just roll a mage.

[Octopiii]

The reason he wants it is because if you've got unarmed skills, running, jumping and climbing are fairly essential to any B&E Guy (particularly climbing, even with gecko gloves our DP is 2 for climbing a wall), and it's cheaper to boost gymnastics than dodge with cyberware and adept powers, making it a better choice if you want a big dice pool- usually. I'm not saying you need it though, for a mage dodging is generally better.

Octipii's last build is pretty good - but Currently your guy has a DP of 2 for climbing, meaning that even with equipment he will be unable to climb brick walls and will be limited to the effects of just his equipment alone, and he has no disguise skills or ability to beat voice and palm print locks.

So really, what do you want to do? Is that important to you? I don't know. You need to less us.

Actually, he gets +2 for assisted climbing when using gecko tape gloves (DP 4). As for gymnastics - he's maxed out on cyberware as is, and even if he did take the relevant bioware he would only have 1 more dp to his dodge pool. It's a waste of an adept power (and 30 karma) to get points in Improved Gymnastics, which also has nothing to do with climbing. He has a disguise skill of 4. For voice and palm print locks, those are generally a hacker's purview. (or for an agent loaded with an exploit program). In a pinch, there's always the trusty monofilament chainsaw.

If you really want climbing, drop etiquette and take climbing instead. Now you have a dp of 6, which is fine for most purposes.

Edit: Of course, you can also drop some points else where. This guy could lose a few die from infiltration and unarmed and be fine - he's a monster in those two areas as is.

[Cthulhudreams]

Climbing a brick wall imposes a -2 DP penalty, making the net DP 2.

Anyway, this is my point. You can totally slice and dice this concept any number of ways, so we need functional details - is he the guy who's going to beat the voice print, or will it be the hacker?

[daddystabz]

I just want you all to know I really totally appreciate your help and feedback. I am absorbing it all.

[daddystabz]

Here is another experiement: Anyone want to tack a stab at making this guy into a vampire or maybe into a changeling? I know vampire is really expensive and is listed in the Runner's Companion book on pg 81 but how cool would it be to be a vampire? I just wonder if the advantages of being one make it worthwhile overall.

[daddystabz]

I assume it would probably be better for me to because a vampire later on in-game than to spend 100 pts at character creation on it, right?

[daddystabz]

I ended up dropping Etiquette 1 for Climbing 1. I also had 8 BPs left at the end so I bought Automatics 2. So, with this new Ork version of my character I get 2 initiative passes, right? Also, as far as I can tell now with this Ork character my new pools are as follows:

Automatics: (9 Agility + 2 Automatics+ 2 Smartlink system): 13
Infiltration dp: (9 agility + 4 infiltration + 1 Reflex Recorder + 1 Ninjitsu, +1 Improved Infiltration Adept spell): 16
Palming dp (9 Agility + 4 Palming): 13
Disguise and Shadowing (4 Intuition + 4 Stealth Skill Group Rating): 8

Unarmed dp: (9 agility + 6 unarmed + 2 Ninjutsu specialty + 1 Reflex Recorder): 18.
Your hands are better than a heavy pistol. You can attack 3 times a combat turn (two complex action and use Finishing Move for a third). Also, +4 DV to Unarmed damage and -3 AP Unarmed damage due to Bioware. Can choose to do Stun or lethal Physical damage with Killing hands, even to creatures normally immune to normal weapons and can be used for Astral Combat as well.

Dodge dp: (6 reaction +4 Dodge: 10 vs MELEE OR 6 Reaction + 6 Dodge w/RANGED specialty): 12. Your Watchful Guard maneuver lets you ignore the first -1 penalty from being attacked previously.
Climbing dp: (3 Str + 1 Climbing): Counts as assisted climbing when using my Gecko Tape Gloves

[daddystabz]

I will assume from the lack of responses that I am correct. lol