Synergistic Builds, At Chargen Options

[mmmkay]

I find it really enjoyable to design characters that have a lot of synergy between their skills, attributes, gear, spells, power points, contacts, pets, or whatever. Obvious (but not really playable) examples include the pornomancer, where every single build point has a synergy with a seduction dice pool. The pornomancer is an extreme case, but illustrates my point. Although I'm more interested in builds that have synergies in more than one field. What are your favorite, chargen-legal, playable builds with lots of synergy?

[Mäx]

Well mages/technomancer of charisma tradition/stream have a pretty high synergy when you make them into hybrid faces.

[Ryu]

Logic-based TMs/mages profit from an easily augmented attribute, that also works for technical skills and academic knowledges. Not the most powerful synergy, but one I like.

You can get a lot of mileage out of Intuition, too. It is used for Perception / Initiative / Languages / Street Knowledge, it can be used for Fading and Drain.

[Karoline]

Logic-based TMs/mages profit from an easily augmented attribute, that also works for technical skills and academic knowledges. Not the most powerful synergy, but one I like.

I've made a few characters that take advantage of this. Combine metagenic improvement (logic) with genetic optimization (logic) to give you a soft max of 7, then throw on rating 3 boosters to grab you a logic of 10. Drop that one nanite to give an extra +3 on all logic based tests. Menomic enhancers on top of speed reading and photographic memory. The character should in theory be able to learn at crazy fast rates because she only needs to be shown anything once to remember it. She can speed read a book in a minute or so (memorizing each page), and then digest it in a few more minutes.

Think I'm forgetting something, but even that is 13+skill DP on all logic based stuff. Combine that with a bunch of skill groups and you can be quite good at just about anything. Also don't forget a smattering of low rating knowledge skills to take advantage of the high logic and menomic enhancers.

[mmmkay]

Ok these are all true. I guess I was looking for something a little bit more sophisticated, but my example was probably not that illustrative.

So if you have a street sam or combat adept who dual wields hardened pistols, takes the two-weapon defense maneuver, and uses clubs, then there is synergy. In this example: 2 guns increases both your attacking and defending potential. This would be a skills-gear-manuever synergy. You could take ambidexterity and that only improve the synergy. Then obviously you can have synergy between attributes and give the char high agi and infiltration dice, so now he has attribute-skill synergy between agi and a gun skill, melee skill, and infiltration.

You could also have an adept throwing build that takes advantage of the two-weapon defense maneuver with a focus on blades (for melee) and throwing weapons (for range) and then take all of the ridiculous throwing weapons stuff in SM. Now you can quick draw both blades, throw twice, and as long as you have two weapons in hand (definitely not always true) you can take advantage of the maneuver. Mechanically it's similar to the previous synergy, but I'd rather have clubs for improvised weapons (cause it's common) and attacking more (at range) means trading off for defense (in melee).

I guess we could switch to finding general types of synergies. The easiest one to think of is: attribute-skill, but I gave an example of skills-gear-maneuver possibly skills-gear-maneuver-quality.

Attribute-skills-contacts maybe? If you teamwork test negotiations with your contact? Is this legit?

Gear-Pets synergy with a barghest (or pack of) and audio filter (as an example in either SR4a or RW). I guess that also makes it gear-pets-attribute-skills.

Now that I think about it, there are obviously a ton of types of synergies, but maybe I'll revise and ask again for peoples favorite or most interesting synergies.

Well on the topic of the previous post, I do like gumshoe-intuition tradition synergy.

[Karoline]

I wouldn't call most of what you said synergy, so much as.... well, I wouldn't really call it anything special, maybe combo for some of what you're looking for. Raising agility so that you're better at both shooting and infiltration? I guess it is synergy kinda, but I didn't think such blatant things where what you are looking for.

And I don't know how you can call the other suggestions not synergy based on what you gave as examples. "High logic means high logic tradition drain pool and huge DP on all logic based skills, and a bunch of dice on knowledge checks." sounds even better than "High agility means shoot stuff good and hide."

[mmmkay]

Karoline I find pretty much all of your posts are amazing and intelligent.

I mean your example is quite classy because it involves stacking a bunch of different things together to get monstrous dice pools in logic associated things, which is functionally similar to the pornomancer design.

As per your last post... maybe you should read my last post again. I did say the attribute-skill synergy is obvious (blatant). I also didn't say the previous posts "were not synergies", I just said they were obvious.

If we compare your post with the previous posts: you had many things being stacked (strong synergy) and the other posts were pairs of a few things that had synergy. Also perhaps important to note is that when I wrote my post, it was in response to the previous 2 posts and not yours...

[Karoline]

Ah, didn't notice the posting times and misinterpreted a bit, sorry about that.

[Saint Sithney]

Perception is really easy to tweak to high levels, but there are plenty of DP penalties to deal with, so it's points well needed.

Gear = +9
+3 from an Attention Coprocessor.
+3 from Vision and Audio Enhancement
+3 from Neocortical Neural Amplifier Nanites (intuition-linked)

Quality = +5
+2 from the Perceptive II Quality
+1 from Metagenetic Improvement
+1 from Genetic Heritage (Genetic Optimization)
+1 From Aptitude


So, starting with max skills and stats for +12, you end up with 26 dice for Perception without even dipping into magic or specialization. That's enough dice to do the impossible every single time. Adept out to bring the DP up to 34 and add on Multi-tasking, then you've got someone who sees and hears everything, always and forever. With Improved Sense (smell) they'd have enough dice to whiff a target through the vacuum of space.

[Mäx]

As per your last post... maybe you should read my last post again. I did say the attribute-skill synergy is obvious (blatant). I also didn't say the previous posts "were not synergies", I just said they were obvious.

Well for an even stronger and multi-think compining synergies just take those mage/tm and face hybrids characters and make them surged dryads with metagenetic improvement Charisma, genetic optimisation charisma,Tailored pheromones 3,Vocal range enhancer,Enhanced Pheromone Receptors 3 and get them some charisma boosting drugs like Galak and an empathy software 6.
With that you have yourself an skill-attribute-race-quality-ware-gear synergy.

[mmmkay]

Well for an even stronger and multi-think compining synergies just take those mage/tm and face hybrids characters and make them surged dryads with metagenetic improvement Charisma, genetic optimisation charisma,Tailored pheromones 3,Vocal range enhancer,Enhanced Pheromone Receptors 3 and get them some charisma boosting drugs like Galak and an empathy software 6.
With that you have yourself an skill-attribute-race-quality-ware-gear synergy.

Well there are deductions to your magic/resonance with this level of synergy, but this sounds familiar =)

[Udoshi]

Gear = +9
+3 from an Attention Coprocessor.

This is one thing I never got. The Reception Enhancer, in the bioware section - while expensive - is SO much better than the attention coprocessor. It adds to -all- perception tests. That includes astral and matrix, and explicitly stacks with Sensors, which helps rigging.(what do you roll to shoot people? Sensor+gunnery)

I'd also like to point out that Intuition-linked tradition/streams make for some rather good combat bunnies, because it means you have an absurdly high initiative. Ditto for technomancers, who, with the right echoes, can use their matrix initiative in the real world. Which is response + intuition - or...double intuition, due to living avatar rules. Twelve isn't all that great, but for mystic adepts, it has nice synergy with your combat related capabilities, and means you don't have to sink logic/will/cha as much.

Think I'm forgetting something, but even that is 13+skill DP on all logic based stuff. Combine that with a bunch of skill groups and you can be quite good at just about anything. Also don't forget a smattering of low rating knowledge skills to take advantage of the high logic and menomic enhancers.

PuSHeD. You're forgetting pushed. Also Learning Stimulus nanites, to actually learn all that crazy stuff at a decent price. For further nano-fuckery, there's even reprogramming Universal Nantidote 9's to work at rating 5-7 Neocortical nanites. With that logic pool, you could even make the Threshold 24 Engineering(nanorobotics) test fairly easily, even with the -1 per extended test penalty.

[Rasumichin]

Think I'm forgetting something, but even that is 13+skill DP on all logic based stuff.

PusHeD geneware should get into that, too. As well as an Encepahlon. There's also a notable selection of drugs that either directly increase Logivc or give a DP bonus to Logic-linked skills.
BTW, Neocortical nanites only give +3 if you're not distracted, but as a lot of LOG-based skills will be used in downtime, this is not that much of an issue.
And there's still Focus BTLs if all else fails.

[Yerameyahu]

Good point: Perception is usually going be just when you're *not* not distracted.

[Mongoose]

Synergy, eh? I always just called in min-maxing.

[mmmkay]

Synergy, eh? I always just called in min-maxing.

Well the way the thread has been going it is min-maxing (not necessarily a bad thing). While not against crazy stacks I was hoping for combos perhaps (examples - ambi pistols/clubs dealio). I guess I was just pretty happy when I thought of it, so I thought perhaps people had other faves. It is pretty easy to think of ways to get gargantuan dice pools in 1 or 2 things (no offense to anyone's ideas so far), but it's not exactly what I was looking for. I had considered not including the pornomancer as an example of a synergy, but I didn't want to spoil my idea (which i'm sure others have had) in case someone else had it (it'd be interesting what others would have come up with). I think the general rule is pornomancer is in a thread, then the thread is about min-maxing a dicepool.

[Karoline]

Yeah, PuSHeD is what I was forgetting. Totally forgot that Encephalon gave a logic bonus, think I've been denying one of my skill monkies a die, though she might not have it as she wasn't a hacker.

I've never tried rewiring universal nanites to neocortical because I figure the upper rating buyable is the upper rating achievable.