New GM, First character Options

[Tomothy]

I'm a new GM. I've played four or five games with my own group and I'm running a campaign by email for my brother and his friends. This is the first character to be created. He was wondering if he's spread himself too thin.

Mikhail Vedrine (alias: Dwayne Miller)

Mikhail is originally from Russia, he has one brother in the military and his parents have been dead for ten years. Mikhail was trained up by the Russian corporation Koschei (a double A rating corp) and sent over to America to spy on the corps there and build up contacts in the shadowrunning community. However, within weeks of arriving his contacts were suddenly uncontactable and he could not get any response from Koschei. Either he had done something wrong or they had and he was now cut off. The only people willing to stay in contact were the few shadowrunners he had managed to start cultivating.

Metatype:
Elf (30 BP)

Attributes (250 BP):
Bod 4 (30 BP)
Agi 4 (20 BP)
Rea 4 (6) (30 BP)
Cha 6 (30 BP)
Int 4 (30 BP)
Log 4 (30 BP)
Wil 3 (20 BP)

Edge 3 (20)
Magic 5 (40)

Qualities (+30 BP):
Adept (5)

Hung out to dry (+10)
Sensitive System (+15)
Signature (+10)

Active Skills (134 BP):
Hacking 5 (20)
Influence Group 3 (30)
Perception 3 (12)
Forgery 3 (12)
Stealth Group 3 (30)
Automatics 1 (Machine Pistol +2) (6)
Electronics Group 3 (30)
Locksmith 1 (4)
134

Knowledge Skills (24 free):
Russian N
English 6
Corporate Security Protocols 4
Corporate Politics 4
Corporate Matrix Security Procedures 4
Operating Systems 3
Security Systems 3

Kinesics 3 (1.5) +3
Improved Negotiation 2 (0.5)
Improved Con 2 (0.5)
Improved Reflexes 2 (2.5)

Gear & Lifestyle (16 BP - 80, 000¥):
Low Lifestyle (1 month) - 2000¥
Ares Crusader (w/Sound Suppressor, Smartgun System, Extended Clip, Gas Vent 2, Ceramic Parts 1, Concealable Holster, 2 spare clips, 20 EX explosive rounds, 10 Stick-and-shock rounds and 30 normal rounds) - 3740¥
Chameleon Suit - 8000¥
Heavy Greatcoat (-2 Conceal for items under it) - 700¥
Fake SIN (Rating 4) – 4000¥
Fake SIN (Rating 4) – 4000¥
Fake Gun License (Ares Crusader) - 400¥
Earbuds (Rating 3 w/ Audio Enhancement 3 and Select Sound Filter 3) - 930 ¥
Contact Lenses (Rating 3 w/ Imagelink, Smartlink and Flare Compensation) - 725¥
Subvocal Microphone - 50¥
Maglock Passkey (Rating 4) - 8000¥
Maglock Sequencer (Rating 4) - 800¥
Autopicker (Rating 6) – 1200¥
Cellular Glove Moulder (Rating 3) – 600¥
Nanopaste (Small Container) - 500¥
Metalink (w/ Simlink modified for BTL/Hot Sim, Response 5, Signal 5, Firewall 6, System 6 – 6350¥
Programs -
Common (level 5) - 500¥
Analyze
Browse
Command
Edit
Encrypt
Scan
Hacking (level 5) - 5000¥
Decrypt
Exploit
Sniffer
Spoof
Track
Armor
Stealth

79999

Starting Nuyen (3D6) x 50

[Teulisch]

an adept face/hacker? well, he wont last long if people start trying to kill him with guns or knives. and hes going to NEED the electronic warfare skill, as that one cant default. no cybercombat skill so the matrix isnt a good place for him to fight either. no dodge skill. is he planning on grabbing those skills with earned karma very early on?

really you cant be a good hacker with no electronic warfare skill. thats the only serious problem i see there. you need it to find teh node, and to decrypt.

[Neraph]

an adept face/hacker? well, he wont last long if people start trying to kill him with guns or knives. and hes going to NEED the electronic warfare skill, as that one cant default. no cybercombat skill so the matrix isnt a good place for him to fight either. no dodge skill. is he planning on grabbing those skills with earned karma very early on?

really you cant be a good hacker with no electronic warfare skill. thats the only serious problem i see there. you need it to find teh node, and to decrypt.

Well, to decrypt at least. I love a R6 Radio Signal Scanner. Cheap and excessivly effective. Also, on a closer look of his skills, he does have the Electronics Group at r3. That seems a little low though, if he is to be a hacker.

But yes, I echo Teulisch for the most part. He is going to be attacked, and when that happens he is going to get hurt.

I would take an autopicker over the skill itself, if only in this situation to free up points to help survive. Maybe take an addiction or two to get some more BP for combat-related skills. Addiction (Betel, Mild) is a good one, especially since you'll want to use betel. And on that note, maybe dropping Perception by 1 and using the points to specialize both Perception and Dodge would be good, and don't forget the visual and audio enhancements from gear. I notice he has the hearing ones, but he can also wear glasses with the visual ones.

[tagz]

My comment would be that the starting attributes looks like it exceeds 50% of the total BP. If I recall correct you're only allowed to invest half your initial BP amount into stats.

Maybe I miscounted as I just added up in my head fast, but it looks like a 400BP character. Unless you want to give a pass on this rule (or I miscounted and it's 500BP) then the character should take 50BP out of stats. This would by the way free up a lot of points to buy a few highly used skills like dodge and a combat skill to self defend with.

[vanillared]

His stats are fine because he spent 190 on normal attributes and 60 on special attributes. The 200 bp limit is not counted for special attributes like edge, magic and resonance.

Also for someone with very little combat skill he has spent allot of power points to get improved reflexes 2. Unless he is planning to run the matrix through AR this will not help him ni the area of hacking. Since most of his skills are focused away from combat I would drop his some of his physical attributes (agility, strength, body) in favor of more skills to round out or bump his hacking skills.

[tagz]

Oh, duh. He counted them in the same category. I'm used to my own notation too much (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohplease.gif)

[Laughing One]

I advice getting a strength attribute (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Saint Sithney]

Adept AR hacker + face? Whycome he doesn't have the Commanding Voice? That is basically mandatory for a guy like him. He doesn't even need a dodge skill against human opponents then since he can make them drop their guns with a Free Action. Machines will tear him up though, unless he can AR hack into them in advance.

I say it's good and workable. Could use a little polish and a voice masker. Also the Maglock Passkey and Maglock sequencer aren't really needed if you have the hardware skill. The opposed tests from the key or sequencer are faster, but will save roughly 6-9 seconds over just using the hardware skill. That's 9k saved.