Ninja Social Adept, Build advice, please. Options

[Sixgun_Sage]

So, a friend is planning to run a 500 BP game and while I have a combat hacker built I was thinking of running a face/ way of the ninja adept. I have a background more or less built up in my head with the character being a ganger and street kid who awakened and more or less began teaching himself the way of the ninja through action movies and "ninjitsu in 10 easy steps" type tutorsofts. Most of the basic principles he has right, but th really detailed parts of the philosophy are room for hilarious misunderstandings. I've begun statting out this character as a SURGE'd elf with glamour and celerity and wanted to go to the aces here on dumpshock for advice.

[Mardrax]

If you want to go SURGed elf with glamour, you might as well go Dryad.

I'm building up a remarkably alike character for myself, under some houserulings, but on a comparable power level. I'll see if I can write that up for you tonight.

[Seth]

I think Dryad is really awkward...the downside is fairly serious in a Dystopian future. If you are part of a campaign set in an area you are really going to suffer

[Mardrax]

Ah, but as a ganger, you have all the opportunity and reason to take proper care of your turf.

[Seth]

Ah, but as a ganger, you have all the opportunity and reason to take proper care of your turf.

Yeah...but this is a dystopia...Your turf is a mess.

[Mardrax]

That's why you perpetually keep hooding to make it somewhat habitable. Losing the perpetual allergy, and turning the quality into something more akin to Dependent quality, but for an area. You have to work your behind off though.

Dystopias are well and good, but if the PC(s) are willing to work for it, they can bring limited change. You can't bring the corps down, you can work yourself up. That's my philosophy anyway. And for both a ganger and a dryad, your turf is part of yourself.

[Seth]

Dystopias are well and good, but if the PC(s) are willing to work for it, they can bring limited change. You can't bring the corps down, you can work yourself up. That's my philosophy anyway. And for both a ganger and a dryad, your turf is part of yourself.

Nicely put

[Eimi]

Nicely put

Like it says in the Symbiosis quality, the magnitude of the effect is dependent largely on roleplaying. If you were unlucky enough to be born a Dryad in either Barrens, if you take the flavor text for what various bad things happening in your "zone" inflict upon you at face value and literally, then you'd probably be unable to function at all, basically a shivering agonized near-comatose mess on a bed for most of your life. If you decide to stick with the "constant mild allergy" level and just RP being in generally bad shape pretty much all the time, it becomes somewhat more tolerable and makes your character, well, viable to play.

Much like the Escaped Clone quality, and several other backstories, you need to do a bit of handwaving to mitigate things into working at all. Which isn't a bad thing, really, so long as it produces an interesting character, rather than a realistically non-functional one.

[Glyph]

All of this assumes the OP wants to have such a character-defining quality. Honestly, dryads aren't so hot - 15-point extra cost, for a 15-point positive SURGE quality and a 10-point negative SURGE quality. SURGE II, by comparison, would let him get Celerity and Glamour, and 10 points in negative qualities that will likely be far less crippling. And he will save 5 points. Dryad is only worth it (number-crunching wise) if you want Glamour, and also want 35 points of other positive qualities.

[Mardrax]

Obviously. First post thread derailment ftw though.

So Sixgun_Sage, what are your thoughts so far? How would you like to give shape to the face and ninja aspects? Face tends to be fairly straightforward. A ninja aspect though, especially the way you're saying he picked it up, can easily be construed from anything like "stealthy assassin guy" to "superhuman swordswinging killing machine". There's a nice synergy in there in the diguise/con department, but really, all options are open.

Could you give us some more to go on?

[Thanee]

Do Glamour and Stealth mix well? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Bye
Thanee

[Seth]

Do Glamour and Stealth mix well?

I suspect you will not be good at shadowing or disguise. I don't think there is RAW about it...but that's what GMs are for. Infiltration would be ok I think. You could even argue for situational modifiers with sleight of hand.

[Mardrax]

You will be memorable, radiant, with so much more to your voice. Someone will have little trouble to pick you out from a line of people, but it's a "can't really put my finger on it" quality. You're not in any way aesthetically remarkable.
Disguise, and stealth skills in general are meant to obfuscate things both small and large that make something what they are. From clothes to mannerisms to that mole on your right cheek.

I think situational mods should apply across the board but it's fairly hard. Palming like Seth mentioned might actually be easier in a sleight of hand situation. Then, in most cases, I'd allow the character a Con test and add those hits to te Palming roll, or substract them from the perceiver's. Sleight of hand isn't just about being unnoticed after all, it's about diverting attention. Con should help there.
The same goes for Disguise as well I think, as in it ties in inherently to Social skills. When you're not using Disguise for camo anyway. A good Con roll to act out your character should make someone want to believe you are who you say you are.
And of course, Glamour ties in to Con.

Hard to call, really.

[Thanee]

Just thought it would be something to think about. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Bye
Thanee

[CanadianWolverin...]

It is something nice to think about.

I once read a fictional novel about a ninja, in which it went into great detail about how one of the camouflage techniques a ninja in this fictional japan aspired to was to so take on the mannerisms and common business person's attire that they would essentially go unnoticed as just another salary man in the crowd wearing a near identical set of socially accepted clothing.

I could have sworn I have come across a fictional story of a stealthy character who used looking like a homeless person in the US to the same effect, he effectively became socially invisible to most foot traffic because they purposefully ignore the homelessness issues.

Want another fictional example? Batman, he uses his Bruce Wayne identity like camouflage and Bruce Wayne is ridiculously charismatic persona but it doesn't stop him from being stealthy as fuck when he is himself as Batman. The Batman Begins movie has some good scenes where Batman is "wearing" Bruce Wayne and uses the persona as a tool to achieve a crime fighting end.

And I am pretty sure to be such a good actor as to disappear into the character you are trying to portray to those around you that you need a good amount of charisma and skills that control its effects IRL, I would find such a notion appropriate in the game as well. I imagine if a character suddenly breaks with the persona they are trying to achieve, if they were charismatic it would seem schizophrenic to a observer/witness.

Being invisible within society is conceivably something that a street kid ganger would have an intimate feel for.

So, would anyone else agree with me that the camouflage or chameleon suit could / should conceivably be programmed to look like other types of clothing after reading the fluff? If one thinks these suits come with hoods, gloves, etc as well, why not program it to show different skin colours, tattoos, etc as well, on top of not leaving hair, skin, saliva, finger prints behind - though I suppose blood and urine might be left behind in some situations.

Also, we are getting into some territory here where a character tries to have it all, the Jame Bond build is what I like to call it. Might as well get a handle on right away that in Shadowrun, you are either the expert of a very limited scope in a starting character or you are jack of all trades, master of none. Personally, I would suggest since this character's concept of how to do ninjitsu comes from fiction that he is really not that great at combat, so forget assassinating anyone with a one shot, one kill kinda thing right now as movies tend to leave out all the "boring" details on how that actually comes about, but that leaves plenty of room for being an absolute bad ass with the stealth skill group and charisma related skills thanks to elf perks and adept power points. You should be able to get perception pretty high as well. Work it in that your character avoids combat like the plague except where absolutely necessary and that should give you a ton of BP to play with for lots of upper deck attributes and skills with 1 or 2 points to avoid defaulting in a lot of varied social and stealth related situations, especially the preparation stages of a run, where your character could very well be the ultimate scout to get on site verification of details critical to the run being successful - any GM trying to lay a trap is either going to be a dick about it or realize your character will pretty closely border precognition if they insist on the time to do leg work.

I wonder how useful astral sight would be though, masking certainly will be but you usually don't get that in a starting character. Its 500 BP characters, so is the GM allowing awakened characters to initiate?

[Sixgun_Sage]

To provide a bit more background for my choices I didn't choose Dryad specifically for te symbiosis, I talked to the gm and he is a bit more strict on his interpretation than I liked and as for the ninja aspect he falls somewhere between the lines of "ultimate stealth guy" and "Sword swigning killing machine", the best description in terms of abilities would be someone that uses a combination of mobility and stealth to get the drop on enemies, currently I have his Blades at a 6, Infiltration at a 4, Influence and Athletics at a 4, for adept powers mostly detection and improved reflexes though I did manage to get a rank of kinesics and the wall running power in there. No mystic armor or killing hands and he does have aptitude for blades but I'm not sure about maxxing the skill at character gen, I preffer to give my characters atleast a little room to grow in his area of expertise. I'm trying to represent what a ninja's actual skill set would be to a fair degree, most of the character's humor value will come from not getting the fine points of their philosophy at the start of the game though I do seem him developing in to a true-blue "ninja lord" archetype eventually.

CanadianWolverine makes a good point about the point spread, honestly I'm probably going to max out my negative qualities and thankfully the character is a lot less reliant on gear than most, atleast the way I see him. The contacts he has are also fairly low value, more usefull for gaining information at the street level than anything else.

[CanadianWolverin...]

So, you are leaving the social face and stealth behind in favour of the blade mastery? (blade 6)

Right there I get the sense you are not being true to a character that has grown up in a shitty enviroment and learned the use of blades through movies. I think anything learned from movies that aren't specifically instructional (and even those that do) are ridiculously light on the details of drilling technique to achieve better results in a melee fight.

It also seems you are going more parkour than stealth with the character so far, not to say that isn't a fine way to have some fun when it comes to running away or even jumping/running over/under/through/around landscapes meant to act in conjunction with security.

There is more to being stealthy than just infiltration in Shadowrun, even than what is in the Stealth group.

And where is perception in your plans? All the parkour and infiltration in the world won't help you one bit if you don't take notice of what you are sneaking in to. What do the two ninjas with attention deficit disorder say to each other as they pass each other on the way to geek each other's team mage to start off combat? Nothing, they don't even know the other is there. What does the ninja scouting the target tell his team he saw? Its all clear, when it is in fact not, god defaulting (-1 + attribute) sucks. Plus you end up in the bloody eternal debate of whether cameras/guards/trip wires-lasers/traps you don't see, astral or otherwise, factor into how well one can infiltrate, if at all according to some opinions.

How are you getting past the considerable amount of electronic security locks in this game as well? No palming skill, so I guess you didn't steal a ID card while disguised, no hardware skill, so that's not happening either, and any method of breaking (chemical/explosive/slashing/bashing/ripping) something (hinges/locking mechanism/wall/frame/door) is probably going to set off alarms and give guards a situational bonus to perceive your ass, who definitely looks and talks like a ninja and not something else using disguise and social skills to blend into the environment.

You want to be a ninja social adept? Think of Mystique from the Marvel comic books and X-men movies as inspiration from fiction, wouldn't surprise me in the least if there were other examples but they didn't pop into my head right away.

But if you want to be a ninja blade adept, sure, have fun, I'm not going to stop you, I just thought this thread was about something else than that more common concept, which IMHO is a shitty concept if you don't add some house rules to melee combat, especially at the very least turning that complex action into a simple one somehow.

[Eimi]

So, you are leaving the social face and stealth behind in favour of the blade mastery? (blade 6)

Right there I get the sense you are not being true to a character that has grown up in a shitty enviroment and learned the use of blades through movies. I think anything learned from movies that aren't specifically instructional (and even those that do) are ridiculously light on the details of drilling technique to achieve better results in a melee fight.

It also seems you are going more parkour than stealth with the character so far, not to say that isn't a fine way to have some fun when it comes to running away or even jumping/running over/under/through/around landscapes meant to act in conjunction with security.

There is more to being stealthy than just infiltration in Shadowrun, even than what is in the Stealth group.

And where is perception in your plans? All the parkour and infiltration in the world won't help you one bit if you don't take notice of what you are sneaking in to. What do the two ninjas with attention deficit disorder say to each other as they pass each other on the way to geek each other's team mage to start off combat? Nothing, they don't even know the other is there. What does the ninja scouting the target tell his team he saw? Its all clear, when it is in fact not, god defaulting (-1 + attribute) sucks. Plus you end up in the bloody eternal debate of whether cameras/guards/trip wires-lasers/traps you don't see, astral or otherwise, factor into how well one can infiltrate, if at all according to some opinions.

How are you getting past the considerable amount of electronic security locks in this game as well? No palming skill, so I guess you didn't steal a ID card while disguised, no hardware skill, so that's not happening either, and any method of breaking (chemical/explosive/slashing/bashing/ripping) something (hinges/locking mechanism/wall/frame/door) is probably going to set off alarms and give guards a situational bonus to perceive your ass, who definitely looks and talks like a ninja and not something else using disguise and social skills to blend into the environment.

You want to be a ninja social adept? Think of Mystique from the Marvel comic books and X-men movies as inspiration from fiction, wouldn't surprise me in the least if there were other examples but they didn't pop into my head right away.

But if you want to be a ninja blade adept, sure, have fun, I'm not going to stop you, I just thought this thread was about something else than that more common concept, which IMHO is a shitty concept if you don't add some house rules to melee combat, especially at the very least turning that complex action into a simple one somehow.

(SPOILERS FOR USUAL SUSPECTS CONTAINED WITHIN, DO NOT READ IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED ON A 15+ YEAR OLD MOVIE)

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Ok. Keyser Soze actually makes a good badass Social Adept model, too. Clearly, he's more than capable of wreaking immense havoc in the physical sphere, but his real power comes from his social abilities. His immense will in being able to ignore Intimidation, and then the will to return the favor tenfold. His ability to recruit loyal Contacts to do his work for him as middle men. And his ability to so completely submerge himself in a disguise that even the veteran members of his shadowrunner team, a team he put together without their realizing it, didn't realize it was really him in their midst. And, finally, an ability to spin a lie so convincing, so real, ON THE SPOT, that a cop was almost ready to believe he never existed at all...and released him onto the streets, thinking he was harmless.

Being unable to unleash some hell when the time comes for it is all well and good, but being able to make sure nobody sees it coming? That's when you become really dangerous.

[Mardrax]

(SPOILERS FOR USUAL SUSPECTS CONTAINED WITHIN, DO NOT READ IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED ON A 15+ YEAR OLD MOVIE)

This forum has a [spoiler ] function for a reason (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Sixgun_Sage]

All good points CW, I do have his perception at a 4 and I realize the lack of tech skills is a weakness but I'm planning on relying on other characters for that initially and as the game progresses fleshing out his skill set a bit, but I might ding some of his other skills for a few points in hardware. Some of my skill choices are honestly just based on the personality of the character since I see him buying in to the big screen depiction of ninjas as swordsmen that fly silently through the shadows, yes he kind of has a clue about the real ninja way but is learning in his own hit and miss fashion. As for the social side I envision that as being a part of how he survived street life, being the one that convinces the other side that yes, they might win a fight, but is it really worth it? I know it is pushing towards two differant goals but my goal is an interesting character, not one of pure number crunching utility.