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> Hideous badly-made characters of DOOOM, please help me I need help *whimper*
NumptyScrub
post Sep 26 2011, 08:03 PM
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Pursuant to the latest Session of DOOM I am linking the 2 characters I created that have survived the cut, in the hopes that minds immeasurably greater than mine can point out all the schoolboy errors, idiotic choices, and plain retarded munchkinism and show me how to make them better.

Not necessarily more powerful, but better balanced, and capable of taking their place in our doomed TPK-waiting-to-happen with heads held high (or at least ducked behind the nearest piece of street furniture while Lone Star or the Yaks empty a van full of ammo into it).

First up is the one I am playing: Caine T. Longshot (chummer file) who is no longer a sniper, as I think I fired 3 rounds in 7 sessions, and the Barrett 121 we bought him in session 3 is still in the wrapper. I freely admit the move from adept sniper to Mys-ad ninja was to take advantage of karmagen, as you can Initiate in karmagen (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Second is our Faceman (chummer file) who I built after realising we had no character with a Negotiate better than 4 dice. I had also (unfortunately) just been reading a post referencing pornomancers, hence this dubious one-dimensional monstrosity. He is an awesome face, but no use at anything else particularly.

Edit: I forgot to mention that we were given the limitation of only material from SR4A or Arsenal (no Street Magic or Augmentation etc.) which is why you may see glaring omissions of stuff you were expecting to see. I just used Chummer set to SR4A and Arsenal, with (where possible) a copy of the books on hand to look up descriptions.

RIP Mr. Happy Punch (chummer file) who was probably the most (accidentally) balanced character I built, as I wasn't sure what the player he was for wanted to play as. He has since been "retired" into the hacker char that Zod's player built, when we realised this whole Matrix thing was actually bloody useful after all.

Please feel free to pull no punches, I am old enough (and ugly enough) to be able to take criticism un-edited, and stupid enough to let the true bile flow past unheeded. Hyphz willing, after taking your sage advice into account I will be providing freshly rebuilt (yet again) characters for him to veto as he sees fit (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
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Paul
post Sep 26 2011, 08:37 PM
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Sorry to throw the rhythm off, but what are you using to generate these characters? Is that the Chummer generator?
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Ryu
post Sep 26 2011, 08:37 PM
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First things first. Caine T. Longshot.

What team role are you going for? Mechanically I would currently be looking at an Ork with a tradition tied to Intuition 5, as Binding does not seem to be present, reducing the value of high CHA. Free Body and STR is better than a single drain resistance die.

Focussed Concentration is IMO too expensive. Go for Trauma Dampener (+++) and Platelet Factory (+) later. A reverse side of low WIL and no spell defense is that magic 5 - spells limited to 5 hits without overcasting - is sufficient to dominate your not-level-scaling average opposition. High magic can very well be not worth it. If you go for CHA do it properly and take the Influence skill group. If need be instead of Electronics.

Play a full mage and replace Imp. Reflexes 3 with a sustaining focus(health). The information to be gained from astral perception alone will pay for that change.


What do you want to play? We can provide mechanical assistance AND features you might like.





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Seriously Mike
post Sep 26 2011, 09:12 PM
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Numpty, where's the other half of your free Knowledge points? You should have 18, I see only 9 spent. 10 if we count specialization.
And why the hell another "Incompetent: Archery" BS disadvantage? I thought only Zod could pull this kind of stupidity.

I'll take on the Facepalm, er, Faceman tomorrow. At the first glance, he seems to be an utter vegetable, with Logic at 1. Also, getting killed by a well-thrown angle grinder disc is going to be very humiliating for him.

That and you're more than welcome to post these questions in the "Character clinic" thread.
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Glyph
post Sep 27 2011, 02:59 AM
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Augmented skill is limited to 1.5, rounded down, meaning the most you can get is 2 points in improved ability for a skill at 4. Kinesics has been capped at 3 in the eratta, as well as in SR4A. So all of the faceman's adept abilities are too high.

Overall, any Attribute at 1 is a serious weakness, and any skill at 1 is generally not going to be effective. Skill groups are only good if you plan on using every skill in that group. For a character that shouldn't be in combat as much, getting the pistols skill at 2, with a specialization in semi-automatics, would be way more effective than the firearms skill group at 1.

I would take another look at Charisma and Magic. Changing Charisma to 7 and losing the exceptional Attribute quality, and dropping Magic to 5 (4 after Magic loss) will free up 55 points - enough to raise his Strength, Logic and Edge to a less precarious rating of 2, get the First Impression quality, and spend 20 points beefing up his non-social skills (although I would definitely consider getting at least a point in intimidation, so you aren't defaulting when resisting it).

Also, tailored pheromones take 0.60 Essence. I would think about ditching the skin pocket and getting muscle toner: 2 instead. If you're going to take an Essence hit, get all of the advantage that you can out of it. I would also consider changing the Pacifist quality into something like low pain tolerance or combat paralysis - something that still shows combat isn't this guy's preferred thing, but which will let him fit in with his raving psycho fellow runners better.
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Yerameyahu
post Sep 27 2011, 03:25 AM
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As a general rule, I'd say to avoid *all* BP-pits like Exceptional Ability, hard-maxing, and so on. Paying triple the cost for +1 DP is just not cost effective for the majority of things. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
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ZeroPoint
post Sep 27 2011, 03:28 AM
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and it doesn't really make sense for a starting runner...which i think is there is that additionally cost..to dissuade people from being munchkin characters right out of the box
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Ryu
post Sep 27 2011, 05:52 AM
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There are no free knowledge skills under karmagen, only BP-gen has those.

It looks like all of your builds have access to adept powers. From what you said in the session-8-thread, I assume this is for the long-term growth potential? The part about fresh chars being weak? As you noticed, this is not necessarily true. Besides that, the need to buy magic, and magic loss upon receiving augmentation, often costs more than it is worth (IMO). Do you prefer to play Elf? If yes, good, else, note that mechanically they are a fringe option. Too little bang for the buck. The baseline option is an Ork, if size does not matter a Troll.


Let´s continue with Caine, since you are the player and can tell us where to go. First, ignoring the Imp. Ability rating, you only have a Spellcasting magic of 2. You DID pay a hefty chunk of 135 karma to get magic to 7, and in return you get a spellcasting magic of 2, and initiative you can get from a single spell which you actually own. Increasing your very low spellcasting pool will be very expensive, as you are missing out on a potential 5 dice allocated to adept powers instead.

I´ll take a different turn - Dawg is your team mage, two can be a bit much - and go for "bioware ninja taking advantage of karmagen". Sell all the magic stuff and cash in on the karma. You get: 135 from magic, 70 from qualities, 40 from spells, and 59? from skills. (Could be worth it if you didn´t have to split your magic rating). 294 karma to spend.

1) We build an augmented char, so budget 50 karma for ressources.
2) You did a good job with the attributes. We´ll switch Willpower and Intuition, to help with Perception, Initiative and knowledge skills. AGI 5 and STR 4 are now affordable. 65 karma.
3) 2*Restricted Gear + Muscle Toner 4 + Suprathyroid Gland. "Somewhat" better than the illegal Imp. Ability (Infiltration) 4. 20 karma.
4) Athletics 2 + Synthacardium 3. This kind of athletics pool removes the absolute need for Leviation. 20 karma.
5) Firearms 3 + Unarmed 3 + Influence 1. 80 karma.
6) Stuff you want, if possible including a Synaptic Booster. 69 karma.

Should end at:
Bod 4(5) Agi 5(10) REA 3(4) STR 4(5) CHA 6 INT 5 LOG 3 WILL 3

With Athletics at an effective 5, you can go places without casting spells. With Firearms and Unarmed you can reliably put out damage, as opposed to Force 4 spells cast with 6(+boni) dice. There is a decent chance you can talk your way out of conflicts. Any AGI-based skill you pick up is immediately at a workable dp size. For the Ninja STR 5 comes in handy for thrown weapons.
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Ryu
post Sep 27 2011, 07:21 AM
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The following stuff is incompatible with the suggestion of "bioware ninja":

QUOTE
INITIATE GRADE: 2
METAMAGICS
Additional Power Point SR4 0, Centering SR4 198


Permitting initiation at chargen is a (common, I believe) houserule. The option of Additional Power Point is now a suggested optional rule for Adepts in Street Magic.

If you are allowed to do both, ask if you can also buy metamagics for 15 karma a piece. Reduce magic to 6, buy two additional PPs for Initiation and get 2 metamagics for 30 karma. Spend the 5 karma left over on starting with a magical group.

Or reduce magic to 5, initiate to grade 3 (still "8" magic to split), and get 3 additional metamagics.

My GM would at this point be looking for The Precious in order to hit me with it.
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Traul
post Sep 27 2011, 10:02 AM
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Faceman is not so bad. Apart from his powers that break the cap, he is pretty much the standard optimised face. With the points saved as Glyph explained, you should get enough room to make him a decent sammy dabbler too: Pistols 4, Increased Reflexes 1, Muscle Toner 2 and you're good to go. You should get a couple of points in Infiltration too to get the most use of your high AGI.

As for Caine, you first need to decide what he is supposed to do. You should probably forget about Mystic Adept: it's too much headaches for a first character.

It has already been mentionned that Initiation at chargen is only an optional rule. In a group mixing BP and karmagen, the GM should not allow it, if only to be fair to the other mage.
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NumptyScrub
post Sep 27 2011, 12:14 PM
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all very valid points, and the reason I posted the thread (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I was initially going for an infitration specilist (while being dumb enough to think that meant "make infiltration very high") and added sniper as I thought that fit the archetype. Now, I'm thinking I should be the party b&e specialist while still managing to not be useless at combat. We have dakka, we have magical dakka, we have hakka, but none of them are actually any good at picking locks or skulking in shadows, so I think I need to be filing that void.

Thanks for clarifying the adept rules regarding skills (and esp regarding the blatantly broken kinesics), that makes a lot more sense and means that skillwires are not as suboptimal as I thought they were compared to adept skill boosts. Chummer lets you buy all of those up to your Magic value, so (being a munchkin) I didn't question whether I should be looking for rules clarifications to ensure that was the correct behaviour. I also saw somewhere that dicepool boosts to skills are capped at +(skill rating/2), is that correct? Meaning that to get 3 bonus dice to infiltration from a source (adept, skillwires), I'd need Infiltration 6. Infiltration 4 would cap the bonus dice at 2, even if I had skillwires 3?

It's awesome how some of the simplest looking system concepts (here, roll a bunch of d6) can become so involved... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)
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Mardrax
post Sep 27 2011, 12:24 PM
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QUOTE (NumptyScrub @ Sep 27 2011, 02:14 PM) *
I also saw somewhere that dicepool boosts to skills are capped at +(skill rating/2), is that correct? Meaning that to get 3 bonus dice to infiltration from a source (adept, skillwires), I'd need Infiltration 6. Infiltration 4 would cap the bonus dice at 2, even if I had skillwires 3?

You are absolutely correct.
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Ascalaphus
post Sep 27 2011, 12:38 PM
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QUOTE (Mardrax @ Sep 27 2011, 01:24 PM) *
You are absolutely correct.


Do you have some page number for that? It doesn't sound familiar at all. (Not that I'm saying it's a bad idea, I just want to read it myself.)
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Yerameyahu
post Sep 27 2011, 12:43 PM
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Skillwires *replace* your skill, and god help you if you try to pull that 'I use my specialization with my skillwires' crap. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

And, no. There's no RAW dice pool mod cap like that. There's an option 20-or-2x rule, and there's the rule that *skill boosts* can't exceed 'augmented skill'—but that's not dice pool modifiers. AFAIK, only Adept powers and Reflex recorders directly increase skill (i.e., are 'skill boosts').
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NumptyScrub
post Sep 27 2011, 12:46 PM
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In which case, Zod likely does not have 26 automatics, and it may actually be more like 18 automatics. That may help bring the party back into manageable pools without Hyphz having to rewrite whole swathes of material (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

For Caine I'm going to go with the aug / bioware suggestions from Ryu above when I get home and see what I can come up with. I think Restricted Gear is in one of the sourcebooks were are not using atm (just SR4A and Arsenal) so I'll go with whatever fits chargen rules, and then post back (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Glyph had some good points about the face as well, so once I've dropped the adept boosts to legal levels I'll have a play at adding some useful skills and ungimping his opther stats. I'm not allowed to chargen at work so that will have to wait until I get back too (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)
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Mardrax
post Sep 27 2011, 01:12 PM
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QUOTE (Ascalaphus @ Sep 27 2011, 02:38 PM) *
Do you have some page number for that? It doesn't sound familiar at all. (Not that I'm saying it's a bad idea, I just want to read it myself.)

Whoops. Misread a bit.
Indeed. It's skill boosts themselves that can't exceed skill*0.5. Dice pool modifiers are a different game entirely.
Still stands that you can't stack 3 levels of Improved Ability and a Reflex Recorder and another Reflex Recorder for the Skill Group. Not to get a +5 to your skill anyway. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)
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Ascalaphus
post Sep 27 2011, 01:53 PM
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QUOTE (Mardrax @ Sep 27 2011, 02:12 PM) *
Whoops. Misread a bit.
Indeed. It's skill boosts themselves that can't exceed skill*0.5. Dice pool modifiers are a different game entirely.
Still stands that you can't stack 3 levels of Improved Ability and a Reflex Recorder and another Reflex Recorder for the Skill Group. Not to get a +5 to your skill anyway. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)


Are you sure? I mean, there's a limit to Improved Ability, and a limit to Reflex Recorder, but AFAIK they don't mention limits to the combination.
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HunterHerne
post Sep 27 2011, 02:03 PM
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QUOTE (Ascalaphus @ Sep 27 2011, 09:53 AM) *
Are you sure? I mean, there's a limit to Improved Ability, and a limit to Reflex Recorder, but AFAIK they don't mention limits to the combination.


However, there is a limit to augmented skill rating. Which both of them apply to.
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NumptyScrub
post Sep 27 2011, 02:28 PM
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QUOTE (HunterHerne @ Sep 27 2011, 03:03 PM) *
However, there is a limit to augmented skill rating. Which both of them apply to.

So you can have Improved Con 3 (skill at rating 6), and Kinesics 3 and they should stack, as Improved Con would count as augmenting the skill rating, but Kinesics "provides a dice pool bonus to social checks" (not guaranteed to be an exact quote, I do not have the books here). Assuming that Tailored Pheromones 3 also "provides a dice pool bonus to social checks" then theoretically that also stacks?

So in context, you have Attribute 8 (Cha) plus skill rating 9 (6 for actual skillpoints and 3 for Improved Con) plus 6 miscellaneous modifiers (3 from Kinesics and 3 from Tailored Pheremones). None of the modifying sources can provide more than 3 dice each for a rating 6 skill.

Or, does Improved Con 3 modify your skill rating to 9? Meaning Improved Con can only go to 3 (cap on augmented skill rating), but Kinesics before it was hard capped could in theory be 4 (or 5 if rounding up)?

Apologies for all the questions, but I think our group need to know these things so we can properly audit our characters (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
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HunterHerne
post Sep 27 2011, 02:33 PM
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QUOTE (NumptyScrub @ Sep 27 2011, 10:28 AM) *
So you can have Improved Con 3 (skill at rating 6), and Kinesics 3 and they should stack, as Improved Con would count as augmenting the skill rating, but Kinesics "provides a dice pool bonus to social checks" (not guaranteed to be an exact quote, I do not have the books here). Assuming that Tailored Pheromones 3 also "provides a dice pool bonus to social checks" then theoretically that also stacks?

So in context, you have Attribute 8 (Cha) plus skill rating 9 (6 for actual skillpoints and 3 for Improved Con) plus 6 miscellaneous modifiers (3 from Kinesics and 3 from Tailored Pheremones). None of the modifying sources can provide more than 3 dice each for a rating 6 skill.

Or, does Improved Con 3 modify your skill rating to 9? Meaning Improved Con can only go to 3 (cap on augmented skill rating), but Kinesics before it was hard capped could in theory be 4 (or 5 if rounding up)?

Apologies for all the questions, but I think our group need to know these things so we can properly audit our characters (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)


The dice pool of 23 from the various maxed attributes, skills, wares, and powers is correct. It's stupid easy to get some skills exceptionally high, and GM's should feel free to do the same with NPC's, where appropriate. Also, keep in mind the Social modifiers table, as that can raise, or, more likely, dwindle, the social pool dramatically.
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Yerameyahu
post Sep 27 2011, 02:54 PM
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Yes. Very few things are actually 'direct skill increases'. Adept Improved, Reflex Recorder… is that all? Everything else is DP mods, and those aren't subject to the augmented (1.5x). DP mods have an optional (and usually pointless) cap at 20 and/or (Stat+Skill)*2, or at least *social* DPs do.
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HunterHerne
post Sep 27 2011, 03:14 PM
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QUOTE (Yerameyahu @ Sep 27 2011, 10:54 AM) *
Yes. Very few things are actually 'direct skill increases'. Adept Improved, Reflex Recorder… is that all? Everything else is DP mods, and those aren't subject to the augmented (1.5x). DP mods have an optional (and usually pointless) cap at 20 and/or (Stat+Skill)*2, or at least *social* DPs do.


There are some qualities in Runner's Companion that run off the Augmented Skill maximums, but other then that, no, there isn't. Too bad, it would have been better to make those more common, maybe. Or at least, it would change the flavour of how the character was doing it.
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Mardrax
post Sep 27 2011, 03:34 PM
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QUOTE (HunterHerne @ Sep 27 2011, 05:14 PM) *
There are some qualities in Runner's Companion that run off the Augmented Skill maximums, but other then that, no, there isn't.

From memory at least School of Hard Knocks and Linguist.

Ascaphalus: the quote you're loking for is this:
QUOTE (SR4A pg 68)
Some implants and magic, as noted in their descriptions, may increase the actual skill, creating a modified skill rating, whereas others may simply provide bonus dice to the test (and do not affect the base rating at all). Note that the modified rating is used when calculating costs to improve the skill. The maximum modified rating allowed is 1.5 times the natural rating (making 9 the maximum achievable, or 10 with the Aptitude quality).
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Yerameyahu
post Sep 27 2011, 03:40 PM
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I agree: it's weird to have a whole mechanic that is almost never used.
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Ascalaphus
post Sep 27 2011, 03:53 PM
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QUOTE (Mardrax @ Sep 27 2011, 04:34 PM) *
From memory at least School of Hard Knocks and Linguist.

Ascaphalus: the quote you're loking for is this:


Yeah, I'd already found it, although it took me quite a while.

Curiously, skill improvement costs are related to the modified skill rating, while Attribute improvements seem to count only the base rating for karma costs.
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