Shiva Arms: Practical or Just Fun? Options

[maine75man]

I've always had a thing for characters with extra arms. Don't know why but I do. My question is are there any good way's to build a character around the Shiva Arms meta-quality in 4E.

[UmaroVI]

Hmm, here's an interesting one: how about a melee-based six-armed character? The Evo Kali cyberarm optimization gives a +1 bonus to Blades test per modified arm. Now, six cyberarms is most of your essence, but I think you could make it work.

TacNet and Specialization still apply to melee; no Red Dot Sight cheese or Tracers, though. Synch still applies.

Personalized Grip only adds to that weapon, but at least you can get one each for a +1 to each attack.

Being a Troll and using base reach 1 weapons would get you another +2 per attack.

It would take some serious work to get six cyberarms and still have a way to get even a second IP, but I think you could reasonably get a base pool of 12, split to 2, +6 for Evo Kali, +5 for TacNet, +2 for Specialization, +1 for Personalized Grip, +2 Reach. That's 18 dice per blade, not half bad; there's a variety of ways to pump your damage per hit through the roof, so you could quite reasonably be a crazy murder machine.

[Raiki]

Hmm, here's an interesting one: how about a melee-based six-armed character? The Evo Kali cyberarm optimization gives a +1 bonus to Blades test per modified arm. Now, six cyberarms is most of your essence, but I think you could make it work.

TacNet and Specialization still apply to melee; no Red Dot Sight cheese or Tracers, though. Synch still applies.

Personalized Grip only adds to that weapon, but at least you can get one each for a +1 to each attack.

Being a Troll and using base reach 1 weapons would get you another +2 per attack.

It would take some serious work to get six cyberarms and still have a way to get even a second IP, but I think you could reasonably get a base pool of 12, split to 2, +6 for Evo Kali, +5 for TacNet, +2 for Specialization, +1 for Personalized Grip, +2 Reach. That's 18 dice per blade, not half bad; there's a variety of ways to pump your damage per hit through the roof, so you could quite reasonably be a crazy murder machine.

I officially love this(!), and I'll work on a build to see if I can make it work as soon as I get some free time. I'll post my results here, if you're interested.