[SR5]Building a versatile Mystic Adept Options

[Elfenlied]

For an upcoming game, I want to play a generalist Mystic Adept. The concept is a former Tir Tairngire soldier who, after a dishonorable discharge fled to Seattle and is running errands for the Ancients gang and going on runs.

The following rulings are in place:
-850 Karma Karmagen. I'm roughly 20-30 Karma and 100k in gear behind the rest of the group, and I will not advance at a faster rate to catch up, so I'm aiming for a high degree of optimization to compensate.

-Module is the Harlequin campaign. I'm joining this game midway through when the group is abroad, and will not be able to bring any gear not fitting in a backpack with me. In return, we get some generic gear on site. Current job is to infiltrate some German Troll Baron's estate.

-Geneware has been okay'd for Prototype Transhuman.

-Game is on the Pink Mohawk side. Gratuitous amounts of violence is to be expected.

Here is the sheet

I'm trying to aim for utility and viability in social and combat situations, accomplished through spellcasting, summoning and the ability to sweet talk people. I'm using the Traditional Black Magic variant from Forbidden Arcana.

Things I'm considering:

1. Switch to a Logic or Intuition based tradition and use a Cerebral/Cerebrellum booster. I have no idea how useful social skills are in this module, and if they happen to be rarely useful, making the switch could be helpful.

2. Ditching Sharpshooter in favor of a mentor spirit. My pool for shooting is fairly low, going to 16-18 with good rolls. Ruleswise, I'd want something that boosts fire spirits, but that doesn't seem to exist. Flavor wise, any martial or honorable mentor could fit.

3. Switching from automatics to longarms. I really like both shotguns and sniper rifles, and concealability is a non-issue due to combat spells. I could still carry a gun for show.

Any advice is appreciated!

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Ahhhh... Baron Munchmausen...
Fond Memories... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Tecumseh]

Social skills are useful in Harlequin. Maybe not as useful as combat skills, but Social skills will definitely help with legwork.

There is a memorable scene halfway through the campaign that I won't spoil, partly because it can be a big shock and partly because it's optional; it's possible that your PC won't encounter it. I will say that a high Charisma might be valuable for Composure tests.

If you're debating on the Logic vs. Charisma approach, it would be helpful to know what other roles are filled on the team. Is there a gap for one or the other? I ask because your Social skills are on the low side but you've obviously invested a lot of your power points in Authoritative Tone, which suggests that you expect some use out of your Social skills.

You've put a lot of skillpoints into Automatics. Is there a reason you didn't want those in Spellcasting or Summoning instead? Usually when I am playing magicians, I use Spellcasting to kill things, and Suppressive Fire when I don't want to look like a magician (or don't want to risk more drain). Speaking of suppressive fire, you might want flechette ammunition to take advantage of Flechette Suppressive Fire from Run & Gun. It's effective.

On that note, Sharpshooter is a good quality for folks with a huge dice pool for shooting. For the rest of us, it's generally better to strip away the opponent's dodge pool through burst fire. I would definitely go with a Mentor Spirit instead.

The Ares Alpha is a good gun, regardless, but I'll note that you don't have the Heavy Weapons skill to fire the grenade launcher. You can default but a critical glitch would really suck.

Your spell list is pretty solid. I find Physical Barrier to be underwhelming, personally. I would opt for Magic Fingers, but there are lots of good choices available.

Are you allowed to Initiate? Masking and/or Extended Masking would help conceal the fact that you're a magician. There's a portion of the module where you might not want to be identified as a mage, but again there's no guarantee that you'll need to be involved in that section.

That's a first pass. Let us know who else is on the team and that might help tailor things some more.

[Elfenlied]

The other characters are:
-Medic: Ex-Doc Wagon Extraction Team. Ork Mystic Adept with some ware that is fast and sturdy in combat, favoring the use of capsule rounds and gas grenades with toxins. Has no summoning and some limited spellcasting, mainly for health spells.
-Decker/Rigger: The matrix guy. Started off as a Rigger, then got his hands on a decent deck as part of the rewards. Has the team van, some spy drones and some heavy combat drones with machine guns.
-Combat Mage: A Chaos Mage, focused mainly on killing stuff with combat spells. The only overlap in spells was Improved Invisibility, Physical Mask and Levitate.

There is also a face mage and a streetsam, though both have taken a hiatus from playing and won't return in the foreseeable future.

So, I played the first session with a slightly revised sheet. I went with Longarms instead of Automatics, attempting to fill the sniper role. The choice of using a gun instead of spellcasting for killing things is mostly a choice of style, as I really like to use guns on a character. I opted for a short barreled T-250 and a Remington 950.

Our run had us abroad in Germany/AGS, with limited equipment, so I did not have access to my weapons. I focused on a support role for the run, basically being the planner and group face. The run involved infiltrating the stronghold of a troll baron, stealing a tome and planting the ears of elf posers. We rented a truck on a fake SIN, visited a rival baron and got him to provide us with hardware in return for blowing up part of the target's stronghold.

Next, we did some legwork and scouted out the target, discovering regular shipments of high quality food. Our decker hacked gridlink and diverted the transport, I took out the driver, mind probed and used physical mask to impersonate him. Our medic and combat mage hid in the back of the truck as I drove us into the stronghold, while our rigger waited inside the rented van and had drones in position.

With the driver's memories and some good rolls on a defaulted impersonation test, I drove us inside the stronghold and distracted the guards with smalltalk to allow our combat mage and medic to sneak out under the guise of an invisibility spell. The combat mage used a spirit to search for the tome while they planted the explosives.

They discovered the tome and were detected on the way out, prompting a shootout with the guns. I sent in a F5 Fire Spirit to assist them. Our rigger, meanwhile, discovered a military grade helicopter in the hangar and attempted to hack it, ultimately failing but using his drone to great effect as a distraction. The run ended with our two people inside still working on getting out while my character used the chaos to retreat, being too far away from the action to be of any use.


The first run will yield approximately 50.000 NY, which I plan to spend on 1 month of lifestyle, a high quality sniper rifle (Terracotta Arms or Barret), an automatic shotgun (Auto Assault 16 or Enfield AS-7), some flechette/APDS and a ride (the GMC Phoenix looks nice). The rest will be converted to karma to allow me to initiate. I'm thinking of taking Masking first and then either Centering or Adept centering.