Just How Tough?, How many bullets can you eat? Options

[toturi]

With Hardened Armour, it is still almost impossible to break through.

Take a troll for example, ok, the best he can were without penalties is a medium military armour. Quickness 5 + Bioware 3 = 8 If he is wearing a helmet on that armour, you are looking at a base 10 Power

[Tanka]

toturi: Isn't the Max round down? So that would be 7. Nail him with 'ware instead and give him a nice pump up to 9. (Or 10 if you also give him the Suprathyroid.)

It's possible to be a tank, if you don't mind all the social penalties for it. If you've got MilSpec, be prepared for the Star to be on your ass 24/7. If somebody says "Yeah, the guy had MilSpec!" Guess who's gonna be at your door?

Alternatively, there's (if you can afford it) going full-body replacement. You can get quite a bit of extra armor from that. Currently, a forum game I'm in, the GM is allowing me to play a Cyberzombie (yes, you read that right). He currently has 11/10 when he's naked, and 19/15 when he's fully-clothed. Said GM interprets that cyber-replacement armor is dermal and doesn't count towards calculating the most you can wear from Quickness. Body 11, so can take most rounds with no problem.

Now, most people never get to play Cyberzombies (hell, most never see them), or can get the funding to successfully get alphaware replacements (so you're still alive, if barely), let alone all the armor upgrades.

Not to mention that, for most purposes, cyberlimbs suck ass.

[Bane]

Just of of curiousity, *cough* because I would never actually do this *cough*, what do you guys calculate the max starting body to be?

A friend and I got it up to 28. Just wondering what you all have come up with.

[Botch]

I got 33 with NSRCG. Apparently "Fluffy" got 34, saw it in a thread somewhere, seemed kosher enough at the time.

[GrinderTheTroll]

[Tanka]

Burn enough points for being a Troll Adept (metavariant, perhaps) (putting every ounce of Adept Power into increasing Body), add some Cyber and Bio, cast a few spells and have them Tattooed... You can get up there pretty well. I'd run the numbers, but that isn't really the point of this thread.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Remember the Racial Max limit, which you can't get higher than, I think 20 for a legal starting character without ghouls, surge or genetech (RAM 13 for an ExceptBody Cyclops, 20 RacMax). There's not a whole lot you can do to get higher than that -- Dermal Sheath and Bone Lacing are the only permanent ones and then there's AttrBoostBOD for 6 (or maybe a few more if your GM allows initiation).

Spells to inrease BOD won't work at that point, because the TN will be insane.

[Tanka]

They work based on principle that, AFAIK, you don't roll at chargen except for things that need it, like if you start with Combat Sense or somesuch. Granted, I could be dead wrong, but I'm willing to live with that assumption at this point.

Edit: Heh, wait, +Bod spells are based on successes as to how much + you get... Right, wrong Edition! *vamoose*

[Wounded Ronin]

I think the best policy as a new player is to avoid trying to macho out of heavy weapons fire. I mean, if you are inexperienced and misappropriate your combat pool you could still be screwed.

My advice always is treat it like you would real life. Basically, no one would ever stand there smiling and let someone open up on them with a .45 even if they did have very good armor. It's just not a smart thing to do, even if you are almost certain that the .45 round will be completely stopped by your armor.

[KarmaInferno]

How about cyber armor? Remember it stacks with any other armor.

"I have enough onboard armor to shrug off anti-tank ammo."

"So, any downsides?"

"I can't move. Plus, uh... I gotta go to the bathroom. Gimme a hand? Hello?"


-karma

[Zeel De Mort]

We all know how to do this, but just as a distraction here's a high body at creation effort:


Troll
Exceptional Body
Phenotypic Alteration (Body)

Gives you base body of 13(20)

Then factor in...

Toughness +1
Suprathyroid +1
Calcitonin Synthesis +1
Titanium Bone Lacing +2
Dermal Sheath 3 +4
2x Full Cyberlegs +2

For 24 body on damage resistance. All legal at creation as far as I can tell. All availability 8 or less, and I don't see any mention of gene tech needing a beta-equivalent clinic or the like.

You could make him an adept too, but with all that stuff installed he'd have magic 0 anyway, and if you started taking it out to get power points I'd wager you'll end up at about the same figure, or worse.


Hmm technically you could only start with your body at 12 if you go by some people's interpretation of the rules, which I don't. :)

Anyway, 24 isn't bad I guess. Spend a LOT of karma and you can get that up to 31.


Completely silly of course. You're better off taking a more practical character (like an Ork, Human or Elf) and bolstering him up. You can still get well into the teens for bod that way AND fit in cars and have a good combat pool, initiative, quickness (for all that armour) etc.

[GenoSicK]

A friend of mine tried this afternoon, and he went to 35.
If I remember : troll, adept, cyber, and egdes.
something like expetionnal attribute, toughness, surge dermal deposit, 6 point with adept, some point over the racial modified attribute still with adepte some implants, and I forget somethin I think... Can't remember what though... :cyber:

[Zeel De Mort]

Well yeah, as I say cyber and bio will mess up your magic a bit, but maybe you can squeeze another point or two out that way. SURGE would work too I guess, although I'm not that keen on it and more importantly I don't have the rules for it!

[GenoSicK]

Not only 2pts, geas are for something, don't they ? :D

[Cain]

Hm, let me fire up NSRCG and see what I can do...

Troll adept changeling, made with 125 pts:

Stats:
Max Body: 11
Bonus Attribute: Body: +1
Toughness: +1
SURGE: Dermal Deposits: +1

Augmentations:
Alpha Titanium bone lacing: +2
Alpha Dermal sheathing: +4
Suprathyroid: +1
Calciotonin: +1

Magic:
geas 5 points of magic loss.
Add Imp. Body x 6: +6

Total: 19/28.

Now, even on a less munched-out troll, I find the dermal sheathing to be serious overkill. Orthoskin is a much better buy. My stock troll archetype generally has about 16 body dice to soak with, and that's plenty-- with the aid of a helmet and a riot shield, he soaked a full-auto blast.

[Kagetenshi]

Wow. With enough karma pool, that troll might even survive ebola-plus.

~J

[Zeel De Mort]

Hmm, good points.

Revamp:


Troll
Exceptional Body
Phenotypic Alteration (Body)

Gives you base body of 13(20)

Then factor in...

Toughness +1
Suprathyroid +1
Calcitonin Synthesis +1
Titanium Bone Lacing(alpha) +2
Dermal Sheath(alpha) 3 +4
2x Full Cyberlegs(alpha) +2
Be a Ghoul +2
SURGE: Dermal Deposits: +1

I don't have the rules for SURGE, but I'm guessing Dermal Deposits is +1 on damage resistance and compatible with everything.


Be an adept too and take 8 points of Improved Body with geas to make it cost 6, then other geas on 6 points of magic lost.

Eh, where are we then..

35 body

I guess that's getting pretty decent.


Add in Genetic Immunisation (Ebola Plus) and you can survive that too!

[Kanada Ten]

You cannot geas all six points of Magic Attribute: once the actual Magic Attribute reaches zero the character in mundane. Secondly, adepts cannot have more levels of a power than their magic attribute regardless of the cost. In theory you could initiate twice at chargen if the GM approves (costing a great deal of money), but by canon adepts cannot purchase the spell points required to do so.

[Tanka]

[Kanada Ten]

Once the game starts they aquire karma as normal. I allow spell points to be purchased by adepts for the purpose of bonding foci, as do many GMs, but as for initation...

[Tanka]

Yes, that I understand. You'd also have to disallow other magically-active types from initiating to be fair.

But for not buying any spell points for use of bonding foci at all is little more than ridiculous.

"Here, these things were virtually designed for you, but you can't ever, ever, ever have them at chargen! Have a nice day."

[toturi]

[Zeel De Mort]

Hmm good point with the geas and power limits. All that cyberware unfortunately comes to 5.08 essence. Well, you could tone down the bone lacing and geas 5 points of magic then.

[Kagetenshi]

[Joker9125]

Using starting character rules I made a troll mage with like 17 points of balistic and 15 points of impact. and a 16 body to. Caint quite remember all the stuff i did to him but ill post his cheesiness when i get back to my dorm