So I've been hearing that mystic adepts are generally pretty hard to play and that newbies are better off sticking to adepts or magicians. I was just wondering if this build was viable? The magic is split 50/50. Obviously the aim is a very combat oriented Troll Tank.

Can Or'zet really be somebody's native language? Isn't it kinda incomplete?

I would suggest either trading the weapon focus for a sustaining focus, otherwise you'll be losing 2 dice to all your rolls when you have your reflexes boosted, OR skip the spell altogether and get some reflex enhancing cyberware. There are some things that technology does better than magic, and making you faster is one of them. If you want a spell to start with, look into Armor. Nothing like a few points of free armor to go nicely with your already huge Body.

I'd have no problem with Or'zet being a native language. As far as I can tell it's meant to be a rediscovered language like Sperethial, and so is complete.

I would be concerend that you're sinking a lot of BPs into the weapon focus, but I guess buying one after character creation will take a while what with saving up all that nuyen. I would be inclined to pick up a few more spells, as they can be dead handy, although with only an active magic rating of 2 you are somewhat restricted.

As I've mentioned before, I don't consider dodging to be a legitimate specialisation of gymnastics, but that's up to your GM. I would be interested to hear his backstory to explain why he is so very, very good with an axe, and why he happens to be so very weak around water (reminds me of Unbreakable).

That's your only concern?

I only glanced at it. I remember seeing a lot of specializations, and those negative qualitites.

I missed those incompetencies...

Also, the difference between blood and seawater isn't very much... Does he swell up if you bleed on him?

Remember that Diving/Swimming checks are used when you want to hold your breath.

Good point. Not only does incompetent swimming/diving = instant drowing in a pool because you can't tread water or hold your breath, you wouldn't even be able to hold your breath in situations of heavy smoke or noxious gas.

See, this causes problems. Players who do this say "Yeah, and I'm fully prepared for the consequences", and GMs who see this say "OK, that's going to bite you in the curlies one day".

A good negative quality makes things harder for the player, yet lets him pull through even more dramatically in the end.

A bad negative quality makes the GM fret whether to invoke it and cause instant death, or let the player ride. Chances are their next character will be just as obnoxious, and that means a whole new round of arguing over a broken build...

[An addendum:

Characters like this can't even handle themselves on a short solo trip, which I consider to be a critical difference between Shadowrun and That Other Game. You're *people* in a *modern world*. It's expected that you could find the local supermarket if you were sitting on it, and buy groceries without blowing up a cashier or something.

"OK, in the firefight as you're leaving the premises, you seem to have been separated from the group. You've got no wheels, you're carrying a hot weapon and your mug was just handed over to the Star. Your buddies comms are off; they must by lying low already. It's 2am, and you're in the middle of Downtown. What do you do?"

That kind of thing is supposed to be fun, you spotlight a character out of their element and they feel much better for pulling through it.

With runners like this, that's a few "HOW many dice?" statements followed by a shallow grave. This isn't me being an evil GM, this is me wanting to be a diverse GM.]

Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one concerned with this build.

Thanks for that addendum Narmio. That's worth printing up and slipping into your players books in the char gen section.

I would agree with Narmio. Negative qualities shouldn't force the GM to choose between metagaming to keep your character alive or instantly killing him.

Also, why does an axe-wielding gladiator have a mentor spirit associated with healing? Yeah, the two extra damage-soaking dice are nice and all, but I'm having a hard time seeing this character as having the Bear mentor spirit. You could (barely) justify a combat-focused character with this mentor spirit because of the protector aspect, but this guy is a gladiator, so I'm really not seeing it.


Otherwise, botched min-maxing. Yes, you're a tank. But not only do you have a Charisma and Logic of 1, no social skills, and no perception, but you also lack multiple IPs, and even a ranged attack. And you can't take a combat axe everywhere with you - without one, you aren't even that good at close combat. I really would go back and re-work this guy. It's fine if combat is your thing, and your guy just sits there during the meet, if that's the aspect of the game that you enjoy. But this guy will be bored even during combat! Everyone else will be taking extra actions after you are done for the round, and an axe isn't as effective when everyone else is shooting bullets.

Oh, just noticed something. You have 285 listed for Attributes, but you have actually only spent 275. The rest of your math looks good.

Thanks for the comments. Is it obvious I've never played before?

OK, so let me see if I can give some suggestions for you to have more fun first game.

First, what to get rid of:
- Drop the Incompetent flaws, they're the bit which is over the top.
- Drop the Mystic side of your Mystic Adeptness, you're spending too many points on what is really negligable benefit.
- Drop Strength to 6, Will to 4, and get Logic and Charisma to 2 each.
- Drop the weapon focus. There are so many occasions where you won't be able to use a combat axe that it just isn't worth it.

Now, what you need:
- Either drop some cyberware and spend the cash to get Synaptic Boosters or drop all the cyberware and spend the essence to get Adept Increased Reflexes.
- Be prepared to use whatever weapon suits the circumstances, get a range of blades and maybe ditch the axes spec.
- Pick up some Perception, it will save your arse daily.
- Please, please, please learn how to fire a gun. In a world with third storey windows being considered "close", tiny helicopters wth machine guns and opponents with an annoying habit of being many meters away behind cover, expecting to get by on melee combat is insane. This isn't The Other Game. A good starting point is the Ruger Super Warhawk. Cheap, easy, effective and very trollish.


Did I miss anything? In all honesty I should tell you to ditch the spellcasting, ditch the cyber, ditch the sixth point of magic and be a Magic 5 adept like all the sensible, well-rounded guys, but I don't think you want to play one of those.

Not to mention the difference it makes when fighting spirits. The weapon focus is one of the few things I would keep, although a combat axe is a pretty obvious weapon which the character won't be able to take many places. My problem was that he focused too much on using a combat axe, with no other decent combat options.

I think the problem is that he tried to buy everything too high. Troll, full points on Attributes, hard-maxed Magic, mystic adept with mentor spirit, and 50 resources. I've taken a similar approach often enough, paring skills down to the bare minimum to max out other things. But the bare minimum of a viable starting set of skills is more around 70-80. 50 simply isn't enough. You need things like perception and etiquette at 1 at least, and you need a ranged weapons skill. Not to mention that two Attributes of 1 like that is really asking for trouble.

I'm afraid the tank... has tanked.

If the axe is paramount to your character you might want to invest some points in regular dodge. Gymnastics -cartwheeling, flips, etc.- is very difficult to do while holding something in your hands. If you're into the gymastic dodge you might want to have "hands-free" melee weapons or weapons that take a free action to (un)wield like forearm snap blades or cyberspurs.

Ya know, it's pretty rare that I run into a melee specialist in SR4 that I can't compete with simply by blowing a point of edge and tagging the poor bugger with a shock hand/gloves or monowhip. Sad thing is you only need a strength score of 1 and handful of bp for either of those AND they're some of the most concealable melee items in the game.

Still, if you really must use strength based weapons, my recommendations are always either Unarmed or a good pair of spurs. Spurs are nice, but they're really not all that special now that their reach bonus has been errata'd away. Unarmed is my personal favorite mostly because it's the ultimate in discretion, and because because trolls are strong and enough to occasionally make good use of the subdual rules when they need to. And heck, just because you have a decent strength score doesn't mean you can't still nail someone with a shock glove/hand if you feel like it.

First off, I said it's rare that I run into a melee specialist that can't be put down with a monowhip and shock glove, not that it never happens. Note that Troll adepts with a skill rating of 6 plus 8 body probably qualify as pretty rare. Also, there's a bunch of mistakes in your example, no offense. A monowhip has a reach of 2, so the troll will only benefit from a reach bonus of 1 for being a troll. A force 2 weapon focus does not add two damage, it adds 2 to dice to your pool for melee attacks and allows you to harm beings which are Immune to Normal weapons (which yes, means that a strict reading of the rules means that a weapon focus cannot help you defend ). You've also shortchanged your troll in a number of areas: He should be defending with more dice, he has natural armor, etc, etc. It kind of balances out though since you arbitrarily gave the Samurai a piddly 2 skill rating with a monowhip, which is silly considering that it's easy to have one at rating 4 when you don't have to blow bp and karma on strength, the most gimptacular stat in the game. The samurai wouldn't even necessarily need points in dodge because as much as people cry about it not making much sense, there's nothing out there saying you can't defend via exotic melee skill, even with a monowhip.

Anyway, the troll can and should win, but the sad thing is that is only because of his Body dice and a weapon focus, not because of any inherent advantage in a strength based weapons, since you need at least 10 strength to reach the same damage code as a monowhip with a combat axe, and you STILL end up with inferior AP. Really, the only thing a combat axe has over a monowhip is the simple fact that you can specialize with it. We've only established a couple of things here: Strength based melee weapons suck because they require more work for similar results, and that trolls can take more damage than other characters. Which was really about all I was trying to make clear with my original post to begin with. The best melee specialist character I've seen so far has been a troll adept who blew off buffing strength in order to preserve essence and to have enough skills to actually survive long enough to get into melee range. His body score and monowhip did the rest.