Here is the first run thru on a pc who, sneaks around and perceives things. aka spotter



Not looking for a min/maxer but for issues with the design or equipment, or anything I might have left out

TIA

Edited out astral chameleon and added the last to biowares.

Edited skill list, added Athletics group, increased and decreased other skills.
Added Synthacardium 2

Edited included SINer(criminal) and increased Intuition to a 4

Increased Intuition to a 5
Removed some skills and reduce/specialized others, added Electronics Group
Removed reflex recorder for perception(just do not feel they should work together)
Added another level to Synthacardium bringing it to a 3.
Removed Sequencer Rating 4 and Ares Viper IV
Added Electronic Tool Kit, 20 uses Neurostun, Ares SuperSquirt, Medkit 6
Increased BK:cooking, cuisine and electronics to 4's
Added BK:Stealth and Thrown Weapons

WearzManySkins

I'd strongly suggest looking into shaving some points and dropping climbing and dodge in favor of taking the Athletics skill group and some Synthacardium. Between your blades skill and gymnastics, you'd still be able to use full defense quite effectively even without dodge, and it'd make you a much better all around athlete. Gymnastics covers feats of balance and breakfalling techniques as well as just jumping around, so it's a definite plus if you're going to be spending any time crawling around high places. Plus, it pays to be well practiced in the ancient art of run-fu, perhaps the greatest of self-defense techniques

Aptitude is 10 points and only applies to Perception.
Since Disguise and some other stealth skills share the use of Intuition with Perception, I'd focus more on Perception.
Strength only adds into a few skills. If you want those high its probably more point-efficient to buy up the skill not the STR.

Also, I count 210 points spent on attributes. Normally the max is 200 unless its a 500 point character.

Why get Astral Chameleon? Doesn't that merely modify astral signatures left when you use magic on a person/object?

What level is your Stealth Group at?

All in all looks like a good general purpose character. Not highpowered, but shave points to get Edge up to 6 and this character could be a jack of all trades when it really really counts.

He's not eligible for Astral Chameleon anyways.

What race is this?

reflex recorder for perception? I think not...

Oh, I didn't say, but the concept of a recon oriented character is quite nice. I would also have focused more points into Intuition.

Cheers,

Max

I'd max out disadvantages with whatever ones make you happy. Thats an extra stat point in intuition.

A Mnemonic Enhancer aids in remembering what you saw with a perception roll as well as adding dice to any knowledge skill you use even knowsofts. Photographic memory even further aids memory tests.

Here is the write up for his background....SINer(Criminal maybe?)

He is 5'6" in height, 165 pounds in weight.

Royce is a average looking guy, brown hair medium length, brown eyes, light tan. Could pass for a light skinned Hispanic, Caucasian, or Amerindian.

His clothes are in good repair, not new nor worn old. Tends to wear slightly tinted sunglasses.

Where ever he goes he seems to be very in touch with his surroundings. His eyes seem to in constant movement and he seems to have more head movements than most.

Background, Royce grew up in Texas near Paris, Texas. He parents had a rural farm/business out away from town. He has one older brother and two older sisters.

Attended high school in Paris, and attended three years at Texas A&M University.

Seems while he was attending college he fell into a different crowd of students. He first began exploring the various tunnels underneath the university there.

He got a reputation for being able to warn his fellow tunnel explorers of those trying to catch them. It is illegal for students to be in those tunnels.

Thru other tunnel explorers, he met up with various groups conducting a low key campaign against Aztlan, who had invaded Texas years ago.

Names like Sons of Texas, Corps of Liberty, and The Fallen of the Alamo have been associated with his name. Of those various groups it seems there are some well financed backers of their activities.

He made many ventures across the battle lines/borders in the Aztlan territory.

His ability to spot things became more developed, the various groups backers offered up some perks to improve his skills in that area.

Once he had his perks installed, he became even more useful to the various groups in their activities against the invaders.

He learned to speak Spanish and to pass as a Hispanic.

His ventures took him as far as Corpus Christi, San Antonio and El Paso.

During his last venture into Aztlan territory, in El Paso, he was able to overheard a conversation between a Aztlan Intelligence Colonel and a operative. Seems the operative was discussing the Corps of Liberty activities and of Royce's role with that group. He recognized the operatives voice, as someone who he had worked with many times.

After the operative left the presence of the Aztlan Intelligence Colonel, Royce followed him to his resting place. Once there Royce, reported it to those in the Corps of Liberty. He then watched and waited. He was able to record all of the activities of the operative until others arrive to deal with the traitor operative.

He made his way back into Texas and CAS. Once there he decided that he had been burned for any activities in the Aztlan territories. He various groups he worked with agreed, but extended an offer to take up his services at some later time.

Hate to crash your party, and I love your character, but Im pretty sure you way overspent, Im counting 210BP on attributes, 192BP on skills, 10CP on contacts (14-Chax2), and +5BP on qualities. Now before even paying for Resources (which I see you have a lot of), you are already 7BP over. Are there anyhouse BP rules to explain this or will we have to start helping you min-max

Okay Im sorry about that, I thought you were paying for the attribute at 5, this makes more sense.

The spreadsheet is wrong about qualities cost.

Aptitude(Perception) 10
Blandness 10
Addition Mild(Alcohol) +5
Allergy(Uncommon, Severe)Gold +15
Scorched +5

Which ends up at +/- 5 depending on whether you count up or down from 400.

EDIT:
Also, I think it is charging too much for contacts

Bleu Dog (Fixer) 3/3 |6|
Cookie(Chef/Food Expert 3/5 |8|

6+8 = 14, 14-4(Cha x 2) = 10BP

Aptitude is usually worthless, more so if you do not max out the skill it is linked to. I suggest removing said quality and bumping up intuition to 5 with those points, which amongst other things will add 1 to your perception checks. Nice concept, by the way .

...I must concur, definitely a neat idea, and could be a very useful member of a runner team. My only misgiving is the 1 IP (of course this kinda works with his street handle). I would have at least take Wired or Synaptic 1. Yes he may not be a primary combatant but if caught in the open against someone who is boosted, he will be a sitting duck unless he dives for cover on his first and only IP.

I always believed Perception to be incredibly important (& all my characters have at least a couple levels + some enhancement (implanted or worn). It can be the difference between the team being "at the ready" or walking into an surprise situation unawares.

I would have opted for taking the Electronics Group at 4. This would increase both his data search and Computer skill (which figure into the pools of his Browse and Analyze programmes). I would also look at a few more of the Common Use programmes such as Edit (useful if he wishes to use Nanopaste disguises), and Scan (useful for knowing who else is out there even when you are not a hacker). Since he has two Ranged Combat related skills he could ditch the Throwing Weapons skill and apply the 12 BPs to the cost of the skill group. After the character enters play, he can improve the individual skills independently with Karma The only downside I see to this is that since Sloe is not a hacker, he has kind of a useless skill in Software at 4.

(Personally, my take is that the Software skill should have been included in the Cracking Group & Electronics Warfare skill in Electronics Group since the EW also comes into play when using non-matrix based surveillance countermeasures.

You could also drop the First aid skill (pretty useless at rating 1 as you can only heal as many damage blocks as you have rating in the skill). This would free up another 4 BPs that could go to your Electronic Warfare, or Automatics skill or purchasing a couple specialisations.

With Hardware and Logic, you don't need the sequencer for it doesn't add to the dice pool as the autopicker does to Lockpicking (p227).

With the change to Flechette damage in the FAQ release, I would drop the Ares Viper in favour of something like a Hammerli 650 or Fichetti Security loaded with Stick & Shock rounds. In the scenario I ran last night, S&S proved to be very effective in taking down targets since it cuts the Impact armour value by half & has an extra side effect. Since he has Automatics skill he has access to other weapons with burst fire capability including machine pistols.

I also agree with Nostalgic Jester on the Aptitude quality. Since Sloe only has 160 BPs applied to attributes it would be better spent on raising Intuition to 5 (which would also add 3 to the Knowledge skill pool and add +1 to his Initiative).

Many minds processing the same data can come up with wonderful new ideas. I too had never thought that reflex recorders could be used for the Perception skill. Cool.

The concepts behind this character is that he can be in a bar and be able to overhear/record conversations at a nearby table, even though those at the nearby table have a white noise generator running. He could be the quiet drunk at the bar or slumped over at a nearby table.

He was designed to be a sneaking, eavesdropping peeping tom with both audio and visual recording abilities.

As for his normal tactics when combat happens, if he gets the "chance" he will start using his smoke, thermal, flashpak etc grenades. Use of such types of grenades will level the playing field so to speak, the fastest initiative, still has low chance of hitting something he can not see.

As for the opposition using ultrasound, well that is what the area jammer is for. I have a plan to have the area jammer linked to the "electronics" carried on him so he can reduce the effects of his own area jammer, so when he uses it, it screws over the opposition more than it does himself.

But having been in many games where some of those who threw grenades and did not have "any" skill in doing so, made things very fun for the GM and "interesting" for the rest of the party. So I will keep the Thrown Weapons skill but will tweek the skill with specialization in grenades. Also grenade launchers have a minimum range so dropping them near oneself is impossible. So I do not see him have Heavy Weapons skill.

Being the "normal" looking being, most of the time the opposition is seeking out the Trolls(Thug Bunnies) and or Mages. So unless he makes himself obnoxious he "should" not be high on the oppositions list of who to shoot/cast on first.

I will keep the aptitude ability for perception, if and when he ever gets to a 7 in perception... things will be interesting to say the least.

I will remove First Aide and see about reshuffling some skills and seeing how much I can get Electronics group too.

I have played under several "hard arsed" GM's, most of them did not use "linear" adventure runs, so if we the players found a way, achieve the objective with out large amounts of violence, we did not get penalized.

We did have one GM who tried using "linear" adventures against us, he gave up on "linears" after almost every time we short circuited his plans. but he found out that having players like our selves made things for him also.

I have found in game play and from in RL if one goes somewhere expecting a "fight" one usually gets what they expect. So when I play a "recon" character I usually carry a knife, no not a great axe, but just a knife, into most recons. Why you ask, if all you have is a knife and the opposition you are trying to sneak around has firearms, you tend to think very carefully about your actions, since you know if a fire fight breaks out, you will more than likely get body bagged.

The sequencer is fairly cheap, but look again at that.

The viper slivergun is silent naturally, but I have yet to have read thru the FAQ on Flechette damage. Will read thru it and make changes needed.

As for reflex recorders being used to aide in perception, but that is the way I read the rules in the book. Yes that abit of a "rules lawyer" coming out, but rules evolve due to such "rules lawyering" attempts like the one with reflex recorders.

Thanks to all for their suggestions/comments.

...my bad on the throwing skill. Missed seeing the Grenades on the bottom of the gear list. One thing, with thrown grenades they go off on the thrower's next IP or end of the combat turn whichever comes first. This would still give a quicker character time to react before it detonates (as my character Hurricane Hannah unfortunately found out).

I can see the thing about the GL minimum range, but again, if the oppos get a chance to fire back before the grenade goes off, the character could be in a world of hurt since he already used his IP.

In earlier editions of SR Demolitions skill covered a wider variety of situations allowing the character to also rig grenades to explode as he or she saw fit. In the SR4 description of the skill it only seems to cover determining the amount of explosive needed and placement for maximum effect.

one runner i was going a run with taped a thermal smoke grenade to the back of his bike when trying to get away once via/ gecko gloves, which made the people in the pursuing car crash when they failed their perception check to see the building in front of them.

Hey ManySkins can you post a run log when you get this guy going, he looks like he'd be fun to watch. I'd suggest skillwires to get more skills but it might not fit your style, concept, or essence remaining. I like skillwires because they give you instant mad skills. Which is nice in a pinch.

You should put the ultrasound sensor in your eyes to save some essense, since you still have capacity left (I didn't think an ultrasound sensor could go in cybereyes, until someone else on the board pointed out that the bounty hunter archetype had it that way).

I'm of the opinion that if you can put said enhancement on contacts, and it has a capacity rating, then you can put it in cybereyes.

It has a capacity of 2. For a cybereye, that actually seems a bit low - I mean, that seems more like a capactity rating meant for cyberlimbs (which is what they are talking about when they discuss capactity ratings for headware). They did have ultrasound mods for cybereyes in SR3, but they had more of an Essense cost. On the other hand, senseware in general seems to have become a lot more compact in SR4. And one of the archetypes has it - but WearzManySkins is right that the archetypes are not exactly bastions of rules accuracy.

I guess in the end, it will probably come down to WearzManySkins' GM's call. But I would run it by him, at least - if he rules in favor of it, you've saved 0.3 Essense.

You do not need to buy the Hardware skill, it is included in the Electronics Group and you bought it at rating 4. If you really want a Perception of 7 buy it now! Even though I think it is not worth the 18 BP that you have to pay for a rather small benefit, it is going to be worse later: once the game gets started, you will have already paid 10 BP for nothing until you pay the 28 karma to raise said skill...

The capacity is listed as 2, as for that being small the thing can fit on a pair of contacts so I don't really have a problem with it going in a set of cybereyes.

...the Super Squirt is a nice addition. Quiet and effective.

I usually use Narcojet. since it is already a liquid compound. Neurostun is described as a gas.

The medikit works better since it's healing cap is it's rating. I believe you can still default with Logic which will add 4 dice to the pool.

The changes to his skills are pretty good. Actually in the book if you look at Pistols Skill, the specialisations are broken down by type instead of specific brands of weapons. I would make the Specialisation Semi Automatics which would cover all SA pistols.

BTW with with a 3 Reaction and 5 intuition, his initiative should be 8 instead of 6.

The only other thing lacking is a bit of social skill If you can squeeze the points from somewhere I would take Etiquette 2 (Street) just so he knows his way around without risking a social gaffe and can work with his contacts better.

Pepper Punch is SICK its so effective. Its not a narvojet replacement but its well worth looking at!

Very nice now that I spent all the nyen.

Will have to find some IG then it seems.

Thanks