I have three other players coming up, but these two have already created their characters, and I'm wanting some critiques; as we are all new to the system, so I'm not certain where to advise them one way or the other with their creations.

Name: Daener
Metatype: Human
Attributes: B 3, A 5, R 3(5), S 2, C 4, I 3, L 3, W 3, M 5, Edge 3, Ess 6, IP 3
Skills
* Group (Influence) 3
* Group (Stealth) 3
* Pistols (SP: Semiautomatics) 7
* Climbing 1 (SP: Building Scaling)
* Perception 3
* Pilot Groundcraft 1 (SP: Bike)
* Dodge 2
* Hong Kong Triads 1
Qualities: Adept, Ambidextrous, Aptitude (Pistols), Spirit Bane (Spirits of Man)
Powers: Improved Reflexes 2, Kinesics 2, Combat Sense 2
Resources: Commlink (2/3/2/6, IC 4), Contact Lenses (Image Link, Smartlink, Vision Magnification), Sunglasses (Low-light Vision, Thermographic Vision, Flare Compensation), Headphones (Audio Enhancement & Sound Filter 3), Actioneer Business Suit, Armor Jacked (Fire Resistance 1, Insulation 1, helmet included), Chameleon Suit (Thermal Damping 6, Gecko Tape Gloves), 2x Ares Predator IV (4 extra clips, 2 clips of EX-Explosive rounds, Hidden Arm Slight, Silencer), Suzuki Mirage, handful of backup weapons along with a couple pieces of B&E gear
Contacts: Bartender (C4, L3), Fixer (C5, L4), Triad Good (C3, L2)


Name: The Comedian
Metatype: Human
Attributes: B 3, A 2, R 3, S 2, C 3, I 3, L 6(, W 3, Edge 3, Ess 3.9
Qualities: Elf Poser
Skills
* Cybercombat 5 (SP: IC)
* Hacking 5 (SP: Stealth)
* Electronic Warfare 4
* Group (Electronics) 3
* Group (Mechanic) 2
* Armorer 4
* Perception 4
* Etiquette 2 (SP: Hacker)
Resources: Commlink (5/5/5/6, all programs 6), Datajack w/Control Rig & Hot-Sim enabled module, Skillwire 3, Cerebral Booster 2, Cybereyes 4 (Full suite), Skillsofts (Unarmed Combat, Pistols, Dodge, Infiltration, Shadowing), Urban Explorer Jumpsuit w/helmet, Tag Eraser, Directional Jammer, Raecor Sting, Camouflage Suit, Skillsofts (All at 3; Infiltration, Shadowing, Negotiation, Dodge)
Contacts: Blogger (C3, L3)

Name: Herman
Metatype: Dwarf
Attributes: B 4, A 3, R 3, S 4, C 3, I 4, L 5, W 6, Edge 1, Magic 5
Skills
* Group: Conjuring 3
* Astral Combat 2
* Counterspelling 4
* Spellcasting 5
* Assenssing 4
* Perception 2
* Blades 1 (SP: Swords)
* Etiquette 2 (SP: Triad)
* Infiltration 2
Qualities: Magician (Hermetic Tradition), Bad Luck, Sensitive System
Spells (8 total, rest unchosen): Heal, Control Actions, Turn to Goo, Levitate, Improved Reflexes, Combat Sense, Ignite, Physical Barrier
Resources: Monofilament Sword, Armor Jacket, Commlink (3/1/2/4, trodes), Mage Sight Goggles, Magical Lodge 4, Glasses (Optic Magnification, Low Light, Vision Enhancement 3, Flare Compensation, Image Link), Middle Lifestyle (1 month), Camouflage Suit
Contacts: Talismonger (C 3, L 3)

Name: Sam
Stats: As per Smuggler in the Sample Character section, with Pilot (Aircraft) switched for Pilot (Nautical), and Electronic Warfare switched for First Aid.

Name: Hanasuke
Metatype: Troll
Attributes: B 8, A 4 (6), R 3, S 9 (11), C 2, I 3, L 4, W 3
Skills
* Group (Stealth) 3
* Group (Influence) 2
* Group (Electronics) 3
* Blades 5 (SP: Combat Ax)
* Automatics 4 (SP: Assault Rifle)
* Perception 3
Qualities: SINner
Resources: AK-97 (3 flechette clips, 5 regular clips, gas-vent 3, internal smartgun, shockpad), Combat Ax, Camo Suit (Fire Resist & Nonconductivity 6), Contact Lenses (Image Link, Smartlink, Flare compensation), Goggles (Vision enhance 3, vision magnification, low-light)
Cyberware: Internal Commlink (5/5/5/6, datajack, sim module), Ultrasound, Cyberears 2 (Audio Enhance 3, Damper, Select Sound Filter), Wired Reflexes 1, Skillwires 3 (Climbing 1, Cybercombat 3, Hacking 3, Electronic Warfare 3, First Aid 1, Medicine 1, Pilot Aircraft 2, Pistols 1, Armorer 2, Auto Mechanic 2, Industrial Mech 2, Dodge 3), Muscle Augmentation 2, Muscle Toner 2, Platelet Factories, Reflex Recorder (Close Combat)

Where are their Knowledge Skills (other than the HK Triads)? The first guy should have 18 points of Knowledge Skills, and the second should have 27.

Those skills are still somewhat varied right now, as the player for The Comedian hasn't finished choosing his knowledge skills, and Daener's thinking of rearranging some of the points. The HK Triad skill he does have is because he spent all of his points and wanted one more knowledge skill, which he paid BP-out-of-pocket. So, to keep things simple, I'm just leaving that part out until they come to a final decision.

There's also a last minute alteration from the player for Daener, adding a negative quality to boost his Agility to 5.

Added a third player to the mix, a magic using character with a noticeable distaste for reliance on technology for survival after the Second Crash ruined his normal life. He's almost been considering abandoning the commlink, carrying the equivalent of an RFID of his fake SIN & licenses in an anti-wireless wallet, and a credstick for transactions.

Would help if they had a solid concept (or, more correctly, a more solid concept was provided for each). All three of the ones you listed seem to sort of meander around without any real goal as far as their abilities go. What is each one intended to be?

The Comedian is intended to be a hacker with all things technological, both electronic & mechanical.

Herman is supposed to be a mage who loves magic, disdaining technology as a poor substitute.

Daener's a combat expert with pistols, infiltration, & is supposed to be the face.

The Comedian's deck is going to be limiting his programs, he's got a 5/5/5/6 which means his programs will all be running at rating 5 rather than 6.

Comedian could probably use some drones, and piloting skills since he has repair skills and hacking skills.

Every one may want to find some kind of transportation, I doubt every one will fit on Daener's bike.

I'm suprized you're letting the mage get away with Incompetent: hacking. Since he'll obviously never use hacking, why let him get points for never using it?

Well, the rules don't allow characters to have commlinks with Response & Signal to be at 6 at chargen, and Response acts as a cap on what System can be. The Comedian has all of his desired piloting skill in skillwires (forgot to include that, need to find the list).

I just noticed the lack in Daener's equipment list, as he also intended to have a van (the Bulldog I believe).

As for Herman's choice in Incompetent, why would any character (especially from their perspective), set themselves up to be expected to do something they're incapable at? It's like requiring someone who took Incompetent: Pistols to carry around Ares Predators as their only weapon. The same argument can be made for his Sensitive System quality, why give him points if he's never going to buy cyberware?

I'm not entirely sure why they included Incompetent in the game in its current incarnation. It's just free build points in the most cheesy way possible. Examples such as "Incompetent: Heavy Weapons" for pretty much anything except a troll mercenary or something and "Incompetent: Cyber Combat" for a non-hacker. Just... very silly.

It should have been left out completely with the way its written. If it required you to spend build points (say double like Uneducated) on the skill and just be bad at it? That would make it worthy of being a notable negative quality. But making it something you're bad at and not having to worry about it at all? Silly.

Incompetant is a tricky one, but I as a GM usually require it to be taken for something that the character may have to use, but most of the time would be okay with. For example, I'd allow Incompetent:First Aid for a street sam, but not Incompetent: Hacking for a mage with no hacking programs. Then I'd make sure everyone got hurt but the street samurai.

The way you guys want to use the Incompetent, it would be worth WAY more than 5BP. However, for a criminal, the inability to change his mind without extreme effort as to his choice for hacking is noticeable in a world of computers; forcing him to rely on others for hiding his data trail or even dealing with his RFID tags.

I am aware of your opinion on Incompetent, and now ask for further discussion about that specific quality on another thread or something, because I do not want this thread to devolve into solely that one rule; as I wanted to discuss the entire build, on a mechanical level, not an RP-level (partially why I haven't covered the knowledge stuff).

As previously stated, all three are decent characters. They don't have much focus and don't really stand out as a result, so there's not much to really comment about them aside from lacking pretty basic skills. Pretty much every character who's a professional runner should have Perception, Dodge, and Etiquette (usually Street oriented) at the very least. Other than that, they're just kind of... there.

Looking at the characters I have a couple of points.

First none of them have any BP's put into edge. I'd strongly recommend that they change this. Edge can and will pull your ass out of the fire. 1 or 2 points will rarely make a difference even 3 or 4 though can make or break a situation. They'll be wishing that they had it the first time they simply have to kill that orc in one shot or blow the run.

Dainer's body seems a little low for a fighter type. He can't even wear the armoured jacket without suffering penalties to his agility. I'd recommend raising his body to at least 4, 5 would be ideal though. I'd also make sure he understands the rules for dual wielding. You suffer some pretty harsh penalties even with ambidextrous he'll still only be rolling 6 dice for each gun, not terrible but not great either. You may want to house rule the duel wielding rules if you like the gun-fu idea. Though nothing in the rules says you can't the arm slide for the predators seems a little over the top. Preds are big freaking guns, probably the equivalent of a 50 cal desert eagle and hiding one up your sleeve seems like a bit much.

The Comedian has exceptional attribute logic but the rating 2 cerebral booster implies that his natural logic is only 6? If this is the case then it's wasted BP's. It also means that he's spending 74 BP's on logic alone. 20 for the exceptional attribute, 50 to raise it to 6 and 20000 (4bp) on the ceriberal booster. Even if he were to ditch the exceptional attribute and pay the 65 BP to raise it to his natural max he still only has to pay a total of 69 to get it to the same level. Those 5 BP's could be better spent elsewhere. That said having logic at 8 is over the top anyhow. It's not going to come up that often and if he were to lower his logic to 5, keep the rating 2 booster, and ditch the exceptional attribute he'd free up 30 BP's to do something else with. Logic only comes into play when you are writing programs anyhow, otherwise it's the Program Rating+Skill, writing a program is Logic+Skill so since skill effects both rolls but your attribute only effects one you're better off spending the BP's on skills. Only other point is one that kinda ties into my edge comment earlier. He may want to consider using some of the BP's he just freed up to put a point or two into pistols since edge can't be used with skillwires.

Herman looks ok... I'm not much of a mage player though so I can't comment too much.

Herman really, REALLY, needs Dodge or the Combat Sense spell. Both preferably. He should also consider Cerebral Booster 2, CyberEyes (Rating 3) with ERU, Flare Comp, Image Link, Low-Light Vision, Thermographic Vision, Vision Mag, and Vision Enhancement(3), and then either a Datajack or Damage Compensators or Platelet Factories. Of course he would need to lose sensitive system, but there are other qualities, and the loss of 1 magic is nothing compared to being able to see through smoke, darkness, and all that jazz. Not to mention 2 more to your soak pool via CB2 and all the nice bonuses it provides on Arcana, which is a wonderful skill.

Chris

One of them may be a face, but the other two should at least have basic etiquette skill. It's not as absolutely essential now that the concept of "rating: 0" skills exists, but it is such a ubituous skill, and can come up so often, that it is still a good idea to have it.

This is not a group that is up to very serious challenges, combat-wise. The one character filling the sammie role is trying to do triple duty as the face, the sammie, and the sneaky guy, and it shows. He's not bad, just not tough enough to handle most/all of the heavy combat duties the way a dedicated sammie does. The mage, as has been mentioned, needs to work on his defensive options (and might want increase reflexes as one of his spells, so the face isn't the only one with more than one initiative pass). The techie lacks any combat capability at all outside of the matrix - it's your campaign, so you know better than I do whether that's feasible or not.

The techie and the mage are also limited outside of combat because they are so specialized - the techie only knows how to hack and fix things, and the mage is limited mostly to magical skills. So either of them would have a difficult time tagging along on a B&E run, or any run dealing with social interactions with NPCs. The mage only needs some good spells to be useful, but the techie doesn't seem like a good "on site" hacker.

I also notice that these guys all have minimum Edge. They don't seem to realize how incredibly useful it can be - and a small group like theirs could probably benefit more from it than most.

Yeah, 2 edge should generally be considered the absolute barest minimum, and even then you better have a darn good reason for not taking more of it. I'll occasionally leave humans at their natural 2 edge but you better believe that I only do it if it's necessary to squeeze in in some heavy duty gear like Synaptic 2 or a Power Focus into a finely tuned build. Not to mention, that dwarf is just BEGGING for trouble considering that he's combining Gremlins 2 with only a single Edge point to buy off glitches with! He's sounds like the kind of guy who could accidentally wander off into a secure node while doing a simple data search.

I've been considering just halving the cost of skills, because they're overly expensive, which would solve most of the problems with the builds.

I would suggest against that. It is not difficult to build a character great at one thing and marginal at most other things, very good at two things and marginal at everything else, good at three or four things and marginal at everything else, or just decent at everything. Poor building skills and not understanding just what to spend karma vs. build points on is generally the problem with such characters. If you would like, I'll revise at least the mage build tommorrow evening and maybe the others(in my experience most people have the most problem with mages). Give me the basic concept behind him and I'll give you what I think is a well-rounded version. Then everyone can rip apart what I did, and leave your players alone.



Chris

Some of the players heard your suggestions, and modified things. And Herman is trying out a different set of negative qualities instead of the Incompetent (might still go back to it).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Herman go from Incompetent(Swords) to Blade: 1(SP- Swords)?


Chris

He had the swords skill around from the beginning, and originally had Incompetent (Hacking).

Huh, must have been another character somewhere around here that had incompetent(swords) then. I remember remarking it because he had incompetence in a specialization not a skill. Oh, if swords aren't integral to his concept I recommend the monowhip, for someone with low STR it's the only decent melee weapon. If he just wants swords for parry/block and/or because it's cool then nevermind.


Chris

I'll take a whirl.

New player joined in, using a much simpler approach to his character creation, just using the sample one with a tweak here and there to include the fact they'll be in Hong Kong.

Edit: Also added the other character

Judging by the party composition and build, since they're apparently without much in the way of notable weaknesses, I guess I can now ask this...what kind of missions are they ideally suited for, as a whole?