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JRandom
I am creating a troll adept who specializes in throwing things for a living and need some help with making him useful.

Are there any other adept powers besides Missile Mastery, Power Throw, and Improved Ability (Throwing) that would be useful?

Also, can anyone do this for me for fewer build points?
I bought Magic to 6, and then burned a point for Muscle Toner 2, Muscle Augmentation 2, Synaptic Booster 2, Reflex Recorder(Throwing), Synthacardium(1). I also spent 30 pts on Type O system which halved essence costs so all of that nicely fits in at 1 point of bioware.

I get +2 str, +2 agi, +2 rea, +2 IP, +1 dice to throwing, +1 dice to athletic tests for 72 BP.

This gives my throwing troll the following for throwing attacks
Throwing Skill 6
Improved Ability 3
Reflex Recorder 1
Spec. (Throwing Daggers) 2
Agility 5

Damage:
Strength 11/2 = 6
Throwing Knife = 1
Power Throw = 5
Missile Mastery= 1

That gives me 17 dice for throwing attacks and I deal 13P damage with no AP.

Anyone who can offer ways to improve these abilities, or offer other ideas that are really useful for a troll character who can use anything he happens to be holding as a superdeadly weapon?
Whipstitch
Synaptic Boosters and Reflex Recorders aren't compatible with Type O since they are cultured rather than basic bioware. Reflex Recorders and Improved Ability (if they can be combined at all, I don't remember) also cannot provide a bonus in excess of half your unaugmented skill rating, so you're effectively limited to a +3 bonus in that area as well. Looks like you'll have some adjusting to do, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I heartily recommend dropping down to "only" 8 to 10 throwing damage (or you could just take the much maligned troll bow) in exchange for points to spend on Edge and versatility. The loss in damage won't hurt you that often anyway; you'll still easily threaten physical against the vast majority of opponents, and that combined with your high damage and the odd narcoject laced dagger will down just about anyone. And if you really need the AP you'd still certainly have the dicepool needed to be a real threat with a couple HE grenades.
DTFarstar
I made a character similar to this, but he was an elf. Agility 6, STR 5, Magic 5 with 2 essence in bioware (boosters, toner, etc) Power Throw 3, etc.

Biggie is he really like being able to call a shot and boost his damage from 7P to 11P and still have I believe like 16 dice or so to hit with.

8 Agi + 6 Skill + 2 Imp Abil + 2 Spec.... I don't remember the rest, but I feel like he had 2 more dice in there somewhere.

Chris
JRandom
Would it work better if he was a mystic adept with a sustaining focus and the increase reflexes spell?

Mystic Adept +10BP (5 more than Adept)
Increased Reflexes Spell +3BP
Sustaining Focus Force 3 +9BP
I would also purchase a fetish for help in resisting the spell drain.

I am still unsure how mystic adepts work with regards to how many dice they have to cast spells. He need 4 pts of Adept Powers for Throwing, so he could use the other 2 for spells. Does this mean he has Magic (2) + Spellcasting Skill in dice to roll? I am assuming he can still cast it at Force 3, meaning +2 Rea and +2 IP. That means Drain DV is 5?

If that route was taken, would a Force 2 Power Focus for 12BP be worth it?

Thanks.
Glyph
Mystic adepts look cheap when you only look at the quality, the spell, and the sustaining focus, but you also have to buy the spellcasting skill, and then expend power points on magical ability - 3 minimum if you want to cast that increase reflexes spell without soaking physical drain. Mystic adept works for some builds, but throwing or punching combat adept builds are too costly in power points for it to be an optimal choice for them.

My recommendation, since Type O system won't do what you want it to, is to go ahead and drop the quality, and take the hit of two points of Magic. With a Magic of 4, you can still get Improved Ability/Throwing: 2, Power Throw: 4, Missile Mastery, and Quickdraw, with 0.5 points left for whatever else you want.

Be sure what type of campaign it is, too. Depending on how important social skills, stealth, and contacts are, you might be better off starting out less optimized - good min-maxing includes metagaming, which means taking into account things such as whether social skills get ignored, how often perception checks are made, and so on.
Narse
QUOTE (Whipstitch)
Reflex Recorders and Improved Ability (if they can be combined at all, I don't remember) also cannot provide a bonus in excess of half your unaugmented skill rating, so you're effectively limited to a +3 bonus in that area as well.

I don't remember this being the case. IIRC the rule was things that provide an augmentation to a skill rating (note that this is not bonus dice) cannot augment your skill to more than 1.5x the current rating (round down). Bonus dice were not capped. Otherwise there would be no reason to have a rating 6 medkit. Or hydrolic jacks, or any pieces of gear that adds more that 3 dice to a skill test.

Other than that you points are good.

JRandom, a recommendation: If you're trying to minimize essence loss, remember that the lesser of your bio essence cost and cyber essence costs is halved. This means that you can take 0.66 essence worth of both bio and cyber, for a net essence loss of 0.99. Also alpha grade cyber often costs a similar amount of essence to bioware (at least for the small ticket items). (an example: alpha Titanium bone lacing is almost identical to Bone density augmentation 4: they have the same essence and nuyen costs, as well as providing nearly identical effects)

You might want to look into taking the Quickdraw adept power. Its not neccisarily better unless you absolutely don't have the time to spend readying weapons. Note: it only lets you draw one (1) thrown weapon at a time.

Personally, I think this char is a little munchy for my tastes, but if your group is playing a combat centric game, it makes sense.

Oh, I just noticed that you are asking for suggestions on how to make your character more useful. Here are mine: branch out a bit. Your character doesn't necessarily need to be able to kill 4 cars with knives in 3 seconds. Others have pointed this out before, but having basic social skills will be a major asset on a mission that relies more on subtlety than firepower (and inversely it can be a major hindrance if some characters can't cut it in social situations). Of course your mileage will vary depending on the type of game.
DTFarstar
I would recommend against that. You need at least 9 dice to reliably get the threshold of 3 that you are looking for and bioware doesn't get blocked by wards. Mystic Adepts are more trouble than they are worth most of the time. If you are determined to be a troll, I would drop Type 0 and have a magic of 4, or hell get 25 BPs back for a more rounded character and have a magic of 3, power throw 3, throw anything, etc. still wonderful.

Agility is king, simply because a 30P attack doesn't matter if you can't hit with it. I would rather have 24 dice and 6P damage than 11P damage and 16 dice. Especially if your Gm does like mine and gives everyone dodge vs. throwing weapons just like they get vs. melee attacks even though my fucking throwing knives had a larger minimum range than most pistols. *growl*

If you do magic 4 and the powers listed above, I would recommend 2 Enhanced Perception, 1 Kenesics, or for more combat goodnes Combat Sense. All very respectable .5 PP abilities.

Chris
Whipstitch
QUOTE (Narse @ Dec 4 2007, 01:51 AM)
QUOTE (Whipstitch @ Dec 4 2007, 12:28 AM)
Reflex Recorders and Improved Ability (if they can be combined at all, I don't remember) also cannot provide a bonus in excess of half your unaugmented skill rating, so you're effectively limited to a +3 bonus in that area as well.

I don't remember this being the case. IIRC the rule was things that provide an augmentation to a skill rating (note that this is not bonus dice) cannot augment your skill to more than 1.5x the current rating (round down). Bonus dice were not capped. Otherwise there would be no reason to have a rating 6 medkit. Or hydrolic jacks, or any pieces of gear that adds more that 3 dice to a skill test.

That's all true, but they nerfed Improved Ability in the errata ages ago. It's considered a skill rating modifier now rather than a dice pool bonus.

Anyway, yeah, everyone's spot on with their criticisms of Mystic Adepts in this case. I personally believe that MystAds can be a lot better characters than many give them credit for, but the most effective MystAds I've seen combine Power Foci, Counterspelling, and modest Conjuring ability (Movement, Guard and Concealment are great tricks even from low Force spirits) with efficient or irreplaceable Adept powers like Pain Relief, Improved Ability and Kinesics. Heck, even taking a single point of Spellcasting just so you can you can summon Force 3-4 Spirits of Man with Innate Spell: Heal is a great deal. Combine that with Improved Ability: First Aid and the Pain Relief power and you have perhaps the most competent healer in the game.
Fortune
QUOTE (Narse)
QUOTE (Whipstitch @ Dec 4 2007, 12:28 AM)
Reflex Recorders and Improved Ability (if they can be combined at all, I don't remember) also cannot provide a bonus in excess of half your unaugmented skill rating, so you're effectively limited to a +3 bonus in that area as well.

I don't remember this being the case. IIRC the rule was things that provide an augmentation to a skill rating (note that this is not bonus dice) cannot augment your skill to more than 1.5x the current rating (round down). Bonus dice were not capped.

The specific wording of each modification is important. Most things state that they add dice to the Pool, or add dice when using the skill, or something similar. This is not the case for Reflex Recorders and the Improved Ability Power, which specifically state that they add to the Skill itself, and their bonuses therefore come under the afformentioned restrictions of Skill x 1.5.
Ryu
Check PowerThrow with your GM. That one is raising effective strength, not adding damage. We think the augmented maximum applies as always (elven ki-adepts are more concerned here) => max. applicable Rating for you right now is 3.

Another suggestion:
Strength -2
Agility +1 (natural is 3 right now, right?)
Edge +1
Moon-Hawk
QUOTE (Ryu)
We think the augmented maximum applies as always

I've always gone with the rule-of-thumb that if the modifier is conditional, it's bonus dice, and if it applies all the time, it's probably subject to the cap. I would rule that Power Throw is not limited by the attribute cap.
I guess this one is more contentious than I'd thought; check with your GM indeed.
Fortune
QUOTE (Moon-Hawk)
QUOTE (Ryu @ Dec 4 2007, 02:55 PM)
We think the augmented maximum applies as always

I've always gone with the rule-of-thumb that if the modifier is conditional, it's bonus dice, and if it applies all the time, it's probably subject to the cap.

That's the way I see it.
Whipstitch
Yeah, that particular point of contention got ugly a time or two in my old group, although in those cases it was over the bastion of powergaming known as Combat Sense. I'd love to get a ruling on it one way or the other from the devs themselves, but I'm not holding my breath.
Fortune
Bone Lacing also falls into that category. I'm happy just ruling all of them as not applicable to the Augmented Max.
Karaden
QUOTE (Whipstitch)
Synaptic Boosters and Reflex Recorders aren't compatible with Type O since they are cultured rather than basic bioware.

Where exactly does it say that Type O doesn't work with cultured bioware?

"Off the rack, basic bioware is considered delta grade for purposes of interacting with a type O body"

I assume this is the line that is causing the trouble, but nowhere does it exclude cultured bioware, as it comes in four grades as well Basic, alpha, beta, and delta. (check page 127 of augmentation if you didn't know that it came in grades)If cultured bioware can be graded, there isn't any reason a type O couldn't get the free upgrade to delta.

Also, no real comment on the build itself, but what he said is rather relevent to it.
Jaid
cultured bioware is by definition tailored to you. it cannot exist as 'off the rack' bioware.
Stahlseele
as long as no errata comes out the type o edge does apply to cultured bioware. this has been discussed how many times?
Whipstitch
I dunno. I feel like I've written a novel or two on the subject at this point. Still, not everyone can be assumed to have read the massive can o' worms spawned from the Augmentation release threads, so I expect this conversation will be with us for quite some time.

Anyway, basic is not a grade, it's a type. The four grades of bioware are Standard, Alpha, Beta and Delta. This means you can have Standard Cultured Bioware and Alpha Basic bioware. If you look in the Augmentation tables you will note that they have seperate categories for Basic Bioware and Cultured Bioware. As Jaid said, the difference is that one has to be tailored by definition and the other can be purchased off the rack. Many people have complained about this, but it's important to realize that "cultured" is in many ways a game design conceit; they're uniformly some of the best pieces of 'ware in the game and as such would become pretty overpowered if they were allowed in Delta form at chargen.
WeaverMount
[Edit]
Before my post - I though cultured bio-ware had to be at least alpha grade and that the list prices included that already? Did I just make that up?

* * *

Anywho, one of the scariest throwers in the 6th world is a troll adept with custom cyber-arm. A cyber arm can only have an enhancement of +3 without a torse, but custom limbs raise the base rating. So you raise your STR to 9 and your AGL to 4 so you can by a custom limb with those stats. 6 of you 15 capacity goes to getting it up to 12/7. Then you put a nano-hive with Stims in it cover the stun you take red-lining your agility past the elven max! With nano-born stims and a body of 12ish body you can red-line for a +3 or +4 over aug-max fairly safely. You can start with rating 2 nano-hive. Load it up with Carcerand-Plus to heal your stun, and Implanted Medic to repair your arm constantly. You would have to have a really mean GM to get slapped with fluff wear and tear on your limb if you have a bunch of nanites repairing the micro fractures and metal fatigue 24/7. Throw in a cyber-doc contact for the macro issues and you should be good to go.

All this cost you:

15k Basic arm
7k Customizing
1k Implanted Medic (%5 of limb)
------------------
22k that gets multiplied by grade if you want it.

and another

20k Nant-hive (rating 2)
2k Carcerand (rating 2)
3k enhancements

for a grand totally of 47k and .8 essence (for standard)

Now may I point out that bows do str+2 damange not str/2 damage, and that with quickdraw and nimble fingers you can draw and knock arrows as free actions.
Whipstitch
QUOTE (WeaverMount @ Dec 4 2007, 06:23 PM)
[Edit]
Before my post - I though cultured bio-ware had to be at least alpha grade and that the list prices included that already? Did I just make that up?

   * * *

Yeah, you made that up, but it's actually a pretty common misconception online, especially since so many people use Daegann's Character Generation tool, a user friendly app that makes the same assumption and unfortunately ends up with some flawed calculations for cultured Essence costs because of the way it implements that assumption into its drop down menus.
Karaden
Hmm, I'm fairly sure that I remember reading somewhere in the augmentation book that implant medics don't actually need a nanohive to keep their raiting up, that it is assumed that the implant is adjusted as part of the cost of the nanites to keep the nanites healthy. I'd have to look through the book though to find the exact refrence.
WeaverMount
I just checked the bits in Augmentation about degradation and Implanted medics again and they don't say anything. Not sure where else to look
Glyph
QUOTE (WeaverMount)
Now may I point out that bows do str+2 damange not str/2 damage, and that with quickdraw and nimble fingers you can draw and knock arrows as free actions.

True, but a troll trying to carry around a huge bow will be a lot more conspicuous than a troll with Missile Mastery, who can kill you by tossing a ballpoint pen in your eye. It depends on the campaign, though. If it's a campaign where everyone totes around heavy ordinance and combat axes, the troll bow is a viable choice. Otherwise, it's too conspicuous for some situations.
GryMor
QUOTE (Karaden)

Where exactly does it say that Type O doesn't work with cultured bioware?

"Off the rack, basic bioware is considered delta grade for purposes of interacting with a type O body"

I assume this is the line that is causing the trouble, but nowhere does it exclude cultured bioware, as it comes in four grades as well Basic, alpha, beta, and delta.  (check page 127 of augmentation if you didn't know that it came in grades)If cultured bioware can be graded, there isn't any reason a type O couldn't get the free upgrade to delta.


Basic Bioware is a specific list of bioware (Shadowrun 4th pg 338, Augmentation pg 171-2) distinct from Cultured Bioware (Shadowrun 4th pg 339, Augmentation pg 172).

Basic is not a grade of Cultured Bioware, the grade you are looking for is 'Standard' (Shadowrun 4th pg 303, incorporated by reference Augmentation pg 61). Basic may be a grade of Basic Bioware (Augmentation pg 127) and is probably the same thing as Standard grade Basic Bioware, since no cost multipliers are specified for the 'Basic' grade. However, it specifically specifies that "Cultured bioware may also be alpha, beta, or delta grade." without specifying that Cultured Bioware is available as basic, and again, referring to Shadowrun 4th, the 'normal' grade of Cultured Bioware is Standard.

Also note that Augmentation pg 20, Augmentation pg 61 and Augmentation pg 127 are contradictory as to the status of Alpha grade Basic Bioware with regards to it's usability by someone with the Type O quality.

Karaden
Ah well, maybe it'll get clerified in an errata or something, but no more about it here, this thread has been jacked enough already.
Narse
QUOTE (Fortune)
QUOTE (Narse @ Dec 4 2007, 04:51 PM)
QUOTE (Whipstitch @ Dec 4 2007, 12:28 AM)
Reflex Recorders and Improved Ability (if they can be combined at all, I don't remember) also cannot provide a bonus in excess of half your unaugmented skill rating, so you're effectively limited to a +3 bonus in that area as well.

I don't remember this being the case. IIRC the rule was things that provide an augmentation to a skill rating (note that this is not bonus dice) cannot augment your skill to more than 1.5x the current rating (round down). Bonus dice were not capped.

The specific wording of each modification is important. Most things state that they add dice to the Pool, or add dice when using the skill, or something similar. This is not the case for Reflex Recorders and the Improved Ability Power, which specifically state that they add to the Skill itself, and their bonuses therefore come under the afformentioned restrictions of Skill x 1.5.

Hmm... it turns out that I've been reading Reflex Recorder wrong all along.
Anyway, I didn't realize I included improved ability in my post (don't know how I missed that). The point I was trying to make was that "Bonus Dice" are not capped. "Skill Augmentation" is.
Fortune
QUOTE (Narse)
The point I was trying to make was that "Bonus Dice" are not capped. "Skill Augmentation" is.

Exactly. smile.gif
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