I'm looking to put a character together for a new PBP game starting up here on the boards. Specifically Buddha72's > Recruitment: Vengeance of the Heavens

He's looking to start the game with experienced characters and has creation set for 400BP + 300 Karma.

Since I have only been playing SR since shortly after 4th Ed came up and most of my experience has been Adamu's > Up From the Bottom PBP game also on the boards here I'm a bit over whelmed as to what a 300 karma character would/should look like.

I'm looking at bumping a Social Adept that has earned 12 karma in RL games to use for the game, but have no idea where to go with it.

Should he be more well rounded by that point or still focused on his magical abilities? What should his ability and skill #'s look like?

I'm looking at bumping his Magic via Initiation to 9 or 10. (I just realized as I was typing that it may not be allowed, need to check the book. opps)

Any input will be greatly appreciated.

JD

Yeah, you can raise your magic quite high via initiation. As for what you should do with a rather nice 300 Karma to spend, well that is largely up to you, but I think you'll see most people focusing on their specilaty, with maybe a few secondary and terciary skills. (At 400 BP bob is good at sneaking into places and killing people with a knife in the back. At 400 BP and 300 Karma, bob is amazing at sneaking into places, kills with ease with his knife, has become much better at bypassing locks of all kinds, and has become decent with a pistol, and picked up basic skill with an assult weapon.. just in case.)

Since your an adept, I would think you would get the most benifit from puting your points into initiation and magic, but as I recall that gets expensive quickly. Don't forget to spend points/karma on other things.

I'm sure others will give you much more in depth advice.

Thanks for the start, thats kinda the way I was going, but wasn't sure.

Yeah the Initiation / magic bump is not cheap. I was at 6, and to get to 10 it costing me 172 of the 300 Karma. But I'm looking at lots of abilities.

JD

You can find that stuff in Street Magic. I don't have my copy on hand, so no page references, sorry.

I do not consider a social adept a good choice for spending 300 karma, generally speaking. Once you have reached a certain level in social skills, further increases don´t net you much playability. Maybe you could salvage the underlying concept and build a mundane with high charisma and specialised social skills.

That one could be build up with bioware/genetech/nanoware to almost any taste, even with the limited amount of ressources you get, and still pass scanners easily.

Street Magic page 62.

Joining a Group gives you a 20% discount on the cost of Initiation, as does taking an Ordeal. These can be done together for a 40% reduction.

Isn't an ordeal something you have to actually go out and do though? I can't imagine that being allowed for as part of a premade character.

For the same game I'm doing two things

A) pumping the magic

B) pumping attributes.

It's just karma inefficient to raise skills later, so I'm running skills at where I'd like them to be with low starting attributes and then dumping 200 karma into bringing all my attributes up to max.

On a side note, because I'm that sort of person: I notice that the new shadowrun.xls spreadsheet I use to make characters has a karma efficiency rating, and I'm trying to keep that above 150% atm

Be a man and take the aesceticism ordeal, and have your character covered with scars that give him penalties on social skills. Any run of the mill combat shaman can do it, but it takes balls to do it as a social adept. You should totally go for it.

..the one incentive for pumping MA that 4th ed offers compared to older editions is they eliminated the MA loss for deadly wounds.

The only example I have comes from 3rd ed...

...the original version of the Short One (#84) had just a bit more than 300 Karma, however, only an MA of 7 even though she was a grade 5 initiate (she was in a fairly rough campaign where deadly wounds were apt to occur with far more regularity). One initiation was to make up for a previous MA loss another for new powers, and the remaining 3 were burnt out for bio enhancement. Most of her Karma went into direct attribute improvement, which was far less costly than the Improved Attribute power, and skill improvement as there were no hard caps.

Her physical attributes were 6 Body 8 Strength & 8 Quickness (Muscle Toner), and her Willpower was maxed out at 6 (got to be unshakable when fighting spirits)

Her specialisation in Katana was 12 with a 13 Combat Pool and force 3 Weapon focus. True she was limited pure raw power, but by then could nearly throw a "brick" full of dice if she went full offence (30 with -1 TN for reach), and had a heck of a masking ability.

If it's an option, I would suggest reimplementing this character as a mystic adept as it opens up a lot of 'backstory' ordeals and initiation powers.... It may actually save you karma, and ally spirit sustained, low force increase reflexes is a LOT cheaper than the other alternatives for getting extra IP. Similarly, it's a relatively easy way to hit your augmented max charisma. If your compatible with a possession tradition, it's also a good way to completely cover your physical inadequacies.

...but, there is a trade-off for the lower Karma expenditure. An adept can walk through wards without losing her improved reflexes or alerting the mage who cast it. Her powers also cannot be banished or counterspelled. Plus, if she has the Masking/Improved Masking metamagic techniques, she can also attempt to appear mundane. Stealth is a good way to go.

KK could not only mask herself but her weapon focus as well.

...oh, and don't forget Attune Item metamagic. With a firearm it's kinda like a built in smartlink that gets better as you go up in initiate grade.

I'll take a look at those ideas, but I haven't dealt with alot of what you mentioned before. :-P

JD

The mystical adept might work, especially with the massive karma boost you get.

It might basically look like your social adept, with spellcasting strapped on top. You buy a magic attribute of say 8 (from 5 up, better to pay 18 karma than 25 BP on the last point), the corresponding initiate degree buys Masking, Shielding, and Flexible Signature. Save 4 magic points for standard magic and you should be good to go for everything (except maybe combat). Seeing you are a face, specialise in illusion magic.
Foreboding, Physical Mask, Improved Invisibility, Stealth... do not forget Improve Charisma. With the later, one might consider spending some power points on combat power.

The rest of the karma should buy 2 or 3 sustaining foci, a broad skillset, and several attribute points. I´d put aside karma for additional knowledge skills.

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone.

The one thing I know at this point is I want to stay straight Adept as far as the Awakened portion of the character goes. (This is primarlly due to my limited experience with magic in SR)

I've looked over the groups & ordeals as suggested, and they look like good options. But its just my luck that none of the example groups from the book seem like a very good fit, which means I may have to make one up. :-)

I also checked out the Item Attunement option, which looks cool and I plan on using that as well. Thanks for that one.

JD

...mah pleasure....