Genki
Elf

Body 3
Agility 4
Reaction 3
Strength 2
Charisma 8
Intuition 4
Logic 4
Willpower 2

Essence 5.2

Edge 2
Magic 5

Positive Qualities
Adept
Mentor Spirit (Dragonslayer, Leadership bonus)
First Impression
Aptitude (Leadership)

Negative Qualities
Gremlins IV
Addiction (Mild) [Manashrooms+Psyche]
Addiction (Mild) [Galak]

Active Skills
Leadership 7 (10) (Persuasion +2)
Perception 3 (Visual +2)
Etiquette 2
Negotiation 3 (Bragaining +2)
Longarms 3 (Shotguns+2)
Pistols 1 (Revolvers +2)

Language Skills
English (Primary)
Japanese 4
Mandarin 3


Adept Powers
Enhanced Perception 3
Linguistics
Commanding Voice
Enthralling Performance
Kinesics 5
Improved Ability (Leadership) 3

Geneware
Genetic Optimization (Charisma)

Bioware
Tailored Pheromones 3



Genki is an extreme idealist and uses his idealism as a weapon against his enemies. He believes wholeheartedly in the neo-anarchist lifestyle and will stop in the middle of combat to make rousing speeches to his enemies in an attempt to convert them, a tactic that is made easier by his Commanding Voice and Enthralling Performance powers. He hates the oppressive corporate environment with a passion. His catchphrases include "Make your own destiny" and "Believe in your own power". Due to his use of charisma-enhancing substances to improve his oratory abilities he has some mild addictions.

The idea is simple. Where the pornomancer seduces an enemy the leadermancer turns an enemy army into his own army. This is actually far more effective than pornomancer seduction and far more useful.

And it will become much more scary once the player gets ambitions.

heh, he will have his own fan/poli-club in no time . . with their own secret handshake or salute and a nice uniform/dresscode with their symbol proudly worn on their upper arm . . he austrian?

No but he can get Hugo Boss to design all his uniforms.

-Chrysalis

Well, I'm the player in this case and my ambition is to play a hyper-idealistic anime protagonist who talks his way to victory using the power of friendship. Love and Peace! Love and Peace! In the Name of the Moon!

Of course he's only a technical pacifist. In his own words, "I won't kill anyone, ever, under any circumstances. But I will shoot people in the head and if they just happen to die that isn't my fault."


Just imagine the awesomeness of a spiky haired kid leaping out in the middle of a firefight, commanding "Wait!" and then going into a David E. Kelley tirade about how the guards are all just cogs in a soulless profit machine and that they can never do any good unless then throw off their shackles and make their own destinies.



And, yes, the Nazi's weren't bad guys, they were just frustrated because they had such ugly uniforms. If Hugo Boss had been their designer WWII would never have happened.

I like it. They could build up something of a following. But getting neo-anarchists to do your bidding is a bit like herding cats so the "broken" factor isn't there as much as for other philosophies.

Also most SR engagements are fluid enough that their skills aren't going to be one stop shopping to deal with threats. Due to new guards, drones, whatever busting in on the scene or just time limits before enemy reinforcements show up. And of course cases where the player doesn't get the drop on the opposition.

But it'd come up often enough to be interesting.

Sounds like every whiny kid I used to slap in highschool. He should go to a lot of open mic nights and annoy people with his poetry about how deep he is.

Nits to pick...

Did you forget to post any language skills or does he do this by Sign Language or Miming? Opps those are listed either.

To be more effective language skills are a must.

Trying your bag of tricks on someone who does not understand your verbiage, means he can die alot.

Also background noise can limit the range of his verbiage also a sound barrier spell will work wonders against him. His visibility aka rep will mean some potential foes will have noise/sound canceling, and other neat tricks at hand.

But in all an semi interesting One Trick.

WMS

One note

Charisma linked Social Skills are linked to the language skill of the user, so your character in his/her native language would use all those dice. Since you have a Skill of Leadership 7 all other skills are limited to a rating of 4 or less. So in non native language tests your Social Skill Dice are limited to 4.

Also with Gremlins of 4 trying to use Language Softs, could lead to some interesting words exchanges. ie Attack being worded into Retreat.

Now RAW limits the dice to your characters non native language, if the victim(s) language skill is even less than your non native language skill of 4, GM's
"may" also use that as a limitation too.

WMS

That's a feature, not a bug. He's a ditz genius leader and even JFK called himself a doughnut one time. And he's working in Seattle so English will be the primary language used.

Actually, that turns out to be one of the lovely urban legends. As I understand it, folks from Berlin refer to themseves as Berliners. And they do not refer to the pastry as a Berliner. (I suppose I should leave it to the many German SR players to provide better clarification.) Most importnatly, the folks listening to him in Germany at the time understood what he was saying and did not think he had said something funny or stupid.

Yours,
Joel

I know this to be true, but I choose to reject that reality and substitute my own. After all, truth is just a matter of perception and perception can be changed by an act of will.

Wait, is that another one of his rousing slogans?

Social dice-slinging builds aren't that limited by the language-related skill hit, since their skill is only one small part of their dice pool. Even with a newly-acquired (from linguistics) language skill of 1, the character will still have 8 (Charisma), 3 (tailored pheromones), 5 (kinesics), 2 (first impression), and 2 (mentor spirit bonus) to add to it for a total of 21 dice.

Now, if the GM uses the optional rule limiting hits to double the skill rating, and decides that the language-modified skill rating is used to determine this, then that would be a nasty hit on his abilities.


By the way, don't forget the emotitoy to get 6 more dice. And what spikey-haired anime kid would be complete without his animorphic Ruxpin the Metal Idol teddy bear perched on his shoulder?

Do not forget that with Gremlins 4, using techno items like emotitoys will be interesting at times.

As for your first statement, I have a different read on that.

But since he has stated that he/she will only have skill in English, non English speakers will be immune to his bag of tricks for the most part.

WMS

Yeah, forgot about the Gremlins. You'd have the teddy bear interrupting him going "Don't, Haley! You'll break!"

But the linguistics power lets you constantly pick up new languages simply from exposure to them, so in a social melting pot like the Seattle plex, he'll be gaining basic fluency in all kinds of languages.

The probability of getting fifteen ones on a thirty-eight dice test isn't particularly large. I don't think that gremlins will have much of an effect of emotitoy-assisted leadership tests. It is, however, cheesy. For added cheesy one could have a magician cast Analyze Device on him so that he can Analyze the emotitoy for even more dice. But I think that just goes too far.

Under the description of Gremlins "software crashing" is one of the effects.

WMS

In the fluff. The mechanism by which this fluff is achieved is reducing the number of ones required to glitch by the rating of the Gremlins (to a minimum of 1, I must presume).

If you are really worried about the Gremlins, just get the mage to summon a spirit with Guard. No more Glitch.

I think he was pointing out that he wasn't too concerned with rolling leadership glitches.

I agree with him on the cheese factor of emotitoys. They can be annoying if everyone else uses them, though. It's like playing a sniper, and suddenly having people start using a new type of sensor that gives them 6 more dodge dice. I imagine most GMs either gimp it or ignore it, though, and hopefully an errata will take some of the cheddary smell off of it.

Just doing a quick build point check for you:


Assuming you use your free points (24) towards the language skills means you still have 17 leftover for more languages/knowledge skills. I come out at 398 BP for this build. So, you can start with a 1/1 contact, and absolutely no gear, or some gear and no contacts. Thats pretty harsh, kinda hard to get jobs if you don't know anyone, and as good as you are at leading, you'll still have a hard time finding jobs.



Edit: Correct bp calculations and my comments.

I think the "The gamemaster may also require the character to make a test for operations that would otherwise succeed automatically, simply to see whether or not a glitch occurs." text is most important. Oh, you're using your emotoy software? Roll a computer check for me, and with his mighty pool of 3 (defaulting to logic), and needing a single 1 for a glitch, he'll probably be screwed.

You miscalculated. Genetic Optimization increases his unaugmented maximum Charisma to 9. That means that the eigth point only costs 10 BP. That's why I bought it in the first place. You're calculation is 15 BP too high.

That's so very Japanese. It should get bonuses to work in Japan.

I remember the manga episode of Crying Freeman where the Freeman grandstands for 20 seconds to a bunch of American Vietnam vets about "fighting for no reason" and wins them all over to his demand.

I kind of assumed you were doing that, looking at the stats. Not every GM would allow it to work that way. He was also wrong on the skills, though. Leadership: 7 with the specialization should cost 34 points (he forgot the specialization, which makes it cost 30, and to double the cost for the last point, which adds 4 more).

I get 30 for elf, 190 for Attributes, 75 for special Attributes, 5 net points back for positive/negative qualities, 90 points for skills = 380 points. Add 9 BP for geneware and 9 BP for bioware, and the character has 2 BP left for contacts and other gear. 10,000 Nuyen is enough for the absolute essentials, but your character will be starting out with no contacts unless the GM uses the (relatively common) house rule giving free contact points equal to Charisma. I assume he intends to "acquire" most of his contacts in-game, which he certainly has the skill-set for. It's like a decker starting out without a deck, though. He'll nab one soon enough, but he'll be a bit handicapped for the first two or three runs.

Knowledge skills are (Intuition plus Logic) x 3, so actually you have 17 points left to spend on those.

On reflection of many thoughts...This is a Munchkin Build that I would not allow in my games, yes by RAW it is legal, but still by definition a Munchkin build.

Thank you for another example of such, so I can identify them even faster now.

If your GM allows it more power to you, and pity on your GM's soul and game.

WMS

The Canon and the RAW does not require your pity, only your compliance.

There is no canon or RAW definition of a Munchkin build, therefore it does not exist.

*Breaks Winds in ArchBishop Of Canonista Toturinia's Nose*

WMS

I missed that. It is rather silly given that the cost already built into aptitude.

You're doing it wrong. One extremely crucial thing is missing - you need to be able to speak Ancient Greek. And use a spear.


-paws

This .........
is ...........
SEATTLE!!!!!!!!!

I wouldn't allow it either, but I'm willing to admit it's because I couldn't cope with this character in one of my games. I wouldn't call him a "munchkin build", because munchkin is a player type, and not a build process. I've seen much less powerful characters in the hands of true munchkins; they caused serious damage, without being nearly as maxed-out. I'd certainly entertain powerful character concepts from players that I knew wouldn't abuse them.

Interesting build, but I noticed one small problem: to have a Mentor Spirit, you have to be a Mystic Adept or Magician.

If you want the +2 from the spirit, you need to pay 5 BP for Mystic Adept and drop a point from the Adept Powers, or drop it and you have BP for a contact or some gear.

Street Magic - Shamanic Way Adept, thank you very much.

I read that part, but I don't see a mention saying it bypasses the need for Mystic Adept or Magician, only that they may exhibit the Shamanic Mask. I don't see anything saying you get the Mentor Spirit positive quality automaticly, or that you can buy it, only that you believe you have a mentor spirit.

As none of the other Adept Ways give them special access, I personally wouldn't allow it as a way of bypassing a preq. to the quality, but I could see a person's GM ruling differently.

It's just common sense.

Not the way I see it.

I see the rules stating you have to be a Mystic Adept or Magician to have the quality. I see nothing in the description explicitly allowing you to take it, and none of the other Ways allowing you anything extra (except the shamanic mask).

But it also doesn't say that an Adept can't have the quality.

Besides, Shamanic Way adepts would need to have the Mentor Spirit quality in order to go on Astral Quests. Since they don't have access to astral projection, they'd need for their Totems to open Astral Gateways directly into the metaplanes for them.

I also dont see just because a shamanic tradition is followed by the adept would give him a mentor. I mean mentors are not just for shamans, so would a hermetic adept get a mentor too? What about a non magical meta that follows a shamanic religion. Its a slippery slope, i think your grabbing for straws.

Easy way to get around the gremlins.

Take 20 points of in debt instead... you get 20,000 Nuyen... a 30,000 nuyen debt, and payments of 3,000 nuyen per month added to your lifestyle.

No gremlins.. the emotoy works fine... and ... you can probably talk the loan sharks into ignoring the debt pretty quick.

Cool Resolve... more dice

Hans solo could only talk his way out of trouble for so long before he became wall art for jabba the hut.

Sure sure... but my social adept has in debt... at the max of 30 pts... 4,500 nuyen per month is easy enough to pay and maintain a lifestyle... and save up for the future... or to pay down the principal.

You mean that post? The one where you addressed ONLY the vocal range extender bonus, which is +1?

The entire point of the build is just to stop them long enough for him to use his Enthralling Performance to keep them in their seats while he delivers an impassioned speech about life and love that will hopefully lead the to reexamine their career choices and stop fighting against him. The Commanding Voice was never meant to be anything more than a stop-gap solution to segue into a more permanent technique.

No, the one you ignored before it, where I said this:

The "Empathy" software at rating 6 from Arsenal p61 would be a good addition.
[Avail 12, 3000 nuyen]

Oh? Where is anything to show that smells carry a long ways? Listed specializations are the only RAW ones. Being within 30 meters I will guess is your reasoning for why he can smell them?

Here is my arguements for why bonuses wouldn't count.

8 (Charisma) good
6 (Leadership) good
2 (specialization) no valid specialization
3 (Glamour) must not act hostile. I think telling them to surrender is fairly hostile.
6 (Global Fame) Only benefits when the character can bring their social status to bear. Telling some guards what to do shouldn't qualify.
2 (First Impression) Only works when trying to fit in, not when trying to order people about.
5 (Kinesics) works
3 (Improved Ability) works
3 (Tailored Pheromes) Doesn't work, rule quoted below. Its a magical effect, specifically doesn't work for magical effects.
2 (Enhanced Pherome Receptors) Aug, 64, "Additionally, recipients may experience extreme discomfort in crowds due to the overwhelming amount of odors. They suffer a dice pool penalty equal to half the receptors’ rating (round up) to all tests due to the strong distraction."
Actually, I think it'd penalize you, due to there being a crowd. So thats a -2 modifier instead.
1 (Vocal Range Enhancer) I'll give you this one. Yelling at 'em like a drill sergeant instead of a schoolgirl would help.
2 (Minor Biosculpting) Aug, 61, "Also keep in mind that while it is entirely appropriate for characters to gain a +2 dice pool bonus to Social skill tests for being romantically attractive to some NPCs"
I doubt the NPCs are going to typically be attracted to the leadermancer. Especially in mid combat when they've hardly had time to look at her.
6 (Empathy Software) works, cheezy as it is.
1 (symbiosis gives bonus to social skills vs. inhabitants of her neighborhood) How often do you do shadowruns in your own backyard? I'd say 99% of the time, you won't be ordering the guards nearby around, so typically this wouldn't work.
1 (effects of eX) works

Thats 28 dice. You're starting with. Throw on social modifiers:
Hostile -4
disastrous to npc -4
npc has ace in hole +2 to his resist (HTRT)
guard has superior rank -3
character is not a part of guards social strata -3
Gives you 14 dice left.
Even a 4 willpower guard, +5 for buddies +2 for ace in hole has 11. Chances are you'll get 1 net hit.

To address psychophipps who posted in the other thread.

The reason I am harping on tailored pheromones the worst is this SR4, 339, "This bonus has no effect on magical abilities and tests."

Glamour: Telling people to surrender is the opposite of hostile.
Specialization: Listed ones are not the only ones possible. For example, an otaku might take Software with a spec in Threading.
Global Fame: "Hey, isn't that the action star Jackie Chun? Man, he could kick all our asses!"
First Impression: You forgot it works for infiltration.
Enhanced Phermone Receptors: The active term is "may". If you're not inflicting the penalty all the time, suddenly applying in every time commanding voice comes into play is GM metagame cheese.
Minor Biosculpting: What, haven't you ever heard of the "Art of Distraction"?
Tailored Phermones: If you're going to be technical about this, then so can I. It doesn't give a bonus to the Commanding Voice power, it gives the bonus to a Leadership test.

We're back up to 51 dice or so, despite your attempts to nerf the power.