Could people take a gander at these characters? They're all built with 450BP, 30 Karma and 7000nY/BP, in case the math looks wierd.
Dionysus

Shamus

Ventilator

Do you want to know wether they conform to the rules (or, better, your group's set of houserules)?
Or do you want some advice to optimize them?

I just took a very casual glance at the chaos mage and my advice would be to drop the pistols and grenades skills alltogether (probably go down with AGI and STR too, as he doesn't really need those) and pick astral combat instead.
I cannot stress the importance of this enough!
Sneaking around on the astral is enormously useful and you'll want to be able to defend yourself there.
Even if you use spells to attack astral enemies (which is a good idea for a decent caster), you'll need means of defense if someone starts to hit you with a weapon focus or a spirit goes into melee there or whatever.


Also, i wouldn't waste BP on bound spirits, but bind them after start of game.

I'm not so much interested in heavy optimization, but just people's opinions on what they feel are glaring mistakes, like what you said about Astral Combat & bound spirits. Mostly out of curiosity: I think it helps to get different angles on things from time to time.

I consider magic 6 a mistake, especially with such a reduced skillset.

Imp. Agility is a wasted power point while you are under the attribute limit, so the adept buys agility instead of magic (once) and spends 15 BP elsewhere. (I don´t get the augmented rating of 7, if it is one).

Echo Rasumichin on the bound spirits/sprites, but to each their own. The mage should replace Stabilize with Heal, for greater utility.

The TM could stand CFs at resonance, or 5. It´s damn expensive to do that later.

I take your point re. magic of 6. By "reduced" you mean quantity of skills or skill ranks?


The aug rating was intended to reflect the Imp. Agility power (6 natural, 7 w/ magic), just for bookkeeping's sake.

I'm not sure I follow your logic re. the wasted power point.; the cost as I wrote it was 105 (65 for magic, 40 for agility). If I buy another agility and keep magic at 5, it's still 105, since the racial max for agility is 7. I don't see where I save the 15BP.

You have listed an agility of 4(7). That would usually tell me 4 natural, 7 augmented. Hence the confusion. With such values I´d simply ditch the magic point for Improved Agility. If you absolutely need to, buy the last point for agility before you buy magic 6. Agility can not be used to gain other advantages.

As for the skillsets, it´s about number and focus. I see no athletics or influence groups for example. Both very useful. Contacts are also low.

well he'd be playing in a group of 7 other each picked out for a mission so most likely every thing would be covered by a few other.

Right. But I'm mainly doing this as an exercise in character building in general terms, rather than trying to tweak out for a specific campaign. Finding out what tradeoffs people think are/aren't worth it, etc.

This is for the "Runners Co-Op"-campaign in the Welcome to the Shadows- Subforum. Just in case anyone else was wondering. Seems like everyone has a pool of chars, this being the OPs selection. If I got the idea at least.

Adept:
You build this one for Unarmed combat (critical strike), Armed Combat (weapon focus), and Thrown Weapons. Then you went ahead and bought a light pistols skill. Improved Agility should go, but I already said that. I´d personally go for Synaptic Booster II instead of Improved Reflexes II, but maybe I´m a bit more efficiency-minded than others. Consider Elemental strike instead of Imp. Blades and weapon focus. If you have access to Arsenal, you need to use Martial Arts instead of / on top of critical strike.

Skillwise, I´d invest at least the 25 BP from Magic 6->5. Groups are even cooler than in usual campaigns, because you can have broad specialists instead of a generalist.

Example (126 BP, minimised impact)
Group: Athletics 3 - Climbing is nice, as is acrobatics dodge, as is running, swimming, jumping.
Group: Close Combat 3 - the alternative to Unarmed only is being able to work with any weapon
Group: Electronics 1 - This one has FOUR interesting skills, must-have.
Group: Stealth 3
Throwing Weapons 4
Perception 1
Pistols 1 (semi-automatics +2)



Mage
Active Skills: (90 <- outch! More so since you are lacking skillwires)
Delete: Pistols - waste of BP, echo Rasumichin
Delete: First Aid - replace Stabilise with Heal and you are done
Delete: Conjuring Group - Banishing is SO not worth it
Delete: Dodge - more than anyone else, Mages need athletics. They can´t compensate.
Delete: Throwing Weapons - You are the HAMMER of god without weapons

Perception 3 (visual +2) Clairvoyance is sight-based
Assessing 3
Spellcasting 5
Counterspelling 4 - consider spec on illusion spells
Summoning 4
Binding 1
Group: Influence 1 - A waste not to have in case of already decent charisma

Lower magic to 5, buy a mentor spirit, buy astral chameleon. First metamagic should be flexible signature. Leftover BPs go into Influence and contacts. Contacts are generally "the bomb" in this campaign, as friend-of-a-friend contacts are nice, too. Sustaining foci (2) would do you better than the power focus. One for manipulation spells (armor, magic fingers, levitation instead of detect magic?), one for health spells (Increase reflexes).

Now it may be personal preference, but any chaos mage should walk down the road of augmentation a bit (minimum datajack for knowsofts), and also have Electronics skill. A starting magic of 4 is absolutely acceptable, especially with your drain resistance pool. 12+ item = cerebral booster 3. Natural ability scores of 2 in Agility and Strength would not hurt your efficiency at all, echo Rasumichin (again). Could be influence 4, substantial face instead of 101-gunner. Or you get Athletics 1 in .



Riggermancer
I like this the best. It has this most adoreable BP number next to skills . Some quick calculation suggests you bought Electronics 4 and upgraded the Software skill. Do so if you didn´t already. Try to add More-than-Metahuman (quality from unwired, jumping in is a free action), and increase the CFs to 5.

I'll stick with suggestions for the mage.

I'd choose a different spell list, recommending to check out the following :
heal
increased reflexes
mana or energy bolt
mana/energy/stunball
mana static #
control actions
influence*
brainscan*,#

All are tremendously useful.

If high-level wards come up frequently in your game, astral window might come in handy, too.

As far as direct combat spells are concerned, which type to choose depends on how flexible you want to be in physical combat.
If drones are frequent enemies, the energy variant is the way to go, but mana and stun are much more drain-friendly.
Anyway, you'll be better off using them in a fight instead of a pistol.
To compete damage-wise, you'd need a much higher attack DP, even though multicasting isn't that recommendable for your mage.
But even with single spells, he'll be better as a secondary combatant when using magic.

Also, i'd put more points in conjuring, spirits can be extremely convenient.

*not sure wether these are the original names of the spells, i made the mistake to buy both the BBB and SM in German.
# from Street Magic

I made the same mistake unfortunately, but I think you want to say mindprobe instead of brainscan.

If you want to go in that direction (an interesting speciality to say the least), put mob mood on the list, too.

With 450 points, you will usually wind up with at least a functioning build. Other than that, it depends on what you are trying to do with them.

The adept actually looks less like a close combat adept, and more like a covert entry type who is better than average at fighting. He is not optimized for either role, but comes a lot closer on the covert ops side. His most glaring lacks are no social skills (the base elven Charisma means he can at least function, but he won't be much good if he needs to fast-talk someone, and it will be harder to get gear), and no dodge or gymnastics for ranged full defense. Gymnastics would be best, since it is the skill used for jumping.

Nuts and bolts stuff:

If you already bought firewall separately, don't waste money on ISIS Orb OS - just by system: 3 and save 400

Getting the ultrasound on your contacts is a waste, since using it replaces your normal vision. If you can't use your other vision mods with it, why get it on the contacts, and waste Karma on the Availability increase? I would get the ultrasound in a pair of goggles, reducing your contacts to only 8 points over the starting Availability, and saving 2 Karma, which you can maybe spend to add a specialization to one of your skills.


For the mage, others have hit things like the pre-bound spirits and spell selection already. Personally, I would also try to find the points somewhere to raise the conjuring group (although I would probably also break it up and only take summoning and binding, using a stunbolt to "banish" spirits). Same thing I said earlier about ISIS Orb vs. system: 3 for his commlink.

No, i mean the area effect version of mindprobe (German name is Gedankenscan).
Reads only surface thoughts, but the victims don't automatically feel that the spell is used on them.
Not nearly as good an interrogation spell as mind probe, but perfect for surveilance and espionage.
Mind probe, though, is a good choice, too.
As are all control manipulations, BTW.

Anyway, you'll always find out that there's tons of spells you could use right now and don't know.
One could easily sink one- or twohundred karma points into learning useful new spells alone.

I'd definitely select as many as possible at chargen (haven't checked wether you did, just saying).

Area Thought Recognition?

Hrm, I'm not really into 'ware for the Adept, but I'll think about it for the mage. Impressed by those skill lists: I bow before your superior chargen skills. I'm not sure they're all quite what I'm looking for, but I'll think about them. Will definitely re-read the Martial Arts section again.


Agreed, but the character is more focused on divination & detection; I'm also trying to keep him a pure BBB character. I've replaced stabilize with heal, I'll look at the rest.


That's precisely it: sneak in & a silent kill. Or, at least, that was my thinking.

Excellent points. I'll look into that.

Thanks to all; very helpful. I appreciate the feedback.