I've been leafing through the Runner's Companion, and noticed something interesting:

Pixies can be pretty effective.

A few of the ideas I came up with:

Power Puff: A pixie shaman gets +2 to both willpower and charisma, and a free point of magic. The concealment power and flight ability are nice, too. The low body might make soaking drain a bit tricky, but with a willpower of 7, it might not be such a big issue. The restriction to deltaware is not such a big deal for magicians, who will benefit from the reduced essence cost anyway.

Sneaky monkey: A pixie adept specialized in infiltration is a scary thought indeed. Miniscule size, innate flight, concealment, and huge bonuses to agility make for a character that is nearly impossible to see, yet capable of using such silent weapons as a DMSO squirtgun or taser with the same effectiveness as any other character. Of course, there's a good chance that the pixie could simply sneak up on a guard and stab him in the thigh with a hypo of anasthetic, knocking him out safely and silently.

And, my favorite of the lot:

Super Sentai: A pixie rigger sounds pretty silly - the quadruple cost of delta cyber combined with the negation of magical ability appears be a deal-killer. However, while rigging, the pixie's small size and fragility become a non-issue, while the large bonuses to reaction and agility are very useful indeed.

Furthermore, pixies' small size means that they can actually use most drones as vehicles. A pixie rigging a troll-sized anthroform drone from inside the drone itself will have huge strength, tremendous toughness, incredible armor-plating, and, if I read some of the rigger min-maxing threads right, up to five initiative passes.

In other words, you have a character with all the power of a cyberzombie. However, unlike (most) cyberzombies, the pixie can leave its' body entirely, allowing it to easily pass through security checkpoints (who's going to look at a control rig?), or even escape from dangerous situations in some sort of rocket-powered ejector seat.

my first reaction after reading the thread title, was writing something about trolls being able to stuff them where the sun doesn't shine . . now not so much any more O.o
if you can get a dart-rifle in that size, they would make the perfect assassin too, as they can get up to anywhere to shoot their darts with venom from.

Tricky?
Now that's understatement...good luck getting decent armor with softmaxed BOD 2, even with all the stuff from Arsenal and magical help.


But besides that, yes, you're totally right, they can really excell at spellslinging, rigging and especially stealth.
However, just keep in mind what anybody here on DS would say if he saw a character of another race build with BOD2.
That evens out a lot of the advantages pixies get.

Yeah, pixies are really powerful, if you don't plan on getting hit. I don't know how exactly I would go about making any sort of pixie character, but it could be fun.

Also, so you know, everything is limited to four IPs, nothing can have more. Nitpicking, I know. It's a weakness.

Unwired introduced options for hackers and technomancers that explicitly state that they allow the character to exceed the "four passes" cap spelled out in the basic rules.

Since we're nit-picking, Matrix IP can go as high as 5 with the right stuff from Unwired.

Edit: Damn! Just beaten.

Not everything. There are, however, other issues with going that route.

Quicker than you though!

Oh, my bad. I haven't read Unwired yet.

Having more than 5 passes seems kinda silly, but whatever. I doubt any of my PC hackers will live long enough!

The fifth pass was basically to stop adept hackers from typing faster than a mundane hacker could think.

also, the pixie magician doesn't get a free point of magic. if they buy the magician quality, they start at 1 just like everyone else.

Pixies are the classic glass cannon archtype. They have a lot of power and ability and can excel at many things, but they always have to be aware that they can be taken out handily by things that would only be moderately threatening to tougher characters.

It's actually a lot easier than you think to take out a small target. The transportation specialist in my game is keenly aware of this: he's lost something like twelve thousand nuyen in microdrones.

I'll give you a hint. It starts with an "a" and ends with "rea of affect."

"I hit the target"

"Which one?"

"All of them."

This is why I like the idea of a rigger so much.

All you need to do is put the pixie rigger inside an armored cylinder - it would only need to be about 6" in diameter x 20" in length, smaller than many rockets.

Put the armored cylinder inside a small but heavily armored drone.

Having a body of 2 is no big deal if you're walking around inside a suit of troll-sized power armor that's rated against anything short of a tac-nuke.

Could you put pixie cyborgs in smaller drones? I don't think RAW says anything about it either way, but logically that barbie-doll brain should have no problem fitting in just about anything.

to bad it has no effect what so ever on data searches...

There fixed the quote for you.

Having it protected from the outside, still leaves it vulnerable to the armor taking damage from full auto fire, explosives, and crash tests. Crashes would be the worst, because the armor value wouldn't help the Pixie out.

Pixie adept hackers/riggers are all kinds of awesome. I might even work one out to replace the Technomancer idea I was planning for an offline Shadowrun game I'm occasionally playing in.

Did everyone forget the uneducated flaw that they come with for free?

SR4, 83, "Characters with the Uneducated quality are considered “unaware� in Technical, Academic Knowledge, and Professional Knowledge skills they do not possess (see Skill Ratings, p. 106), and they may not default on skill tests for those skills."
...
"Additionally, the Karma cost for learning new skills or improving existing ones in these categories is twice normal (including at character creation), and the character may never learn skill groups belonging to these categories."

For those who forgot, technical skills important to riggers/hackers are, armorer, all the mechanics, computer, cyber combat, cybertech, data search, demolitions, e warfare, hacking, hardware, medicine, and software. Paying DOUBLE for all of these skills will kill you. Especially since you can't pick up skill groups. Not to mention no defaulting on anything you don't know about, and GMs can make you roll for tests that other people don't have to.

That's why you make the pixie a Technomancer. Resonance skills are not effected by Uneducated. This may require plying your GM with alcohol and pizza.

There are two ways to accomplish this, the RAW legal way and the not-insane way.

RAW-legal: Take some essence loss at chargen. For a pixie, this can be accomplished three ways; you can the Genetic Heritage Quality - which costs essence according to the devs - this should be possible if your GM is very drunk and you have a really good story about being born in a corporate research lab; you can take the Mysterious Implant Quality and convince your GM to give you something that costs essence, this should be possible with a good story and sufficient alcohol; or you can take the Addiction Quality at Burnout level. Your second step really depends on your GM. Both interpretations are valid, since the rules don't actually cover this situation. With a plyable GM, you can now simply take the Technomancer Quality and buy up your Resonance; with a stickler GM you will have to take the Latent Technomancer Quality and wait to awaken to the Resonance in game - if you have to go the Latent route, you don't need to take the Essence Loss at chargen, but it can speed things up. With this method, you also need to convince your GM that your Pixie doesn't lose the Sapience Power along with all of the other magical powers it possesses. The Devs say that it doesn't, but by RAW it does. It is just a small unforseen problem with the way the Critter Powers system interacts with the Magic Rating system.

The Lot-Quite-Legal way is to convince your GM that the prohibition of having Magic and Ressonance at the same time only applies to characters with Awakened Qualities, and does not apply to those with natural Magic Ratings

No, they forsaw the pixie being really good as a non-physical character because of her low physical stats and limited her? Say it isn't so!

Of course you can always buy off the flaw for 20BP which means that it certainly isn't undoable.

But still, the pixie suddenly seems like a very fun character to develop.

Actually, their agility, reaction, and intuition bonuses mean that Pixies also make great samurai, assuming that you can get the deltaware or talk your GM into using the Crome Critters optional rule. A Pixie can effectively be faster and more accurate than any other race, excepting characters who spam the attribute max increasing Qualities and geneware.

I might point out that a hold-out pistol is the pixie eqivalent of a shotgun. You wouldn't be doing much damage.

Buying off uneducated for 20BP is totally worth it.

There is no rule preventing a pixie from using any weapon. A GM might apply the same modifiers that would apply to a dwarf or a troll with human sized equipment, but a pixie-modified grip is perfectly legal, as well.

However I think any DM would be well within his rights to rule that a barbie doll sized shotgun does not deal the same damage as a human/troll sized one does.

But a human sized shotgun with a barbie doll sized grip should work fairly well. A Pixie's strength ranges from 1( Weak Human) to 3 (Average Human). Lifting such a weapon shouldn't be difficult.

I don't know about that, weight might not be a problem, but I imagine the pure unwieldiness of the firearm would.

In hindsight, it would have been appropriate to do a pixie-size modifier for equipment, additional recoil penalties, etc. but there wasn't the space for a lot of it.

You can't "buy off" uneducated when you pick a pixie anymore than you can "buy off" having a lower logic when you pick a troll.

Uh...yeah you can. I wrote it into the rules. <flip, flip> p.85, Runner's Companion.

Huh. Well why even bother giving it to them then? Might as well have just made it "recommended" and bumped their BP cost by 20.

Think about it for a bit and I'm sure a reason or three will come to you.

Because, rather than keep in line with previous rules on buying off qualities (the ones in SR4, at double karma) you instead put in special provisions that allow them to buy it off in chargen. And I ask, whats the point? Did it really need special rules to explicitly allow that?

Yes.

Just curious, but whats the distinction between sapient critters unfamiliarity to technology and shapeshifters? Shapeshifters are encouraged to get uncouth and/or uneducated, while sapient critters are forced to take uneducated but with special provisions that it can be bought off.

Any reason for having them different? Or is it just so that they aren't the same?

From a metagame standpoint, shapeshifters have the option of blending in - they don't really have their own cultures, and with their ability to appear like metahumans they can blend into metahuman culture. In fact, in some Sixth World nations the practice is somewhat institutionalized. Sapient critters, on the other hand, cannot be mistaken as metahuman even in a dark alley and very drunk by an open-minded sort of person, and have their own cultures separate from metahumanity - sometimes intentionally so.

In which case, why allow them the ability to buy it off in chargen? Theres already rules to allow for buying it off with karma after the game has begun, and that would reflect working on adapting to the 6th world. Allowing it in chargen is like saying "yeah, most of them don't know, but theres enough that do that you can start with no penalty at all".

If you wana play a spellslinger pixie and are worried about the low body and gear options. Just make sure you have atleast a body of 2 and shapeshift into a human. You loose the Conceal and flight. But, you keep the cool mental stats and get a +1 to the human physical stats for every success on the spellcasting roll.

Note:
Whether or not metahumans are considered a mundane critter has been a point of contention on the forums and have never been officially ruled by a Dev-type. Check with your GM about thier stance on said issue before making a character with this concept.

use shapeshift and transform into a shape-shifter . . or has that been ruled out somewhere?

Not all sapient critters are created equal. Some have extensive interactions with metahumanity that would qualify for buying it off at chargen, most don't. The naga that was taken as an egg and raised as a security paracritter only to be emancipated has a stronger background in metahuman culture than any "native" culture, for example, and thus has justification for buying Sixth World skills at chargen.

SR pg 204 "Shapechange transforms a voluntary subject into a normal (non-paranormal) critter, though the subject retains
human consciousness. The subject can only assume the form of a critter whose base Body rating is 2 points greater or less
than her own. Consult the Critters section, p. 285, for the subject’s Physical attributes while in critter form. Add 1 to
the critter’s Base attribute Ratings for every hit the caster generates. Her Mental attributes remain unchanged."

As a GM, I would rule the Shapeshifters aren't normal critters.

ok, yes, i tend not to remember that particular part of the spells description/rules . .
horse shamans should be able to morph into pegasi for example, or unicorns, or if you want only pegasus and unicorn shamans should . . but at least a centaur should be possible!
and a gargoyle for gargoyle shamans . . generally, every shaman should be able to shift into whatever his totem is . .

OK, quick question (I would have put this up before, but DS was down for a couple of days):

Do all pixies have the dragon-fly wings? What about butterfly, bird/angel or bat-wings? (I've always had a thing for sexy chicks with bat-wings.......)

hmm . . female pixie adept with some sort of spell that allows her to change body size without too much trouble . . and voila, you have the wasp from avengers O.o
as for the wings: i guess they are only for show, as with dragons o.O

And you still can, even with uneducated. I rather doubt being raised as a security paracritter is grounds for being able to learn aeronautic mechanic. Yet, he can. I also would doubt its any good for hacking, software, or pretty much anything except maybe a computer skill (for trigger alerts).

I thought the goal for SR4 was streamlined and less little tiny rules tucked away in places that deviate from the main. Having a special-case rule for sapient critters only to be able to buy off the uneducated flaw in chargen seems to go against that. I just don't see how it was thought to be such a needed thing that it warranted bookspace for it.

Because of late a vocal portion of the 'Shock has been ridiculously bitching about anything that wasn't hit-you-over-the-head-and-spelled-out-in-every-last-tiny-detail. If we had not included the buyout option, believe you me you'd probably be bitching about that for right now. As far as "little rules tucked away into a corner" - Sapient Critters are the only option with Uneducated as default; they're the only character option that would need or want to buy out the flaw at character generation, because for everyone else taking Uneducated is simply an option. If they decide later on in the chargen process that they don't want it...poof! It's gone! So yeah, I feel that the particular rule is well-located given its relevance to the target audience.

Uhh, thats my point. I think it would have been better off recommending uneducated to sapient critters, like with shapeshifters, rather than requiring it and having an optional buy-off option, adding further to rules bloat.

As far as bitching about things not spelled out. Does the uneducated flaw count against a sapient critters 35BP/70Karma total of flaws they can take? Does buying it off make it then not count? Or does buying it off count as 20bp/40karma worth of positive quality?