Hey guys, so I’ve finally got my first build to a point where I’m pretty satisfied with it. I thought I’d pass it along to you to get any comments you might have. I’m not interested in optimizing him to the point of twinkness as this is only my first character so he doesn’t have to be perfect. I was hoping for advice on if I’ve made any glaring omissions, am going about the character in a backwards way, or of course if I’ve made a mistake somewhere. Thanks in advance.

I’m envisioning this character as a former French DGSE (Directorate-General for External Security) operative (think the French equivalent to the CIA). Specifically, he would have participated in the Action Division, or those responsible for performing the assorted clandestine operations. With that in mind, his skill sets should account for the ability to be highly effective in combat and infiltration supplemented by some social graces. I haven’t incorporated much of his backstory because it is still a work in progress. Without further ado, I present Guillaume Laroche.



Questions:

-I had planned on having him carry two Smartlinked weapons: a Colt Manhunter and Ingram X for frequent use. If necessary he would later on pick up more advanced weaponry. Is that a sound plan? I don’t think in our campaign he could get away with wandering around with an assault rifle, and I haven’t played enough to know when/where it would be useful. I took the skills for all the weapons though because I think eventually he’ll need to use the heavier arms.
-Which knowledge skills would be useful for him in your opinion?
-And of course the general things I mentioned above.

Personally I'd say ditch shock hands and buy some shock gloves instead.

You can take them off that way, which is a big advantage if you're trying to walk through a security scanner.

Given his former DGSE background some shadowing might be good (Maybe drop a point or two from heavy weapons for it? As they're not something which would be suitable for the jobs he'd be suited to).

If you can I'd up the athletics skill a bit. If only because Gymnastics dodge seems to be your choice of range defence. Alternately if you can find the nuyen for it Synthacardium is an awesome buy. Adds to all athletics skill group tests, is fairly cheap and only costs a small amount of essence.

One thing he probably does need is at least a token point in computer and data search. They let you join in with the legwork part of missions and virtually everyone in SR will have spent enough time around computers to have them unless they have some weird background quirk.

Edit - I'd pick the Ares Predator over the manhunter. It comes with a built in smartlink, which saves you nuyen, at the cost of 1 less shot in the clip. Submachine gun wise the Ingram is a good choice although personally I like the FN P93 Praetor from Arsenal.

For what it is worth (and granted, my games are high-action cinematic), I don't think there is anything wrong with owning heavier weaponry just in case it is needed. It doesn't mean you have to carry it/them around with you all the time, but if you find you really need something to pack a punch then it is a lot better to pick something up from your cache then to have to wait on your contacts...

Other than that I offer no advice to the mechanics of the build itself just because I find builds to be personal

You might want to add a Sim Module and a Data Jack so he can use Knowsoft things (languages, maps, etc.) and to talk with things w/o wireless modes turn on (aka top-secret on-site devices) he infiltrates his way to. Even a cyber-comlink might be handy getting into places when you can't bring much luggage.

Looks like a very decent build, though i'd add some skillwires.
This way, the character could easily adapt to specific missions (you could get the needed BP by dropping Heavy Weapons, for example), loading up on a plethora of highly specific skills.
As an agent, he might occasionally need stuff like Disguise, Forgery, Hardware, Locksmith, various Pilot skills and so on and skillwires would be a very convenient way to accquire these skills.


As far as the knowledge skills are concerned, besides the usual token hobby stuff to round out the concept, i'd consider various Security Procedures skills, probably Foreign Politics (or the Conspiracy Theories skill one of the archetypes has^^), as well as skills specific to the missions the character was sent on.
Somebody who has infiltrated one of the Tirs will have a completely different background than an agent who used to work on the Arabian peninsula.
Typical targets for a French spy would be Amazonia (still extremely suspicious due to their support of eco-terrorists), any state in the greater Middle East (even long after the Euro Wars, relations seem to be strained) or some of the whackier awakened nations, such as Henan (the magocracy in former China).

is he like cleseau from the pink panther?

I'd go with Shock Gloves instead of a Shock Hand. You can easily switch to Hardliner gloves when more severe thrashings in hand to hand combat are needed.

The pistol and SMG are fine. You can get a pistol into a lot more places than an assault rifle.

It seems a bit odd that a former government agent would have so much used cyberware. Shouldn't they have kitted him out better?

Presumably you have GM approval for used Cyberware at chargen? I'm not 100% sure but I didn't think you could start off with it. But then I don't have my books to hand so I could be wrong.

Budget restraints?



Looked it up in Augmentation, by RAW there's no such rule.


However, now that you mention it, the Reflex Recorder is neural bioware and as such not available as used ware.

Thanks for all the responses so far.

Oenone: I’m going to ditch the Shock Hands for the Shock Gloves as per your (and Knight Saber’s) advice to save a bit of Nuyen as well as the need for another fake license. I also realized that I wrote the wrong pistol in my first post. I meant a Colt Government 2066. I chose that one because it came with the Electronic Firing already, so adding on a Smartgun System saved me a bit of Nuyen over the Ares Predator IV. As for the FN Praetor, I really like that gun, but it’s rated Forbidden, which means being caught with it is bad news, right? I was trying to avoid having him carry any equipment that can’t be covered by a Fake License. I also switched a point from Heavy Weapons to Shadowing, because I think you’re right that he should have some of that skill as well. And great idea about the Synthacardium. I added a rating 2 one (used) so his athletics is effectively a 4 for the cost of 2 more BP.

Speed Wraith: I definitely want to own at least an Assault Rifle, Sniper, and Shotgun at some point in this character’s career. Right now though the points are just too tight so I’m going to have him purchase those things once he gets a little Nuyen from some jobs. Hey, who knows, maybe he’ll find one or two while trying to not get shot on a run, ha. I was thinking one of the modular weapons, as that way one gun covers all the bases, which could be really useful, but I’ll just have to wait and see. This will be the first game for our SR group, (and our first tabletop experience as well) so I’m ok with building up to toting a Grenade Launcher down the line.

GrinderTheTroll: Good advice. I did a little research on the Sim Module/Datajack option and it sounds interesting. I’m going to play around with incorporating it.

Rasumichin: Thanks, I’ve tried to incorporate a fair amount of Dumpshock advice into his build already, so it’s really more just how much of the forums I’ve surfed than anything else if his build looks good, haha. As for Skillwires, I’m going to try and incorporate them. I just need to decide which ones he would have had. And scrounge up the points for them. It’s tough because once you get the skills as softs then they aren’t going to get any better, so I want to make sure that I don’t pick anything I’d want to upgrade later on. Probably stuff like Piloting, the token points of data search and computers that Oenone mentioned, too. Not sure what else. Maybe some Lingua/Knowsofts.

Hocus Pocus: No, but since I do have a decent knowledge of French, I plan on having him randomly curse/chastise/complain en francais for laughs. I thought that would provide some good comic relief at the table. We’ll see how it goes.

Knight Rider: Changed the Shock Hands for Gloves, and I agree about the weapons. I haven’t played SR before, so I wanted to make sure that I didn’t make a character that can’t take his weapons anywhere where he would need them. And I had originally wanted normal Ware, but it’s just too expensive so far to do that. I do have a reason to account for the used status, but optimally it wouldn’t be. Oh well, I guess.

And good point about the used Reflex Recorder. I’ll fix that while I play around with the Skillwires.

A general question about Skillsofts/Skillwires. It says in the BBB that Skillwires can hold their rating x2 in skills and that for Activesofts their rating cannot exceed the Skillwire’s rating. So, if my character had a Skillwire rating 3, I could equip him with 6 rating 3 Activesofts? (Assuming I had the money, which I don’t, and I’d probably use some lingua/knowsofts anyways, but just for clarities sake). Am I understanding that right?

Thanks again for the help.

I should've thought so when i saw the high BOD and Edge stats.



Yes, but the skillsofts aren't hardwired into the system, you can exchange them as you like if you have the time to upload a new program into them.
Simply store all the skillsofts on your commlink as swap as needed.

Moreover, you could try to get skillsofts as pirated programs, which greatly reduces their cost.
Unwired includes various methods of cheesing out skillsofts even further, such as customizing them to specific users, including an overdrive option for bonus dice or reducing demands on the skillwire system.

If your GM is unsure about allowing assault rifles, he might have a problem with those options, though.

If you're really being sneaky you could go without /any/ skillsofts except maybe the ones required for matrix browsing.
Invest the nuyen in a high lifestyle and a +12 to your starting nuyen roll.
Take a suitable hacker contact, then have them download you pirated copies of a huge range of skills with pluscode etc on them on the cheap. Then wait for your GM to hit you with a plot stick as revenge...

haha, it so happens that the hacker of the group (there are only 3 of us) is also the acting GM. I wonder how that would go over. On the one hand, he could download himself some of the same equipment. On the other hand... well. At the moment we're looking at a rotational GM policy until we get a better handle of the system, at which point we hope that one of us will step up and run a campaign before we switch again. My issue with assault rifles is that since none of us have played we have no idea when/where they would be feasible to be used. So, more of a lack of knowledge about the setting that we're hoping will come the more we play. Or maybe with the release of the next Seattle book.

Though I do like that option for obtaining the Softs--pirating them, I mean. I might not go all out with it, but it wouldn't hurt to save some Nuyen, and it would help me give him a plethora of lower level skills that I think he would be able to pull out of his hat but that aren't essential to his character without having to sacrifice any of his core skills. Being able to swap them in and out for different situations also sounds helpful. Do you know what section of Unwired where it discusses the different modifiers for the Skillsofts that you were mentioning? I'd like to look that over. Oh, and could I also trouble you for where the rules on obtaining pirated software are?

Thanks.

If you are wanting to make is a realistic operative, its all about the information. Your attibutes look fine but you might want to shift you skills around. The DGSE and CIA operatives are similar to the Covert-Ops Specialist in SR4.
Some ideas about the Skills would be dropping the Firearms group and taking Pistols-5 and Automatics-5, drop Heavy Weapons (Not to many agents firing .50 cals) and default on any First Aid test. Pick up skills in Shadowing (previously mentioned), Electronic Warfare and some Computer. For some knowledge skills, backgrounds in forensics, psychology, international affairs and government policies, could be benificial.
Also think about breaking up your contact into a network of informants. Information is the weapon and you set your rescources it aquiring it.

Page 94 for Piracy rules. Page 117 for the skillsoft program options.


Providing you're paying for them (and maybe giving them a bit of nuyen on top) and make sure the hacker knows they'll be getting to keep copies too I can't see why they wouldn't allow it... I mean it makes sense ICly right?

Assault rifles... Depend entirely on where you are and what you're doing. Most of the time if you're going to be carrying a submachine gun then you /really/ don't want anyone to stop and ask for ID anyway. At which point the extra range on an assault rifle is handy for being able to put holes in people before they get close enough to do the same to you.

Smuggling compartments are a good way to ensure you have them close to hand. Of course the one gun I like the most for personal protection is the pistol size grenade launcher from Arsenal. Easy to smuggle but can turn a room full of people into paste. Just so long as you make sure you're in another room at the time first.

Well, as I envision him he isn't your standard CIA operative. He's more like 75% Spec Ops (Action-oriented end of the covert operations branch) and 25% typical spook. Maybe more 80/20. So I want some of the spy skills, but his main focus is the business end of the operations (I'm handling the combat role for our 3 person group). I suppose a good example would be John Clark from Tom Clancy's novels.

I've toyed with your idea of swapping Firearms for just Pistols/Automatics because I could either save some points for other things (there just aren't enough BP around for me, haha) or I could just have him be more proficient with those two skills. My main problem with that is that I wanted him to be able to use a Sniper Rifle if necessary. Same thing for the Heavy Weapons skill. Those are there because I think he'd be proficient with them. Ultimately I went with the Firearms Group because I figured trading one die off Automatics and Pistols was worth having the extra 5 dice on Longarms (4 from Group +1 from not having to Default). If I took Auto/Pistols at 4 each then I could save 8BP for other things and try and acquire Longarms later. It's still an option I suppose.

And I'll check out the Piracy and Skillsoft program options, thanks Oenone. I don't think it'll be a problem in the group. My hesitancy is more towards this being our first game so I don't want to try and do anything too complicated before we all know more about the game. And I had planned on getting him a Fake BodyGuard License or something of that nature to account for having a pistol and SMG. Would that be viable? If not, then I might just trade out the SMG for an Assault Rifle and figure out a way to either smuggle it around, or just hope the pistol will be enough for day-to-day stuff.

Depends on how you run licenses which seems to vary from game to game. So long as your group agrees on it being acceptable then go for it.

Don't rule out machine pistols either. They're easy to hide but can pack some serious punch when you use the burst fire options.