I had to lol.

Not at your plight, but the comment. Yeah, I mean, I mentioned in another thread I think we personally have a lot more negative qualities than our characters, even when maxed. At least our characters can gain something from it, unlike us.

RE: Skilllist:

I don't mind specializing at the start. I'm known to be a bit of an optimizer sometimes, but this is one of the things I tend to disagree with-I specialize in the things I think my character would be specialized in(usually their niche.) If I have a combat character, I specialize in things, the 2 dice IS really good, after all.

Skill list looks good overall, however. If I were to change anything around, I'd just lower First Aid to 1(6 dice for Combat Wounds isn't bad for a secondary role), and pop 4 points into Blades, and then scrape up 4 more BP from around(you could remove the Intimidation specialization and get 2 more BP from somewhere, or maybe drop Intimidation itself to 2), to grab a 5 in Thrown.

It is a consistent skillset. I would personally make that Influence 1 instead of Etiquette, and have a Vory knowledge skill instead of the spec. IMO it can´t be too wrong to have Athletics/Influence/Stealth on a char.

Specialisations are 2 BP, not enough potential to care about minmaxing them somewhere else. The only thing that stops me from buying specs is if they separate a group.

And I assume troll babies are too large to be effectively thrown?

-paws

Oh come on, now. A little troll is EASILY the best projectile; their little horns change the S damage to P!

Assuming that a Troll-baby could be about as big as an adult dwarf, yes, i'd say so.
of course, does not stop anyone from trying . . but i would not like to see the angry parents O.o

are they born with tusks and horns? that should make the birth for the mother even worse than it is usually.

True, but anyone throwing troll babies is probably a troll himself, so it might be a fair fight.



I've assume that the teeth/tusks grow in after birth, like human children, and that the horns are, at worst, nubs.

-paws

Well, one-year old troll projectiles, then.

Question: would it be worth taking the Aptitude quality for Blades and/or Throwing Weapons over additional Martial Arts qualities? Is the raised skill cap worth more than the miscellaneous advantages and maneuvers? The qualities I have so far are:
Poor Self-Control (Combat Monster) -10
SINner (Criminal) -10
Geas (Use only knives, throwing knives, and unarmed techniques in combat) -10

Dude! I get Ambidexterity! I also get High Pain Threshold, though, only Rating 1. My wife usually agrees that I get Human Looking, but I don't ask when she is unhappy with me. (Yeah, I know it is for metahumans only, but I'm pre-change, man!) The rest of my Positive Qualities are probably magical and haven't awakened. Oh, yeah, and I almost forgot Photographic Memory ... though it isn't worth as much as I forget to take the lenscap off. Okay, never ind that one.

nah, not really.
that is only ONE DICE more, which you pay even more for . . because as far as i know (about as far as i can throw the Big D) skill and augmented skill are rounded down too.
only if pool is capped by actual skill or a multitude of that or successes are capped like that . .
THEN there is a reason for that . . other than that? no.
it's only ever feasible for completely hard maxing something. if you wanna soft max or min/max, then no.

Only a couple of things I would change to your character:

1- bump str to 7(9) since DV rounds up (and you get better range)
2- bump blades and throwing to 5 each

Other than than it should be a fun build, and fairly effective. He'll probably have as much range as the gunslinger I'm running right now. You're not going to want plenty of non-magic knives for throwing purposes and can probably get by with only one bound magic knife (which is cheaper to bind at the start).

Aptitude really isn't worth it. You have to spend 10 BP on a quality, then 8 points to raise the skill from 6 to 7. 18 points! For the same outlay in points, you could take Urban Fox's recommendations, raising Strength and your two primary skills by 1 each - which would give you far more tangible advantages.

My only issue with this concept is the fact that many of the best knife fighters tend to be of the "grab 'n stab" variety. The lack of Unarmed Combat means that the character has no way to disrupt their opponent's mobility as they chase them around the room with their pointy, bladed stabby/slashy bit(s).

Throwing knives dipped in strong sedative.

Hopefully, you aren't alone in your endeavors, and anyone who strays away from the "safety" of melee combat with you will get shot. Of course, you may have to fast-talk the logic into your opponent.

"No, really, you don't want my companion to shoot you. My knife is a much quicker and painless way to die."

Also, in corporate cube farms or packed warehouses, there isn't much room to run away.

Umm...yeah.

Dying is dying, dude. And it's right at the top of most people's lists of what not to do today.

It's interesting, for sure. I'm just saying that you could probably get a lot more mileage out of a non-Geas build that focused on Close Combat group and the Stealth group and/or Infiltration + Shadowing. More like "The Hunted", as it were. Spend your early Karma on Blades(Knives) and Unarmed Combat(Subdual) so you can get them close, remove their ability to maneuver, and get to work at making them scream and bleed. Plus, you're not hamstrung tactically or efficiency-wise if you need them less than dead.

I recently did it with a non-adept Sammy/Covert Ops Spec build and it worked very, very well with a healthy helping of Viciousness and a side of Sneaky Git.

Sorry, but you seem to be implying that I can Grapple a guy (using Unarmed(Subdual)) and then without letting him go stab him with my knife. Is that actually allowed by the mechanics? From the way I read it (The subduing character must spend a Complex Action from each of his action passes to maintain the grapple.) if you stab him you let him go.

My understanding to do with that within the mechanics you want to use the Clinch Manoeuvre from Arsenal. Also, if you do it this way you don't need anything except blades. Of course, with its higher STR and BOD an Orc is better at this 'Grab-n'-Stab' style of knife fighting. Whereas an elf would probably be better played as 'Slash-n'-Dash'.

Also, subduing isn't the only way to knock somebody unconcious. Narcojet slap patches are a way to go (with Surprise, touch-only and your high AGI going for you even a low Unarmed should be sufficient). Also, you could draw you knife, sneak up to them, clinch them and whisper menacingly into their ears the usual 'Don't move, Don't speak. I don't want to get blood on my shoes.' (Intimidation being a more generally useful skill than a high Unarmed for a knife fighter).

Imp

Well, I apologize for that, sir. I had no idea that the RAW unarmed combat rules were that completely lame. I just figured that the the way we have been doing things was RAW, but I was mistaken.

However, a successful Subdual attack means that the opponent is treated as Prone until their next initiative, so you can still get the +2 dice bonus until then and they're not going anywhere in the meantime. Not the best, but better than nothing and it just might be enough.

Having been known to attend a few japslapping classes in my day, I would houserule that you can substitute Agility for Strength for Knockdown attacks if you have the correct type of Martial Art (Tai Chi, Aikido, Jujitsu, etc) as technique will get you just as far as being able to pick up and slam someone a la UFC which seems to be the descriptor in the SR4A.