That's why I made a point of it - for comparitive purposes. In SR4A your limit is 20 and you can hit it very easy (I was thinking of making a troll face just to prove a point).

At the end of the day, if you really want to play a magician first and foremost, face secondary, go for it. It almost doesn't matter how many dice you have for secondary skillsets (I'd try for 9-12 minimum, depending on your group).

If you want to play a magician/hacker/face, its just too much. Magician/hacker is much much harder because you're (effectively) trying to split your pools 3 ways not one and you suffer MAD (multiple attribute dependency. Simply put, there are no synnergies to the build at all.

I do agree with Dr. Funkenstein that the build is terrible. I'd allow it as a GM but I'd make sure you hit plenty of situations where you realise the limitations of it. I have played a magician all-in-one character in SR1-SR3 and let me tell you, it is almost impossible to build the same character now that I did then under SR4 rules. You gimp yourself in too many other areas.

- J.

Quick note: commanding voice is Leadership plus Charisma. So this character would roll 8 dice for it.

Another quick note: someone mentioned using spirits of man with the innate spell ability. Unfortunately, it has to be a spell known by the summoner. So this character, with no spellcasting skill and no spells, would not be able to take advantage of that ability.

Thanks Glyph! I thought that was how it worked.. but then I was confused by someone here.

I was actually planning to learn so basic spellcasting and spells after I cover some basics for the character. Probably only 3-4 spells that would still be useful at a lower focus. But I could also have spirits of man (which are in my tradition) cast them, after I learn them-- so it had crossed my mind. I have a drain pool of 12 (7 Charisma, 5 Willpower), so as long as I can successfully cast the spell-- it won't hurt much. And a power focus would summoning, binding, and my casting all at once (once I can get some karma for one. I have the money for it.)

Ask your GM first about emotisofts. They'd fit your build well, but they're kind of broken, rules-wise. He might limit them.

But you definitely need an Agent program like quick. You can duplicate that agent like crazy and pull off some excessive hacking feats. Plus you can load them up with skillsofts and make them code for you or tell you how to diffuse a bomb through AR. You'll be happy with more robot friends which you don't have to work so hard to manipulate.

As a stopgap for perception, you can just feed your image link and sound enhancements (or RFID camera and mic sensors,) to your com where you've got a pilot program monitoring it with some Clearsight autosofts. That should spot hidden threats, and with some emotisoft there, it'll even notice when people are acting weird. I say drop the rigging idea entirely. Robot army can take care of itself well enough with pilot programs, so long as you can keep the hackers out of your PAN.

Dodge is a good move. It's tied to reaction, and you can dodge as you flee (which takes running by the way,) which should allow you the time to summon up your friendly ghosts. But, yeah, your best bet is to use commanding voice to shout "don't shoot" or "not in the face!" while you put up your hands.. and then summon a storm of devilish death.

On a final note, I'm confused why you took both human looking and facial sculpt. Did you just want to play an elf who didn't look like an elf? Because facial sculpt can handle that. What it can't help is your apparent total lack of disguise skill.

Final final thoughts: get edge. Rerolls gonna save your life, brah.

Be careful with the updated errata. SR4A has officially changed the workings for this so that you cannot add more than your Charisma + Skill to your social skills. Said another way, you can up to double your Charisma + Skill for social interactions.

With your Charisma 7 + Social 1 you cannot gain more than an additional +8 from any sources, making your maximum dicepool a 16. Even if you have +30 to whatever social roll, you are not allowed to add more than +8.

Also, as I said before (and it bears repeating), you very well might want to turn your ranks of Cracking/Software into more ranks of Social, grab some spells/Spellcasting, and make sure you have a (Connection/Loyalty) X/5 Technomancer contact that can pass you some Crack sprites every now and then. They're like spirits for the Matrix, and a R6 Crack Sprite is better than most hackers you'll see.

For Perception, I suggest specializing it for Aural (hearing), as you can generally hear someone coming at you far before you can "spot" them, smell them, taste them, or definately feel them. Also, you can get some Vision Enhancements (as mentioned above) and Audio Enhancements, which will make your spec even better.

Thanks so much! This is very useful, and exactly why I was posting here! You get my concept and fighting style completely here too. I've kind of come to realize it would b a pain to actually jump into the drones-- I would need gunnary, a piloting skill, a control rig.... If I find enough extra money for a couple autosofts and skillwires-- maybe I could make it work.. but it seems like more trouble than its worth right now. Its better just to have a few drones with on-board pilot programs, and customize them. I can even summon task spirits to maintain, work on, and repair them, huh?

I'll talk to my GM about the emotisoft stuff (But I'm doing the image-link and audio channel to my commlink, with a pilot and clearsoft program though!!). Even though I have only 1 skill in my social group, I'm rolling 14-16 dice on every social challenge. Its more dice than anyone else in the group rolls at once for their skills-- so I don't want to force the GM to expect dicepools of 18-20 in order to do anything. It would really make it hard on the rest of the group, who is more into roleplaying than stats-- and harder for the GM to balance. I had considered emotisoft earlier, but this is why I haven't been in a rush to take it, or boost my social skills further.

The group composition is also why I've gotten into hacking. Simply want to protect the group, and no one else is interested in learning the matrix stuff. Looking it over before character creation, it didn't seem to take much more than the cracking and computers skillgroups. So its karma cheap, easy to fit into other builds.

I didn't realize facial sculpt and human looking were redundant together. I chose both of those for a few reasons... I didn't want to stand out. People tend to remember elves, right? I also have several alias and fake SIN cards-- and they tend to look and act different. Plus, I would like to be able to impersonate someone on a job, for social engineering gigs. Would facial sculpt alone be enough to cover up my being an elf if I want to? I originally had a couple points in disguise, but my build was too tight to include it. Maybe I could include an autosoft of it in a skillwire system later.

Good catch! I'm pretty much hovering below that limit as it is. So emotisoft is out for now. If I had known you could have a contact help you with hacking jobs like that-- I would have done that instead. But I'm going on two months into this game, and it would be a major change to my character's backstory and concept to just throw that out and revise-- don't even want to bother my GM about it.

My knowledge of technomancers is almost nil, unfortunately. Still trying to grasp a few more things about the matrix, before I work on learning those rules. Plus, no one in the group plans to play a technomancer of any sort. I plan to read up on it, but for now I'll work on other things.

I've read some of your other posts though, so I was wondering if I could ask you (or anyone else) your opinion on spirit types. I hear that Spirits of Man are useful, and I understand why. But what about other spirits? My tradition focuses on bargaining with souls of the departed, and human-like spirits make much more sense than say... an earth elemental. Are there certain types of spirits that are just really useful? Or more useful than others? Guardian and guidance spirits look interesting, and human-like. Sprits of task too. But if I choose those, I still have the last spirit type to choose for my tradition. Any recomendations? And should I link certain spirit types to certain schools of magic?

It says in the description that Facial Sculpt allows you to change the shape and size of your face and ears. Elves pass easy enough as humans to begin with, so I wouldn't worry about that. Skillwires are also pretty boss for an infiltrator, so, go on and jump on those when you think you can fit them in. And, yeah, disguise is a pretty good autosoft skill, since it's a low-intensity thing. You get your disguise together, try it out, and go "ta-da" then, if your crew says it stinks, it's back to the makeover table. Though, I think there's a mechanical makeover machine you can buy somewhere. Let me check.

edt: hmmm, couldn't find a specifically tasked machine, but a renreku manservent seems to have the needed dexterity if you can drop the appropriate chip in. At 2,500 nuyen, it's a steal (haha Arcology disaster.)

dubl edt: Also, your char seems like a prime candidate for spoofing his lifestyle. Why pay for the good life when you can trick someone into thinking you've paid for the good life. I wonder if you can spoof DocWagon too..

Spirits are a personal thing.

Spirits of Man grant Influence, and Compulsion if summoned in a Great Form. Personally, I like Great Form Plant Spirits for Regeneration. Task spirits are also useful for their ability to gain any Physical or Technical skill - arguably superior to Spirit of Man's ability to cast any spell you can. Also when Invoked, Task spirits gain Endowment.

Seriously though, its six of one, half a dozen of the other. If I had to pick, I'd go with Task spirits.

If you build your own tradition you can cherry pick which spirits you want. This is why Voodoo ROCKS by RAW because they get Task and Man spirits (sadly, however, it lacks Plant spirits - which would make them truly broken).

- J.

If you are deciding how to progress with this character my first advice would be not to, but since you like it I'd say pick a direction for the character to go, either tech or magic, and do that and the face work. Hackers are karma and cash expensive because they have fairly hefty skill requirements, especially if they are going to be acting as a rigger (the wise 'runner lets no man tinker with his drones), and then you have to buy the programs, electronics and other associated gear and keep it up to date and running. Mages need to initiate, bind with foci and spirits and keep raising their skills and attributes. Then you have the actual cash cost of foci, magical lodges, spell formula.... pick one to be your primary non-social roll and let the other just be your "ace in the hole", something you nail people with when you need to surprise them and get some room. I suggest tech because honestly the level of customization you can do with drones, autosofts and optional equipment is, in my opinion, greater than with magic. That isn't the consensus opinion here, just my own .02 .