I suck incredibly with the number crunch of characters. Mostly with gear, but in this particular case also with the attributes.

Our Storyteller has made things even more difficult for me by adding some houserules.

Within the spoiler are the numbers for the character, a professional assassin. House rules are in regard to disadvantages and starting funds. Up to 70 points in disadvantages are allowed, we start with 150k more money, and we get twice our charisma rating as free BP for contacts only.

The character's role in the group is mostly the infiltration specialist. The assassin side is my own idea to keep things 'interesting'.

This guy is a professional and is quite 'anal' about killing, unless he's paid to do so.

The help I could need is suggestions in regard to gear as well as improvements.



When I was writing this all down, I realized that perhaps some form of electronic / computer / hacking skills could also be useful, but that will make things quite cramped on points.

for a stealth character nothing beats Krav Maga in my mind, not only are the technical bonuses quite good but if one looks past the rules you find a fighting style where you can twist the gun out of a persons hand breaking that persons trigger finger and end up with that gun in your hands aiming at your foe in one smooth motion...among other things.

Elf race cost is 30 bp, not 35.. Muscle toner and Muscle augmentation bioware are good choice....

Well, first you need a white outfit with a hood, get a shoulder cape for some style. Make sure you get a retractable wrist blade for stealth kills. You'll also need a sword of some type when you get into trouble, perhaps a pistol and some throwing knives....


On a serious note...

Go bio where you can, it's discreet and you won't light up on MAD scanners, and if you face any millimeter wave scanners all the damning evidence won't show up.

The HK Urban Fighter would be a solid purchase to get when you can, it's not as concealable as the small pistols, but it's going to fool scanners. It's ceramic and hermetically sealed ammunition and there's an optional ceramic silencer upgrade.

You're basically going to need gear that supports social infiltration and physical infiltration. Lots of tools, basically...

Gecko Hands, for getting those.... hard to reach places. Even then get yourself a grapple gun, I once had a very proffessional combat hacker nearly die because he was thrown out a window by an explosion, but he grabbed his grapple gun on the way down, fired a line and "batman'ed it to safety". If you have to you can use grapple gun line as a restraint or to help set up a trap. Your grapple gun, much like the rigger's duct tape, is something deserving respect. Get an outfit with Ruthenium Polymers on it, my favorite is a set of fitted armored cloths to go over my form-fit. Blades are anachronistic in a world with dmso and slab, but permanent and a corporation can make it's security immune to common drugs, no one's immune to a knife to the brainstem or heart. Maglock passkeys and sequencers are your friend, so is your hacker contact. Sensory augmentations are the path and the glory of an enlightened professional.

If you can squeeze it in take the SURGE quality and pick up Setae instead of Gecko Hands.

Blades are great, Eskrima is the best Martial Art for focusing on Blades. Ceramic knives are cheap and great for stealth work, use a Called Shot for extra damage to make up for the low damage code.

As you are going with Close Combat Group you might also consider Shock Batons for non-lethal work.

Melee weapons ought to have Ruthenium and Lanyards if you went for the Setae. Personalized grip is great also.

The disguised aerosol (Arsenal p64) will hold 200 doses of something useful like Slab or Lael. The later just in case your victim saw your face...

I always recommend having a flyspy with UltraWideBand radar and Covert Ops autosofts. Nothing says tactical superiority like seeing through walls and knowing what the guard on the other side has in his guts.

One piece of advice: You probably don't really need Dodge on such a character. Close Combat can handle melee defense (pistols count as an Improvised Club weapon as per Arsenal, so you could even parry with that, at a penalty, although a glitch could be really bad without weapon hardening...) and a Gymnastics Dodge Full Defense can be used to defend against ranged attacks.

Anyway, depending on your character's background, Carromeleg isn't a terrible choice either if you intend to ambush people with your melee weapons, as it increases your Initiative for Surprise tests. Krav Maga or Firefight are probably more practical overall choices though.

Nothing says "Infiltration Specialist" like skill wires. You can download the the skills, languages and info you'll need to be able to truly infiltrate. The skill wires are also not that unusual for a corporate drone either. However it will let you avoid making the common "mistakes" that most Shadowrunners make in infiltration (IE going into SK and not knowing German). Add a contact that is a costume designer and a fashion consultant and you can even make sure that you are wearing the right thing for the right location. (Most runners don't know what to wear to fit in because they think all Corps look alike.)

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I'll have to dig up my infiltration specialist "Bob from Accounting". He is kitted up pretty well.

I thought you just needed a simrig to use knowsofts. Skillwires are for active skills.

You need a Sim Module. A Simrig is used to record simsense, though it includes a Sim Module, too.

Yeah, I don't think anybody has ever had reason to regret getting Skillwires. At the very least, you'll want Skillwires, Lockpicking and ESPECIALLY Hardware Skillsofts. Hardware alone is worth the price of admission for an Infiltrator, although one level of Hardware and the Maglock specialization might do in a pinch as well. I honestly find the ability to MacGuyver my way past security devices so valuable that I often try to find a way to fit Cerebral Boosters into my infiltrator builds as well, since Hardware+Logic tests are the catch all method for disabling security devices through physical means. There's nothing worse than BSing your way through a facility only to glitch while slicing a basic maglock once you're alone.


I would also recommend synthacardium; few pieces of perfectly legal 'ware are more powerful or more inexpensive for what they do.

The only thing that sucks about Skillwires is the cost of Activesofts. They're ridiculously priced. At character creation you're better off just buying the skill than wasting the 40,000¥ (16 BPs) it takes to buy a single rating 4 Activesoft.

40k is 8 BP, but the point still stands that for the same price in BP you could get half the rating as an actual skill, and then you actually have it and it doesn't count against your max cash.

Also, I find the fear of arithmetic to be Hilarius.

"So, how much am I getting paid for this job?"
"10k, and a 5k bonus if no one sees you."
"So that would be a total of.... oh god! No! Just whatever, I'll do it man! Just stop with the math!"



As for serious advice, give me a bit to look around.

Oh, wait, just noticed it was mania, not phobia. Hehe, almost as good.
"So, if I'm getting paid 15k for this job, and I just spent 80 on that smoke grenade, and 100 on the stealth rope and I'm going to spend 15 on ammo and another 5 from a stealth stick to get rid of the stealth rope when I leaves and this has taken me 3 hours to do... when will the train reach boston what is my hourly pay."

Karoline beat me to it.

So instead I'll make a picture of a little guy giving a thumbs up (o'.')b

Think about the price for a second. It makes absolute snese that you would have to spend 16BP to get a rating 4 skillsoft because it takes 16BP to purchase any skill at rating four as it is.

Ack, sorry. I've been using the Karma generation rules lately so I have 2,500¥/point stuck in my head. My mistake.

Heh, never apologize for using karmagen. A lifetime of real skills is much better than being forced to rely on robo-skills.

Bad Dr. Funkenstein. You know mistakes aren't tolerated here Still stuck on Keren's game?

Anyway, my big suggestions are mostly things that have already been mentioned:
Gecko hands for climbing.
Muscle Toner for Agi
Maybe a few points of Muscle Enhancer for a bit of a Str boost.
Reflex Recorders might be good for some skills or skill groups.
Smuggling Compartment/skin pocket could be handy for sneaking in a small weapon (holdout or garrote of some kind maybe)
Hardware skill to let you bypass maglocks.
Lockpick skill (or auto lockpick) for the occasional old style lock.
Cutting torch. Any number of uses, including getting into air ducts.

Oxyrush nanites can allow you to hold your breath for ages, which could prove useful for getting into or close to a facility from the water, or allow you to hold your breath if they pump a gas into the room you're in.
If you're getting nanites anyway, nanotattoos could be handy. They can make for a quick disguise by adding/removing tattoos, changing skin color, even shading your face so it looks fatter/thinner at a glance. If you get max rating for each bodypart you can even go chameleon in the buff (Not generally great, but if you need it for some reason...) or get a hiding bonus as long as a fair bit of your skin is showing.

A chemical glad could be potentially cool for having some sort of assassination poison always on hand, though it is somewhat pricey.
Smoke + Thermal Smoke + ultrasound = only you can see.
Ultrawideband radar = see through walls to spot your target and guards and such.

Mistakes are fine. Adhering to them as law isn't so much.

Honestly, if I were designing an assassin built around an infiltration specialist, I'd go with a standard adept of the Silent Way who augments his abilities with technology. I'd start by maxing out my Agility as high as I could without it being too much of a BP burden, then focus on a decent Charisma and Intuition score. Strength should at least be 3 (giving you a 8P unarmed strike with the primary build below), Magic needs to be maxed out at 6, and Edge, Reaction and Willpower should all be solid, too. Honestly, this is the type of character that benefits from a heavy investment in Attributes, as you can benefit from every single one of them.

Skillwise you'll want to go with either Unarmed Combat (Martial Art) 6 or Unarmed Combat (Martial Art) 5 and Infiltration (Urban) 5 if your GM lets you split up skill groups. You'll want the Stealth group at 4 for sure, and Influence is a really handy one to have, too. But if you can't afford it, at least get a good Con score. You'll also want Hardware and whatever other skills are required for breaking-and-entering. Athletics is another group to consider picking up. Everything else is purely up to taste, really. Security Systems and Security Procedures are must-have Knowledge Skills, though.

As an adept, Improved Infiltration 3 is only 0.75 power points and, if you max your Magic attribute and avoid implants, Agility Boost 1 will net you about 2-3 points of Agility every time you need to use it with a negligable chance of drain. That's basically +5-6 dice to your Infiltration for a single power point. Throw in Improved Reflexes 2 with a geas limitation (if your GM is allowing that optional rule from Street Magic) for 1.85 points, and you have 3.40 points leftover for anything else that tickles your fancy. Killing Hands, Critical Strike 6 and Distance Strike, if all geas limited, costs 3 points and gives your unarmed strikes a damage code of [(STR/2)+6]P that you can "shoot" at people, and you still have almost half a point leftover. Use that to score Improved Sense: Damper and Improved Sense: Thermosense and you're pretty damn set as an infiltrator-assassin already. The best part? You're totally undetectable except to Assensing, and a single grade of Initiation and the Masking metamagic will cover that up nicely. Alternatively you could go with Facial Sculpt and Voice Control for the ultimate master of disguise, but that's an entirely optional build path. Yet another option is to score Elemental Strike and choose an element that's quiet but halves Impact Armor to make your unarmed strikes all the more deadly. Most GMs will house rule it to work with Distant Strike, too, but you should ask before considering that option. It's still a good option either way.

With your basic skill set covered, you can then get started on technology to supplement and accentuate your talents.

Start by grabbing Contact Lenses 3 with Flare Compensation, Low-Light and Smartlink, some Glasses 4 with Ultrawideband Radar 4 (Radar Sensor 4), Vision Enhancement 3, and Vision Magnification, and a pair of Earplugs 3 with Audio Enhancement 3 and Select Sound Filter 3, and most of your sensory needs are already met. You can score some Microsensors disguised as buttons or whatever else you like on the cheap, and stack up on even more sensors such as MAD Scanners and Cyberware Scanners. Invest in a commlink with a Firewall and System rating of 6, then add in Nonstandard Wireless Link 6 and Hardening 6 to make it difficult to detect and highly resistant to jamming/hacking. If you have the cash, get a pocket Agent hacker to defend it for even better security.

Buy a set of Form-Fitting Body Armor instead of a Chameleon Suit and twink it out Thermal Dampening 6, Shock Frills (to accentuate your unarmed abilities and a great "quit grappling me" security measure), and Ruthenium Coating. Now you have the equivalence of a Chameleon Suit when you need it, but you can also wear it underneat your other costumes/armor, too, with a minimal chance of detection. Use Clothing to score the other big armor options such as Nonconductivity 6, Chemical Protection 6, and/or Fire Resistance 6 based on situations. Or, if you have the Body for it, just do it with whatever other armor pieces you fancy. Remember, even basic Clothing can support 6 points of modifications.

Just so you can take advantage of firearms, I'd get an Ares Light Fire 70 with the custom silencer accessory. It's one of the quietest guns in the game with a -5 penalty to Perception Tests to detect its firing. You can load it with Stick-n-Shock for most fights, or Subsonic rounds to make it even quieter (for a total of -7 or -9 penalty I believe). Some custom DMSO/Drug Capsule rounds are another option; when using those, you don't really care how much damage the base Capsule round does so much as you're using it as a drug delivery system. Lael and Narcojet are really nice options there. And, as soon as you can after character creation (or if you wanna blow a Restricted Gear slot for it), get the Ceramic/Plasteel Components 3 modification for the gun to make it the perfect stealth firearm, and maybe even Barrel Reduction if your GM doesn't have a problem with that on Light Pistols that use a silencer. That makes it as concealable as a Hold-Out Pistol. Since you have Distant Strike and a brutal Unarmed Combat attack, you can rely on that when you encounter the BigBadAss™ opponents in the game. This gun is for taking care of the little stuff and lulls enemies into a false sense of security when you let them "find" it on you during a pat-down.

Oh, and if you do decide to skip on the Capsule rounds, at least get some Slap Patches loaded with Lael. It's an awesome drug for any character that doesn't want to leave evidence they were there.

Next, grab a Maglock Passkey, Autopicker (or standard picks if you have a high Locksmith score), and Glass Cutter. Maybe even get the Body Cavity Escape Kit from Arsenal if you don't mind having a tube shoved up your ass on a semi-regular basis. Multiple fake SINs and Licenses are great, too. You'll definitely want a Sequencer and Electronics tool kit if you have the appropriate skills for it, which you should as an infiltrator.

When you can afford it, look into Retinal Adjusters and Altskin nanoware. Combined with the Facial Sculpt/Voice Control optional build earlier, there's almost nothing that can keep you out with a little spy work ahead of time. See if you can talk your GM into allowing an external version of a Nanohive (which should certainly be possible; it's lame that they don't have rules for it) and you can pretty much have that nanoware available whenever you need it without causing you to be in the poor house... and all with zero impact on your Magic or Essence.

All that is where I'd start as an assassin-infiltrator. Sure, there's lots of cyberware that can get the job done, but this is one of the few fields where an adept actually excels. And there's tons of growth options, too. Traceless Walk, Improved [Stealth/Athletics/Unarmed/Influence skills of choice], Adept Centering, Attunement (Tools), etc. And if there is some situation where you have to appear as a regular Joe Schmoe, you can leave all the toys at home, deactivate all your powers, and throw Masking up and it'll be rough figuring out that you're anything but one.

Actually, as per RAW in SR4A, you only need a direct neural link, aka a datajack, to use linguasofts and knowsofts.

"Linguasoft: Linguasofts replicate language skills, allowing the
user to speak a foreign language as fluently as her native language.
Linguasofts may also be used as real-time translation programs.
Linguasofts must be accessed with a direct neural link (either a sim
module or datajack)."

SR4A restricts starting characters to a Rating 3 Skillwire, and you could always use pirated Autosofts.



It's not a mathematical mania. It's counting, plain as that. It has some advantages, but also quite a lot of disadvantages, and I have had that for as long as I can remember. It's quite an annoying form of OCD, which I've learned to live with. Just to give an example of how bad it is.

From the front door of my apartment building to the nearest store, I pass 18 parking spaces, three trash containers, along that road there are 6 street lanterns on my side and only four on the other side. It takes somewhere between 128 and 150 paces to reach that store. The zebra path is also odd, one side has 6 stripes the other seven. To get from the front door of my apartment building I have 8 steps, seven steps, and two times eight steps again and I pass five other front doors.

That's just to give an idea of what artithmania is. The fascination lies in the numbers, not the meaning behind it, or the math ... just plain numbers.

i know the 1st part is off topic but when i first read this i saw "flypsy" in my head an though flipsy what the hell is a flipsy is it like a trycorder?... oh no its fly-spy ok makes sence....

no on topic i dig the adept and biowere-toy useing inflitraters with a good splashof social you maynot need to climb the wall if the maid will letyou in .. oh and nbo seate its gross

Time to post the 'Nullhead'.


Race: Homo Sapiens Sapiens


Attributes

B: 3
A: 5
R: 4
S: 3
C: 3
I: 4
L : 3
W: 3

Edge: 5
Essence: 6

Positive qualities

Blandness
Erased II
Adrenaline Surge

Negative qualities

Sensitive System
Nano Intolerance

Active skills

Perception: 3
Dodge: 3
Longarms: 3
Automatics (Assault Rifles): 4+2
Unarmed Combat: 3
Athletics: 2
Stealth: 3
Etiquette: 3
Negotiation: 2
Pilot Ground Craft (Wheeled): 4+2
Automotive Mechanic: 2
Armorer: 1
Survival (Urban): 1+2
First Aid (Combat Wounds): 1+2
Locksmith: 1

Knowledge skills

Armstech: 2
Vehicletech: 2
Military Tactics: 2
Coverd-Ops Tactics: 2
Police Proceedings: 3
Anatomy: 1

Languages

German (m)
English: 4
French: 3
Spanish: 2
Russian: 2
Arabic: 2

Connections

Fixer (6/3)
Gunsmith (3/2)
Junkyard Owner (2/2)
Smuggler (2/2)
Club Owner (4/5)
Hacker (2/3)
Street Doc (3/2)


Weapon of choice: Modded AK-97
Vehicle: Modded BMW 400 GT


Area of operations: Sniper, rigger, infiltration

Interesting. A non-wared non-magic assassin.

That and Faces are two areas a mundane can get away with doing pretty easily.

I can think of a ton of 'ware that could give either one big bonuses to their DP, but yeah, they don't need it as badly as a gunbunny needs it if only for getting some extra IPs.

Detectives are another, less used, archetype that is not ware or magic dependant.

Detectives are another, less used, archetype that is not ware or magic dependant.

Detectives are basically the hybrid of a Face/Infiltration Specialist, so that's not very shocking.

Meh, arguable, there are alot of ways to build an effective detective, sometimes having a low charisma can work to your advantage, though the con and interogate skills are always a must.

How the heck could having a low charisma working to your advantage? It adds dice to tests, period. The same Charisma score that lets you Intimidate people also helps you Con others into thinking you're harmless. Like it or not, there's no advantage to having low charisma by the RAW. You can be the burliest troll on the planet and get the "Physically imposing" bonus to Intimidate that way, but that's a context based GM judgement call, not a function of your Charisma score. A charismatic elf Face sporting obvious offensive 'ware would be an even better option for intimidation in such a scenario.

And a Charismatic guy can still play a bumbling slob well enough. For example, see Colombo, the world's greatest homicide detective/hobgoblin.

For those 10 points you spent on charisma I just got 2 ranks of a skill and a specialization, I'm not saying it's an optimum way to do it, but it works, and when gathering information I actually roleplay it out with my players, and depending how they go about it, gives a bonus to the relevant dice pool. Too often things degenerate into rollplaying otherwise which I find sad, considering how good my players are at crafting great scenes.

Well, yes, but 'using those 10 points on something else' is a much different statement than 'lower charisma is good'. For most characters though, there are only 5 skills in the game that base off charisma, so getting a point from 10 BP by upgrading the group is almost as good as raising the point of charisma, but not quite due to that fifth skill and the occasional charisma based stat check.

And of course even if you give a bonus for good RP of a social scene, it doesn't make having a lower charisma a good thing. Personally I find giving a bonus for something like that to be a bad idea. I understand the point is to encourage RP, but RPing should be something people do because they -want- to do it, not because it is giving them bonuses. It also penalizes the player that is socially inept for playing a social character, because he will have a harder time getting that bonus, but the player's ability to do anything should have no baring on a character's ability to preform the same action.

Still, both of these discussions are beside the point of this thread, which is assassin related gear for the character.

Well, I'm done with the gear. And there is a lot he'd actually would want to have still, but his money ran dry.

On the other hand, I did invest heavy into a very special fixer, who can provide him with nearly anything if the price is right. This after having a talk with the GM.

Thanks everybody for the suggestions.


Wishlist:

He needs much better matrix gear as his absolute first priority, closely followed by weapons. Then he'd probably need to spend his money to go through rehab, followed by intensive psychiatric treatment, followed by new cyberware.

Then again, the characters of the group are going to hunt stuff with a dead 'bounty' on their heads, which should pay fairly acceptable.