Linguasofts are pretty cheap. Investing in a dozen or so at rating 3-4 shouldn't set you back that much, and covering all the basics should be easy enough.

There's also the Linguistic adept power (which only costs 0.25 Power Points) and the Linguist positive quality (5 BP). Combined, you can have a rating 3 Language Skill for free after about an hour's exposure to any language. In may only be half an hour, too, when combined depending on the GMs interpretation. Either way, it doesn't cost any Karma or BPs at all. It's completely free to learn languages, and as soon as you do you have it at a rating of 3. Adepts actually make fantastic communicators. Throw in some other powers like Kinesics and Commanding Voice, and you can be a powerhouse without even having to have a high Magic rating. Even if you just go with Linguasofts instead of the adept power, the Linguist quality is awesome; it's a flat +2 bonus to any language skill.

Either way, just make sure you have a high Logic attribute if you're the comm officer and you should be fine.

For the non-adepts: get skillwires!

You don't need skillwires for linguasofts or knowsofts. A datajack or even trodes will suffice.

D'oh! Seems like I glitched.

we'll have so many med kits. I've gone the skill heavy route with my ex-SBS guy trying to fit it into IRL SBS training ect. Means i have a few skills I doubt will see play parachuting for one. Same with the ability to track and survive in jungles. The SBS and SAS share a lot of training and both recruit heavily for the paras and marines.

"I-rey breddas! So ya be wannin t'know about I and I? I's been sailin' dese waters for tall time now. An' I be keep sailing till come babylon if I's gotta say in dat. You be needin' a bredda to handle any hacklin ye's got? Ain no wolf, I's Rasta thru n thru. I and I together are tallowah jah? Mr. T says the let off be good here nuh? Mek we big bout yah? Gettin on about da bandulu bizness. Seen? One love."



Malachi is an rastafarian Ork of Jamaican decent. He knows the Caribbean waters well and has spent most of his life on boats. He's well versed in heavy weapons, both mounted (gunnery) and man-portable (heavy weapons). He's also a decent mechanic, though not an engineer by any standards.

Nautical Mechanic 4 and I'll fix your boat with my mechanic shop. And shoelaces, paperclips and gum.

Penta, I sent my char to you via PM.

True dat. She reminds me of Hana Gitelman from Heroes, only a redhead elf, and not a technomancer.

This isn't a bad concept, though I'd beg you to keep the accent subtler in actual play.

Maybe is because an entire branch of huge extended family though marriage is Jamaican but I can read that perfectly.

You'd need a linguasoft just to understand him!

Hehe. I should have his sheet prepped for dissection later tonite Penta.

Oh and if I can manage the heavy accent (took me awhile to put that together) I'll always do the spoiler underneath with what he's saying in more contemporary English.

Thank you so much.

...So, an Israeli woman?

A thought with regards to custom boats: if we really want a helipad, the greater beam of a catamaran or SWATH type vessel should make that possible (cats often have beams as wide as 1/3 of their length), though such vessels are often slower than a monohull of equal capacity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWATH
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontoon_%28boat%29

I need a decision on my Sylph, will it fit, can I bring it? Also, what shops are we going with?
Nautical Mechanic (mine)
Armourer?
Cybertechnology? (can I bring this?)
Medical?
Chemistry?

Problem: What's their seakeeping like? Keep in mind, you'll be out in the North Atlantic. It would suck to get a helipad, only to be unable to handle rough seas.

Cybertechnology would be useless - you aren't going to be doing implantations at sea.

Cybertechnology isn't for implantations, that's Medicine. Cybertechnology deals with implant maintenance, like tinkering with cyberarms and installing accessories, etc.

Oh. I stand corrected.

Hey, for added flavor I could always make my magician a dolphin shaman (or any other sea creature) if you like though I have not found any stats for a dophin shaman.

Later

So pick a mentor spirt that is dolphiny/or just sea creatury and call it that.

I'm interested in joining, but I'm at somewhat of a loss as to what roles have been picked - any chance anyone else have been keeping better track than me?

Erm, it's bad when the GM has lost track too, but I have. Help?

Well, unless you've had personal conversations with all players, you're probably confused for the same reasons I am, given that people swap ideas back and forth and casually hint that they might be able to also fill out this and that role

Well I can say without a doubt that I'm covering the Thaumaturgical Officer role. Playing an Ork Hermetic Mage.

Hehe, Lemme see

uhm....

*will edit post while looking*


Commander:
Master: Digital Heroin
XO:
Engineering Officer: Xahn Borealis
Gunnery Officer: GrimWulf
Marine CO: Belvidere & remmus have both shown interest but no posts recently
Thaumaturgical Officer: fazzamar
Intelligence Office: Grinder & Foxx have both shown interest (Ready? Fight)
Quartermaster: Dumori
Medical Officer: Faraday/Hudson(?)
Navigation Officer: toturi
Communications Officer: Minchandre

Ones I'm not sure on:
Dr Funk

I had a sound off on roles a few pages back, hope it helps.



Also, Dear GM, quote the above post to the 1st post. This will make things much easier.

So, which specific position to you see yourself best fitting Faraday?

I've been low on net time, but I'm not out... still working on a jack-of-all-trades type who could fill the Master spot.

He's a medical officer first, but he's also good with comms (hacking 6, Biotech group 4). I could switch that to engineering if needed, though.

I'm hoping for Navigation/Engineer. Like if Sulu and Scotty made a baby. Good God, imagine the accent...

Just put me down for medical officer and comms.

The thought makes Sulu happy.

Pontoon boats, I don't know. Catamarans are regularly used for high seas sailing, and SWATH boats are used by the US Navy and others for all uses. SWATH boats are actually super stable, which is their primary advantage; their main downside is being slow and fuel inefficient (they have a relatively high underwater profile, creating lots of drag). I'll have a sample ship - a mineral surveyor - out some time this afternoon.

Cherry is a skilled but flawed hacker; if we end up having no proper Engineer, that's probably more critical. Otherwise, an proper hacker would be nice. In particular, Cherry doesn't do "subtlety".

Jolly Roger is also a flawed hacker, but in the opposite sense. He's very subtle but not well geared for cybercombat.

Sounds like a perfect combination!

I friggin' love the name.

Well, I'd be more than willing to fill the role as either Marine CO or Executive Officer, though frankly, besides the face description in the early posts, I'm not really sure what the latter entails.

If I get the first gig I'd like to make a Hobgoblin with some genre appropriate cyber-modifications.

RedFish: I don't really like using the metavariants from RC...or the other player types from RC like infected or drakes. They're not, IMHO, particularly balanced.

XO, in truth, could probably best be combined with another post. CO is the only one where I'm insistent that that's all you do.

Keep in mind, that's just a matrix handle.

In the meat world, he's just Dr. Angus Audrey.

Actually, the Hobgoblin is probably worse than the basic orc. Costs the same as a basic orc: What he gets is Fangs (a really sub-par close combat attack option worth 5 BP which has -1 reach and is just str divided by 2) and Vindictive - a 10 BP negative quality.

Hobgoblins are described as wiry and less bulky than a standard orc, and with an arabic background, I find the flavour much more "piraty" than a normal orc, but up to you of course

I'm a proper Engineer! "I've got the knowledge!"

Yeah, but there are equally some variants that are not balanced. Hence, the ban on metavariant PCs stands.

Sorry, I thought you were meant to be a pilot. I just checked back and saw that your char had Mechanic/Nautical 4, so that's good. I always forget that in Shadowrun, the people who drive and the people who fix are usually the same.

Fair enough. I'll cook up something else - like a boring human adept or something

Why not just a tall, skinny, grumpy ork with Arabic parentage?

Agreed, I figure it's mostly a matter of outward appearances.