For an upcoming SR4 campaign I opted to play a ninja-ish character, but all my builds are boring and the same I always come up with. So if anyone wants to come up with a new, interesting character build, feel free to post it.

400 BP
50 Karma
Elf preferred, otherwise human.

Magic Ninja Thread -.-

My advice? (Which is probably unwelcome and will be ignored, but here goes.) Play a different type of character. Having people create characters for you won't make the character less boring if you just keep playing the same archetypes over and over.

I've actually been considering an oni ninja for myself, but I think he would work better as a samurai (in the classic sense, though Street Sam would probably be his role in the party).

Go with a pixie ninja adept, pump Agility and Reaction to 7 and Intuition to 6, magic of 5 will help with adept powers and bonus concealment power.

Adept Powers: Combat Sense, Increased Reflexes and Increased Infiltration (or exotic melee).

Equipment: Second Skin Line w/ Ruthenium Polymer Coating, Weapon Focus - Monofilament Whip

Fomori Troll with detachable Raptor Legs. Traceur and Melee Fighter
either Ki-Adept or Late Awakening

Or (my) Nartaki Elf ("One-Man-Army")
a Surged Elf with Shiva Arms and Striking Skin Pigmentation
(I added Astral Gazing,Mood Hair and Mood Eyes for Mine IIRC)

with two totally different Dances
Medicineman

Alright, speed ninja creation run: Go!

36 Minutes:



Didn't spend all the karma, and might have a few BP left over, but oh well. Do I get to see Samus take off her suit now? Oh, wait, wrong game

could be interesting to see an Oni (ork metavarient) ninja for a change. the extra challenge of their bright skin color would be a minor thing, once you start getting ware and gear.

i'd go for Restricted Gear (Samurai Armor with polymer coating) and adept with power throw and Throwing Weapons (Shuriken)

I'd have gone with Ninjitsu instead of Arnis de Mano.

But then, i'd also have chosen ware over adept powers.
I'll see what i can come up with.

Oh, I've played a ninja character for a short time and that is probably ten years ago. But while trying to build a new one for the upcoming game I noticed that my builds are always centered around the same adept powers and ideas. Personality and background are already written - since that's what brings a character to life I'm not afraid that a ninja build by one of the posters here will be boring to play.

Karoline, thanks for the build. Will have a closer look to it tomorrow.
And for rest, can't wait to see your ideas and builds!

Gotcha.

Here's a basic writeup of a cybered human ninja.
Note that karma has not been spent yet (the char generator was mucking around) and knowledge skills are missing.
BP and have all been spent, however.

I also decided to ditch the usual shuriken. Sniper rifles tend to work better for assassination attempts until SR introduces shuricanons.

I'd almost say go Technomancer. They're great - with the right echoes and lenient karmagen - stealth sammys. I mean, who expects the unaugmented human to bust out four passes and turn people into gibbering, brainwashed wrecks with a touch.

My buddy had a great Troll adept ninja named "Snowfall". He had insane stealth, walking without tracks, the whole nine yards....and a No-dachi. The standing joke was that his entire stealth ability was based upon disbelief (Man, I know that I didn't just see a 9ft troll walking across the street in the shadows between those two Geo Metrocars! *rubs eyes* Yeah, just a figment of my imagination...) and what we dubbed, "Coat Rack Skillz" (*Sounds of urinating* Ahh...I was holding that one for-EVER. Huh, that sure is a funny place to put a coat rack... *STAB! HACK! PUREE'!*)

I like taking different approaches myself.

If I were in your shoes, I'd probably go with either a full magician or mystic adept, then focus on some of that old school ninja mysticism.

Grab some spells like Improved Invisibility, Stealth, and Levitate. Throw in one or two flashy attack spells for fun, too, or maybe just the old standby of Stunbolt as a Sleep spell instead. Maybe take the Aspected Magician (Sorcerer) quality to shave some points off the package deal (which owuld then let you focus on just Counterspell and Spellcasting since you're going to be a heavy Skill character), too. You could even get away with a Condition Geas like (only while in costume) and a Gesturing Geas as well.

If you go with a Mystic Adept, there's a ton of powers that fit. Considering that Adepts were originally designed for Ninja-type characters, that makes a lot of sense. Improved Ability (Blades or Exotic Weapon, and Infiltration), Traceless Walk, Missile Mastery, etc. Maybe if you could get away with Elemental Strike and then asking your GM for permission to combine it with Distance Strike, it could make for a fun alternative to the aforementioned flashy spells. That would mean focusing on Unarmed Combat more than a melee weapon, but that's perfectly fine, too. It would certainly help you sneak past security easier.

Your outfit could be built from Form-Fitting Body Armor (Full Body) with Ruthenium Polymers and Thermal Dampening, allowing you to wear it under your normal clothing then, bam!. Just strip, throw on your hood and gloves, and go to town. I'd continue sticking with the more mystical theme and go with a Ninja-To (Katana or Monosword), and/or maybe some other weapons of choice for fun like a Custom Look-modified Monofilament Whip designed to resemble a Kasurigama. Getting one as a Weapon Focus makes a lot of sense, too. That's definitely the way to go if you decide on a magician in lieu of a mystic adept. But if you do go mystic adept and snag Missile Mastery, you can turn just about anything into a deadly thrown weapon for those occasions where you don't have or run out of traditional Shuriken, too. Decisions, decisions.

You could use some of the bonus Karma to initiate, picking up Shielding and Reflecting for some really cool fun, too. Especially when dealing with hostile magicians who like to hurl Fireballs or Lightning Bolts. Just grab that spell right out of the air and hurl it back at them. Masking, Centering/Adept Centering, and [Weapon] Attunement are all awesome choices, too.

If it's a long-term campaign I'd definitely go with the Mystic Adept if for no other reason than because they have so much more potential and fit in to both aspects of the character.

I mean, if you're going to call yourself a Ninja, don't be just another boring assassin. Embrace the concept and have fun with it. Sniper rifles and Arnis de Mano instead of Ninjitsu, indeed! <puts his nose firmly in the air>

Non-standard ninja, hell yeah. Hi-5, bro. Besides, I would imagine that by the 2070s, the ninja clans have adjusted pretty well to the circumstances of security and the difficulties of getting to their target. Minor hacking - or at least spoofing doors open and the like- wouldn't be out of place in a ninja build.

At one point I was considering rolling a plain-jane human ninja, possibly with just Astral Sight, for help in sneaking past astral security.(It lets you -project- too, which is quite useful, and lets you take hits on spirits in their metaplanes.) Focused on, oddly, awakened drugs and chemicals for that old-school ninja vibe. There are some really good ones, too. Little Smoke to, well, be a ninja. Immortal Flower to always come back/fake your own death if necessary.(and your fees pay for Cellular Repair, in augmentation, all the time, so its less of a one-trick-pony). Rock lizard blood, for when you need to make your escape, not by popping down a smoke grenade - but flooding an area with pepper punch, neurostun and breathtaker, perhaps even all at once - and walking out unharmed. Or using it to get to your target in a cloud of chemical mayhem, leaving people to wonder how the hell you got out alive.

And, well, when the going gets tough, Chemistry lets you make plastic explosive. Up to rating 15 at no threshold change, if youre willing to pay for the raw materials. Boom. Go arsenal.

Really like that build, as I've never thought of using sniper rifles as a ninja-ish weapon. Interested in trying to build this one with bioware too? Would make him even harder to detect.

I'm not sure how cool it is for a mystic adept to use spells that need to be sustained. Sustaining focus is not that expensive on the other hand, hm. Will think about that.

the digital grimoire has an adept power that allows you to ignore any dice penalty adding up to a - equal to your magic. I was under the impression it worked for sustaining.

The spells I mentioned are used for getting to your target, and only for targets that your impressive Infiltration and (greatly improved) Chameleon Suit don't work quite as well against. You're certainly not going to be fighting while sustaining them, and if you do need to, there's always Psyche, Living Focus, and/or Sustaining Foci.

That's not what it does. It allows you to spend a Complex Action to negate a single situational modifier up to your Magic rating, and only for one task at a time. Each additional task requires another Complex Action.

Heightened Concentration. Seems to work with sustaining, yes. Thanks for the idea!

Damn right. See, that's why I wanted this thread.

My original plan was to go vat-job ninja (like the genecrafted little guy in Neuromancer), with geneware like Reakt, Synch, Neo-EPO, Qualia and perhaps the usual Genetic Optimization.

Unfortunately, this gets prohibitively expensive real fast. I already blew 50BP on resources for the version i proposed here, and almost all of it went into ware.
While you can squeeze out some more money by resorting to used bioware for the Muscle Toner, Synthacardium and Enhanced Articulation, the Trauma Dampener and especially the Synaptic Accelerator can't be bought used, so i stuck with Wired Reflexes (BTW, that's the only piece of R cyber the character has, except for the smartlink).
If money is not an issue, it would of course work perfectly (and Genecrafted/Genetic Heritage put together help a lot with that, but my character builder program didn't calculate the discounts properly, so i left them out).

For an NPC, i would totally take that approach, though.
Just get him the finest Chiba has to offer and come up with a genetweaked, mundane killing machine that can walk undetected past every cyberware scanner.
All metal parts would be unsuspicious, strictly legal stuff like eyes and ears.

To go completely over the top, you'll need a bio-adept, of course. Or a bio-mystad.

Other metatypes would also work a lot better, but i stuck to human so he fits in with the more traditional Japanese.
Human-looking dwarf or ork would probably work best (and you may add Big Regret to the list of Qualities- just imagine how a traditionalist clan reacts when they learn that you're not only a kawaruhito, but also have gaijin in your family tree because you're not even a koborukuru or oni, but the baseline metatype that almost never occurs in Japan).

I was under the impression that the Oni appeared in Japan along with regular orks. I didn't realize that orks from Japan were exclusively Oni. Kind of like I didn't think trolls from Greece were exclusively minotaurs.

It also depends on if you want the realio-dealio spy/scout ninja who occasionally shanked stuff through stealth and deception or the movie/anime ninja that cuts necks 24/7 and can kill 10,000 mooks but gets schooled by the big bad until the last second when gloating and hubris leaves them vulnerable. Totally different concepts and it will be pretty tough to fit them both in.

I have a ninja build I whipped up awhile ago for one of these threads that I don't think I posted. This build is non-magical, but has some augmentation. He wouldn't last long in a fair fight, but when do ninjas get in fair fights? The skills may seem low but I very much see this character as using forethought, planning, and the environment to his advantage. As a side note the character is human, he was built to appear as uninteresting and non-threatning as possible. Now on with the build!

I'd like to see builds for both.

RC states that in Japan, more than 75% of the orks are oni and more than 85% of the dwarves are koborukuru.
The text also includes the assumption that other expressions are "likely the result of immigration on the insular genepool".
So if you're a Japanese baseline ork, this is probably due to some Koreans or the like in your family tree.

This is probably the most extreme example of metavariant prevalance in the entire 6th world.
Even the really common metavariants like fomori don't go above 50% of the metatype population in the areas they are native to.
And most are even rarer, though there's few exact numbers given for them.


Some addition to the build i posted :
That guy actually has enough Essence left to switch out Muscle Toner for Muscle Replcement.
Would give him a nice boost in close combat and free up some .

Thats not quite accurate. It does work with sustaining, but it does so in a slightly odd manner. I shall explain. Heightened Concentration does this:



The problem is, 'task' is very vaguely worded. A task can be anything from firing a gun, to performing an hour long extended test to modify said gun. But it does let you tune out a single situational modifier. The power doesn't stop working, though. It doesn't turn off, because it doesn't say it ends, there's no duration. On the flipside, it lets you reduce/ignore a single modifier - you can't use multiple complex actions to reduce more than one modifier, because then it wouldn't be single anymore. You can't get around -that- by taking the power more than once, because it doesn't have multiple levels to take.(not to mention the cost.) So how does it work?

You spend a complex action.
You pick a negative situational negative dice pool modifier.
That modifier is reduced.
...and that's it. As long as the modifier is present, its reduced. It doesn't stop being reduced, either. But if the modifier goes away, heightened concentration isn't doing anything either.
If you'd like to reduce another penalty - spend another complex action.

While that may sound rather good, its rather easy to get negative modifiers in SR4, and this power cares about where the penalty comes from. For example, in combat, there's glare/visibility, attacker running, wound penalties, and you only get to reduce one. Worse, you have to give up a more useful action to use it.
On the flipside, you can spend an action to ignore a penalty that isn't present yet. With a little understanding of the rules, its quite good. In that example I would - depending on the context of the game - consider ignoring Blind Fire penalties(such as if I wanted to play a Zato-ichi gunman. Normally -6. ouch.) Perhaps the Called Shot penalty ahead of time - and when combat opens, take a free action to called shot at +4 damage, -4 dice(reduced to 0, hopefully) from there on out. Even kung-fu adepts can benefit, by running around outside of cover to charge their enemies, ignoring the Attacker Running penalty while claiming the Defender Running bonus against incoming fire. Its not a lot, but it shifts dice pools by 2 each in your favor - and it also has theme.

So...yeah. Heightened Concentration works for spell sustaining. The question isn't whether it works or not - its how well it does at it. IE, whether Sustaining Modifier gets lumped into batches of discrete -2 penalties, or if its lumped into one big sum. Its been discussed before, and I think, after some talk, the 'big number' theory was prevailing. Which means that a mystic adept with a magic of six can, basically, sustain their buffs(improved reflexes, combat sense, energy aura - or use control thoughts/emotions in a social situation to get the bonus social dice without the penalty.). Its quite cool, and one of the most compelling reasons to play a mystic adept.

I didn't say it didn't work with sustaining. Sustaining gives you a situational modifier. That modifier can simply be ignored for one single task at the cost of a Complex Action in a matter similar to Adept Centering. That's all the power does, no matter how much some people want to turn it into an uber power. It's literally just a poor man's Adept Centering. It's sole advantage is that it can potentially reduce a severe penalty with ease (up to your Magic rating).

Sure. but what happens if your 'task at hand' is 'shooting people'. or 'not dying'. or even 'performing surgery to save a man's life'. How long does that last? you can't quantify it, because you're trying to put rules mechanics - to description text. A task is not a Pass, or even one Roll, or even a Combat Turn. its...what you're currently doing.

Besides, Heightened concentration is a full power point. It -should- be good, but its hardly uber.

Quit trying to be a munchkin. It's clear that it's meant to be used in one brief situation for one single task. If you want to use it some other way in your own game, knock yourself out. Just don't go around trying to tell people it's this all-powerful power that works in all situations forever and ever. Because it's not.

Funk, I can understand that you don't agree with me, but if we're discussing the rules, I'd appreciate it if you could back up your claims with them - and without munchkin insults.

Even in your version of HC, where you have to spend a complex action constantly to gain the benefit, its amazing for a social adept - because you only need a free action to talk each turn, and, like it or not, the social modifiers table does include penalties for things like not being dressed for the occasion. If you actually bothered to read what I'm saying, and look at the modifiers you can use HC on, you'd know it can save you about 1-2 dice on any given roll. That's -hardly- broken or overpowered. But. In a game system where everyone is trying to stack the odds , it does something very, very useful - it lets you unstack the deck. Just like adept centering, except more directed and focused.

You seem to think I'm saying that heightened concentration lets you ignore all penalties forever.(and yes, that would be stupid), when all I'm trying to clarify is that it lets you reduce one(and only one) thing at a time, until you spend some effort to change it to something else - and that it lasts for A Little Bit: slightly longer than a pass, slightly less than forever, or even a whole day. A Scene, if you will. Because you're right - it is meant to be used in brief situations. However, being able to reuse it as the situation changes is hardly overpowered: it still takes an action, and sometimes there are better things to do with your passes. Where I think you're hung up on, in this current discussion, is How Much Time that one complex action buys you, each time you use it. That, i think, is the crux of the arguement.