To much karma and BP to spend.
I'm looking at 1000BP 1000karma prime runner with a nuyen ceiling at about 10-15mil.
I just cant build anythign that really makes the most of this power lvl.

I'm wanting to build a really nasty NPC then biuld an adventure arch around him for my long running group. I know some of you really love chargen and soem of you are rich in char op tricks. So Dumshock lets see what you can build. I want something that will challeng my PCs in a nasty way. As SR is a game of glass cannons a stright out tank is unlikey to work.

And dont worry about going over the nuyen limit.

Agent Smith - How a bout a bastard that kidnaps others and cosmetically modifies them to look like himself while also giving them personafixes to act like him, only subservient to the 'prime' bastard through some heavy psychotropics in their headware. If the PCs can't beat him, they might just join him!

With that kind of setup, you can do literally anything, can't you? I'd just handwave at that point.

I don't like hand waving I liek to some times hand my PCs the sheet afterwards so so them it was ligit.

interesting... well thats 500 points for attributes, before karma, so you will have everything at 5 and 6, with one 7 if you want it. lets say around 50 points for contacts, as a nice number that should cover whatever he needs. that leaves a good 450 for skills. you could get several skill groups at 6, and have points left to spare.

this guys could go two ways really- magic with multiple increases to his magic, or cybernetic with some very nice beta/delta ware. if you want to use him against the PCs then hes gonna need to go with the magic. but thats enough karma to make a mystic adept dangerous.

lets assume he initiates in a group with an ordeal. for 366 karma you could get your starting magic of 6 up to 14. thats a lot of magic, and a mystic adept with say 6 magic for spellcasting, improved reflexes 3, and 3 other points of adept magic would be a fairly dangerous person. but then a 14 magic mage is just plain scary if done right.

you want nasty? dont worry yourself about the numbers. just give him an attribute and a skill at 7, the rest of the stuff he needs to use at 6, a couple useful qualities, and enough gear and contacts to do his job as plot requires. forget the rest of the points as they wont matter. lets say its a mage who does hit-sim hacking with a high-end deck. not a combo most people expect, but if he can trace you then he can send a spirit to do things to you fairly quickly.

I would say make him a mystic adept. The classic struggle for mystic adepts is that they end up spreading their karma too thin. With a prime runner using those kinds of numbers that shouldn't be an issue.

For extra fun, you can even cyber him up and buy back the lost magic through initiations galore. I did something similar with my prime runner "Rift Wrath" (I know, silly pun but I like 'em ).

A drake mystic adept...

Wasn't that how Dunkelzahn was created?

Even when in a group and doing ordeals, it would still cost at least 536 karma to get to magic 14. I do the math here: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=31038

Soo much karma....

*Disappears into the character workshop*

With that much karma, you really don't need to optimize or post nasty builds. There's little point beyond putting down hugely-high dice pools for whatever you decide the concept of this guy ought to be.

Instead, you may want to focus on making a *cool concept*, fleshing -that- out, and then applying way to much karma.

I'll start. how bout a Fixer. Someone your runnerse have offended in the past. Perhaps their names were just a *convenient* target for a framejob. Someone who has resources, hideouts, and.... more importantly, knows people. He acts through them, tries to make their life crap. Your fixer may not be awakened or a TM - but he can trade favors to a few virtuakinetics he knows, and have them, say.... trade a mansion for whipping up a sprite each morning, and having it mess with a person - basically giving them Gremlins. and the best part is, if he works through the shadows and other people, it may be a bit before your players realize/figure out who's got it in for them - letting you build up suspence, aggravation, and putting your party in the mood for getting even when they manage to find the end boss.

I agree with Udoshi that the concept is likely much more important then the actual stats when making a prime runner.

Big dice pools don't make a character memorable, his/her/it's personality and style do. A prime runner should be a bit "larger then life" in some way. Can come in many forms.

My prime's concept is that he is obsessed with personal growth and power. His style is that of a stealth assassin trained in both magical and physical arts. He has collected a number of magical items to aid him, and also uses STOA weaponry, armor, etc. He doesn't bother with the matrix, but has strong ICs and is prepared to abandon his tech if need be. He also uses underhanded but effective tactics.

Goals? None really. He used to have them, but he long since fulfilled them. Now he continues to run because he has nothing else. He seeks high risk missions, mostly just to remind himself he is still alive.

There is much more to him, but that's the short version.

Hah! I like it. I can picture it already: 'If you thought the red samurai armor was bad ass enough, you should see what the ninja did with the idea.'

Like I said, hand-wave. At some point, it's just a 'Professional Rating' of 8, 10, 12…

You can't handwave style.

Enough counterspelling to be immune to spells, enough astral combat to be immune to astral threaths, 24/24 hardened armor to be immune to attacks even if they could hit the 30 defense dice it gets without taking a full defense, energy aura just in case someone wants to tango, quickened spells have 12 + F x 2 dice to resist dispelling, 46 dice to resist drain, 19-21 dice to cast spells. Oh, and don't forget, has a 120,000 square meter rating 6 aspected background count at their lair. Oh, also, the 10 edge to play with.

While I'm sure there is some theoretical way to defeat this character, I don't know that any normal sort of runner group will be able to manage it, especially since the spirit can always vacate the physical plane if things get too difficult there.

I suppose an adept or something with a weapon focus would be the most likely way to defeat this spirit, though it is still rolling 26 dice to defend against a melee attack.

I'm pretty sure a thunderstruck rifle can do it. AP half -4 is -ridiculous-.

Your math on the stats is wrong. Force is the only thing that matters for free spirits, since it sets the minimums and maximum. A force 12 spirits has 24 hardened armor, 12 magic, 12 edge, 12 in all stats.

Yes, that is one of the few things that can actually do damage, but they have to hit first, which is fairly difficult against a DP of 30.



Haven't we had this discussion before? Wasn't it generally accepted that F != all stats? I mean if so, great, I get 340 karma and 400ish BP back, but I don't think that the entry for free spirits was meant to indicate that minimum = F and thus all stats = F. It would make free spirits rather stupidly powerful after all because they could easily start with 6s in all stats. Remember, the entry says that minimum is based on force, not that it is equal to force. They just never mention how it is based on force. Would likely have 7s or so in all stats for free though now that I think about it, because I've always taken minimum to be maximum - 5, and maximum is very clearly stated as being equal to force.

Have fun building a big-bad for them to tussle with, but watch your players when you're using him. A good game should be challenging, occasionally surprising, sometimes fear-inducing...but always fun.

Don't get carried away with the godlike NPC, and lose track of the rest of the game.

Sorry, but that thing is not a Prime Runner (why the hell would an Edge 10 Free Spirit need to run the shadows?) and with its powerlevel and capabilities its basically a prime Handwavium Group Killium. The DPs are so ridiculously high, why even bother rolling. Just tell your guys they were ripped to shred by something so powerful a Great Dragon would have to fear it and they need to make new characters.

I don't think so, but someone I know very recently rolled a free spirit character, and I've been helping. Page 92 in the RC very clearly says Force acts as a natural minimum and maximum for all attributes, right in the second sentence.

Which makes sense. In the regular spirit rules, a spirit uses Force for everything. Its only when physically manifesting that they get their statboosts(i know there's a clause which says astral combat is at just Force values, somewhere.) Its kind of a pain in the ass, though. If you want just one more point in an attribute ...... you have to take Exceptional attribute, which is way overpriced for that purpose. Why spend 20 points when you can just raise force!

Granted, that entire paragraph is worded very poorly. But, like regular spirits, Force is really the only thing that matters. Yes. High force spirits are freakishly powerful. Free spirits.......... even more so.

Just real quick:
Notice it says 'determines', not 'is equal to'

I do admit though that it is horridly worded. But if they really wanted all stats equal to force, why didn't they just say "All of a spirit's attributes are equal to its force" instead of talking about minimums and maximums?

I have an idea.

An AI Prime Runner that's Home Node is in a cloning facility (possibly/probably part of a larger facility, as in he owns 8 or 16 rooms inside a main medical hospital and none of the staff know he's there) that uses Type O bland clones of vanilla humans to interact with the world via a Stirrup Interface (and his Piloting Origins, of course). To make things even worse, toss in some additional 'ware to the clones, and since they're Type O, they can accept a heckalota bioware.

The part that makes this hard is that even with R1 Stirrup Interface, this guy's got 3 IP, and he goes at his Matrix Initiative, which will be over the twenties. Also, if/when the team kills his body, he's still in his Home Node, slightly peeved that they ruined his couple hundred thousand nuyen "car." When he shows back up in the same body (well, different body, cloned and geared the exact same way), the team will be all "WTFH?!?" When they kill him again, and he shows back up again, they'll start doing interesting things like beheadding him, burning his body, dropping him in acid, or the like, and with no avail, since he's a jumped-in clone rigger.

And best of all, since he's an AI, he doesn't take Dumpshock or Biofeedback.

a randomly fun fact with clones is that being type o and clones delta wear can be mass produced it suite for them as well. As delta is made to fit your phiscial and genetic suitability as well as possible. Thus type o clones with the same DNA ect and froce grown in the same enviroment would have be able to have delta ware made in suites and en mass for them.

True, but delta grade is going to be so expensive that it's not worth it, especially not with your disposable bodies. Remember, Essense isn't a problem because if the AI doesn't like how an implant is working, he can either take it out or get a new body. Your standard Street Sammy can't really do that.

Also, keep in mind that most implants do things that by simple fact of this character being an AI jumped into a drone you'd be bypassing. No MBW 3, no Synaptic Booster 3, no Reflex Enhancers, no Pain Editor...

Delta is madly expencive due to it having to be 100% custom made for each person beta is partly bespoke alpha is just better quaility. I'm saying fluffwise delta quality implant if the right inforstructer was it place could likely be made at the price of beta ware due to tge fact your moving to a standard template not a custom job per one.

I may have to do this ...

The point that I'm making about the AI Clone Rigger is this: since the clones are disposable, they do not need anything over standard grade. Most of the benefits of most cyberware is already subsumed by fact of the body being a rigged drone anyways. Toss in that the clone is Type O system and you don't need to buy over standard grade Bioware anyways.

You can even drop hints and rumors at your players about 'the cybered zombies' to leave them wondering - and panicking, when they just keep coming back again and again.

I like this idea, and I have some things to contribute. While deltawear needs to be custom-tailored for an end-user, and is expensive as all hell .... betawear's almost as good. According to augmentation, its only got a threshold of 12 to implant(12, 1 hour) test, which is fairly reasonable for an AI with a long uptime and a medical shop/facility to manage on his own. (For comparison, basic bioware is Th of 4.) There are other minor benefits that make betaware rather attractive. First, its a rating 5 device out the door, just due to its grade (betajacks are an amazing deal, compared to a commlink). They're also rather hard to detect on assensing or cyberware scanners. If your intended hot-rod car-clones are primarily biowared up, a single high-grade implant(or nanoware) can be a nasty surprise if its, say, a cybergrenade launcher or an area cortex bomb(what? your ai doesn't care -that- much about a clone dying.)

Nanoware's another good one. While nanocybernetics do some neat things that cyberware can and can't do, nanoware itself - the stuff you want nanohives for - are rather hard to detect as well. Its not even on the assensing table in 4th, though it is in 4thA - but it shouldn't be, since it doesn't impact your essence/aura at all. I would suggest this AI rigger use Taggant/Marker 6 nanites to get a Signal to jump into his clones - further leading to the 'who the heck is this guy, and how does he do this, augh' impression. They're also -cheap-, at ratingx750(the price is in the master table at the back of the book). Nanocybernetics also have a higher threshold to detect than regular cyberware - i believe its one above the usual threshold, which means a beta-nanohive, for example(threshold 4 vs a six-dice cyberware scanner) is pretty hard to spot.

I might consider giving this AI the Spawn ability (possibly through Intuitive Hacking, or possibly an npc-type class of AI). This nets this meat-rigger the ability to make a gimped copy of itself..... which means it can bring along backup when dealing with the players, which puts it on more of an even footing with the group. I believe, due to the rules regarding it, a spawned/emulated agent would be an Agent, and thus unable to jump it - it would have to rely on the Command(and its Action Inefficiency) program to act through secondary Clonedrones. Which is..... delightfully creepy, because it means every once in a while there's a body that's just a little *off*, laggy, slow, unresponsive - creepy. Up until it 'suddenly' starts paying attention, and getting things done(the AI jumps in) - to the onlooker, constantly daydreaming, then sudden bursts of activity, in the Must be nuts/crazy/needs medication kind of way. Which is great flavor, and a way to leave your players guessing - especially when the next time, their nemesis shows up with two of himself.

With the ability to be in more than one place at once, this can lead to devious things, like calling the team up to arrange a truce after a bit of this - and sending another body to go mess with their stuff, spraypaint their safehouse, put boots on their cars, and generally get back at them while they're busy at the meet(Or, if they're competent, their -face- is at the meet, with the rest of the team watching and ready to either swoop in and save the day or run away - but the point is, they're paying attention to the meet, and not somewhere else at the same time.)

The team will be all "What the hell? Didn't we kill him already? Yeah! Twice? Yeah! Well. I don't think you did a good job of it. What? There's three of them. Goddamn it. And they have assault rifles. Oh, you have got to be shitting me."

I made an AI prime too. Was the Big Bad for my first story arc. But I didn't give it high amounts of BP and karma. I took a slightly better then average pilot program and made it self improving. Every 3 failures at a task it improved in that skill, and had the ability to make back-ups of itself and store them remotely. Just through trial and error it improved fairly quickly and became a real threat. That was a fun one.

They finally beat it by faking their own deaths, or actually dying, thus fulfilling it's objective. It still exists and later learned they were alive, but since the objective was removed it had no reason to bother them again.

The AI attacks were fun too. It liked rigging, so it would just randomly hack a car and try to run them over when they weren't expecting it. It was great, they were in total fear of the matrix and any area that had signal because they never knew what to expect.

Man, I tried this. Just...so...many...points. Most deadly build I could come up with? Not as creative as Neraph's clonal ai, but how about an Otomo or Tomino possessed by a free spirit? I'm thinking a free Psionic "thought form." By possessing an object, you get around the augmented maximum and with 1,000 karma you can initiate and raise force to a ridiculous degree. A Tomino possessed by, say, a Force 12 spirit, yields a Body/Armor/Speed of 22/22/47 plus Immunity to Natural Weapons? Compare that to a Great Western Dragon with B/S/R/S of 25/10/11/50 and Twist Fate it's still inferior. Why not just use one of them?

If you guys really want I can stat something up. I have a 400 BP version already built. I'll nab that in a second....

Viola.



Obviously this version is done with 400 BP, and you can't really build it "out of the box" since some of the stuff required is high end and you run out of BPs. Oh, it should also be noted that since he does have the full Piloting Origins, he can also use Autosofts, and if you use a Stirrup Interface, it also acts as Skillwires, so there's no reason this guy should ever not be able to use anything.

To upgrade this one, max out all the mental stats, give him some "moar skillz!" (Infiltration, ranged weapon skill, melee weapon skill, negotiation/etiquette, dodge, gymnastics [cool dodge effect]...), and definately give him better 'ware.

Oh, to mindf____ your guys even worse, change what clones he's using. He's using the "Joe Human" model, then the "Stevie the Wonder-Troll" model, then the "Georgette the Hot-Ork" model. Each one with their own voice, saying things in pre-combat monologue that only "Joe Human" should know.

Neraph, i was cracking up at the booze and drugs qualities there. The idea of an AI who grows a clone, just to jump into it and get utterly smashed is hilarious to me.

Oh you caught that. I find it interesting that AIs can be addicted to narcoject and have a SIN, but they can't have Day Jobs and Debt.

EDIT: Oh, and what would a Burnout Addiction matter to an AI anyways?

I'm building the big version of the AI. I'll post it tonight.

So how many of these billion point monstrosities are actually Prime Runners, instead of just exercises in flinging lots of points around in order to make a party-killer?

Define runner?

Not all that hard to hit when thay cannot actually dodge the round (They have to actually know it is coming for that to be an option after all)... I am sure a competent individual could set up a situation where Reaction/dodge was not an option...

Keep the Faith

Doesn't combat sense go through regardless of surprise as a 'sixth sense' sort of thing? But even if it does, it would still hit.

Let me think, 10P/-half/-5 or something close isn't it? Lets see... drops armor down to a lousy 7 points, and body is only five, so 12 dice is about 4 soaked, so a good 6 + net hits damage. Quite possible to disrupt the spirit in one surprise shot, provided you catch it outside its domain (Because then the force goes up by 6 points, which means armor would be at 13 so you might not break it).

Still, that's a disrupt, not a kill. Still, an impressive achievement.

Oh, don't forget the difficulty of tracking the spirit down. Masking with 10 initiations, mutable form, and realistic form mean astral tracking will be near impossible and physical tracking will be very difficult as the spirit can change form at will. Still, the spirit will likely favor a handful of forms.

So I watched Iron Man 2 for my birthday, so I'll be posting Mr. Geoffrey sometime tomorrow.

Iron Man 2 spoiler-esque: You have been warned.

Well when I'me making this type of runner with the standard rules for a super nasty prime runner yes part of me is aiming to savage the PCs and maybe kill one or two however they said they wanted thougher fights ect so i'll do that.

Here he is: Mr. Geoffrey.
BP


Karma


Money


Mr. Geoffrey started off as a Renraku Manservant II (not III) who was his owner's butler. His owner trusted Geoffrey with managing his estate. After some time, the owner's penchant for martial arts and weaponry caused him to load a database of weapons skills into the drone to have Geoffrey analyze styles and help the owner train. After many, many years, dozens of weapons styles, and multiple software and hardware upgrades, Geoffrey became self-aware, developing into an AI.

Since he already had access to the estates, Geoffrey started manipulating funds and services, eventually culminating in the deletion of his prior owner's SIN (and reporting this SINless tresspasser to the authorities), transferring all accounts into an assumed name, and procurement of a cloning facility to complete the facade.

Mr. Geoffrey now maintains a number of cloned bodies that he enjoys the pleasures of a successful business in. He retained his refined, elegant, suave, and polite (maddeningly so, sometimes) personality and tastes. Mr. Geoffrey is never seen outside of an expensive suit, and is never questioned about his trademarked saber and main gauche. He eats real food (no soy!), indulges in the highest quality imported wines, and always has reservations to the highest class resturaunts and clubs.

*****

Buy like 50 of the Shiawase Kanmushi listed above and have them Clustered together to make the Home Node and keep them at close to the extreme range (100 km) from each other. This makes the AI nearly unkillable, since every single one of these drones would need to be destroyed before he could escape into the Matrix. To have even more fun, place some in public parks, some in hospitals, some in schools, some in sewers, maybe a couple on public transportation vehicles... the sky's the limits (speaking of which, at least one on one of those inter-city air taxis). Because of their size and the ruthenium polymers there is a -10 dicepool penalty on Perception Tests to find them, and that's before you factor in them Infiltrating.

Take at least four of the Dragonflies in order to give the full TacNet bonuses to the clonal body. Their size and coating gives them a -6 Perception Tests to find them. Also, keep them flying around at signal range (Signal 3) to prevent the players from finding and destroying them too easily.

Remember to slave everything to the Fairlight Caliban, and then Slave that to the Home Node.

I only spent 1,520,000 nuyen. You also have more than enough left over to buy every single program at R6 with all the bells and whistles you want (like R3 Armor Piercing for that Black Hammer program) as well as any freaking weapon in any configuration you want.

Assuming they don't destroy the dragonflies, replacing the body with the gear listed above is 319,400 nuyen. You can have like eight of these resting on stand-by in the cloning facility tubes in case the party kills one, complete with gear sitting to the sides. The cloning facilities are within a larger hospital of your choice (although I suggest using a delta clinic - high security and high profile), which have been paid for and leased out to Mr. Geoffrey for his private use. They are never bothered by the staff at whichever hospital you decide to place them in.

The Sports Rifle should be loaded with Anti-Vehicular rounds.

Players need 7 successes in a Matrix Perception Test to see him, assuming they can get into his node, and they suffer a -6 penalty to do so.

If you need any skills for him that he doesn't have, you have two options: 1) Buy the skills with the 500+ karma left over, or 2) buy drone autosofts for the skills with the millions of nuyen left over.

I assumed average stats for the human body (3's down the board), and augmented he looks 4 Bod, 8 Str, and 3's the rest. The meat-brain doesn't matter, since Mr. Geoffrey uses his own while rigged in, and the Agility/Reaction scores are replaced by the Sensor/Response of the rigger. A good chart is on page 204 of Unwired. This being a biodrone, I'm not sure what the Sensor should be (but I suggest at least a 6), and since he has hands and not weapon mounts, you'd use the weapon skill instead of Gunnery.

Remember to factor in a -1 to all dicepools for actions done through the biodrone (page 153, Augmentation, second paragraph of Stirrup Interface). Even so, most dicepools should be pretty close to 13 (6 skill + 2 spec + 6 stat), with ones based on Reaction (response) close to 20 (6 skill + 2 spec + 11 Response - 1 = 17), not including other modifiers, such as those gained through Martial Arts, smartlink, two-weapon fighting, ect.

With the Influence skillgroup of 6 (and the specializations), this guy is everyone's friend. Even the 'runners should like him, but their conflicting agendas should cause them to be enemies.

EDIT: Oh, I forgot that you may be able to get a Response Enhancer R6 to get 6 more Initiative. I say "may be" because it may or may not affect a home node.

I like that. I might make a few minor changes bio wise ect. Maybe set him up as a fixer at frist.

That was my overall reaction to this thread. Also, I don't see the point of the BP/karma/nuyen allocations - I could see it if you wanted to make an NPC slightly more powerful than the PCs and keep it "fair", but the massive amount of points listed are enough to pretty much make anything - might as well hand-wave it at that point. I'm not saying a powerful NPC shouldn't have stats. But it's kind of silly counting up points when you have so many that people's most monstrous creations have points left over.

Yeah. I could have easily done what I did with half the points. A lot of those skills/groups were just bells and whistles.

Interesting Bells and Whistles, but Bells and Whistles none the less...

I like that write-up you posted Neraph... quite interesting

Keep the Faith

A little earlier (4 months?) I had thought it up and worked on the stats, but it's not really feasible to start with as a 400 BP character. It makes a good BBEG though. I tried to keep him themed, and only went with a vibro sword over a rapier because I figured for R2 Pimped I could make it look like a fencing saber and get the same effect with more dmg.

He would favor sports rifles because it takes more skill than a SA Sniper Rifle with 30 shots a clip and because with his agi/reaction reloading is a non-issue.

Also, if you really don't think 3 IP is enough, a good case could be made for implanting a Simsense Accelerator/Booster (I forget which.. the implant, not commlink upgrade) to get a 4th, but that's another like 45k. And again, the entire point was to get a highly effective body as cheaply as possible.

Speaking of which, if you wanted to do something a little crazier, you could remove the Suprathyroid and Muscle Augmentation and put in an Auto Injector with K-10 and Immortal Flower. Since the body is disposable, the dmg from K-10 wearing off doesn't matter, nor does the essence loss from Immortal Flower. Also, since he's a biodrone, it doesn't matter if the meat body perma-zerks, since all his movements would be overwritten by the AI anyways.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and the Explosive Self Destruct for the laser pistol is tied to a biomonitor that I failed to put the 500 nuyen price for and it's tied to explode when the body flatlines. I also didn't buy any Peak Discharge packs, but again, he has like 13.5 million nuyen left. I think he can spare a few extra thousand.