Okay, so I might be playing in a game soon and I was going to go a different direction for our group and play a face (my group, with the exception of me and one other, is pretty focused on combat/hacking. They tend to be bad at talking).

Anyway, my character concept was a human changeling who SURGEd and got Astral Sight and Thermographic Vision at the cost of Extravagent Eyes. He concealed his changeling nature with mirrored shades and wears a classical pinstripe suit (and possibly a fedora).

So what skills/equipment/'ware/positive qualities does this guy need? And what are some nice tricks for a face?

The obvious ones are charisma, the influence group, and lots and lots of contacts or one really awesome group contact (or better yet, both). Any of the various softwares from arsenal (truth detection, empathy, etc) help. Being an adept will go much further for you than getting wares, as there are lots of great social powers like Kinesics, Commanding Voice, etc. Is this going to be a straight up face, or will you do other things, like also being the driver, or an infiltrator, or something else? A charisma tradition mage would be a decent face AND provide magical/astral support.

I would actually also get Intimidation and the Stealth Skill Group on top of the Influence Skill Group and tons of contacts.

Faces can usually do a lot of fun things as secondary specializations.

Stealth, inflitration, and impersonation are some great ways to make your "face" steal the show. Impersonation via bioware Fake Fronts, adept power facial sculpt, or mage's mask are pretty good ways. I like adepts or 'wares route. 'Wares like voice modulator, dynamic handprints, and some of the other nanowares are pretty nice. Very fun to play different people for different situations.

Faces can also focus one weapon type and be very good at it, but usually not as durable as a street sam, so pick you combats smart, and stay in cover as much as possible. I'm a fan of auto's for faces, but pistols aren't half bad either.

Astral sight means no ware right? You're going to be missing out on a ton of boosting ware. And non-adept means you're missing out on the adept side as well.

Id go with the Influence skill group, intimidation, pistol skill as well. Pick up a couple languages with the linguist quality(as well as the linguistics adept power if you go that route; you can get a rating-3 language for free after some exposure time), otherwise languages are just cheaper. Adept powers would be Kinesics, Commanding Voice, Voice Control, the aforementioned Linguistics, facial sculpt, enhanced perception, multitasking, Improved Ability in one or more of the influence skills.

Lots of street knowledge, decent contacts. High charisma and intuition, with decent will and edge. Equipment-wise, basically empathy software in a damn good commlink(and in a bunch of mundane replaceable POS one's as well), contacts and earbuds with vis\audio enhancement, usual runner stuff from there(guns, bullets, etc).

Oh, and more contacts. Alternatively you can add stealth or the more physical skill groups to diversify, or just make a face powerhouse.

I know it's a game but it always irked me when people had thermo eyes and were wearing glasses, goggles, masks, novelty sized condoms.

I wouldn't take Thermographic Vision as a Metagenetic Quality; it's much cheaper in a contact lens, which will also hide your extravagant eyes. Or in your mirror shades, it's really up to you.

What, just because it would totally blind the person's thermographic vision? You should know better than to expect little things like physics to work.

Hiding Extravegant Eyes with contact lenses is a bit cheap IMO. Mirror shades sure, you have to take those off from time to time.

If the extravagance of the eyes can be hidden with contacts, they aren't extravagant enough.

Given the lack of 'ware/adept powers (Is the Astral Sight quality as lame as it looks?) then First Impression and Trustworthy could be good picks, along with a decent supply of charisma enhancing drugs.

Yes.

Doesn't work like that in a RAW game, rating 1 skill has an augmented maximum of 1,5 rounded down to 1.
But a nice GM might be willing to houserule that limit away for this quality(as well as the similar knowledge skill ones), as the limit does make the quality pretty much useless as you need a rating 4 in the language to actually get the full +2 and raising 4 to 6 is lot less usefull then raising 1 to 3 or 2 to 4.

It's been debated quite a bit, but as a rule, only things that say that they fall under the augmented maximum fall under the augmented maximum, and the linguistic quality does not say that it falls under the augmented maximum. It just says it gives you a +2 to language skills. Kind of like smartlink gives you a +2 to shooting people, but doesn't fall under augmented maximum.

Actually it says "modifies the rating of any Language skill the character possesses by +2." Thats miles apart from the smartlinks +2 bonus as far as used terminology goes.

The fact that it doesn't mention augmented skill maximums doesn't change the fact that its a direct increase to the skill rating meaning that by RAW it's limited by those maximums.

Trustworthy, on the other hand, is very specific

Regardless, linguistics is nearly always worth it for a face. Just walk around the various neighborhoods and pick up your free skills.

Actually, as far as ware and astral sight goes, my GM has said that I can take ware at character creation representing ware I got before SURGEing. So, no, I won't miss out on ware.

Also, as far as secondary roles go, he's probably going to have some decent stealth skills and be good with assenssing (and have at least a rank or two in astral combat)

And I kind of didn't want to go with an adept face, just to be more unique.

As for concealing the extravagent eyes, I wanted them to be noticable, but concealable. Plus it might add a small circumstance bonus to intimidation.

Edit: And I chose thermographic vision because I thought it would be the best of the other visual metagenetic qualities I could buy. (SURGE I gives you 10 positive BP, so after Astral Sight I didn't have a lot of options)

I'd suggest getting your essence somewhere between 1 and 1.999 then. Can always take stuff out and replace it without messing with your magic

And Astral Sight is suddenly much less lame

a nose, trust me on this one.

I've never seen the point of the Extravagant Eyes flaw. Won't people simply assume they are yet another custom cybereye mod?

Extravagant Drizzt-purple eyes are nothing compared to the ones with the animated mushroom cloud in the iris.

True, but the quality isn't compatible with cyber or bio eyes and can't be bought off. It's a lot like Incompetent in the sense that some people won't like it because they feel that promising to never get something doesn't hit them as a real disadvantage. Beyond that, if they're outlandish enough they really ought to be paired with the Distinctive Style flaw, just like outlandish cybereyes probably should be.

I understand that -

I was just thinking: If your average shadowrun denizen, who has been seeing people with cybereyes of various styling for the last 50+ years, sees someone with not-normal eyes, would their first impulse be to identify it as
1) My goodness! a magic Mutant!
or
2) Ech! Couldn't that guy choose a better iris color? Those are high qualitiy rigs, but look so fake!

Hmm. Maybe the flaw _is_ working then....

I still say any face needs a nose!

Most Definitely...

Man, being an Adept can do that for just about exactly the same price.

Surge2 is 10.

Adept is 5, comes with magic 1, grab Astral Perception.
Magic 2 is 10 more, boom, Enhanced Senses for thermographic.
Downside is, you can't Project anymore.
Upside is, you now have access to Kinesics, Commanding Voice, Improved Social Skill (if you take this, and it IS cheaper than kinesics, take the Linguist quality from RC - Language skills still limit your Social Skills, even if they're greater than 6), Killing Hands, and a host of other goodies.


If I'd pick up anything from surge with your build, it would be Glamour for Extravagant Eyes. If you're not an adept, and you can't take ware from astral sight, then you're going to want those extra social dice. And besides, I get the feeling you want your character to be somewhat memorable, despite attempts to conceal it.

I guess voldemort's not a face.

See, my point exactly!