This is the character the GM complained about in our last session. Like i mentioned in the topic "how many karma do you need before a char. becomes unplayable" this char. had been approved by the GM and during the run he realized how powerful it really was. Is he really too mighty or would you allow it in your game respectively would you like to have such a team-member?

Metatype: Troll / Fomorian
Profession: Spirit /mage-hunter

Body 9
Strenght 9
Agility 5 (7)
Reaction 3 (7)
Initiative 7(11)+ 1(3) Phases
Essence 1,05
Willpower 3
Charisma 1
Logic 4
Intuition 4
Edge 5
Magic 0
Natural Armor (0/0)
Close Combat Damage 8 P; Reach+1
Movement-Rate 23 / 53

Skills:
Bladed Weapons 5
- Specialisation [Cyberimplant. weapons] 5 [+2]
Athletik (+3 Synthac.)
Gymastics (Ges) 5 (+4)
- Specialisation [Parcour] 5 [+2] (+4)
Skillwires:
- Automatics 4 (+2 / Smartlink)

Gifts:
- Surge rating 3 (15)
- Magical Resistance Rating 1 (10)
- Erased (5)
- Common Sense. (5)
- Restricted Gear (MBW) (5)

Handicaps:
- Allergy (Mycoprotein) medium (15)
- Spirit Bane (Beast Spirits) (10)
- Amnesia (10)

Surge-Effect positive:
- Celerity (5)
- Metagenet.Attribute (Agility). (20)
- Balance Receptor (5)

Surge-Effect negative:
- Impaired (Body) (5)
- Astral Hazing (10)

Cyber/Bioware:

Rating 3 Cyberears and Cybereyes
Radar Sensor Rating 4
MBW-System rating 2
Spurs
Muscle Toner rating 2
Synthacardium rating 3
Cosmetical Modification (10.000 Nuyen) (to become more acceptable for non-troll-clients)
Skillwire-expert-system

Connections:

Fixer (6/6)
AI (3/6)

Gear:
Ingram Smartgun with sufficient ammo (SnS, Exex)
Ares Alpha Combatgun with sufficient ammo (Exex)
some Armor
Lifestyle low for 1 month
middle-class commlink

I don't see a real problem with it, though there are two potential red flags in my mind. The Charisma of 1 makes me want to ask questions as to why, because when you have a 1 in an attribute it screams of a dump stat, so there really needs to be a good in character explanation for it, not to mention that his Intuition and Logic are fairly high. I would be wary of situations where they were used to explain why he is suddenly outgoing and leading the party when his self image is that of a mouse. Second flag is the Amnesia negative quality. I would want it understood by the player that taking that quality is essentially signing a contract with the GM, allowing him to make you his own personal ... well you get the picture.

With that in mind, with the second red flag taken care of, I would love a character like this around.

We have a character in our group who is somewhat similar to this one (Physical Attributes are more average for a Troll with 7's in Body and Strength though). He is quite the powerhouse character, though he does have many more skills than you do (Took the points saved in Stats, and put them into Skills). In the end, a Troll Ganger put him down for the count when it really mattered.

I have no preoblems with this charactrer, as long as he understands that there are situations where he is going to be heavily handicapped. Our Troll just blunders thorugh such situations, which is actually very entertaining.

Anyways.

Pretty good char. I'd allow it, if I was a GM. I agree with Faelan, needs more fluff-wise explanation. A name'd be useful, too.

We had a troll possession mage whose stats were higher than that, so I'd definitely allow it, especially since the Astral Hazing is really going to piss off the two magical PCs in the group, and the 1 Charisma + 0 social skills means you're not going to be liked (we've got runners in that situation already, and it's been hilarious).

This looks like one of those typical hyper-specialized, incapable of acting outside its normal sphere characters. I look at it this way: the security that shows up on a run is up to the GM and can have whatever numbers they need, so a PC with really high stats just means harder runs and opponents with higher than average stats and/or numbers. But this character could be conned out of 50 bucks by an eight-year-old, scared off by an average gangbanger, or schmoozed by the cashier at the Stuffer Shack. The Achilles heel is the size of a leg and just about anyone can stab it easily. And Amnesia + Astral Hazing are a perfect combination for having people pop up that want to do so.

The character is an impending lesson in versatility for the player, not something for a GM to fear.

Machiavelli, if you're a spirit hunter, you might need a high Charisma to hurt the spirit reliably (Attack of Will, pg 94 Street Magic). Otherwise you're going to hacking a spirit for a while... or you might not do any damage to it because of Immune to Normal Weapons.

I would suggest dumping one point of Strength, Logic, Intuition, and Edge (&/or Body) to boost your Charisma to 5. Remember that you will do (Charisma)P damage to a spirit and ignore it's ItNW ability.

Thank you very much for your replies. So i can now stop feeling like being in twilight-zone where everybody complains about me being a powergamer that ruins the fun for the group because the other characters are not that well-build (or the GM is not capable to look outside his narrow-viewpoint and handle a char. like this).

Regarding the background: i was thinking about a corp (or maybe the big bad elven-court) that was trying to create some new kind of biodrone which is capable to fight magical threats (be it critters, blood-mages, spirits, etc.) while being completely mundane (and therefore more replacable). The recipiants for this project had been selected by their genetical heritage that expressed anti-magical capabilities. Some of the children taken in this project had either been kidnapped from their parents or they had simply been bought like slaves. To make them combat-ready and to save time (that is usually needed for education) they implanted skillwires or and corresponding hardware. Finally they tried to erase their consciousness while an AI-like programme that was "implanted" to rig the body while serving as a build-in hacker at the same time. With this kind of "non-complaining" biodrone, the corp tried to fill the leaks of a common spec-ops team by having magic-resistant firepower that doesn´t need to be protected by a mage all the time. You also don´t need to spent a lot of time to teach them skills and of course they do basically whatever the corp want them to do....quite like mindless zombies.

Of course i realize that this character is taken to the limit with the combination of astral hazing, magical resistance and arcane arrester while being a really tough troll at the same time, but nevertheless...

To come back to the story: something went wrong in the process of mind-erasing and the AI and the char. excaped from the facility. Now they established some kind of symbiosis and the brain/commlink of the character is the "home-node" of the AI. I thought of the AI as being some sort of "inner voice" for the char. and they take care of each other like a family.

Because the corp had to take everybody that shows this abilities, they were sometimes forced to accept "ugly" orks and trolls as well. But to be considerate of their elven clients, every specimen that didn´t fit into the customers beauty-ideal had to undergo extensive chirurgial treatments.

@Kitsune: Charisma definitely is a dumpstat at the moment. I was hoping that every spirit that would come up after the team, was not much higher than force 5-6, and in this case i can accept his left 2 points of hardened armor. Due to the fact that nearly any other attribute is soft-maxed and he doesn´t need karma for skills through the skillwires, all the following karma would have gone directly into charisma.


Name is "Tank" and he is a she. 16 year old female troll without family, shy in social interactions. The only thing she feels free in, is combat.

Maybe the GM is too good at giving advice.

Why the high logic though? Maybe you're hiding something in that skillwire system that made the GM go nuts.

This char is not allowed, because of:


If this is fixed: Yes.
But: As soon as there is the slightest Astral sec, this guy brings down a lot of heat.

I see how this character is a problem for GMs who focus on the run and not on the world.
I think it is important for every GM to be ok with the possibility that your hole team gets taken in by Lonestar for (for exampe) walking with heavy weapons through an AAA district. Even if this would fuck up your run.

(The only good thing about him is, that he has just Essence 1, leading to the fact, that his BC is just 1 m around him.)

There are a lot of things that make the GM freak out:

1) high soak pool. He usually handles humans, somtimes an ork
2) first char. that was allowed to use the "restricted gear" quality and implanted a MBW with it...he also started to realize what a MBW really can do after he had seen my char. during the run.
3) very resistant to magic
4) will quickly get new skills without karma (and therefore need no GM-allowance to get better)
5) high stats, the only thing the GM can make fun of, is his low charisma which is quickly maxed if you don´t need karma for other purposes
6) edge 5, which quickly causes imbalances if all the other ones run out of it quite quick and you can use if for every single roll...

The high logic was just to prevent the GM from telling everybody that the char. is a dumb troll....^^

I don't get it. He only took one dump stat. I try to get at least 2 dump stats.

"Some people think they can outsmart me. Maybe. <sniff> Maybe. I have yet to see one that can outsmart HUGE TREE TRUNK LONGBOW."

She's doing a base of 8P, so under normal circumstances couldn't fail to hurt a Force 4 spirit. Add Astral Hazing on top of that and she's lowering their Force by 4 if they're in melee range, so shouldn't have a problem with anything under Force 9. Well, assuming she can hit it.

Why no Astral Hazing?

Are you using SR4A? If so, skillsofts are 10,000 per rating point so unless money flows like water I don't see where the "quickly" comes into play.

Well, there's a Trick where you get the most maxed out browse for software you can have in char getn, and then get a Rating 4 Group Contact to a Warez Network.
Bam, every single skill soft for 10% of the price in 3 days Game Time.

Would you believe I almost made a quote exactly like that for my distinctive style?

@longbowrocks
Well beeing a troll cuts out any sneaky approach from the start.
You do not even fit though a freaking window!

This char has one purpose and one purpose only: To beat the magic shit out of astral beeings. (And the real out of not astral ones)

(The only thing offering variety is the skill-wire system.)

YES.

We are using SR4A, but the last first job she got was worth 8000 Nuyen and took about 3 hours. We usually have 2-3 jobs/month and i only have to spent money to replace ammunition, lifestyle, armor etc. The most important ware is already built in, so i can save a lot of it for skillsofts....

It doesn´t mean the char. will "explode" in the next months, but he will definitely raise faster than the other characters in the party. Of course they could also implant skillwires but they simply don´t do it...they have the money etc.... this is ways out of my mind. I want my char. become better so that he can survive. I don´t get it why they don´t use the possibilities that are given by the rules.

Thanks. I was wondering how people did that, and I'm starting to see the importance of balance (only two dump stats on my latest concept!), so I'll just buy balance at 1k NuYen a rank.

It's not about dump stats, or at least not wholly. This character has:

- No social skills. As mentioned, an 8-year-old can con them out of stuff.
- No infiltration skill. Even with a 7 Agility, the average security guard will have more dice to see her than she has to hide.
- No Perception! That same 8-year-old has a decent chance of sneaking up on him, and any trained foe is going to be practically invisible (despite +3 dice from cyber eyes & ears).
- No skills at all that aren't related to being big, mobile, and hurting people.

It's just not a character-type that would typically thrive at our table outside of a D&D style campaign where you go in, kill stuff, and take their loot. Doesn't mean it's bad though. Like I said, I'd allow it. We've got some similar builds at the table right now that have been loads of fun.

Doesn't pirated skillware degrade?

I assume you're planning on doing skill-wires for your skills.

1) Skillsofts costs 10kxrating. That's a pretty penny.
2) To have a useful number of skills you'll want to pluscod them, which costs an additionaly 6k (each)
3) You'll also want to get them personalized (another 5k or so)
4) Even if you do all that you're running around with 8(at any onetime) rank 4+1 skills that you cannot spend edge on.
5)You won't be able to specialize.
6) The GM can have amusing side effects in your skillsofts: Ares TruDodge™: When targetted by a Knight Errant Officer, the software will shutdown. S&K Stealth: Sends out a beacon when on S&K Extraterritoriality.
Summary:
For 400k roughly, you can have 8 skills at equivalent rank 5, with no specialization and no ability to spend edge. Congrats, if the GM gives you 400K that quickly, he gets what he asked for.

If you say, "but, I'll just Pirate the Skillsofts, they'll cost me 1/10th the price."
1) They'll cost you 1/10 the price, + 10th the differential costs in ranks every month.
2) IF you can find the right skillsofts, with the right customizations at the right ranks. (every month)
3) You're going to slot BTL software you picked up a Warez site? REALLY?

This is quite the way i build characters. I don´t like allrounders that suck at a lot of things. A new char. needs to survive the combat first, all the other stuff is absolutely secondary. He is nothing more than mere "muscles" and he does nothing else that beating the sh**it out of things. Nobody would ask the face to go in close combat with the troll-enemy, the mage to rig the car or the sam to lead the ritual team. This character is made for further improvement and a good GM can outplay his (lot of) weaknesses easily. He has potential, that´s it. If he dies because of his specialization i am fine with it. This was my risk as i made him.

full ack from me here.
i don't understand why people harp on such weaknesses and preferably only on the combat oriented characters . .

He has skillwire expert, which allows limited use of edge on them.

I didn't see anything specifically suggesting that, so couldn't the GM just as easily say: "you practiced your organic longarms skill on a target, but you don't have what it takes to shoot a real flesh and blood person"?

Liked. ^^

That would give you additional BP´s for "pacifist".^^

Limitation
Program Types: Common, Hacking, Autosoft, Simsense

A program with the Limitation option has some sort of restriction parameter that prohibits the software from being used in certain ways and under specific circumstances (for instance when
a pre-determined trigger situation is met). Programs that are released as shareware typically feature a Limitation option that prohibits the use of parts of the programs or prevents it from being run above a certain rating until the software has been purchased and registered.
Simsense: The Limitation option manifests as a mental block that prohibits the use of a skillsoft against certain targets (a Lone-Star cop, corporate grunts carrying a certain logo) or restricts the use of a combat skill to certain brands of weapons. Mental block Limitations can be tied to any particular trigger condition the user is able to experience.

No Etiquette skill. No Infiltration skill. No SIN. No vehicle. Save his parkour spec, he is nearly entirely dependent on the rest of the team to actually get where the action takes place. So, I don't think he is going to steal the light too much from the other characters. Not to mention no Perception skill and that he cannot make a Social Test without using Edge. As a gamemaster, I would make sure that when his Amnesia shows up, he is going to owe his teammates a favor or two to get out of it alive. He is also not tough enough to require bringing to the fight guns so big that the other characters would risk an instant kill (well, not much more than your average troll).

My main problem as a GM is that I cannot redo the right math for him. Is it a 400 BP character ? 750 karma ? (and then, what was the Attribute multiplier used ? x3 or x5 ?).

Jesus, really no Perception and no Socials? Man! "all the other stuff is absolutely secondary"? Horrible.

If the GM lets you get skillsofts for free, he deserves what he gets. If available at all, they should suck; TANSTAAFL.

On a personal note, I don't mind giggling at the idea of actually writing an 'escaped corp science project' character background. Hehehe. I guess it's better than generic 'ex-special-ops'. I'm sure it'll be fun.

Yes, it is a common 400BP character. If you exclude all the skills, you have a lot of BP´s left for attributes. This was a completely new approach to solve the problem that you never have enough BP´s. Image what have happened if i had lowered some attributes (body and strenght e.g.) and put it into the missing skills? I declined to do that just because i thought i can survive with a good team long enough to spent the BP better in the attributes.^^

Yes, it is a common 400BP character. If you exclude all the skills, you have a lot of BP´s left for attributes. This was a completely new approach to solve the problem that you never have enough BP´s. Imageine what have happened if i had lowered some attributes (body and strenght e.g.) and put it into the missing skills? I declined to do that just because i thought i can survive with a good team long enough to spent the BP better in the attributes.^^

Besides that, my main char has intuition 5 and perception 4 which means 9 dices at all. This char has intuition 4 and cyberears/eyes which give +3. So 6 dices. I think this can last for a while.

sorry for the double post.

Not your fault. We've all been there. Although, it's starting to look like a triple rainbow post....

I don't really see what makes the character so strong that the GM complains.
What exactly makes this character so bad in his eyes.

@Max

I guess the GM does not know the rules for skillsoft and so Machiavelli is just getting the things he wants instead the things he deserved. (And we all know, players always deserve thing worse than hell)

Like said in this thread: If you stick with the rules for skillsofts they are not the kind of stuff you want to depend on. (Yeah, a raiting 3 skillsoft for a skill you use off the run might be nice...)

I don't know you CAN, with a lot of work get effectively Rating 5 skillsofts. I have a couple of very strong builds who use skillsofts to good use.

But, usually it's to fill in secondary skills. And the character is build with the potential pitfalls of doing skillsofts. Most of his skillsofts are defensive or utilitarian. Not going to risk a pistol 4 skillsoft that only works on H&K pistols.

I wouldn't allow him. Not because he's too powerful, but because he's so useless. He's an NPC, someone you call in on every 10th run where you need extra muscle. Real problems are solved by planning, social engineering, stealth, hacking and magicks, and a little well-placed violence. Combat monsters just don't bring much to the table. And trolls with astral hazing, please. That's an attention grabber that will get you exposed and tracked down easily.

No way I'd allow this thing to play.

It's a fomori... it's ALREADY a surged troll of sorts... piling surge on top of it.

Astral hazing is about as cheesy as it gets for a *NEGATIVE* quality... hunted is a negative 10point quality... even if astral hazing does piss off the local awakened community to put money on your head... then you're effectively giving the char both hunted and hazing as a GM.

It has zero abilities outside of 'hulk smash'. I think someone else had it right, this is a NPC... not really a PC.

The logic of... I can just grab tons of skills off the wires doesn't fly either. You're limited to a few, and skillsofts are very costly now w/ the new system. (one of the good changes from SR4 -> 4a).



Put quite simply... pretty much everything in Runner's companion is almost unplayable... fomori... yeah look for the wierd ass troll... good luck hiding that when anonymity is your first line of defense. (same goes for pixies... etc... which are all great for power game theory crafting but awful for most SR games).

I don't know why people say this character isn't versatile. He can hit things and shoot things.

But seriously, Machiavelli. I know you want some vindication, but really, people here saying this character isn't that overpowering doesn't matter. Sure, in an absolute scale, he is a character who is good at combat but has a bare-bones selection of skills otherwise. He is not so unstoppable that he cannot be challenged in combat, and his weaknesses should give him problems, but not insurmountable ones.

But what does really matter is that, apparently, your GM has a hard time challenging your character, or dealing with what he can do, and the fact that other GMs might be able to run him better doesn't change that fact. The only thing that can really solve this problem is to sit down with your GM and talk things over. Maybe you can give him some pointers, or maybe you will need to sit down and tweak your character a bit, to tone him down some.

You have not done anything wrong, by any means. But while Shadowrun's point build system can make a wonderful array of different characters, the downside is that, with the same number of points, you can make characters of widely varying effectiveness. Honestly, the game master is the one who should ensure everyone is on the same page, before the game even begins. But this sounds like a new GM, when you describe him not knowing how effective certain pieces of 'ware would be, so consider cutting him a bit of a break. Maybe make the character slightly less awesome, losing some of his weaknesses in the process, to bring him more in line with what the power level of this game is.

Combined with the last thread about the technophobe mage, there seems to be a pretty adversarial relationship with the poor GM, and not in the good way (where he tries to kill the players, they resist).

Okay, read some of the other threads. Guess it it probably too late for this particular player/GM relationship to be salvaged. I can't comment on it too much, since I'm only getting one side of it, but I'll be honest: a lot of GMs flat out have trouble dealing with any effective character. I've seen my share of threads starting out "One of my players is rolling, like, 15 dice for pistols, and he's only a starting character! What do I do?" Part of it might be a mentality expecting starting 'runners to be the equivalent of first-level characters, and part of it might be a railroading mentality. But unfortunately for such GMs, Shadowrun is a game chock-full of lateral solutions to problems. Hell, unlike D&D, where you are hacking your way room by room, the whole point of a run is often to sneak in, nab something, and sneak out, with no one the wiser.

This character would cause the entire team to get eliminated within a few runs. He has no solution to sniper blimp drone from 1500 meters away. Which is a very basic rigger assassin tool.

command(6)+gunnery(4)+specialty sniping(2)+vr(2)+personalized interface(1)+optimized command(1)+take aim(erases range modifiers)=16d6 with a 10P -5AP weapon.

What's more fun, you use 3 blimps all slaved together so you can use the same diepool for all of them at once.

Which is why Assassination by Sniper should be a rare thing in the game. There is really no way to protect against such things, and should always fall into the realm of Plot Device, rather than PC/NPC Interaction.

Not true, Hackers, Faces, Infiltration type characters, and most shadowrunners have several good ways of avoiding such a thing.

1) Don't be a walking posterchild for Terrorism.
2) Make sure very few people know what you look like, or what your name is, or where you live.
3) When ever possible, wear disguises.
4) Hackers should be constantly scanning for anomalous drones like that.
5) Faces should already know that there's a hit out on them.

Yes, from a survive the shot issue, its tough. The trick is to never be the target of said shot.

A Giant Fomori Troll with Astral Hazing who is only good at breaking things, and drawing attentiont o himself is very likely to become the target of said shot.

This is a good idea and maybe the only possible solution of the problem. But i fear that the problem will not be solved for long. The GM has a problem with "Super"-Characters and his and my opinion what is "super" and what not differ immensly. In our quarrel he also told me that my dark-mage is going to become a problem for him too, at least in the nearest future. Acutally i have body 3 and only 6 points of armor, this causes me to be in danger every run. So i planned to learn and quicken "increase attributes" on him, but a mage with bode 8-9 is already in his rating of being "super".... i think i give up. Saves a lot of trouble, nerves and time. Does somebody know an SR-group near Stuttgart / Germany?

I can kinda see where he's coming from. A lot of the fluff, especially the earlier novels, are about nobodies who are thrust into the streets and have to learn to survive before they become bad asses. the original Dog shaman from the first three books probably started with a 3 in Magic and no armor at all. Those sorts of games can't be run using 400 BP characters without a lot of holding back on the players' parts, because 400BP means you're an experienced runner.

Has the group talked about dropping the BPs down to 350 or 300 and having a guideline that every PC must be able to fulfill 2 roles decently and a third role without defaulting? that should put a hefty limit on the max attributes, skills, and gear but still leave characters that are playable and fun.

Also kinda sounds like lots of redundancy in the department of redundancy department to me.