Hi Folks. I was about to create a new character for our (from now on) “not-so-uber-game”. I thought about it during the weekend, but obviously i have been a powergamer for too long and therefore I cannot create lame or “standard” characters anymore. Everything I plan is either extravagant, highly specialized, maxed or all at once. My fellow gamers call the variation of chars “freak-show”….So all my second-source characters are cancelled and I really don´t know how to go on. The GM checked all my chars and the only one he could “live with” (surge-wise) is the this one:

I had the concept of a medusa-mystical-adept in mind with the focus in possession magic and magical skills. Since our last session, possession magic is forbidden in our group and overly extreme surge effects like “astral shroud” are banned or at least highly restricted. I am tired of telling the GM that it is an disadvantage if he plays it right so please, dear dumpshockers, lend me a hand.

What I would like to have (but not necessarily need):

1) Mystical adept (for future options – I love options)
2) Elf
3) Female
4) Medusa Hair (I thought about a thagomizer-variant) means a lot of small snakes to cover the head (extravagant hair???), and a long python-like snake for the thagomizer effect
5) Natural Venom (if possible for the big snake)
6) Must at least be able to cast “Petrification”
7) Focus on adept powers
Combat character
9) Magic is (except of the petrificiation-spell) only to buff herself. So nothing that interferes with that. I could imagine a limited range acid stream spell from the mouth.
10) Char. should look like medusa but somehow coverable – mask spell?

Could you please give me some hints how I can proceed? I would need a good combination of spells and powers, a tradition, mentor spirit etc.

Please help me. I offer an invitation for a barbeque and unlimited amounts of beer for everybody that participates on this project (location: Germany, Baden-Württemberg, close to Stuttgart, date: to be defined)

woot! first on the list! (I hope)

For 4), there's the "fiberoptic hair" option from Augmentation. You can have it move, all kinds of colors and patterns, and in lengths between 0.6cm and 1m, with GM approval for lengths / configs past that.

For 10), combination of the Mask / Physical Mask spell and-or the adept power of Facial Sculpt

Mentor spirit is easy (snake, right?)

Hey. Put you on the list.^^ Does fibreoptic hair cost essence?

yeah - 0.1 Essence. But hey, cyber-adepts are all the rage, right?

Ok, gimme a build.^^

4) Get Nanonhair from Bodytech. It's sculptable smarthair, programable with a comlink. If you dislike the Essence loss, you could also get Unsual Hair with SURGE.
5) Either Elemental Strike: Acid as an Adept, the venom SURGE effect, or an implanted Bioware Gland with the spitting option.

Here's a vague draft on how'd I do it. I'll leave stats and rest up to you, I'll focus on the magic/ware/SURGE aspects.

"Cassiopeia":
Female Elf Mystic Adept

Qualities:
Mystic Adept
Restricted Gear: Power Focus 4
SURGE II (Natural Venom, Unusual Hair)


Adept:
Heightened Concentration
Killing Hands
Elemental Strike: Acid
Critical Strike 4


Spells:
Acid Stream
Combat Sense
Increase Reflexes
Shapechange
Petrify

Additional spells and qualities are up to you. Basically, I would buff the character with Increase Reflexes, Combat Sense and Shapechange into a Giant Snake. Then Use Heightened Concentration to negate the -6 modifier, giving you awesome stats, a high dodge pool, and deadly melee attacks. The F4 Power Focus offsets any DP disadvantages you might have from the 3 PP in Adept powers.




I might just take you up on that. It's not that far from Nuremberg, after all

Of course you would want bows to be your weapon of choice.
If you want to poison a thagomyser, you're probably best off with a cybergland or whatnot.
Disguise skill (and Intuition to boot) and Etiquette should be priorities.

And I love the flavor of shapechange.

Also: I plain do not get the adversity against possession spirits. You're hamstringing yourself in versatility in a bad, bad way.

I would really like to make her a possession mage, but the GM...always the GM.....*sob*

Since you can't have a possession mage, make sure to always summon a Beast Spirit in the morning, in the form of a snake with the Venom power, and always have it materialized draped around your neck.

And since you want a "combat character", losing the 0.1 Essence for the hair isn't such a big deal, as you probably would be wanting some reaction / IP enhancing 'ware, or similar...

Another idea: Get a tradition that has both Beast Spirits as well as Guardian/Task spirits (e.g. the Nordic tradition). Get the Invoking metatechnique, and invoke a Guardian/Task spirit in Great Form. Let this spirit use Endowment to grant Endowment to the Beats Spirit, and let the Beats spirit endow you with the Venom power.

Hilarity ensues!

I'd sort of second shapechange, but maybe instead take [Snake] form. Also, unless your game really runs this way, stay away from the one-trick "combat uber-monster" pony. Animate / mass animate might be useful and flavorful as spells, and fit the concept. Clairvoyance/clairaudience/other detection spells could fit the concept too. Antidote / Detox spells?

Some sort of wall-climbing / gecko hands / spell to give you that double-creepy effect of dropping down on people from the ceiling?

The resistance to toxins Positive Quality.

RC p112 Corrosive Spit. Exotic Ranged that deals Acid damage.

SURGE II
Corrosive Spit
Thagomizer Tail
Striking Skin Pigmentation/Critter Spook
Unusual Hair

2 Magic Points towards Magic
you need Force 3/4 Improved Reflexes, Force 1/2 [Snake] Form, Force 3 (Physical/) Mask

Adept Powers for Combat.
Improved Ability (Exotic Ranged: Spit) 2
Attribute Boost (Agility)
Improved Ability (Exotic Melee: Tail) 2
Counterstrike
something for 0.25 and fun, like Iron Will or so.

I'll be in Stuttgart early or late August

Tell me when, i will heat the grill^^

Tell me when, i will heat the grill^^

4) From Attitude
"MEDUSA EXTENSIONS
Part drone, part trode, these narrow, twenty centimeter-long
“snakes”  fit along the scalp and move with neural stimuli. Over a
dozen can be placed along the scalp and can move independently
or in sync. Simple in design, they can be programmed to change
behavior with certain emotions. There’s optional color changing
for them as well."
You could try to convince your GM to allow you to modify them to have a bite attack
5)You could try to convince your GM to allow you to get Bioware Chemical Gland that produces cobra venom (or some other snake venom) and have it so that the snake drones take the poison secreted by the gland and store it until they bite someone.

Thats very dependant on your GM allowing you to do it, but as it's pretty expensive and mostly for flavour, not being OP in the least, i don't see why a GM would disallow it.

1) Mystical adept (for future options – I love options)
2) Elf
3) Female

Mystical adept should take care of the minmaxing... can you use karmagen? That one provides a ton of stuff at lower dp levels.

4) Medusa Hair (I thought about a thagomizer-variant) means a lot of small snakes to cover the head (extravagant hair???), and a long python-like snake for the thagomizer effect
5) Natural Venom (if possible for the big snake)
6) Must at least be able to cast “Petrification”

I´d use a sustaining focus for the physical mask spell, and forego actually having Medusa hair. Mechanically it´s plain cheaper, and and the sustaining focus has secondary options.


7) Focus on adept powers
cool.gif Combat character
9) Magic is (except of the petrificiation-spell) only to buff herself. So nothing that interferes with that. I could imagine a limited range acid stream spell from the mouth.

3 "Magic", 2 powers. Fortunately petrification is handled. I´d suggest Improved Reaction 1 + Improved Intimidation 2. Note that my PG self feels sorry for the build.

10) Char. should look like medusa but somehow coverable – mask spell?

See 4-6.

Just one questions before i will post the finished char for your approval: if i walk on the "way of the adept" and get a reduction for a power AND i add a geasa, would that mean i get the power at half cost (2 times 25% reduction) or should i either calculate 1PP reduced by 25% and the result again reduced by another 25% (which comes out at 0,56 instead of 0,5)???

That's for your GM to deside, if he even allows you to combine the 2 optional rules, but the writers succestion was to add them together first(just like the reductions to the initiation/submersion costs and the reductions to the essence costs if we ever get that Aug errata) so you would get a 50% reduction.
It's not good math, but it produces much simpler numbers.

100% agree. I only assume that this could be a viable calculation, because the initation-rules use them too. Here you can also combine 2 single reductionsof each 25% (initiatory rite plus group-reduction) to a sum of 50%.

You may want to go about making your medusa-themed snake woman, well, backwards from what you're doing. Instead of slapping hair and poison onto an elf, slap arms and elf ears on a snake.

Naga: 30BP (RC84). this WILL make you dual natured, however, but you do have built in venom. Guard is just a nice bonus. Its also the same cost as the elf.
Buying off the automatic Uneducated for critters: 20bp

Surge II: 110BP
Positive (20)
Metahuman traits: Elf 5bp
Shiva arms: 15bp
Negative(10)
Scales: 5bp
Unusual Hair: 5bp
Other possibilities include: Mood Hair(-5)(you can judge a mood by how annoyed the snakes are), or the Fangs(+5) quality(the damage and reach make sense for short-ranged shake hair, just fluff it as being on your head instead of your mouth.( naga already have a bite attack)) The benefit of fangs over a thagomizer is you don't need an exotic weapon skill: they use unarmed. I might also suggest 360 Degree Eyesight(+10)(you have a bunch of snakes watching over your shoulder)

Should be 60BP total. 65 if you opt to go Surge 3 to fit more metagenetic qualities in. I think its a bit more expensive, mostly due to Uneducated
I think this route is a little more expensive, but you get more of a medusa-feel. The different max stats may hurt what you're trying to do, though.

This is probably the way that I would do it as well. Much Better flavor, in my opinion.

I like your thinking, but by RAW this quality is only available for humans . That's probably the GM's least problem *g*

Not exactly true. I checked that. Metahuman Trait's restrictive clause reads as follows: "this quality cannot be taken by metahuman characters."

Naga aren't metahuman at all, they are Critters.

Also don't forget that as long as you already have Surge, you can take MORE qualities than you have metagenetic points for... but they count against your usual quality limit of 35, if you feel yourself wanting to add just one more trait for flavor. This goes for negative qualities as well as positive ones.

Have you considered playing an interesting character that's i.. dunno.. less of a sideshow freak?

Yeah, but i don´t know if it would make fun.^^ The Naga-Proposal is so sick that it really makes me wanna see the face of my GM if i put it on his desk. If he doesn´t drop dead right away, i really don´t get it.

This is the actual status of character creation:

Race: Elf
Class: Mystical Adept (Charisma-tradition, materialization with at least beast and guardian spirits)
Body: 4
Strenght: 3
Agility: 6
Reaction: 5
Intuition: 3
Logic: 2
Willpower: 3
Charisma: 3
Edge: 1
Magic: 5 (4 on adept powers)

Qualities:
Mystic Adept
Surge II
Mentor Spirit
Restricted Equipment
Way of the adept (Magician - warriors advantages)

Negative:
Sensitive System
Dependents (10)
??? (still to choose for another 10 BP´s. Maybe hunted?)

Surge:
Snake Hair (Thagomizer)
Natural Venom (Ekyelebenle Venom)

Negative:
Extravagant Eyes (Snake-eyes)

Skills:
Spellcasting: 2 (+2 on combat spells from mentor spirit) (+4 power-focus)
Counterspelling: 4
Summoning: 3 (+2 on beast spirits from mentor spirit) (+4 power-focus)
Exotic Melee (Snakehair): 4
Automatics: 4(6) (+2 Smartlink)
Gymastics: 3 (+2 from "thagomizer")
Perception: 3 (+2 Enhanced Perception) (+3 from goggles on sight)

Spells:
Petrify
Physical Mask
Increased Reflexes
Combat sense

Adept powers:
Enhanced Perception: 2
Critical Strike: 2
Killing Hands
Increased Skill (Automatics): 2 (reduction from Adept way)
Mystic Armor: 4 (reduction from Adept way + geasa (Talisman))
Motion Detection
Attribute boost (Agility): 1

Equipment:
Power-Focus Rating 4
Sustaining focus Rating 3
Ingram Smartgun with Exex and SnS
Ares Alpha with Exex (plus all needed extras)
Common Commlink
Motorcycle
1 month low lifestyle
Fake ID and Licences for magic
goggles and glasses with full-range equipment (e.g. infared, flare-compensation, vision magnification (all optical))
Medkit (no refill)
Armored jacket, forearm guards, and some other stuff from the PPP-system
FFBA 2
Helmet

Do you think i can start or is there something i should optimize? Is this character "uber" in any way?

I don't think your character is particularly uber, since you're not abusing any of the known loopholes.

As for the negative qualities, how about distinctive style? You're about as distinctive as it gets

I wanted to ask the same thing. To each his own, I guess (as long as the GM and the rest of the players are okay with it). *shrugs*

Somehow, something seems...just...wrong here...

This is the same i think if i hear "Troll" and "helmet" in the same sentence. Distinctive style would come for free i think, i don´t have to think about that. ^^

I have planned to use physical mask where it is reasonable and a custom made helmet as well as a hardcase-backpack for the "thagomizer" to hide. This very distinctive weapon will only be used under extreme circumstances. I want to play it realistically and like it is: Something that makes people freak out, makes you recognizable and therefore has to be hidden whenever possible. For me the "hair" is more about the fluff and for roleplaying than everything else.

Changelings have Distinctive Style for Free... And he is indeed distinctive...

Oh boy. Did somebody recognize how often i used the word "think" in my last post? And the grammar....i have to stop smoking "things".

You smoke Things? There is your problem, stop smoking things and get on the herbs...

Here it goes...

Heh...

I think....i am hungry now. Maybe i can find some sweets...or maybe chips?`Whoah....nachos.

And now we know his source of inspiration...

DISCLAIMER: NOT meant to offend. I have an unhealthy and illogical bias against all drugs, recreational or otherwise.

No problem. Never mind. I have a quite big amount of humor and i would have said EXACTLY the same.^^ Maybe you are even right? Muahahahaha...would explain a lot.