Hello all,
I require your assistance in creating a mage character for an upcoming SR4 game. No house rules that I'm aware of, and we have 425 BP to start with, plus an additional 25 Karma that count as post-chargen. I decided to go the Face/Mage route, with a strong focus on summoning spirits. The tradition thus far is Shinto, since it's a Charisma tradition with a nice selection of spells, and the flavor is unique, but I'm also considering black magic.

That said, here's the character. Note that all specialisations and the initiation is bought with Karma.

Name: Takeshi "Shinigami" Itagaki
Race: Elf

Attributes(180BP + 50BP special):
Body 4
Agility 3
Reaction 3(5)
Strength 1
Charisma 7
Intuition 3
Logic 3
Willpower 5
Edge 2
Magic 5

Qualities:
Magician
Lightning Reflexes
Mentor Spirit: Wolf

Allergy(Sunlight, mild)
Sensitive System
Geas(Smoking)

Skills(108BP+4 Karma):
Summoning 3
Binding 4
Influence(Group) 2
Infiltration 2
Spellcasting(Combat Spells) 5
Counterspelling(Combat Spells) 4
Assensing 2
Perception 2

English N
Japanese 2
Spherethiel 2

Criminal(Yakuza) 2
Criminal(Seattle Gangs) 2
Procedure(Security) 2
Hangouts(Shadowrunner) 2
Magic Theory 2
Parazoology 2
Zen Meditation 2

Gear(22 BP in Resources):
Power Focus 2
Sustaining Focus: Health 3
Camouflage Suit
Lined Coat
Full Body FFBA
Ares Predator IV (Silenced) + 2 Clips of regular ammo
Keycard Copier 6
Glasses (Image Link, Thermographic Vision, Flare Compensation, Vision Enhancement 3)
Earbuds (Hearing Enhancement 3, Select Sound Filter)
20x Scent masking cigarette
20x Láes cigarette
Gas mask
Smart pack
Magesight Goggles
Fake SIN 4
Fake License 4
Emotitoy 6 (disguised as a ring)
Comlink: Sony Emperor + Renraku Ichi
3x disposable Comlink
Suzuki Mirage
1x Binding material for F5 spirits

Spells(30 BP):
Stealth
Stunbolt
Combat Sense
Mind Probe
Heal
Increase Reflexes
Improved Invisibility
Physical Mask
Control Thoughts
Levitate

Initiage Grade 2 (21 Karma): Group+Centering+Shielding



So, what do you guys think? Playable? Did I forget something crucial the mage? Note that the DM said that this adventure will be hard, so keep that in mind while analyzing the character.

EDIT: New version.

I don´t see much of a problem. Drop the Ares because your agility is relatively low, you lack the pistols skill and even with smartlink you are rather shooting yourself than an enemy. The power focus makes your starting char. very useful right from the beginning, but...

1) if it´s gone, your screwed
2) it will be gone quick because it is very powerful AND precious
3) it is very costly (BP-wise) because of restricted gear and the monetary costs

If you spend these points otherwise, you can increase your skills or attributes instead. Leave the focus for the moment and take it at a time you don´t need it anymore.. to become a real badass-magician.

Sustaining foci don´t need to be purchased for a specific spell-category if i am not absolutely lobotomized.

The point is: your attributes and skills are not very high, except for your magical ones. You only have 2 dice in perception and counterspelling with a low intuition...no good idea. If you don´t have a GM like i have, you could possibly survive like that. In our games, you wouldn´t.^^

Regarding the Power Focus: Agreed, leave it out, increase Edge.
Buy Pistols 1 (Semiautomatics +2) which will give you enough to handle the Ares as a Magician.

Regarding the Sustaining Focus: Nope, they are limited to one spell category as every other spell focus is.

Regarding Attributes: Lower Body to 2, push Strength to 2, increase Intuition and Logic as high as possible.

Regarding Skills: Leave Binding out. You don't need it at start. Increase Counterspelling.

Regarding Spells: Combat Sense is useless if you don't sustain it by Sustaining Focus. As is Incr. Reflexes.

The gun is just there to conceal the fact that this character is a mage. I don't actually intend to shoot with it, lol. I even consider getting a shotgun with some of the left-over money, although that might push it. It's hard to find the sweet spot between "Mage" and "Sammy with the biggest gun" when your primary combatant is a pistol adept.

About the focus: it's a gamble I'm willing to make. Having it taken away will suck, I agree, but there are several measures against that, like wearing it concealed. Besides, I still have 14 dice for combat spells, 10 dice for other spells, and 13 dice for beast spirits, even without the focus. If the DM decides to pull some arbitrary stunt to remove it, I'll just resort to physical violence

As for perception, I've got 10 dice for vision, 8 for hearing, and 5 for everything else. Sure, it's not ideal, but I think it will mostly suffice. The low Counterspelling sucks, but if it's really needed, a spirit with magical guard could do the trick. I'm considering switching to Voodoo, with it's better spirit selection and possession.

Note that this character is for a one-shot game, so character advancement isn't really a concern.

It is much more offensive to run around with a gun than to be a mage which only 1% of the population ever might discover without seeing the character actually cast. And as you don't have Masking any security mage assensing your character will discover this. So it's completely useless. Even if you resort to try to intimidate with a drawed gun as you don't have the Intimidation skill, greatly marginalizing your pool for that.

Well, being the only character in a fight who is completely unarmed kinda puts a big target sign on your head, so having a gun in this case somewhat helps with this. Besides, the Predator IV is completely legal to own.

As for security mages, I'll just trust in the fact that mages make up 1% of the world population, so they should be fairly rare. Being a mage isn't illegal either.

You still need a licence for both - the gun AND being a magician. Carrying a gun is much more tempting for any security to check your licences than to be a mage.
The invoice regarding not being armed at all is valid though. Would still opt to carry those suggested "legal" home defense guns from gun heaven.

I might also consider going for a taser. Those are neither R nor F, so no license should be necessary, right?

Looks like you are, then.


As for the character...

Spellcasting 6 would be a pretty obvious improvement.

Assensing is way too low with such a mediocre Intuition.

I wouldn't get two Stun spells, just one and one other (i.e. Power Bolt and Stun Ball).

A R3 Sustaining Focus for Illusion is very nice (the one for Health is pretty much mandatory, of course)!

Totem: Wolf? Just from the character sheet, that does seem somewhat unfitting.

Emotitoy... ugh... "disguised as a ring"... err... so it is not a toy then?
Be a man (or girl or A.I. or whatever) and buy the actual Software at least!

Bye
Thanee

I agree with dropping the Power Focus. You're better off putting the points into Arcana and a Talismonger contact who can lend you a Lodge, so you can build this stuff for yourself and others.

If you really want to carry a gun for whatever reasons, you won't have access to masking, but could possibly pull off an Analyze Device roll to get some bonus dice when using it, so you don't shoot yourself with it.

Also, while being a mage isn't illegal, it does require registration to cast spells, and ALWAYS remember to scrub your astral signature from spells you cast if you can help it (it takes a few rounds). It might be worth sparing the points for Astral Chameleon, unless your GM doesn't generally deal with that.

I would like to know why Binding isn't considered useful from the start, as a good soak pool can make it very useful to prep some longer-term spirit help.

I would definitely prefer a Sustaining Focus for your Increased Reflexes rather than the Power Focus. That will gain you some extra points as well. Having lots of IP is really important, and losing 2 dice on everything you do is also a big hit for sustaining the spell yourself.

I agree here. Binding means you can have 2 or more spirits active helping you are once. Even if they are low power spirits, they can still make use of friends in combat, or just be in more than one place at the same time. Also, they can be using spirit powers on multiple targets at once.

With a dose of Psyche (no crash effect when it runs out, lasts hours) you can sustain spells with just 1 die penalty.

Being able to go 4 times instead of 1 is definately worth -2 to all actions, even more so if its just -1 to all actions.

Combat sense cast w/ edge so it can exceed force, you can easily get 8 successes with your char, and that is worth a concentration penalty also.

Couple of things:

1 - No 'barrier' spells? They're incredibly useful.
2 - Infiltration of 2, and no dodge or gymnastics at all?
3 - There's a rule in sr4a somewhere (don't have the books handy) that limits the modifiers you can use in social situations by your number of language dice. You might want to consider adding enough dice in languagew so that all of your social benefits will apply. Unless you've already considered that, in which case forget this.
4 - Fluff wise, I agree with Thanee in that it seems like your character is suffering from a bit of an identity crisis. Face/Mage/Summoner with a combat centered totem with knowledge of biology and zen? To each his own I guess.

There's an ap (spirit) for that.

Bound spirit for that spell type or a summoned spirit of man (f3 or above) could do the job.

Getting a spirit to sustain something like combat sense is a waste of a spirt really, a focus is much more effective

Agreed. Justing saying there's an alternative.

I'm pretty sure there's not, but there is one that limits the rating of your social skill to the rating of the language skill your using, meaning all faces should have the Linguist quality.

You can drop most the specializations, 2BP is way too expensive for them, you can pick them up during play for approximately half as much (1BP being worth about 2 karma).

Your characters skills are bad, it's 2072 and you're a shadowrunner, you need to be able to use a gun, especially since it's pretty easy to make that gun better than a stunbolt at taking most foes out.

You also have no social skills to speak of, which is kind of a waste for such a high charisma character. You should have at least 1 rank in etiquette so your character doesn't tank meetings with people far more important than you(Mr. J, the local Yak boss, ect).

The power foci is a bit much. It's super expensive during character creation, and after you have some runs under your belt you can just buy one and bind it with karma. Magicians have far less sue for nuyen then other characters, which means any item you can put off and buy during play instead of using super valuable BP, you should. As mentioned by others edge will be a stronger investment.

Don't drop binding, binding is incredibly useful, especially for charisma based traditions, binding works best when you have a good edge, so you can get a ton of successes on your summoning and binding rolls.

Now I have the book handy. I'm pretty sure we're talking about the same rule. Here's a page reference so the op can fish for themselves <sr4a130, 'Charisma-Linked Skills and Language'>

You really missed the most important part of Elfenlied's Posts... here , let me quote it...



It is a One-Shot Game, Advancement is a non-issue, thus the Specializations and Power Focus.

Either they edited their post after you said this or you missed the Influence skill group at 2. So that's Con, Etiquette, Leadership, and Negotiation at 2 each. IIRC the only social skill the character is missing is Intimidate. Although I agree the character needs to know how to use that pistol and how to dodge (either through gymnastics or the dodge skill).

This character is for a one-shot game advertised as hard. Agility 3 and Reaction 3 without Dodge or any non-magic combat options is lacking even for normal games (the way we play, YMMV). I would either beef up the physical skills at the cost of some of the more expensive magic bits, or build even more of a glass cannon.

Don´t focus that much on combat magic; with Magic 5(+4) + Spellcasting 5 and your drain resistance of 12 you are pretty much set up. Even the 4 dice against Combat Spells won´t do much, so beef up Counterspelling. Think equal power; consider a Stunbolt 10 cast against your char with a DP of 16.

Invest into Arcana 1 and get a Magical Group (instant contacts), get a rebate on your Initiation. Why Cleansing? Removing BC at your power level is only interesting if it was BC aspected for the opposition, Cleansing traces does little for a one-shot game. You can get a second degree (group, ordeals of Oath + Quest, 5+7+9 = 21 karma). Shielding + Centering?

Alright, thank you so far for your helpful comments. I've taken everything said into consideration, and edited the original posts. Changes are highlighted in bold.

What do you think?

With the inclusion of Lightning Reflexes you introduce some compatibility issues, and can drop (or at least rethink) your Increase Reflexes spell, and/or the Sustaining Focus.

Yeah, lightning reflexes gives +2 reaction, while increase reflexes gives +1 reaction +1 IP up to +3/+3. I would drop lightning reflexes and keep the spell and sustaining focus. Maybe pick up Focused Concentration, and keep 5 BP for more starting cash.

Well, I don't believe there's an issue here. Increase Reflexes only increases Initiative and IP, while Lightning Reflexes only increases Reaction.

You'd think, but Lightning Reflexes comes with a "screw you" clause. Runner's Companion, p. 98: