This little topic was spawned by me wondering wether it was possible to make a character with Mage/Shaman abilities, Adept abilities, and Projection. By the rules in Dot6W, I believe that it is possible for a drake Physmage to have all of these (any drake with magical skills can project in either Draco- or Metahuman form).

Well. Isn't that Nice? But what can they do? The hefty cost of being a drake Physmage (55 points/Priorities A and B) streches the Skill, Attribute, and Resources fairly thin. You probably won't even have the attribute bonuses of your dracoform for most of the time. They get some nice freebies (enhanced senses, astral armor, innate spell: flamethrower, flight in dracoform) but what attribute/skill/resource/adept power/spell combos can really compliment this well? Are there any archetypical roles that can benefit from this significantly?

Right now I'm leaning towards a stealth physad with magical skills providing spirits and a few choice spells (Invisibility, increase reflexes +3, ETC) where needed.

Also: Do drakes have Armor or not? I'd expect so and it's listed under the stat-line in Threats 2 but not in Dot6w.

I'm doing something similar, if you've noticed in the threads, with my own character:

I've looked at Invisibility, and have given that a pass. You need at least a Force 4 to have a consistant shot at hiding from even the weeniest of security, and with stealth you definately want to go with consistant. The F:5 or F:6 spell you are going to want to rely on when your life is on the line will put a serious strain on your magical resourse. Maybe later on once you have built up your Magic and/or Power Foci? But at the start concentrate on things like the Improved Reflexes, Makeover, Shapechange, etc. that you don't have to worry about opposed rolls.

Onto Projection: someone mentioned that they include Astral Perception within Adept metamagic, but that the Initiates need to use 2 grades worth of metamagic to gain it. I'm not sure why that couldn't be extended to an extra grade or two beyond that giving you Projection. If you think you even have a chance of convincing your GM to give the thumbs up for a Drake PC then i suspect he is a GM that would definately consider that. *shrug*

Physad powers do not apply in Drake form, sorry. The tradeoff of being a physad Drake is that:

1) You can cast spells as a drake, but not astrally project.

2) You can be really deadly in either form.

That's it.

Invisibility is useful at force 1 as long as you are rolling enough dice. OK: Rolling enough dice is tricky if your magical magic attribute is low (as it may be for a physmage) which is why I was considering taking an ally spirit or something (5 spell points and -1 magic for a force 2 power focus that can fight as well as you in astral combat). If I managed to take centering as a metamagical technique that would also help.

As for 2 initiations worth of metamagics for perception: That is for people who don't understand how useful centering is for adepts, let-alone physmages. I was even considering taking magical power 6 and initiating 3 times using the spell points (possible only if you use groups & ordeals). That way I could take Centering on Physical skills (Athletics and Stealth), Magical skills (As per normal mages), and another area like Melee combat.

@ AH and Cochise: It states that drakes can use all magical skills and abilities while in dracoform on P184, Dot6w. It also states that any drake with magical skills can project whilst in either form (on the same page).

Just as a general query to the group: What would people consider to be the strength of the Drake?

well, the main one i can think of is that you can project as a physad. there isn't much on the astral that'd be scarier than that.

Okay, I wrote the last post at school, so let me look through my books and check <flip, flip>

Hrm. Okay, according to Threats 2, drakes may cast spells and use physical adept abilities in either form (which is sort of ridiculous, since neither shapeshifters nor dragons can use physad abilities when transformed, but I digress). It also says that if the drake can astrally project, it can do so in either form. So, a physical magician still cannot astrally project.

And, DotSW backs it up.

Strength for drakes is Natural + 4 in Drake form.

DotSW goes on to say, in the next section, that "Drakes with Magical skills can also astrally project like magicians in iether humanoid or dragon form." however, as both Threats 2 and DotSW contradict that, the best choice is probably to ignore it.

another oddity: in T2, it takes 4 or 6 succs on an assensing test to determine a drake's true nature; it DotSW, it's 3 or 5.

why do the topic make me want to scream munchkin at the top of my lungs?

does anyone have the number to ghostwalker? im planing a party and are wondering about a place to hold it

As I'm currently GMin a... "high-powered campaign", where one of the pcs is a drake physmage, allow me to step in...

Basically, the drake physmage, on paper, is the weakest character, mainly due to points lost to being a drake and being an adept. Drake form can help to go around this, but, as drakes are generally rare (and hunted...), and as the game requires the PCs to be in the spotlight most of the time the drake form isn't exactly seen often.

In the game, though, the drake physmage currently holds the highest body count, for what that means.

This however, is largely due to force 6 stunbolts, which any vanilla mage can have, and probably cast better.

err, bodycount and stunbolts? soundslike that drake is getting a lot of nice sucsesses

Doesn't take that many successes to use a Stunbolt to great effect. Resisting a 2M or even 2S Drain with Willpower 6 and a couple of totem dice (or Spell Pool dice) is pretty easy, and it only takes two successes (which don't have to be net successes) on the latter to bump it up to Deadly Stun. The target then has to roll against a TN of 6 and meet or beat his successes to avoid that Deadly Stun blow.

Sorcery 6 + Spell Pool 3 alone against even an above-average opponent (Body 4) leaves you with, what, four or five successes? That's going to take down a lot of opponents without the Drake taking any Drain whatsoever (especially since he just needs to cast it at a Moderate level with that many average successes).

Being the player with the drake physmage in Synthcat's game, I think that yes, it was really hard to find a way to make an elf drake physmage somewhat useful to the team. However, the GM gave us some karma to begin with ( it's a high-powered campaign, so we all got about 70 karma ) so it greatly helped for the skills and attributes.

Anyway, here's what I did. First, I made sure that the character could sling one or two mid-level ( force 5-6 ) low-drain ( stunbolt ! ) spells per turn without fearing at all for the drain. High willpower + increase reflexes on sustaining focus, ta da ! Instant 15+ initiative. That way, the character isn't a completely useless 'combat' mage, though far from a really good one. So far so great. I wanted an elf, and decided to go for it even if it cost 10 points because of the charisma bonus, which greatly help for conjuring and the natural low-light vision ( vision modifiers, anyone ? ). As I couldn't afford to waste any point I invested in, I made her the 'face' of the group with a thinned-down version of the usual skillset you'd see for a face. Effectively, it makes her a two-trick poney : she's as good as the mage archetype for slinging spell but she's a lousy conjurer, she can talk her way out of most situations ( or at least try ) and scare/lead people but lack the usual 30+ diversified contacts you'd expect the face to have. Wahoo...

One of the players chose to make his character a technology-oriented jack-of-all-trades ( street sam/rigger/decker ), which, effectively, makes him rather average in everything he does. Yes, he can rig, deck or fight, but not really better than your average, 123 build point archetype. His strenght is that he can do what 3 different archetypes can do. Well, almost. Thus, I didn't look too underpowered in comparison.

One of the players wanted a path of the wheel druid, with a strong kick for illusions. While I did spend mucho power points ( geased, mind you ) to get an effective magic rating for spellcasting of 6, he is wayyyy better than I am. He started iniated - I didn't, he had powerful foci - I just had to forget about those. Nonetheless, since our abilities don't overlap too much ( except conjuring, but again, I can't even hope to be as good as he is ), it's alright for me.


Well, you don't need 9 successes to effectively take out someone with a stunbolt. Cast lev6 stunbolt, damage level serious. Hope to stage up. At this point, the target is usually unconscious ( if it isn't, try again ). Then if you really need to kill it, cast the same spell again, but damage level medium ( to avoid drain ) until damage overflow. Nice and easy.

Umm. Is it possibble to take drake *and* be an elf?

As for the munchkin/powergaming aspect: Yes, I fully accept that this is a munchkin topic, as with every other "What is the best possible initiative?" style topic (which is kindof what I meant it to be, but not how it seems to have turned-out).

Anyway. You can make the character effectively a full mage with 36 spell-points rather than 25 by puting 6 ranks in Magical Power. The disadvantage is that you advance differently/slowly (and geases affect you differently), but you have the avantage that you can take a few points of adept powers as you advance.

@DBR: I'd be interested in seeing what you took, although it would be somewhat different due to the 70 karma tacked-on at the end.

Exactly

Except that projection is explicitly allowed in either form by Dot6W.

Still arguable, but o.k. ...

err, my point above was that usualy the word bodycount is used when you kill a lot of people, not just knocking them out like stunbolt does. (that is unless you hit them 2 times with it or something like that )

once they're knocked out, you just run around in drake form, biting heads. bodycount, QED!

Am I the only one who finds it odd that this appears to be one of the only creature in all of the Sixth World who's dual-natured part of the time? As opposed to a magician using astral perception (and thus suffers a +2 penalty on all real-world actions)?

I really hate these rules. It would've been nice if they could have either put them all in one place, or at the very least kept them consistent when they spread them out. Yeesh.

I'm not knocked-out by the dual-natured part, since dragons are dual natured all the time 'cept when they're astrally travelling. Still might hoping that the adept powers thing was a typo though.

Well Drakes aren't Dragons. They're made by, and share a number of features with, dragons but they aren't actually dragons.

Their part-time dual-naturedness is odd. It kinda fits-in with the flavour in the T2 book though. The drake form is their natural form, thus their natural form exists on both planes and is able to deal more readily with the complexities of acting on both planes. Whilst in metahuman form; they are somewhat 'shifted' from their natural state which tunes them out of the astral (but they are still close enough to it that they can access it sometimes).

Also: where does it say that dragons can't use physad powers in dracoform? I'm not disputing it, I've just never seen it.

it's a reasonably logical assumption, based on the fact that drakes act a lot like shapeshifters, and shapeshifters can't use physad powers in their animal form.

Does anybody actually have that good a use for them though?

Physad Powers + Centering for Melee + Natural Reach + Astral Armor + Astral Projection + Spirit Packs + Spell Defense makes them pretty-much the drek as far as astral combat is concerned. Astral combat is still somewhat specialised though.

the ability to fly without using spells is pretty handy. other than that... yeah, astral combat is their strong suit.

OK: Here are some stats I chucked together. I think he's fully munchkined but if I missed something then please tell me

Construction:
A: Magic (Physmage)
B: Race (Drake))
C: Attributes (24)
D: Resources (20k)
E: Skills (27)

Edges/Flaws:
Bonus Attribute Point (Willpower)
Allergy (Mild, Gold)

Attributes:
B: 2 (6)
Q: 2 (3)
S: 2 (6)
C: 6
I: 6
W: 7

Skills:
Active: 27
Sorcery 6
Conjuring 6
Centering 6
Edged (Katana) 4(6)
Stealth 2
Ettiquette 2

Knowledge: 30
Martial-Arts Katas 6 (Centering Skill)
Talismongering 6
Magical Background 4
Shadowrunner Haunts 4
Dragons 4
Parabotany 3
Police Procedures 3


Magical Abilities:
Adept Powers: 6 points
Magical power 8 (Gesture Geas reduces cost to 6)

Spell Points: 48
Join Metamagical Group: 3
Initiation 1 (Centering for Physical skills): 9
Initiation 2 (Centering for Magical skills): 10
Initiation 3 (Centering for Melee Combat): 12
Ally Spirit (Force 2): 5
Increase Reflexes +3 (force 1): 1
^ Bonding sustaining focus (force 1): 1
Improved Invisibility (force 1): 1

Resources:
Sustaining Focus (force 1): 15K
Katana: 1k
1 month low lifestyle: 1k
Clothes, Basic armor, metamagical group membership, ETC: 3k

Contacts:
Talismonger (lvl 1)
Fixer (lvl 1)

Funky Drek:
Astral Armor (Essence = 6)
Innate Spell (Flamethrower)
Enhanced Senses (Wide-Band Hearing, Low-Light Vision, Thermographic Vision)
Can transform into dracoform and back.
Can percieve and project...
Well :All of the funky drake stuff really.

Just a question that hit me; as a drake what group is he going to join, Drakes Annonymous? Seriously, he would have a very hard time hiding his true identity from the group. What group could he trust with that VERY sensitive knowledge?

I was thinking he would be attached to a group run by a dragon or the draco foundation. That way most people in the group would be loyal enough to not tell.

BTW i'm not trying to be a jerk about this. I'm just tossing out ideas to help you fill in the holes in his backstory that will eventually be exposed....plus give you the heads-up so you can at least get the points at chargen for the Hunted -6 flaw that the GM is likely to saddle you with anyway.

Ack, I just re-read the section... I'd need to buy the 6-point edge... Hmm.. Going Chronic ostiocusps is looking like a good choice. Furthermore it helps munchkin the character further!

To balance the extra 4 points I get, I think Astral Chameleon (Making it very hard to tell I'm a drake like that) and Quick Healer (canceling the slow healer effect of chronic ostiocusps).

It's also tempting to turn him into a tatoo freak at some point in the future. +6 to all mental attributes would put my astral combat pool through the roof. Plus tatooed dragons would be cool... "What's your tatoo of?" "A human." Cool..."

western, eastern, feathered, or sea human?

It's an Eastern human eating its own tail.

Lilt : well, I didn't have a lot of power points left because of 6 levels of magical power. I took some levels of mystic armor and the power that gives some additional dices to resist illusions ( pretty useless at low level, if you ask me ). At the time, I didn't know that one of the other players would want an illusionist. Well, most of the time I can't see through his spells anyway

With the karma I gained in-game, I bought a level of initiation. I spent it to improve some skills I thought the team dangerously lacked ( and was the only character half-good at it in the first place anyway ).

My GM ruled that my character could astrally project only if she was in drake form. It somewhat bugs me, but I can't seem to convince him to think otherwise. Damnit.

Mystic Armor is nice. In-general True Seeing is rather pointless, except versus the force 1 improved invisibility trick, but even then you probably would have seen through them when dual-natured or percieving.

Just wondering: What skills did the team dangerously lack? If it's something compatible with being physmage drake then I might want to get it.

Well: It does say in Dot6w that they can project in either form, but it's not that much of a drawback. For one you get +1d6 initiative in dracoform.

Lilt : Well, my GM house-ruled that an adept could buy additional dices (the 'improved ability' power ) for non-combat related skills too. Since I talked him into letting me buy those for .25 power point per dice, well.... let's just say intimidation, negociation and etiquette just went way up. Oddly enough, at char creation, my character was the only one somewhat good at playing the face. I just got rather good at it now.

As for true seeing being pointless, well, yeah, I noted that pretty quickly, thank you very much

As for the initiative boost, I already use a focus with a low-level improved initiative + 3 on it. Do you think the drake ability stacks with it, or that they are mutually exclusive ( aka you get the biggest bonus but not the other )?

Hmm. I'd expect the 2d6 that the drake rolls as natural (IE: As natural as the 1d6 most characters roll). Anyone else have an opinion on this? Actually: I'll start a new topic about it 'cos this affects some shifters too.

Well: As a chronic ostiocusps freak, I very much doubt I'd be the face of the group. I doubt my (hypothetical) GMs would allow me social skills for .25 of a point either.

True seeing is relatively useless for most characters anyway. I'm tempted to replace it with a (more expencive) power that simply makes the adept immune to indirect illusions.

Hmm. Do you think I'd be better going with a martial art at 3 (with a maneuver) or keep my current 4(6) edged weapons skill? As I can use Sorcery in place of edged weapons or unarmed for combat on the astral, I'd probably only be using it on the physical (unless I bought improved ability at some point)...

Any insights as-to what would be best in the long-run?

One of the few shadowrun books my GM doesn't own happens to be the canon companion. Thus, I can hardly advice you about maneuvers. However, I can tell you what I did. It's not great, but it seems to work. I usually spend the characters 2-3 actions per turn only casting spells ( either combat spells like stunbolt, or more 'strategy-oriented' ones like poltergeist to give the team an edge ). That way, I can use the characer's combat pool only for dodging and soaking. Usually, the character holds ready some kind of edged weapon ( knife, sword, whatever ), but not to attack with it, just to defend. If the enemy's roll is bad or if I'm lucky, she'll get to maim some people with her knife, while casting spells. Of course, I can't hope to stage up a lot and with st:4, it's rather easy to soak the damage anyway, but, hey, nobody is perfect.

well, tell me what you think about it