Poke, poke, jiggle, jiggle, here it goes. He's more combat-oriented now, but I haven't spent all the free Knowledge Skill points (9 points to spend on Japan-centric topics like Bushido, knowledge of Japanese society and culture) and I'm thinking about ditching Dodge (that's 16 points in a skill I most probably won't use, considering that in melee I can either parry attacks with my katana or block them in HtH, and if someone shoots me, I can put ten points of those 16 in Athletics group and just backflip out of the way like a proper ninja).
Also, Chummer counts Improved Reflexes differently than they're given in SR4. Have they been made cheaper in SR4A?

Name: Masaru Shiba
Street Name: Nicks
Karma: 0
Street Cred: 0
Notoriety: 0
Public Awareness: 0
Human Male Age 26
Height 5'11" Weight 163 lbs
Composure: 6
Judge Intentions: 7
Lift/Carry: 5 (30 kg/20 kg)
Memory: 6
Nuyen: 1623

Attributes:


Skills:


Qualities:


Powers:


Equipment:

Hey, to answer your question about the Ghost: the idea is that you don't carry all your weapons all the time. If you're storming a compound, you probably pack the machine gun, the grenade launching pistol, and the Ruger Thunderbolt. If you're going to meet the Johnson in a theme bar, you probably pack the pistols/tasers, and the grenade launcher-pistol. If you're trying to slip past good security that plans to pat you down, you maybe just bring the taser, or bring the taser and the holdout pistol, et cetera.

Oh. Makes sense, then. Still, I'd ditch the Fubuki and get something cheaper instead.
And check the equipment on my Adept, I think I love the Elan. It's a peashooter, but it's an invisible peashooter.

It's only invisible to MAD, cyberware scanners see it just fine

In fairness, Cyberware scanners make the game into Magicrun, and there's nothing you can do about that but be a magician.

Who's going to suspect an adept with Darrow's Syndrome (or, crunch-wise, Sensitive System) of having any cyberware on him?

Also, what would be better: Stealth group at 2 or Negotiation at 3 and Etiquette at 2? Bodyguards usually don't need stealth and that's exactly what my character is.

Has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the Scanner being installed in the door that the Adept just walked through.

@Seriously Mike

If the opposition has your medical file dating back to your childhood, you are fucked anyway.

One remark on cyberwarescanners:
They suck hard.
They are unable to find bioware and it is unlikely for them to find beta or even delta ware.
Considering the fact, that you also need net hits for information...
They only cause problems for the "I have 7 cyber implants from the start and half is illegal" kind of characters.
Very much like Wards pose the same problem for their magic equivalent.

How do I hide illegal implants from a scanner?

Get them in Delta Grade.

Delta spurs on a starting character? Umadbrov?

Admittedly hard (Impossible) to get at chargen, yes. Alpha Grade imposes a Threshold 2 for Scanners, so that is a place to start.

*makes funny noises trying to pick up the corebook off the floor* Damn. And they get +2 dice for all the shit Olga has installed. That's enough potential hits to figure out that my cyberarms are armored Evo heavy duty models with upgraded myostrands, actuators and frames, and... oh shit. I still can spend one BP to upgrade both spurs to Alpha for 3600 nuyen, though.

Yep, the more you have, the harder it is. Though even a Rating 6 Scanner will only roll 9 Dice (Assuming you have 6+ Systems installed). Which is a good incentive to get to Delta Grade when you can (Threshold 5+). But Your typical Scanners are going to be R3-R4 Devices. So Alpha is not too horrrible. And Beta will keep you mostly from being detected. Unfortunately, your non-cyber weapons are still detected on a Threshold 1.

Unless the mooks inside whatever the scanner is protecting are packing shotguns, that's not a problem. Take the first one down with fists or blades, pick up his toy, showtime.

True...

However, the physad still has a problem. 15 dice with a katana can produce enough hits to seriously wound anything, be it a mook, a paracritter or a materialized spirit, but without it... uh oh. Half the dice go out.

Which is why, if you are worried about losing it (The Katana), and if you are going Melee, and you are a Physad, you do not use a weapon. You go Unarmed. Katana is Str/2+3, AP -1 Yes?

Unarmed Combat with Killing Hands, Critical Strike 3 and Penetrating Strike 1 (1.5 PP Total) gives the same base stat as a Katana, of Str/2+3, AP -1.
And you can raise that even more with Martial Arts and other Unarmed Adept abilities. In fact, for a half point more, your AP would be AP -3.

*shrug* Lots of choices...

No. The character is a bodyguard, and a Japanese one at that. As a physad, he's more of a samurai than a kung fu master. Apart from using a katana to dispatch magical dangers, he's also a decent shooter. As for unarmed combat, I kinda overlooked that and I'd be scrambling for points to do anything about it.

Also, Katana has reach, as a sword. That's one more dice against people having smaller toys.

Gotcha, and very true, though the Penetrating Strike is better AP.

This is ultimately the core problem with a lot of melee weapons in Shadowrun.

In the grim darkness of the cyberpunk future, why do people use melee weapons instead of guns? For some melee weapons, there's an answer - for unarmed combat, it's impossible to "disarm" you. Spurs and other cyber-implant weaponry, similarly (and they don't use Exotic like cyberguns). But a katana? The core problem with katanas is that they are just as hard to hide as an assault rifle and less good than an assault rifle.

Now, one sensible way to go is to pick Unarmed, and then carry shock gloves too. This is a pretty reasonable option - while you are shooting people, you can still get Unarmed to melee defense, and the grim darkness of the cyberpunk future is full of people that really desperately want to melee you. You also get to Subdue people and can't be fully disarmed, which is handy.

Another way to go is to Blades, and use spurs. Spurs are hideable, do great damage, use Blades, and can even be weapon foci. While you have the Blades skill to use your spurs, you also use bayonets on your guns (so you can apply Blades to melee defense while shooting). And hey, it can't hurt you to carry a vibro blade (or a katana or no-dachi if you really love GRORIOUS NIPPON that much), even if you frequently check it at the door.

A third way to go is all-out melee specialist, which looks similar to one of the above two except that you're playing in a game that at the very least allows Martial Arts, because they you can use Two-Weapon Style to justify your existence. Regardless of how silly melee combat generally is in the dark eighties future, there are plenty of monsters that are really good at melee, and the ability of a TWS character to maintain solid offense and defense simultaneously against melee is a worthwhile schtick. Martial arts (especially combined with either Adept powers and 'ware, or a Mystic Adept) also allows you to hand out enough damage for people to care about. Without martial arts, this winds up being a very sad way to go and you'll wind up crying yourself to sleep unless the rest of the group is playing similarly lower-powered characters, or you are the only person trying to be good at fighting and the GM dials the challenges down to what you can handle.

Ah hell. The adept is pretty much pink mohawk, style over substance, while Olga/Kestrel is more toned down and still effective. However, when you have an adept with a spirit-killing katana AND knowledge which end of the gun to point at other enemies, things look pretty good and should get better with a couple of well-spent Karma points. That and some people will be VERY interested in that 30K nuyen weapon focus, more than, let's say, a pimped-out sniper rifle they can source from elsewhere.

Seriously, the more I look at combat-oriented adepts, the shittier they seem.

You should consider the long-term potential of augmented adepts. Load up on essential bioware. Disregard the astral potential, put the focus on powers that are not duplicated by ware.

Or start mundane and get Latent Awakening. Risk: You might end up as a magician.

Pretty much, yeah. Unaugmented adepts are just bad at life in general. Combat-oriented augmented adepts are giving up a lot of breadth for a little bit more specialization than mundanes.

*sigh* I will never get used to augmented Adepts.

I wonder, does Dumpshock want to look at my magician? Here's the first draft of Crapshoot, the Mercenary Mage. I should mention that this guy was built using Karmagen, with 10 extra Karma from plot advancement, Attributes at 5xRating, free karma for contacts and knowledge skills, and gear restrictions of 12/10R/8F. There is a cap on all attributes at chargen of 375+(Metatype cost/2). Anywho, here's the build:

Metatype: Dwarf (could go for gnome too, but I figured it's better not to bother with Arcane Arrester as a magician)- 25

Attributes:380
Body 4/Agility 3/Reaction 4/Strength 3/Charisma 3/Intuition 5/Logic 3/Willpower 7/Edge 6/Magic 6

Qualities: Positive Qualities 70, Negative Qualities -70
Magician, Focused Concentration 2, Enemy (MET2000 Lieutenant, Incidence 3/Connection 4), Records on File (MET2000), Bad Rep, Allergy (Uncommon- polonium, moderate)

Skills: 262
Spellcasting 5, Counterspelling 4, Summoning 4, Binding 4, Assensing 5, Perception (Visual) 4(6), Longarms 3, Dodge (Ranged) 4(6), Outdoors Group 3, Stealth Group 3

Knowledge Skills: 64 free Karma

Spells: 45
Increase Reflexes, Improved Invisibility, Levitate, Stunbolt, Napalm, Trid Phantasm, Detect Enemies, Combat Sense, Mind Probe

Bonded Foci: 12
Force 2 Sustaining Focus (health)
Force 2 Sustaining Focus (detection)
Force 2 Sustaining Focus (detection)

Resources: 36
FFBA Half suit w/ nonconductivity 6, fire protection 6, chemical protection 6
Armor Jacket
Rating 6 Goggles w/ vision enhancement 3, image link, smartlink, vision magnification, flare compensation, low-light vision
SPAS-22 Shotgun w/ sling, foregrip, gas vent 3
100 SnS shells
40 Flechette shells
Ruger-100 Sport Rifle w/ external smartgun system, silencer
100 rifle rounds
Battle Buddy Basic Commlink
Firewall 6
System 3
Rating 6 Directional Antenna
FTL MatrixWizard Program Suite
Trodes
Force 2 Sustaining Focus (Health)
Force 2 Sustaining Focus (Detection)
Force 2 Sustaining Focus (Detection)
Health Fetish
Combat Fetish
Detection Fetish
Illusion Fetish
Manipulation Fetish

Contacts: 24 free Karma

Total Karma: 760

I guess I should also mention that this guy is using a homebrew tradition, based off cartomancy, Tarot, and divinations. It's an Intuition-based tradition, with access to Fire, Air, Water, Man and Guardian spirits. RP-wise, the guy's an ex-MET2000 magician who ended up being the sole survivor of his outfit when they were ambushed by Azzies in Bogota. Since it would normally be his job to have Detect Enemies up and running to warn the unit, it doesn't exactly paint a good picture for his LT when this goes down, and he left Bogota before the LT could begin his investigation. Hence the negative qualities I picked there. Any glaring inadequacies so far?

I guess I'm also looking for characterful suggestions for knowledge skills and contacts that an on-the-run mercenary magician might have.

Of course, you're welcome. That was actually the idea of this thread, but then it turned out that only I used it for help.

But:
Allergic to polonium? You have to be kidding me there. You do know what polonium does to people, and former Russian spies in particular?
Also, someone here said that Pistol skill is insanely useful. You know, concealability, popularity, availability, that sort of stuff. Lugging your arsenal in a duffle bag is a bit obvious.

Pistols is far less good as a magician. If people don't let you bring your heavier weapon in, you can still stunbolt people with your mind. The main time you'd want weapons is in heavy background count, and that tends not to coincide with places you can't carry a weapon.

I will point out that Longarms < Automatics, though; you really don't need a sniper rifle as a magician given that spells have LOS range, and as someone who is only meh with guns, wide bursts are good. And you can always jam a machine pistol down your pants and claim you're just happy to see them.

I don't think it's worth the drain savings to have Detect Enemies instead of Extended Detect Enemies, given how much drain soak you have and that you're only casting it at force 2 to put it in your focus anyways.

Re: Dwarf vs. Gnome, you should check how your GM interprets Arcane Arrester. RAW, it only halves force-based effects, which doesn't do much to any of the spells you'd be casting on yourself (it does reduce the range of Extended Detect Enemies). Some GMs rule that it caps the hits too, although the text indicates otherwise, in which case you can't really have it as a magician.

Napalm is a crap spell, the double elemental effect is all Magic Tea Party anyways and it isn't worth the drain. Blizzard is a much better spell. I would also want Stunball if you can scrape up 5 karma.

I would rather have 6 intuition and 6 willpower than 5/7. Initiative is super important, also you have a lot of Intuition-based skills. I would also try to scrape up for Reaction 5.

IMO, Assensing 4 is plenty good enough; I'd rather have more of something else like Spellcasting.

I agree with Mike that the allergy is bull.

Your armor is messed up. You are encumbered, but also below the maximum Impact armor you can have. Check the link in my sig and look at the Spook and the Info Savant for examples of appropriate armor for a Body 4 character.

You have no mentor spirit, which is bad because mentor spirits are full of winning and are super cost effective. There are about a zillion good ones, but Dark Goddess, Dark King, and Sun come to mind as ones that give you nice, direct benefits.

To use fetishes, you have to decide in advance that the spell is limited to only work with the fetish. But you didn't mark any of your spells as limited.

Some skill/contact suggestions:

Knowledge: Small Unit Tactics
Mercenary Companies
Security Procedures
MilSpec Technology
Contacts: Mainly, I'd suggest a talismonger - maybe a retired MCT combat mage that you're still on good terms with?

Or see my Kestrel build in the very first post. However, Kestrel is a bit broken due to her cyberarms (and I even decided that cyberlimb armor doesn't stack with itself, in that case it'd be even more broken), but you'll be able to get 11 Ballistic armor and roughly 9 Impact without getting encumbered (your main armor should be 6/2 FFBA suit and a 5/5 armor vest or that reinforced boiler suit people suggested, then you top it with PPP bits (shin guards, forearm braces and a helmet should give you +0/+4).

Oh, also, specialize your spellcasting, summoning, binding, and guns skills.

Okay, dropping Wil to 6 for Int 6 seems a good enough trade. Done.
I also dropped assensing to 4, which gives me the 10 Karma I need for a mentor spirit. I'm going with Wise Warrior there to fit the military theme and give him bonuses to the two types of spells he'll be casting most (priority one is gonna be getting higher force sustaining foci for detect enemies/combat sense).

Napalm was mostly a fluff choice to help build the concept of an ex-military merc (War is all hell or something to that effect), but we do have a running joke about how Napalm is what the pros use, because otherwise you'd have to be crazy to risk such high drain. I'm kind of partial to keeping it, but in the grand scheme of things it's not strictly necessary for the character. Stunball would be an equally valid choice. What book is Blizzard from, Digital Grimoire? I can't seem to find it in Street Magic, SR4A, or Bogota!

Automatics makes more sense than Longarms, so I'll do that. Any suggestions for a gun? I'm thinking a Machine Pistol/SMG for myself and possibly an AR for a guardian spirit to use.

Now to try and fix the rest of this guy's gear and see what I can cut to pick up some specializations...

Which spells do you wish to cast with the fetish? Do know that any spells you use with the fetishes cannot be cast if you lose them? Cf. Limited spells SR4A p. 182

Hmmm...also a good question. At first I thought you just needed one fetish per category of spells, but I see now that it's more specific. Here are my thoughts so far:
Health fetish is for Increase Reflexes, my only health spell
Manipulation fetish is for Levitate, my only manipulation spell
Illusion fetish is for Imp. Invisibility, my only illusion spell
I guess that leaves me with a choice between stunbolt and napalm for the combat fetish and between combat sense, detect enemies and mind probe for the detection fetish. Offhand, I'm inclined to go with Napalm and Mind Probe as the limited ones for now, since they have higher drain or are being cast at higher force than the others.

You have a drain resistance pool of 12, that nets you 4 hits on average. I wouldn't bother about limiting spells that cause drain of 4 or less at the usual Force. 2 more dice only give you 2/3 of a hit extra.

And let me guess, those fetishes are tarot cards. Pretty awesome.

How about Geas: Tarot cards?

I was going to save that for when this guy actually initiates, since it gives a more tangible benefit there. For now, I'm cool with fetish-as-tarot cards.

A couple questions about spirits-
Guardian spirits can come with a combat skill as an optional power. Does that include specialization in said skill?
I know a guardian spirit can pick up and shoot a gun, but what about other equipment? Can it wear armor? A commlink? Benefit from a smartlink or a tacnet?

What does imposing a restriction on magic use have to do with furthering your understanding of magic?

Nope. a specialization is not automatic with a skill it has to be bought separately. Since Spirits only get the skill, they don't have any specialization in it.

If the materialised form is humanoid, yes.

Nope, Spirits cannot process simsense.

Blizzard is the AE Ice elemental spell. It's Fireball, but Ice damage. See Street Magic for how Ice works - what makes it good is that it forces Crash Tests.

Choice of automatics depends somewhat on how much money you want to spend on customization. Here's a good loadout that I already have made:

Ares Executive Protector (1000) with built-in Smartlink (500), Personalized Grip mod (100), Gas-Vent 3 Mod (400)

Ares Alpha (1700) with Gas Vent 3 Accessory (400), Shock Pad Accessory (50), Underbarrel Weight mod (25), Chameleon Coating mod (1000), Personalized Grip mod (100)

The Alpha is very unsubtle, but has 8 recoil compensation allowing you to long burst/short burst. The Executive Protector is less good for fighting, but looks like a briefcase so you can carry it around places where the Alpha is not socially acceptable.

Another useful gun:

700 Ares Crusader: 4P SA/BF, RC 2, 40© (7R) [Machine Pistol]
0 Gas-vent 2 system: 2 RC (factored in)
400 External Smartgun System (Top mount) (4R)
150 Rigid Stock: 1 RC
100 Personalized Grip: 1 Recoil Compensation [1]
25 Underbarrel weight: 1 Recoil Compensation [2]
1,000 Chameleon Coating: -4 to Concealment (10R) [2]
20 Barrel Reduction: -1 to Concealment, -20% range [1]

This is the machine pistol you stick in your pants. It has 5 RC, allowing for burst fire, and a concealment of -2.

It doesn't come with a specialization since skills by default don't come with specialization.

Generally spirits can use mechanical or otherwise "dumb" devices. So they can pick up a gun and pull the trigger or wear armor and get protection from bullets. They however generally run into issues with using electronics gear. They don't have nervous systems or real eyes, but just have weird astral based senses to the point where they can't really read physical books per se much less AR. So I'll say no to a commlink, smartlinks, and tacnets using guardian spirits. You might be able to use laser sight though.

You occasionally encounter people using task spirits that hack using braille enabled commlinks, but the support or explicit banning of this is lacking. I will argue that it's against the spirit of the magic and technology dualism/antagonism that exists in SR though.

If you take a geas you can make it the same as your Centering technique?

I Don't Know, Buttercup reads comic books IIRC.

Owning comic books and reading them are different things. Or does she own more books than just the ones Big D left her?

Big D said she loves manga. But still, using a tacnet or a smartlink is right out. Books are "dumb" technology after all

Heh...

These are nifty, but unfortunately for me I'd have to take Restricted Gear twice for the Executive Protector and the Alpha under my GM's gear rules at chargen. I'm currently going with a Steyr TMP machine pistol and an AK-98 AR, both with gas vent 3, external smartgun, personalized grip, foregrip and sling. That's definitely not enough RC on the AR, and probably not enough on the MP if I want to do more than burst fire (which is the point of a TMP over a different MP anyway). I like the chameleon coating on the MP, but I dunno if I can swing that within the budget this guy is on.

Also, I don't know how useful an AR w/ underbarrel GL would be in the hands of a Guardian spirit, since they only get one combat skill per optional power. I'm thinking about just using a regular AK for him until I can get my hands on something better like an HVAR. Thoughts?

The grenade launcher is for silly. You use the Alpha because it has 2 inherent recoil compensation, and the grenade launcher is just a free bonus.

The guns are relatively cheap, so I would stick with what you have right now for chargen, and just spend some money on getting proper guns later. You might also be able to get away with looted guns.

The Ares HVBR is a really, really good gun, but you need to have a way to get a bit more recoil compensation out of it than can be built in - the magic number with HV is 11. Gyrostabilization can do this, though, and guardian spirits are not super subtle anyways, so I might consider getting a slightly modded HVBR and a gyrostabilizer for your guardian spirit. An alternative is to equip it with a HMG, but that is more expensive (since you need to mod it for HV, and that costs a hefty chunk of change - if you don't mod it for HV, the HVBR is generally better).

Spirits don't read in the sense of seeing a word as bunch of characters. They can however see any emotional "charges" the work might have (which has interesting implication for literary analysis).

Materialized Spirits can of course see the letters and pictures, whether they can make sense of the symbols has never been confirmed or denied in the rules. Every materialized Spirit has physical senses, some even have enhanced ones. Since free spirits can learn, it wouldn't be much of a problem for Buttercup to pick up English, whether spoken or written.

There are no "emotional charges" in an off the rack piece of literature, as they are all produced en masse, by machines..