Please excuse any errors in my Deutsch; I haven't actually spoken it in years.

Jaeger, troll huntsman

I like it. Interesting concept, excellent execution. I might use it as an NPC or as inspiration for a PC. Kudos.

Thank you. One glaring deficiency (from a strictly optimization standpoint) is the utter lack of any initiative enhancer. I would have liked at least a rating 1 synaptic booster, but at 80,000 nuyen I just couldn't afford it and didn't want to sacrifice any of his skills or attributes. In the short term, he can make up for it with combat drugs, and rely on the massive damage from his bow (10P, or 11P with explosive arrows) to drop an enemy every IP.

Overall, I'm very pleased with him. I wanted a troll with a clear and comprehensible reason for using a bow over a nominally more efficient weapon, and I think I succeeded. Plus trolls are just awesome.

Actually, the lack of IP is only the most glaring problem with your build (and you are correct. someone with 1 IP is no fighter whatsoever. he is more like a random citizen with an assault cannon, dangerous but no warrior.). So get those IPs.

Get Archery 6. You will use it all the time.

Buy Metagenetic improvement (Agi) instead of Natural Athlete and Outdoorsman (which suck anyways, just level up those groups. you only have them at 3, costs only 20 to go to 4 as well and you dont need to spend precious quality points. those skills only (if ever) make sense after you already got level 4 in a group). So you can have natural 5 + muscle toner 4 for the standard 9 agi.

You dont need both blades and unarmed, pick one (i would choose unarmed so you can always block).

You seem to want to do gymnatics dodge. consider the martial arts that improves it (you can get 2 dice to make up for the lack of spec.) and synthacardium.

There is a special skill in running wild for taking care of animal wounds, it's called VetTech and part of the group animal husbandry, which you may want if you wanna be the critter man as well.

Aptitude is really costly, and you dont even make use of it. Altogether that one dice of skill 7 compared to 6 costs you 34 karma. not worth it imho.

Dont take restricted gear for an 800 nuyen bow and some arrows. buy them ingame, start with a weaker one if you like.

Swap Cha and Log, you have 2 Cha skills and its also used in more tests as defence (but oh well, you will lose those nevertheless). While you're at it, skimp Logic to 1. No difference basically, saves 10 Karma though.

Speaking of it, get Intimidation and some of the cheap stuff to boost it. Theres even a metagenetic *negative* quality that boosts it at the cost of other social skills. 6 dice for etiquette wont get you far anyway.

Willpower 3 is enough. 4 is inefficient because of stun track, get 5 if you really want lots of it (wont save you against stunbolts neither though)

On the same note, sure bows use STR as damage [which is a bad design decision btw, same goes for wrestling damage], melee weapons dont though. consider strength 9 to improve those.

Get more armor. You have your high body for a reason.

You will never use your crossbow. Those are for weak people. You are a big fat trog.



Apart from all that you may want to consider Shiva Arms for dual troll bow action. Well, Just kidding

Have fun pimpin'!




Edit: All of that seems more mean that it is meant. Kudos for using KarmaGen Chummer, it's far too seldomly used here on dumpshock still!

While most of your points are valid, from a strictly optimization-oriented standpoint, there are a couple of things I want to address. Jaeger's First Aid specialization isn't in treating wounded animals, but wounds caused by animals. In other words, if you get mauled by a bear, Jaeger's your man. I see him as not just a hunter in his own right, but someone who leads hunting expeditions for rich city folk. Gotta keep those greenhorns healthy; losing customers is bad for business.

Second, he absolutely has a use for a crossbow: it has an internal magazine and does not require a Ready Weapon action every IP. It makes up for only doing 7P (8P with explosive arrows) by being able to fire twice per pass. The bow is for big game; the crossbow for lesser game.

Third, Jaeger resents your characterization of him as fat. He is, in fact, in excellent physical shape. Also, if you call him a trog again he'll rip your arm off.

Basically, he's heavily concept-driven. I'm aware that there are many ways in which he could be better optimized, but most of them involve compromising the concept more than I'm comfortable with.

You may want to consider the Krav Maga martial art, which allows you to take ready weapon actions as free actions. This allows you to alternate between 2 shots/1 shot per IP. Also, I would suggest getting at least 1 extra IP, e.g. via Wired Reflexes 1, which are affordable at 10000. Purchase Aptitude after Chargen, and use the free points for more money.

Some changes I´d do:
- Replace Blades/Unarmed with the Close Combat group to open up blunt improvised weapons (piece of wood, stone)
- Get rid of all your positive qualities.
--Replace with:
--- Perceptive 2 (good for an uncybered hunter, strong running synergy)
--- Guts (to actually face large game, see Composure Checks)
--- 40 karma for other stuff
- Reducing strength to 7 saves another 40 karma
- Add Armorer skill for arrow fletching (say 10 karma for Armorer 2 (Arrows+2))
- Get the Synaptic Booster and Muscle Aug/Toner 2 (110k¥, so 44 karma)
- Spend 26 leftover karma

Your german is actually pretty much perfect.
It means:"i am the hunter".
It could be seen as "Hi, i am(as in "my name is") Hunter!"

And i welcome another Troll-Bow!

My bad, your spec definetely makes sense then.



You are definetely right in that you wanna be able to shoot more often per IP. I think Krav Maga is cheesy though, but you should definetely be an adept, totally forgot to mention that. Even Magic 2 gives you +2 dice for shooting plus Quick Draw plus half a power point to do whatever you want with. Quick Draw is awesome because you can then quickdraw each arrow and shoot twice per turn, so its even better than krav maga in that sense. It's really a big optimization (basically "Double Damage").

My point with the crossbow is that it's not synergistic with your build. If you are fine using a crossbow, you could just be a human, don't need to spend anything on strength and still do good damage. You would still be a man of the woods, but it's just another build. If you invest so heavily on using your bow efficiently, you should definetely use it as much as you can.

I kinda wanna muck around with making a dwarfbow at some point. (And no, I don't mean a bow that shoots dwarves as ammunition.)

~Umi

Damn. And I wanted to see a dwarf projectile.

See various threads regarding Throwing Adepts. I believe someone once threw a dwarf through a tank, but don't quote me on that.

~Umi

I've got a decent human archer, should work just as well with a drawf

Yeah, but you'll be stuck using a short bow.

*pulls a heavy pistol round from the Pun Jar, chambers it, and blows his brains out*

~Umi

I wrote up a similar concept a while back.
I went with the traditional gathering skills - and quite a bit of stealth, but that might not be necessary.

A few extra IPs would be helpful, but not necessarily essential.
You're a damn troll. Bows are silent, so they lend themselves to stealth and one shot-one kill scenarios.
You could always lean on combat drugs.

i'd say one of the best archer troll builds would be the ultimate mundane climber. strip off some points here and there and invest these into trollery(troll archery).
you can get anywhere you want and shoot from there. hell, you could even hang upside down from the ceiling under a bridge and shoot from there . .

That reminds me of a scene in The Dark Knight Returns where Green Arrow was hanging upside down from a fire escape and shot his bow one-handed using his teeth to draw it. He still made the shot and the kryptonite arrow did a number on Supes.

Ahem?
1.) Spoilers?
2.) Dark Knight Returns with Green Arrow and Superman? What?

what is the official Dumpshock policy on spoiling 26-year-old comic books?

Ah, so not a Movie.
And if it's indeed 26 Years old, then i think i can be forgiven for forgetting about that . .

I had to double-check the publication date, then immediately felt like yelling at some kids to get off my lawn...

Go ahead, we all do.

Not me.
I don't have a Lawn.
And that comic is only 2 or 3 years younger than me <.< . .

*Shakes Head*
"Young'ins these days."

Just pop drugs for the extra IP.

"This message brought to you by the Shadowrunners and Smuggler's Association For Drug Usage."

Fact is, it is highly DM dependant how drugs work in your game (speaking of addiction test frequency etc). They may very well be either the best or the worst option to use.

Runners Advocating Deliberate and Intrinsic Consumption for Attributes exceptionaL.

R.A.D.I.C.A.L. ftw!

KING Radical.

But, no matter what, is very Cyberpunk, and should always be an option!

Have We all forgotten that the MAX damage a Bow can do is 18 Physical under SR4A

So?
You can still use it to do usefull stuff cheap and silent over big distances.

ONLY 18p? Like that isn't enough.

And it's in one attack, too, so you can hurt even a Force 8 spirit with it. Or, if you somehow have AP 1/2 arrowheads (Trollbow sized SnS, maybe, or some kind of armor-penetrating explosive head), potentially anything up to Force 17.

Even if something somehow soaks a bunch of that damage, it still runs a good chance of being knocked down dependant on body. And at 10 damage dealt you get an auto knockdown, no matter how tough the enemy might be - although you'd need to be pretty dang tough to stage down eight damage, eat the remaining ten, and still be in the fight such that a knockdown matters.

~Umi

36, actually, if you use a MRSI.

It's kind of ridiculous that it works for bows.

At least it's limited to Medium and Long ranges. So for a Rating 12 bow, that's between 13m and 360m.

~Umi

Should be enough . .

Rating What Bow? Bows do not go that High by RAW. They stop at Rating 8.

"Most only go to Rating 8, but I specially made this one for you... This one goes to 11."

My copy of SR4A has that exact quote, but it says 12 instead of 8. Bizarre. Must have be an errata somewhere between them.

That's also the only way the above comments about 18 damage and 36 with MRSI work, because an arrow's max damage is capped at 1.5 times bow rating.

~Umi

Yes indeed... It was erratted and is correct in the newest Hard Copy of the SR4A book. Including the Precious.
Indeed... 15p (30p) for the win. Which is still incredibly devastating for an ARROW.

Well, these are still Arrows Humans would consider Spears . .
So closer to harpoons which are used to hunt whales usually.

Now I want to make a one-legged Troll Whaling Ship Captain hunting after an Albino Whale Shapechanger!

<.<
>,>
i . . may have done so before actually . .
>_<


well, not a whale shape shifter, but captain ahab the troll was there . .



Also:
i don't get the problems people have with trollbows being powerful . .
you have no problem with trolls
you have no problem with tech
you have no problem with bows
but you put them together in a most logical way . .

Go with that, but also pick up Iaijutsu for either Arrows or Bows (whichever your GM wants you to) so you can Quick Draw your arrows and fire them in one Simple Action. Free Action to ready the bow, Simple to QD the arrows and fire.

Actually, since STR 8 is the max for bows, there's no need to be a troll anymore. Any human with some extra muscles can use that.

I personally don't like that they went with straight STR+x for bows instead of STR/2+x (same goes for subduing damage, the only other occurence where plain STR is done as damage). Also, hardcapping things is, most of the time, a bad idea.
With the latest rules, bows can have a base damage of 3 to 10. To actually make trolls weilding bows viable again, i would propose changing that to make the damage scale all the way up woth Strength. Considering a maximum realistic STR of about 14 (troll with STR 10 muscle augmentation 4), what about STR/2+3 without a hardmax?
That way, the STR 8 character would still do some quite ok 7 Damage (same as heavy crossbow), the STR 14 troll would do the prior max of 10 damage, and some tricked out infected, genecrafted, surged, exceptionally gifted,... "being" (probably on drugs) with STR 21 would be able to get to a whopping 14 damage. Sounds quite fair to me, and gets rid of just another ugly rule in our favorite system. What do you think?

Don't forget about suprathyroid gland. Another +1 so +5 from Bioware alone.

Wait, why would you take a bow at all then? A crossbow is no larger or harder to conceal, holds 5 bolts in an internal magazine, has no strength minimum, and fires twice per turn without requiring any martial arts. Bows suddenly go from being a niche weapon to being laughably inferior to everything else.

~Umi

They always were, it just took a bit for the game engine to catch up to the middle ages.

If you wanted to house rule the sacredness of a bow, then perhaps have it able to be enchanted like a weapon focii, leaving out crossbows as they've got mechanical parts. Cause, `ya know, Magic is totally cool with the electrical pathways of the central nervous system, can readily muck with the most potent computer in the world, the brain, but a simple gear just confounds it.