There are some ungodly powerful builds out there.

Then there are the kind of ideas that end up on this thread. The pornomancers who can talk a great dragon into ending it all, the combat monsters who treat thor shots like lesser mortals treat rain. you know the type.

I'm making this thread because these builds do exist, and they do get talked about. So why not have an index where new forum goers can look up what the heck a pornomancer is?

I want to be clear here, I am not condoning using these monstrosities in actual games. Breaking the game is fine in theorycraft, but in 99.999% of cases it'll ruin the fun for everyone if you bring them into a real situation.

Many of the builds this thread references have already got their own threads. If that is the case, please just provide a link for people to follow. Interesting and insane builds such as Bear-Who-Walks-Through-Walls are also welcome.

Are we talking 4th or 5th edition here?

Any edition. If it breaks an aspect of the system, it's fair game.

Here's a 4th ed 400BP ork I built a while back just to show to my friends it was possible to build a "balanced" character around the idea of dodging like a beast. Tried to maximize gymnastics without making the character so cheesy it's unplayable. It could be quite a bit cheesier.

I call him teh_dodgerer. He can easily full dodge more or less anything and with 4 IP he can spend complex actions on dodging (with 20 dice!) and still have 1 or 2 left over for shooting and slashing (both at a decent 11 dice base roll). On average, an elite shooter with agility 5, automatics 5, in perfect lighting condition, shooting a full 10 rounds of fully automatic fire, with dodgerer standing in the middle of an empty room, will barely miss him on average, as he twists and turns in the air to avoid every single bullet. Dodging with edge to make it safe grants him a 25 dice pool with exploding 6s, providing on average over 9 hits.

He can't be talking SR5 as there's most of the Books missing
But I've made some calculations : a dedicated SR5 Mystic Adept with (maybe) 100 Karma can get an Initiative of 70+
(especially if he's got a Chummer with high Leadership) on a maximum Roll from his 5 D6

and since theres no limit to Inipasses in SR5 (that I know of ! In SR4A there was a Limit of 4 physical Passes )
that could result in 7 to 8 Passes
I think this counts as a Overpowering Build , does it ?

HokaHey
Medicineman

How about a fresh conversion from SR4 to SR5 (no karma awards at all) to give a starting decker the top of the line cyberdeck? Those who've got the conversion guide might've already figured this one out, but for those who don't:

When making the character in SR4, hard cap any of the Cracking skills at 6 and your Logic at 6. Do whatever you want with the rest of the build. When the character's converted over to SR5, that Cracking skill of 6 becomes a 10. Decker archtypes get to add their highest Cracking skill (after conversion) to their Logic, divide by 3 and round up. That's the Device Rating of a cyberdeck the decker character gets for free, two levels higher than any fresh starting SR5 built decker can hope to get and your SR4 built character doesn't even have to have earned any karma yet.

And as if technomancers hadn't gotten beaten up enough yet...

what are you stacking to get your initiative that high?

Hmm

Reaction 6+3 (improved reflexes)
Intuition 6+4 (Increase Intuition spell)

So right there you are looking at 30 (rolling maximum on 5d6) +19=49

And then the variable is casting Increase Reflexes. Since it increases your Initiative directly, which is a special attribute and therefore does not suffer the cap of a bonus of +4, each hit he gets gives him plus 1 Initiative.

If you build him to max out - rolling Sorcery 12 + Magic 12 + Health spell specialization +2 + Bear Mentor spirit +2 dice + Edge 7 - so about 28 dice, rerolling 6's so you are looking at another +12 at least. - so now we are up to 61.

Adding in a companion with a high leadership doing a Rally action can put him over 70 - although to be fair I would say that the extra initiative from the leadership test doesn't count, because that isn't the character build, that chummer with the leadership is someone else.

Still 61 isn't half bad

The trouble with telling people what a pornomancer is, is that the definition has changed since its inception. Originally created here, it was basically a dice pool exercise of how many dice a character could get for the seduction skill. Over time, it evolved into a term used to describe any high dice-pool face.

You don't really need a how-to on making a high dice-pool face, though. There are a ludicrous number of adept powers, augmentations, qualities, drugs, and even gear (such as empathy software) which add to social skills, and most of them stack. Most of the "overpowered" builds are as simple as that - people piling on the modifiers for things that can get a lot of modifiers. Troll tanks, trolls who can punch for more damage than an anti-tank round, and elven super-snipers fall into this category.

SR4 Healer Adept
SR4 Ultimate Mundane Climber

huh.

if i make a hacker adept with improved skill 3, does that mean i can get a rating 7 cyberdeck? =D

that said, if we're counting SR4 builds, there's always the technomancer tricks where you make use of ludicrously high-rating complex forms. like black hammer at rating 18 (possible right out of chargen, though you need a rating 6 registered sprite and a lucky threading roll to pull it off) to instantly assassinate someone who's using even regular cold sim, or the same in stealth (undetectable) or command (your effective attribute score for any test is 18). heck, using command is particularly fun... you can boost it even more with easy specializations and qualities

Adepts get a little nerfed in their Improved Ability (Non-Combat) power, which is cut in half and rounded up. Don't know why you can't just spend the extra PP if you've got any to spare when adjusting the rest of your adept powers.

And even a Device Rating 8 cyberdeck is possible with the right qualities & gear (and be a bio-adept hacker), even a 9 if the GM allows you to break the 35BP qualities limit, except that anything over 6 has to be theorycrafted.

You start with a Mystic Adept with MAG 7 , REA 6 and INT 5
Raise MAG to 8 with an Initiation and INT 6 (ca 83 Karma)
and Focused Concentration
Specialise in Healing Magic
Get 2 Spelllocks Rating 4
cast increase REA(+4) and increase INT(+4)
So You Start with Ini 20 +1d6
Add Adrenaline Boost Lv 8
and cast Increase Reflexes at Level 8
this results in an Ini of
44 + 5D6
(Plus Your Chummer with high Leadership and additional Successes)
As I already wrote this was calculated by Memory only. Its not a Char I'm ever gonna Play .
(If I'm wrong please tell me so because this is NOT a positive example for the SR5 Rules)

with a very fast Dance
Medicineman

You are right - the only thing that I would say is that the Adrenaline Boost of 8 is a bad way to go due to the high drain - casting the Increase Reflexes at Force 1 and using a point of Edge (or spending a little bit of money and using Reagents to raise the limit to whatever you want) means that although you are a little slower, it also means you don't take any drain.

SR3 Adept that creates his own Background Count
SR3 Troll anti-tank archer

You have to cast Increase Reaction at Force 6 and Increase Intuition at Force 5, since the Force has to be at least equal to the attribute rank. No way to get around that with reagents. Sustaining Foci can only sustain a spell with a Force equal to or lower than their rating, so you need a Force 5 and Force 6 sustaining focus, and now you're risking focus addiction. Looks legit otherwise!

Well the force of the increase attribute spell must equal the stat to be increased so you'g need a force 6 and 5 spell lock, though if the attributes were 4 and 4 and you'd have 41+5d6 which is still absurd. I'm surprised more of those things don't include the does not stack with other initiative boosters line, seems pretty basic to add in.

Dam out ninjaed.

It's not every day you can say, "I ninja'd Shinobi!"

Now I'm going to have to recreate a 1e adept...

"creates his own Background Count" sounds like the SURGE thing that wasn't allowed to be taken by awakened.

In SR3 one of my characters starts stacking different stuff when we expect magical trouble at a fixed location: Defensive metamagic that adds to mage's TN and gives bonus defense dice against magic (don't know the english name. Abschirmung in german), a spell (with high drain) that causes background count (duration permanent with the BGC declining over time) and a sustained spell that increases the TN of incoming spells.
That resulted easily in +8TN (without accounting for visibillity and stuff) for spells against the team with some added dice to resist if something should come through on a lucky roll.

And Tank-type Trolls in SR3 can really stack body upgrades and armor to become pretty invulnerable to a lot of stuff.
Keeping it civil you start out with an armored jacket (5/3) over form fitting body armor (4/1), add titanium bone lacing (+1/+1 and +3 body), orthoskin (+1/+2) that results in (9/6) without beeing too suspicious. Add in a high body rating and you see that such chars could absorb tremendous ammounts of damage until the opposition started to be really high level.
When trouble was expected helmets, heavier armor and armor spells were added to the mix up to the point where shots from assault cannons could be soaked unless the shooter had a ridiculous ammount of hits for his shot.

Of course the SR3 pornomancer/social adept was quiet broken too with easy -6 to social TNs.

Shooting ambidexterious in SR3 was basically free double damage when you had a high level in that positive quality from cannon companion. Fighting in CC with two weapons not that much but still a big boost.

I guess there is more in SR3 but i don't want to continue.
Stacking many reductions for TNs had a huge impact and could become a PITA. I think that this kind of maxing is harder to do in SR5 since one more die in the pool doesn't have as much impact as -1 TN had. And there are limits now so characters are somewhat reduced to a few "finest ours" where they perform some big hits by spending edge.

It is not SURGE. With Astral Hazing, there is no on/off switch.

Isn't Astral Hazing a SR4 thing?

It is not just a SR4 thing. It is also present in YOTC as part of SURGE that cannot be taken by Awakened as you have stated previously.

So no, the SR3 Adept with Background Count doesn't make use of Astral Hazing.

Astral hazing isn't that what the frats do at mit&m?

Thought it was at Miskontonic U.

For SR5 it is very easy to have a human with 7 edge and 6 magic. Edge is incredibly powerful.

Go Squids !!!