I'm making a Troll Shaman using only the base book as this is our first game and we don't want to overload the GM with information. Got his chummer sheet here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B7L...d0N1XzlwOUplWFU

Priorities: Magic A; Metatype B; Skills C; Attributes D: Nuyen E

The idea is that with Focused Concentration 4 I can cast Improve Charisma on myself every morning to have 8 Cha all the time. Our Troll street sam is going no augments so I will be using the Health Sustaining Foci 4 to keep a Force 4 Improved Reflexes going on him at all times. My first action of a fight will most likely to Improve Agility the Sam and plink away with my Pistol.

He is a former member of the Vikings a Norse themed Biker Gang that is nomadic. Being shit at driving and in a Biker Gang don't go well together however so after trashing another members Bike for one time to many he decided to try going legit with some corp work. Our GM is having the Corp we worked for dissolving our division and disposing of all assets, as in our group. I'll be facing most likely so tried to be ok at that and am leaning heavy ont he 8 Cha. I recently dropped Intimidate for focus in asensing Aura Reading and Counterspelling Combat Magic. I'd like to buy back some intimidation but don't know what else I could part with.

Using the Bear totem as a stand in for Odin, wearing furs, a Viking helmet , and having the Foci be an eyepatch give me my Distinctive Style.

Any advice on the character? Buying the Foci left me with no real funds so the first goal Nuyen wise is 12k for a Rating 4 SIN with licenses. First 10 Karma is going to bump Edge to 2.

Step 1: Beat the stupid out of the street sam's player. O.o

I picked a Troll Shaman when I was a New Player with New Character too. Good choice! Next character was a tigershifter adept (bad choice, but good experience). At least in the editions I am familiar with, it's one focus, several foci; one nexus, several nexi; one locus, several loci. There are other irregular plurals such as medium/media; datum/data; agendum/agenda; erratum/errata; corpus/corpora; axis/axes; apex/apices; die/dice. The powers that be may have changed this in SR5, but I hope not.

Maybe (hopefully?) he is an adept.


As for the character at hand ...

Are you completely set on the troll? Seems to me like you are not really making much "use" of it there, other than, well, being a troll.

What's wrong with being a human? A-Magic, B-Attributes, C-Metatype, D-Skills, E-Resources. You won't be as physically strong (though, 5 isn't exactly stellar, anyways), but you can have more Charisma. Also... Edge 7, which is a huge asset.

Do you need two rating 6 combat skills (Pistols and Unarmed)? For a character, that is not really a primary combatant (and shouldn't be, since you will just fall over dead, when someone points one of the nastier guns, like a shotgun, in your direction), that seems a little odd. Especially, since you also have your magic for combat purposes. Spirits are very good at fighting. Maybe focus a bit more on the other aspects of the character instead, and put more points into the social skills, making him a decent "face".

Furthermore, I'm not sure, I would drop all that Karma you get on acquiring that focus. You can get one later. Those points are great to get some lower level skills, while using your skill ranks from the priorities to get the higher rating ones mostly.

Last but not least, I don't really think you can be "prejudiced" towards Humanis. That's pretty real and not exactly a prejudice (which implies that you hate something for no good reason).

Bye
Thanee

Really want to stick with Troll. I'm already going to be the guy in the group that's way to into the game and systems. I don't want to leverage that into making the strongest min-maxed mage I can. Plus I enjoy the challenge priority A or B metatype gives me.

What could I do to take advantage of the fact that I'm a Troll?



I was just going by some guides I've read and they said everyone should have skills in a gun category and a melee option if available. I also like that I can win a bar fight with my unarmed, or add it to defense if a nutter with a katana is trying to "geek the mage first". How low could/should I drop those skills ideally?

With bear totem I'm looking at 22 soak dice and I've got 11 Wound and Stun thresholds. Am I really that? What would a tankier mage look like and what would I have to do to pull that off?



It is eating up a huge amount of my starting Nuyen, and I do have the quality to sustain my Charisma bumping spell already. That said it's only 8 Karma which I suppose gets me 4 skills at rank 1 so I'm not defaulting, which could be good.

I'm talking the Humanis thing over with my GM. I figure if we have to have a social encounter with them at some point and I take my negative die/they get there bonus die it counts good enough for the karma hit. Otherwise I gota find a new negatrait.


Thank you for taking the time to look over my character and come back with some strong critiques! So much stuff to miss when making these guys.

Just for the record, I am not saying you are doing anything wrong there. Just pointing out some things that stick out to me. If you decide that it is exactly what you want, then that's perfectly cool, of course!

As for the troll... trolls are pretty straightforward. They are good at being tough and strong. And not good (though, not terrible either) at pretty much everything else. You havn't put a single of your attribute points into Body or Strength, which means you just get the low-end of the troll scale. Statwise it's the same as a powerfully-built human, not what you would expect from your average troll.

Survivability... this certainly depends on how deadly your games are. But you have pretty much no way to avoid getting hit (6 dice for defense isn't much, especially once you get some penalties added in). Weapons hurt in SR5. A lot. An Enfield AS-7 (one of the nastier shotguns) does 13K plus net hits. Your 21 dice (22 - 1 AP) will yield 7 hits on average. That's 6K plus net hits going right through. With your defense pool, there will be a few net hits. Of course, that is a pretty big gun (standard ammo, though), but even a weaker one will hurt quite a bit. Essentially, what I am saying is, that your defense pool is low (for a combatant, not for an average person), and thus it is better to keep your head low, stay in cover, be invisible, or otherwise make sure you won't get shot a lot. Being a troll doesn't exactly help there. Trolls are bullet magnets. Mages doubly so.

I'm not saying you have to be able to shrug it off. What I am saying is, you have to be aware, that you are not as big a tank as you might think.

Unarmed Combat for defense is fine, but you can also go Full Defense with Willpower, which also protects against more attacks. Pistols are fine, but you have Stunbolts already, and Summoning. How many options do you need to dish out some damage? And you could really use the skill points for some more diversity.

As for the focus... it costs 16k¥. You get 6K¥ from resources, so you have to get some more ¥¥¥ from your Karma points, in order to buy it (plus the binding, of course). It's not just 8 Karma.

Bye
Thanee