Ok... Let's pretend you have a B&E specialist with the following stats:

ATTRIBUTES

Body: 6
Quickness: 6
Strength: 4
Charisma: 4
Intelligence: 6
Willpower: 4
Essence: 1.00

Reaction: 6+2d6

Combat Pool: 8

Task Pool: 2

EDGES/FLAWS

College Education
Double Jointed
High Pain Treshold 1
Human Looking
Talent: Electronics

Allergy (Alcohol)
Dark Secret
Sensitive Neural Structure

SKILLS

Active

Pistols: 6
Unarmed Combat/Karate: 3/5 (Heard it all before, ok? If offended, talk to my GM .)
Athletics: 6
Stealth: 6
Computer: 5
Electronics: 6
Electronics B/R: 6
Negotiation/Fast Talk: 3/5

Knowledge

Electronics: 5
Safehouse Locations: 5
Security Companies: 4
Security Design: 4
Security Procedures: 6
Security Systems: 6

Languages

English: 6
Japanese: 3

Skill Jukebox (Rating 5 / Task Pool 3)

Biotech
Car
Demolitions
Diving
Etiquette
Launch Weapons
Lockpick
Negotiation
Rifles
Throwing
Wilderness Survival

German
Japanese
Russian
Spanish

... and he has 28 Karma to spend. He also has an Encephalon (Rating 2) Do you spend it on:

a)Raising his Electronics skill to 8 (allowing him to roll 10 dice at -1 TN, making his really, really good at what he does)

b)Raising his Willpower to 6, so he's not going to be a complete victim if faced by mages?

c) Electronics to 7 and Willpower to 5?

d) Something else? (that can't easily be solved by buying a skillsoft - I'm definitely not spending karma on knowledge skills, for example)

Knowledge skills as complementary skills.... much cheaper to buy a knowledge skill at 4, than raising an active skill from 6+ to the next level.

You'd get four extra dice to roll, but only gain 1 addition success on your active skill roll per 2 successes rolled on the complementary test; but you must have at least one success with the skill test for the complementary dice to work.

security devices

Etiquette (Corporate) and Disguise to bypass metahuman security. Forgery for making false security passports. Loads of interest knowledge skills so he has some basis for conversation.

Willpower to 5 would be nice, too.

Personally, I would lean towards raising the Willpower to 6 - 5 is decent, but a TN of 6 is twice as hard for an enemy mage. Plus, raising it by 2 points adds a point to your Combat Pool.

The skill ideas are nice, but you already have a lot of high-ranked skills in addition to skillwires, so improving them is less urgent than raising your Willpower.

With all of your high skills and Attributes, there isn't much you can use the remaining 6 Karma points on, so I would hold on to them until you get more points. But if it is a pre-game "use them or lose them" situation, then you could raise your fast-talking specialization from 5 to 6.

It isn't.

~J

It isn't use it or lose it, or it isn't urgent that I raise Willpower? (the former I know, the latter... well, that'd be good to know )

Heh. What race? Jus' curious.

But, yeah... I'm sort of having a hard time thinking of a good way to advance him meaningfully - and by that I mean making him better at what he was made to do, not just sort of filling in gaps to make him more well-rounded...

I'll porobably raise the Willpower for now, and then start spending points on his B&E skills.

Isn't use/lose. You know me well enough to know I wouldn't tell you the latter

~J

Forgery is always good, or those interest skills that were mentioned earlier. You could always get the Seattle Sewers knowledge skill, help if you need to penetrate buildings from the bottom, corporate etiquette, disguise, how about lock picking in case they have regular locks. Maybe the fences knowledge skill if he's going to be stealing a lot of things.

Parazoology knowledge skills, to deal with awakened guard dogs. A tthe very least, You'd know what type of meat to choose when you try to old trow a bunch of raw steaks over the fence trick.

He's got Etiquette at 8, though... I really can't envision too many situations in which having a chip slotted would be a big deal. (though I could with other social skills - that's why he actually has Fast Talk at a decent rating, rather than relying on his skillwires there)

There's a Forgery skill? In our games, from what I've seen forging just about anything was a combination of Computers and Electronics.

Guard: The computer says your security badge is valid, but the inks is runny, the picture was obviously taken at a photo booth, and the the corporation's name is spelled wrong.

There is indeed a forgery skill. I don't know what sourcebook it is from or what edition, for that matter.

Etiquettes function is to make you pass as member of the right group in social situations . We do increase TNs if you use the general skill instead of an appropiate specialisation. The situation that matters is where the skill is not slotted. Plan for the worst.

Some knowledge skill concering art and antiques, great for finding fringe benefits on your B&E-jobs.

Fast talk response: Yes, ever since they outsourced the manufacture of our IDs to {somebody else} the ID quality has been utter crap.

It looks like you are approaching the point of diminishing returns for your character, in that higher skills cost substantially more, but do not do much toward increasing your chances of success


Handy Table (Calculated with Handy thingy)
..........4............5..........6............8..........9..........10
4...0.9375..0.8025..0.5177..0.4502..0.3757..0.2939
.
6...0.9844..0.9122..0.6651..0.5923..0.5067..0.4067
.
8...0.9961..0.9610..0.7674..0.6977..0.6103..0.5015
.
10..0.9978..0.9827..0.8385..0.7758..0.6921..0.5811

X of dice on the left, TN on the top, chance of getting 1 or more success in the cells

Karma Costs (assuming a stat of 6, calculated by NSRCG)
4: 14
6: 30
8: 60
10: 98

As you'll notice, it's really the karma pool that increases your chance of success, (i.e. ~1.5 times the dice or more), (sometimes known as why metahumans are screwed rule).

You are probably better of raising your willpower, as it is still on the mid part of the curve, as far as costs go. Otherwise you are quite possibly better off adding another specialty.

Another point or two of computers wouldn't have come amiss when you were trying to crack that camera. But given the weird foreshadowing that we got at the end of last game, I think Willpower should be a priority.