Lol... " hi my names Mr. 24 want to come back to my place and ill give you the full 24 hour treatment?"

Eh, decreased deadliness is never fun. It's very important to be able to one-shot people and then say "Tango down!", which is Spethriel for "PWNED!"

The true problem with a char like that is not its offense, Id rather got for 24 dodge dice and a flimsy firearm skill.

Oh wait, wouldnt that benefit from the same attribute?

The char is way more broken is he took the Adept Power Weapon X +3 and Dodge +3 as well as Weapon X (or group) of 5 and Dodge 4.
He would be way more viable and had more points to spend overall left if I am not mistaken (top of my head).

I am not scared of the person having 24 dice in any given skill, more of the 20 in an offensive and defensive skill (both numbers given a +/- 4).

That looks something like this:

337

Elf 30

B 3 20
A 6 40
R 5 40
S 3 20
C 3 0
I 3 20
L 3 20
W 3 20

E 3 20

Adept 5
Magic 5 40

Exceptional Reaction 20 (need to raise reaction cap to 10)

Imp Reaction -1
Combat Sense 3
Imp Pistols 4
Wired -1

Pistols 4 16
Pistols Specialization 2
Dodge 6 24


So on the offense, agl (6) + pistols (4) + adept power (4) + specialization (2) + smartlink (2) = 18 dice

and on the defense :
Passive: reaction 7 + combat sense 3 = 10 dice
(not sure if combat sense counts as reaction for the cap of 10, if it dosen't you can have a passive defense around 12-14)
Active Defense 16 dice

Passive defense is really where it's at, as it dosen't take any actions to use. If combat sense dosen't count for the reaction cap, then add one more point of reaction stat, and change the adept powers to

improved pistols 4
combat sense 5
improved reaction 1

giving a passive defense of 12

This would also let you shift your skill focus from defense (dodge 6) to offense (pistols 6) and gain another 2 dice in shooting people (which you might nee das you don;t have another action). Since I doubt passive defense protects you from grenades, and you still need to geek the mage first (before you are turned to goo), you are probably better off with the first build.

Also, specializations are not efficient to buy during chargen, as they cost just 2 karma once the game starts, but you have to give up 2 precious build points in char gen.

Note that these builds are somewhat speculative as I don't have the book. The exact costs of the exceptional stat edge, the exact breakdown of adept powers, and some other stuff are not fully clarified.

Regarding "awesome" character builds that provide the ultimate offense or defense, it strikes me that a lot of people are missing two key points.

1) Combat is now an opposed activity. As such, it depends on opponents of relatively balanced skill in order to provide balanced results.

Example: Say your character has Agility 3, Pistols 2 and a Smartlink. That's 7 dice. If you're shooting at even a basic security guard you're going to have a tough time of it should there be any negative modifiers to your attack. On the other hand, if you're shooting a guy in a wheelchair with a Reaction of 1 and a Body of 1 you'll hit every time and maybe even single shot him. You need a fairly large amount of negative modifiers to give the poor guy even a chance at survival.

In conclusion - it's not how powerful your character is. It's how much more powerful than his opponent your character is. Should there be a significant spread, one side or the other will always win. This is either a bug or a feature, depending upon your preference.

2) There is a great deal of variance in the dice system. We've all been working on the assumption that you'll get one hit for every three dice thrown. In the long run, that is very true. However, on any given roll you may see a hit on every other die or even two hits out of every three dice thrown or you may see a hit for every 5 dice thrown. Luck is a major factor in how many hits you get.

Example: Take the character with the 12 Reaction. Over the long run (thousands of rolls, say) he'll average 4 hits on his defense tests. But its not unlikely for him to have two or three on a bad roll. These rolls will occur a significant fraction of the time. In those cases, he's no better defended than a guy with a 9 or even a 6 reaction. (Although at times he'll be better defended, of course). Even the guy with 24 pistols can expect to be generating only 5 or 6 hits a significant fraction of the time. While that won't stop him from wounding, it may cause him to wound when he critically needs to kill.

Mr. 24 may be a dangerous guy (and popular with the ladies), but he shouldn't get cocky - nothing in the Sixth World is guaranteed.