Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Character creation and critique => Topic started by: bmoham on <07-31-18/2230:34>
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It seems like a hybrid decker/hermetic mage would be a pretty effective build. Sure you'd need to blow money on a deck and also character points on magic, and you wouldn't have the standard +2/3 logic from cerebral booster, but on the up side you wouldn't need to focus on your physical attributes much and I think you could have a summoned spirit of man cast and sustain a logic boost spell. And your summoned spirit could guard your body while you're in VR.
So, what glaring obvious thing am I missing? I assume it something, or else I'd see some discussion of the build in the character creation threads.
Thanks
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The concept is perfectly fine; the challenge is in the limited resources of chargen priorities. This build basically requires every priority to be C or higher except for Metatype. Given the number of skills needed (both magical and technical), you'll be spread thinly. I'd wager to say it's possible, but - like everything else in 5th Edition - not as effective as a dedicated specialist.
An interesting approach would be to use Qabbalism. It's a possession tradition whose drain attribute is Logic. Once you have channeling you could channel a task spirit to both help gloss over some of your inevitable physical limitations, plus acquire some technical skills that you couldn't afford on your own.
Going mystic adept is another viable approach, as paying 5 karma for a power point is an economical way to round your attributes and abilities.
I'd probably do:
Magic A (for the spells and skill points)
Attributes C (dumping Strength and Charisma, prioritizing mental skills)
Skills C
Resources C
Metatype E
Maybe pick up the Jack of All Trades quality to help round out your skills post-chargen.
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I'm not a great power-gamer or strong on the "this works or not" front, but I like the role-play aspect.
The main problem I see is the one you doubtless already noticed, you're building a character who has two divergent specialties that do not synergize well in terms of what skills and tools are used. That said, here are some thoughts:
-Hermetics CAN take mentor spirits. More to the point the Spider mentor *loves* the matrix and networks and the world wide web (yes, I know) and fits in quite well with a rigger who, let's say has some social anxiety and can relate better to machines and logical formulas.
-Cyberware isn't an option, but prototype transhuman makes BIOware an option if it can help your build. I can see a background where a corp was making a vat-job to be an excellent decker, then she turned out to be magical and everything got political between departments that wanted her. Maybe Ares, and the final straw came when she realized how much Ares has been subverted by insect spirits. She walked out the door, but as she likes to say, "Spiders kill insects, and it's time for me to hunt".
-One thing I am not at all clear on is possession and hacking. Can a hacker take purely mental actions while a possessing spirit takes his body for a ride? Even if not, there are things you can do with possessing tradition while your meat body is comatose and needs to be carted around. Perhaps it possesses your full-body armor? The point is there is at least one willpower+logic possession tradition, and interesting things to look into with that.
-Further, deckers have issues with firefights. What are you planning for "there's nothing worth hacking here" battles? A drone? A possessed plasteel golem? Throwing spells around? Perhaps you can go with enchanting and be rigging a powerful combat drone with Magic Bullets?
-But this brings us back around to the question of Karma cost again. You're bandying about with spirits AND hacking AND whatever other magic you take.
Anyways, I don't have the time to burn 4 hours in hero-lab, I gotta go to bed. Good luck.
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Or, you ignore the need for resources and solve everything through magic.
First, you don't need a very expensive deck to be a useful decker: Just get an Erika and apply the super combo of Overclocker and Perfect Timing qualities. Use the option to shift one attribute point from the 2 Attribute to the 4 for a 5311 deck. Virtual Machine on a Cyberdeck Module gives you 3 Program slots. Through a quick configurator, you now can load two other programs with a free action while also shifting your attributes. That's enough to switch Firewall and Sleaze at beginning and end of your round. With the right program you now have a 1737 deck.
On to the magic:
You only need a rudimentary understanding of what you are doing - 1 skill point, if at all is plenty.
Instead you use Analyse device, which can push your effective Skill almost arbitrarily high. Still, unless you want to cast this over and over until you have a good roll on both your casting and the object resistance test, I'd suggest getting Radical Reagents worth 7500 to lower the object resistance for this spell.
Obviously you want to have quickening to make this spell permanent, so as not to lose this investment.
And since you already quicken stuff, you can get a good Increase Log, Int and Will. Take Heal to erase dumpshock, Invisibility and spirits to bring invisible fiber optic cables directly to any device you want to hack and you are golden.
Obviously it's not easy to do this right out of chargen (unless your GM lets you initiate), but it's something almost any mage can be made into after the first few runs when he doesn't know what he should spend his money on.
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It seems like a hybrid decker/hermetic mage would be a pretty effective build. Sure you'd need to blow money on a deck and also character points on magic, and you wouldn't have the standard +2/3 logic from cerebral booster, but on the up side you wouldn't need to focus on your physical attributes much and I think you could have a summoned spirit of man cast and sustain a logic boost spell. And your summoned spirit could guard your body while you're in VR.
So, what glaring obvious thing am I missing? I assume it something, or else I'd see some discussion of the build in the character creation threads.
Thanks
This is actually a very classic build back in 3rd. Just slap 1 essence worth of ware on your mage being sure to include a datajack, and suddenly you had a very diverse and effective character.
As has been said already resources are the problem the core issue of that is Decking became skill driven in 5th. Magic has always been skill driven. When you consider you need spell-casting, counter spelling, summoning, arcane, assensing as your minimums to run a mage, and for decking you, hacking, cyber-combat, computers, and electronic warfare, 9 skills all need good values in them. It's very difficult to get that level of resources, and the other priorities you need (Spell-casting+spells and the cash to buy a deck+software).
Contributing to this, is the change in drain stats. back in 3rd we had 2 options, cha, and logic. Now we have 3, Cha logic and intuition. Cha is obvious very popular b/c you can run cha 8 elf and great drain pool, intuition is very popular b/c it's initiative stat. So having a maxed initiative stat is always a good idea. But that leaves logic a distant 3rd in the magic arms race.
Thus that combo has fallen by the wayside in 5th.
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Just to echo what Jack said this is certainly possible to start in char gen, and it's still a good and very diverse build. If your willing to work up to it it's certainly will be a cool build given time and resource to achieve it.
Go something along the lines of aspected Sorcery mage using a low magic priority,
Cutting your magic skill needs down to, Spellcasting, Counterspelling and Arcana, then drop cybercombat, and just focus hacking(hack on the fly), Electronic warfare and computers.
Qualities- Perfect time (5), Overclocker (5), Dedicated spellslinger (5),
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As others have mentioned you are trying to merge two roles that doesn't have any synergy except the Logic attribute (if you pick a Logic based tradition that is)
Having said that, the configurator cyberprogram fits very well with the perfect time positive quality and a low rating deck as others have already suggested.
You can reconfigure your configurator software each time you load it (which is a free action) and the configurator software does not need to be one of the programs in the configuration you pre-set.
So basically you may use one of your free actions to load configurator to pre-set any and all of your ASDF attributes and any and all programs you want to run.... and your second free action to activate that specific ASDF + cyberprogram configuration.
Removing the limitation that you normally ONLY may EITHER shift one attribute to one other attribute OR switch one program with one other program (in ADDITION to EITHER unload one program to make an empty slot OR load one program to an empty slot).
An option that might or might not be frowned upon (but is perfectly rules legal) is to go lower magic priority in step three of the chargen (for example D for adept or aspected magician with magic 2 or C for magician or mystic adept with magic 3). At step six of chargen burn little more than 2 essence or so on augmentations (which will probably leave you with a magic rating of 0 but you will still have a max magic rating of 3). And at step seven of chargen you use leftover karma to raise your magic rating from 0 (5 karma to get magic rating 1, 15 karma to get magic rating 2 etc). You will keep all your magic skills and spells as long as you don't fully burn out (reach max magic rating of 0). This probably work better as a physical adept than the other options, but if you experiment a bit you might be able to get it to work.
Another option that might or might not be frowned upon (but is perfectly rules legal) is to dump agility down to 2 (or even 1 if your GM allows it) and instead compensate with a max agility right cyberarm. This require that you have the resources and essence to spend and don't play a primary role that is in need of natural agility. Also the arm will give you an extra physical condition monitor which is almost like getting 2 extra Body for free and it comes with a shit load of capacity that you for example can use to house your cyberdeck in and getting a couple of points of armor might also be a good investment while at it. Customize the agility of the arm to metatype maximum and then enhance agility by another 3 points. Together with 6 skill points in pistols (or automatics) and a specialization in semi-automatics (or machine pistols) and a smartgun system you get some 19 dice to hit right out of chargen which is pretty impressive for a character that doesn't focus on physical attributes at all. The arm will cost quite a lot of resources though which, in your case since you are spreading so thin, might be a showstopper.
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In my home one-player game we started a second campaign set in Chicago, and the character is exactly much of what was suggested above. Given single player I allowed plenty of munchkining, because balance is not an issue:
- prototype transhuman, taking +2 logic plus some other cheaper bioware (mostly around perception)
- magic A, resources B, skills and attributes: not enough! Logic, intuition, and willpower are good, everything else ended up at 2 (and for my single player game I give out 1 bonus attribute point to the lower of willpower or body, for survival's sake, so body actually at 3)
- Little Hornet deck, with overclocker and perfect time
- Quabalism (possession tradition, using task spirits for hardware work)
- Spider totem (allowing computers 4 to function as 6)
Did not (but should have) focused more on increase attribute spells. Relies on handing body over to a possessing spirit when physical competence is truly needed.
The character has massive weaknesses, like it can barely order something at stuffer shack without giving offense, and if it had to get over a chainlink fence without using magic it would have a fair chance to end up hanging upside down (3 dice on both coming out of character generation -- buying charisma to 3 was just about the first thing done). But also pretty good ability to pit strengths to weaknesses, and is capable of some things that have terrified both player and GM. (it turns out that a simple metal cart possessed by an earth spirit is a terrifying assault vehicle. Glue on some googly eyes and it turns into a disturbing, terrifying assault vehicle.)
The one thing is that the player finds the character somewhat exhausting to play, because every situation becomes a puzzle of figuring which set of abilities to use on it.
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Thanks everyone!
Sounds like the bottom line is that I overestimated how much synergy I’d pick up with having logic be the key stat for both. Your math makes that pretty clear. Sounds like it’s doable but probably suboptimal.
FWIW, a character where “every situation becomes a puzzle of figuring which set of abilities to use on it.” is pretty much exactly what I want. I get bored with characters that are too straight forward (I’m the greatest decker ever, so in combat I’ll hack the enemy’s guns, for example). But I guess the system reality I need to get comfortable with is (at character gen) either you build a specialist in one of the canonical roles, or you build someone more flexible/generalist/whatever that just isn’t as good at anything. It’s really tough to get a synergy where two distinct role/ability tree/builds/whatever actually reinforce each other.
That said, this is probably the next character concept I’ll take a stab at, since it sounds like it’s possible and would be fun if I can do it well - even if it requires some time to grow into.
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Thanks everyone!
Sounds like the bottom line is that I overestimated how much synergy I’d pick up with having logic be the key stat for both. Your math makes that pretty clear. Sounds like it’s doable but probably suboptimal.
FWIW, a character where “every situation becomes a puzzle of figuring which set of abilities to use on it.” is pretty much exactly what I want. I get bored with characters that are too straight forward (I’m the greatest decker ever, so in combat I’ll hack the enemy’s guns, for example). But I guess the system reality I need to get comfortable with is (at character gen) either you build a specialist in one of the canonical roles, or you build someone more flexible/generalist/whatever that just isn’t as good at anything. It’s really tough to get a synergy where two distinct role/ability tree/builds/whatever actually reinforce each other.
That said, this is probably the next character concept I’ll take a stab at, since it sounds like it’s possible and would be fun if I can do it well - even if it requires some time to grow into.
It might depend a bit on the size of the group, and how you all like to play? The one in my game can muster between 11 and 16 dice on matrix activities (8 logic, 5 intuition, computers effectively 6, hacking (hack on the fly) 6 (8)), along with 12-14 dice for spellcasting, 12 dice for summoning, and 12 dice drain. And last mission found a truly nasty bit of synergy -- if your spirit can possess someone, then you can hack their link and pretend to be them in ways that you can't normally get to do as a decker (the mission involved killing several doctors/nurses at a facility who had been committing medical abuse on meta-humans. Possessed a senior one in their office, hack link, send ARO asking another to come to the office. When the comes in the spirit hit them with noxious breath (with complete surprise because of course they were not expecting it) while the spider-mage shut the door then hacked their bio-monitors, and the victims were finished off while still incapacitated. Then injected a lethal dose of sedative into the possessed doctor and had the spirit break a window, and leap out, leaving the body before it hit the ground, counting on the combined fall and excess sedative to finish that one off.)
But that could have been done even better by separate mage and decker. Should you have a group that is actually short on each of those roles, then the hybrid maybe makes sense, but if one or both are already covered, then making the character so bad at everything else to be kind of OK in those two areas probably doesn't make a lot of sense?
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This is a good idea, I played Deckermage multiple times. I'd skip decker qualities and just take focused concentration or sustaining focus to sustain improve logic/intuition.
Being able to boost your mental stats on demand saves plenty of money and you do not need high magic priority. You could go magic D and be an aspected mage even, or magic C. In my opinion, expensive decks are totally not worth it - you need more dice to reach that modest limit of 5-6 every time rather than have a limit of 10 and never reach it with your moderate dicepool.
Magic has some of the best bonuses for you (especially if you also go mystic adept for improve ability and improve attribute combination).
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Mystic adept is extremely resource intensive straight out of the box. I would not mix a build that already resource hungry with a priority that very resource intensive. Your already buy large diversity potential going down as duel archetypes adding adept on top is just going slow down progression even more.
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I've been trying to think about synergy on this concept more, and quickening an increase logic spell comes to mind (even though it's not available at character gen).
I know there was a whole debate on how obvious quickened spells are/are not - which didn't seem to come to any agreed upon conclusion. Without reopening /that/ debate, am I thinking about it right that initiation+quickening (which could probably afford after a couple runs) would let you walk around with a 10 logic?
Is there another way to do something similar?
I don't think a sustaining focus will work (since it needs to be force 10 which seems to cost "aren't you retired yet?" karma and has "does that even exist?" availability)
And neither will having a summoned spirit of man cast and sustain it (though maybe with magic 6 your summon could swing 4 hits on your force 10 spell?)
Thanks again
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You only need the value from before the spell as Force. Say you are 6 (7) from drugs then cast, it would have to be F7. Way too high of course even at force 6.
Which leaves you with 2 easy options. Psyche for just a -1, or a Shaman that gets a Spirit Of Man to cast and sustain the spell.
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Or you could do like me right now and make a hermetic alchemist decker.
Your attribute increases will only last a couple of minutes at a time, but matrix stuff happens so fast that that's usually all you should need.
Meanwhile, you'd get to spread Deflection and/or Armor buffs to the whole team, all without incurring a single sustaining or drain penalty in the moment.
Again, they'd only be active for a couple of minutes, and they'd be weaker than spontaneous spells, but still quite useful.
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Or you could do like me right now and make a hermetic alchemist decker.
Your attribute increases will only last a couple of minutes at a time, but matrix stuff happens so fast that that's usually all you should need.
Meanwhile, you'd get to spread Deflection and/or Armor buffs to the whole team, all without incurring a single sustaining or drain penalty in the moment.
Again, they'd only be active for a couple of minutes, and they'd be weaker than spontaneous spells, but still quite useful.
I was really excited about alchemy, until I realized you can't quicken alchemy (I think?) or even use a sustaining focus? I feel, long term, the big payoff is going to be a semi-permanent boost from improve logic and probably analyze device.
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I was really excited about alchemy, until I realized you can't quicken alchemy (I think?) or even use a sustaining focus? I feel, long term, the big payoff is going to be a semi-permanent boost from improve logic and probably analyze device.
Do you even need a sustaining focus? The enchantment automatically sustains for (potency) minutes - or until it becomes permanent. Given combat is measured in seconds, even a 1 potency object is likely to see you through an entire combat. Things like healing and ignite become 'fire and forget' when they're made with alchemy.
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You could channel a spirit of man and then use it to sustain an improve logic spell on you. (and perhaps even improve intuition)... this would give you a nice bonus to physical attributes and unlike quickening, you can turn it off without losing karma.
I would not use quickening for self-buff spells but for other spells like trid phantasm, or some illusion spell to protect your safe house (e.g. Euphoria can be entertaining and make you quite popular). Reinforce/deflection is also a good options, to make your vehicle a bit safer.
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There are quite a few options to sustain spells without penalty and without resorting to Quickening:
- Low level Sustaining Foci, using spells with open limits (reagents or edge)
- Focused Concentration - same as Sustaining Foci
- Spirit of Man spellcasting
- Puppet Master Quality (FA - only Mental Manipulation spells)
- Illusionist Quality (FA - only for Illusion spells)
- Heightened Concern (Only viable for Mystic adepts)
- Getting a bunch of Attuned Animals and taking the option to give them Living Focus tattoos (only Mystic Adepts, high inital investment, but highly effective in the longterm)
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Level 3 or 4 Sustaining foci can be made with minimal skills and a bit of gear (https://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=26062.0)
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You could channel a spirit of man and then use it to sustain an improve logic spell on you. (and perhaps even improve intuition)... this would give you a nice bonus to physical attributes and unlike quickening, you can turn it off without losing karma.
I would not use quickening for self-buff spells but for other spells like trid phantasm, or some illusion spell to protect your safe house (e.g. Euphoria can be entertaining and make you quite popular). Reinforce/deflection is also a good options, to make your vehicle a bit safer.
Don't forget Manascape on your safehouse so people can't notice the illusions on the astral.
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A few sustaining foci can take you a long way. It's not a big investment and you can always add more. It's easy to turn them off if you get worried about mana addiction. It's easy reestablish them as needed. Very few GMs are going to waste combat actions dispelling your foci sustained spells, while you can blow up anyone dumb enough spend action doing that, and then just re-cast the spell once combat ends.
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Magic A, Skills B, Attribute C, Resources D, Meta E. 10 Karma on Nuyen. Your starting gear is basically an Erika and an Armored Jacket. Your Hacking skill ranks will be less than a normal decker, but with buffs your dice pool will be more than fine.
Also I didn't see the Increase Limit spell mentioned, sorry if someone did and I missed it. But it's an easy pick for one of your sustain vectors.
I'd also recommend Shapechange. Let someone carry your deck, just ware a 'trodes collar and be a raven or something. Or a mouse in the Trolls pocket. Whatever. (your physical stats will be absolutely turrable... be a critter and solve that) You've already got so many sustains one more won't matter.
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nother thing you can do is aspected mage you can still create watchers with ritual magic just not summon normal spirits
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I tinkered around with hero lab for a bit and made a thing, using Sum-to-ten, I'm hoping the PDF attaches.
Backstory is a vat-job girl built for smarts, turned out awakened with invisible friends. Her makers at Ares were overjoyed, she was useful (if poorly-socialized) right up until she discovered her recent transfer put her in a section of the company currently controlled by Bug Spirits. She made it out alive but is wanted for crimes she kinda-sorta committed. Ares refuses to admit it's infested to the gills, so all those bugs she shot at were legally people, moreso than her in fact.
House-rule/GM judgement call is that she wears a custom-made underarmor (probably not actually leather) made out of natural materials which one of her spirit friends can possess and proceed to walk her body around (and duck behind cover and make sneak checks, or other stuff) while she's hot-sim hacking.
She's got a mild obsession with fighting the bugs that drove her from her home and I dunno, I *think* she's got decent stats for what she's supposed to do/be. I don't build deckers (like, at all) so I'm only playing around.
I dunno, I like her. Probably wouldn't want to play her but I'd enjoy reading a story about her.