Shadowrun

Shadowrun Play => Character creation and critique => Topic started by: OzGeek on <12-17-11/2029:03>

Title: A first effort. :)
Post by: OzGeek on <12-17-11/2029:03>

Name: Takahashi Rin
Alias:
Race: Ork
Sex: Female
Nationality: Japanese
Lifestyle: Low (2 months)
Karma Spent: -
Physical Description: Small for an Ork, but that means she is still bigger than most other girls her age. Rin is a devoted follower of Harajuku fashion - if it's pink, frilly or sugoi kawaii, she'll buy it.
Personality/background
It was funny, now that she looked back on it. How a blessing could turn to a curse.
Her parents had been Renraku lifers - mother worked on weapon design, father on software - and both were ... cold. Distant. Their daughter was often an afterthought or ignored outright.
She had tried to impress them. She took a keen interest in her mother's work, going so far as to join a shooting club where she impressed with her natural talent with pistols. Academically, she followed her father's footsteps in programming. It did little to bring her closer to either of them. At least she enjoyed the activities herself.
She was eight years old when her family was due to move into the Seattle Renraku Arcology - her father was to start work within the software engineering section. They stepped off the plane into the first confusion following the Arcology lock out and the coming weeks and months served to confirm the worst. It was bad for her father - he was guilty by association even though he had had little to do with the project up until that point. He was corporate poison, shuffled from useless position to useless position. Her mother even felt the repercussions in her own career - promotions did not materialise as often as they had.
That's when the fighting started at home.
Rin dealt with it by pouring more of herself into her studies and her shooting. Her coaches were confident she would represent the UCAS at the Olympics one day.
But then the rest of the curse came down. Rin expressed not long after her thirteenth birthday - something about regressive genes from her human parents. The change brought about her Awakening too. All of a sudden, Rin's physical abilities soared and, equally suddenly, things took a change for the worse. Her coaches were sad to inform her she could no longer represent her country at the Games. Thanks for playing.
Her mother seemed to take the change as a final straw. She disappeared. Rin was never able to determine if she'd been relocated within Renraku or whether she'd turned traitor. Her father turned to the bottle and BLT to cope. That made his work prospects dry up even more until, a few years after the change he was fired. And evicted. Rin considered herself damaged goods at this point - at least as far as Renraku was concerned. She decided to split for good too, leaving behind her unfinished studies and taking the few possessions she had.
She looked for work out on the streets of Seattle and was lucky enough to find work with a armorer-come-fence. She fixed guns for a living. Well, for a kind of living. Sometimes she took an item to a customer or accompanied her employer on midnight meetings. She'd shot her first metahuman on one such excursion - a go-ganger who had been part of an ambush. It hadn't bothered her half as much as she expected.
And so it went, year after year. But Rin was getting tired of living out of a U-Store-It within spitting distance of Redmond. She needed something different. She'd made a few contacts here and there - perhaps they could hook her up with some runners ...

Attributes

Body	Agility	Reaction	Strength
5	5(1)	5(6)	3
Charisma	Intuition	Logic	Willpower
2	3	4	3
Edge	Magic	Essence	Initiative
4	5	6	8(9)

Positive Qualities
Low-Light Vision
Adept
Ambidextrous
Negative Qualities
Allergy (Common, Mild) (Animal Fur)
Media Junkie (Mild)
Records on File (Renraku)
SINner (Standard)(Takahashi Miyu)

Active Skills

Athletics Skill Group	4
Cracking Skill Group	2
Armorer (Firearms +2)	1
Automatics	1
Data Search	3
Longarms	2
Perception (Visual +2)	2
Pistols (Semi-Automatics +2)	5
Software	2
Unarmed Combat (Martial Arts +2)	3

Knowledge Skills

Anime & Manga	4
Firearms	3
Harajuku Fashion	3
J-Pop	2
Renraku	2
Seattle Fences	2

Language Skills

Japanese	N
English	4
Or'zet	1

Adept Powers

Power	Cost	Notes
Improved Ability (Combat)(Pistols)	2	-
Improved Reflexes	1	-
Great Leap	3	-
Combat Sense	2	-
Eidetic Sense Memory	1	-
Improved Sense (Scent)	1	-

Gear (50966¥)

Lined Coat
Urban Explorer Jumpsuit
Armor Clothing
Hammerli 620S (w/ Internal Smartgun System, Concealable Holster & 10 clips Explosive Rounds)
2 x Ares Predator IV (w/ Internal Smartgun Sytem, Quick-Draw Holster, &  8 clips Regular Ammo, 8 clips Hollow Point)
Survival Knife
Smoke Grenade (2)
Flash-Bang (2)
Flash-Pak
Contact Lenses (Rating 3 w/ Image Link, Flare Compensation, Smartlink)
Goggles (Rating 6 w/ Thermographic, Ultrasound, Vision Enhancement Rating 3, Vision Magnification, Camera Rating 1)
Earbuds (Rating 3 w/  Audio Enhancement Rating 3, Select Sound Filter Rating 3, Spatial Recognizer)
Fairlight Caliban (w/ Novatech Navi OS, Microphone Rating 6)
Programs (Analyze 4, Browse 4, Command 4, Edit 4, Encrypt 4, Exploit 3, Scan 4, Sniffer 3, Track 3)
AR Gloves
Trodes
Sim Module (Cold)
Medkit Rating 6
Tag Eraser
Inline Skates
Fake SIN (Tanaka Miyu) Rating 4
Fake License (Detective License) Rating 4
Fake License (Gun License (Ares IV)) Rating 4
Fake License (Concealed Carry License (Ares IV)) Rating 4
Fake License (Driver's License) Rating 4

Contacts

Contact		C/L
Smuggler		1/3
Armorer		2/2
Go-Ganger		1/1

Build Point totals:  400 = Metatype 20 + Primary Attrib 170 + Special Attrib 70 + Pos Quals 10 - Neg Quals 30 + Skill Groups 60 + Active Skills 82 + Nuyen 8 + Contacts 10

Title: Re: A first effort. :)
Post by: UmaroVI on <12-18-11/1211:17>

You have one easily fixed but serious problem, a few tweaks I'd suggest, and a few conceptual things that are making you worse but that can't be fixed without significantly changing the character. Before I give more specific advice, do you have only the core book? Or do you have any others?

Your armor choices are odd, and I think the program you used is assuming you're wearing all of them and thus penalizing your Agility. This can easily be fixed, but how depends on if you have Arsenal or not.

You really want Pistols 6, not 5, to start, because of how expensive that last point is to buy with karma (12 karma vs. 4 bp).

Improved Reflexes 2 and Improved Ability Pistols 3 are worth it. Cut what you need to in order to get them.

It's probably worth getting another 5 points of negative qualities from somewhere.

You should be using better guns, but again I need to know what books you have in order to recommend better guns.

Why do you have Ambidexterity? What do you plan to do with it? If the answer is "shoot people with two guns at once" you should be aware that doing so is counterproductive 95% of the time.

You have Logic 4, a grand total of 1 active skill that uses Logic, and no Logic-based special abilities. Get more Intuition instead.

The conceptual things that are causing you problems basically boil down to:

1) Unaugmented adepts are weaker than augmented adepts, ie, getting 'ware (either right away, or after gameplay starts) will help you. Getting it now vs. getting it later boils down to being better at chargen vs. being better later on.

2) You have a whole lot of skills, but are only good enough to really help with a few of them. You're a very bad hacker who will have nothing to do if the group has one decent to good hacker, because with hacking only the best hacker really matters. You have a bunch of secondary weapon skills that you suck with. And in general, you have a lot of low-rated skills. Especially for starting characters, it's better to be more focused.

Title: Re: A first effort. :)
Post by: All4BigGuns on <12-18-11/1235:53>

Quote from: OzGeek on <12-17-11/2029:03>

Name: Takahashi Rin
Alias:
Race: Ork
Sex: Female
Nationality: Japanese
Lifestyle: Low (2 months)
Karma Spent: -
Physical Description: Small for an Ork, but that means she is still bigger than most other girls her age. Rin is a devoted follower of Harajuku fashion - if it's pink, frilly or sugoi kawaii, she'll buy it.
Personality/background
It was funny, now that she looked back on it. How a blessing could turn to a curse.
Her parents had been Renraku lifers - mother worked on weapon design, father on software - and both were ... cold. Distant. Their daughter was often an afterthought or ignored outright.
She had tried to impress them. She took a keen interest in her mother's work, going so far as to join a shooting club where she impressed with her natural talent with pistols. Academically, she followed her father's footsteps in programming. It did little to bring her closer to either of them. At least she enjoyed the activities herself.
She was eight years old when her family was due to move into the Seattle Renraku Arcology - her father was to start work within the software engineering section. They stepped off the plane into the first confusion following the Arcology lock out and the coming weeks and months served to confirm the worst. It was bad for her father - he was guilty by association even though he had had little to do with the project up until that point. He was corporate poison, shuffled from useless position to useless position. Her mother even felt the repercussions in her own career - promotions did not materialise as often as they had.
That's when the fighting started at home.
Rin dealt with it by pouring more of herself into her studies and her shooting. Her coaches were confident she would represent the UCAS at the Olympics one day.
But then the rest of the curse came down. Rin expressed not long after her thirteenth birthday - something about regressive genes from her human parents. The change brought about her Awakening too. All of a sudden, Rin's physical abilities soared and, equally suddenly, things took a change for the worse. Her coaches were sad to inform her she could no longer represent her country at the Games. Thanks for playing.
Her mother seemed to take the change as a final straw. She disappeared. Rin was never able to determine if she'd been relocated within Renraku or whether she'd turned traitor. Her father turned to the bottle and BLT to cope. That made his work prospects dry up even more until, a few years after the change he was fired. And evicted. Rin considered herself damaged goods at this point - at least as far as Renraku was concerned. She decided to split for good too, leaving behind her unfinished studies and taking the few possessions she had.
She looked for work out on the streets of Seattle and was lucky enough to find work with a armorer-come-fence. She fixed guns for a living. Well, for a kind of living. Sometimes she took an item to a customer or accompanied her employer on midnight meetings. She'd shot her first metahuman on one such excursion - a go-ganger who had been part of an ambush. It hadn't bothered her half as much as she expected.
And so it went, year after year. But Rin was getting tired of living out of a U-Store-It within spitting distance of Redmond. She needed something different. She'd made a few contacts here and there - perhaps they could hook her up with some runners ...

Attributes

Body	Agility	Reaction	Strength
5	5(1)	5(6)	3
Charisma	Intuition	Logic	Willpower
2	3	4	3
Edge	Magic	Essence	Initiative
4	5	6	8(9)

Positive Qualities
Low-Light Vision
Adept
Ambidextrous
Negative Qualities
Allergy (Common, Mild) (Animal Fur)
Media Junkie (Mild)
Records on File (Renraku)
SINner (Standard)(Takahashi Miyu)

Active Skills

Athletics Skill Group	4
Cracking Skill Group	2
Armorer (Firearms +2)	1
Automatics	1
Data Search	3
Longarms	2
Perception (Visual +2)	2
Pistols (Semi-Automatics +2)	5
Software	2
Unarmed Combat (Martial Arts +2)	3

Knowledge Skills

Anime & Manga	4
Firearms	3
Harajuku Fashion	3
J-Pop	2
Renraku	2
Seattle Fences	2

Language Skills

Japanese	N
English	4
Or'zet	1

Adept Powers

Power	Cost	Notes
Improved Ability (Combat)(Pistols)	2	-
Improved Reflexes	1	-
Great Leap	3	-
Combat Sense	2	-
Eidetic Sense Memory	1	-
Improved Sense (Scent)	1	-

Gear (50966¥)

Lined Coat
Urban Explorer Jumpsuit
Armor Clothing
Hammerli 620S (w/ Internal Smartgun System, Concealable Holster & 10 clips Explosive Rounds)
2 x Ares Predator IV (w/ Internal Smartgun Sytem, Quick-Draw Holster, &  8 clips Regular Ammo, 8 clips Hollow Point)
Survival Knife
Smoke Grenade (2)
Flash-Bang (2)
Flash-Pak
Contact Lenses (Rating 3 w/ Image Link, Flare Compensation, Smartlink)
Goggles (Rating 6 w/ Thermographic, Ultrasound, Vision Enhancement Rating 3, Vision Magnification, Camera Rating 1)
Earbuds (Rating 3 w/  Audio Enhancement Rating 3, Select Sound Filter Rating 3, Spatial Recognizer)
Fairlight Caliban (w/ Novatech Navi OS, Microphone Rating 6)
Programs (Analyze 4, Browse 4, Command 4, Edit 4, Encrypt 4, Exploit 3, Scan 4, Sniffer 3, Track 3)
AR Gloves
Trodes
Sim Module (Cold)
Medkit Rating 6
Tag Eraser
Inline Skates
Fake SIN (Tanaka Miyu) Rating 4
Fake License (Detective License) Rating 4
Fake License (Gun License (Ares IV)) Rating 4
Fake License (Concealed Carry License (Ares IV)) Rating 4
Fake License (Driver's License) Rating 4

Contacts

Contact		C/L
Smuggler		1/3
Armorer		2/2
Go-Ganger		1/1

Build Point totals:  400 = Metatype 20 + Primary Attrib 170 + Special Attrib 70 + Pos Quals 10 - Neg Quals 30 + Skill Groups 60 + Active Skills 82 + Nuyen 8 + Contacts 10

[/spoiler]

Personally, I like the character, sure there might be some points that aren't "optimal", but probably not that big a deal. I would suggest getting rid of some of that armor though just to kill those encumbrance penalties.  Reading through the back story, I'm kinda curious as to that character's age--didn't notice it mentioned up there--got a character that I myself played at one point that was born to a couple of Renraku employees, and it just crossed my mind how close the two characters may be in age.

Title: Re: A first effort. :)
Post by: Glyph on <12-18-11/1711:07>

It's a character with a nice, organic feel to it, but unfortunately, there are some skills/abilities where it is okay to be middling good at them to have a secondary specialty, and others where if you aren't great, you get smeared across the asphalt, no matter what the flavor text might say.  Hacking is one of those areas.  I would recommend dropping it, unless your GM tends to handwave it, making the lower abilities actually functional.  Or if you seriously plan on improving this aspect of your character later (if so, this will be a serious Nuyen and karma sink).

The armorer skill and the pistols skill are both ones that I would raise, based on your background.  Someone training to be an Olympic shooter is a justification that would be acceptable for a skill of 6, even for the people who put too much emphasis on the descriptions of skills (which tend to be hyperbolic towards the high end).  And someone who fixes guns for a living, even as someone's assistant, should have more than a 1 in skill.  That's more what I would envision for a street samurai who knows enough to properly care for his guns, and might even be able to put on an external smartlink or a similar minor modification.

Your adept powers are a fun mix, but obviously, the lack of focus hurts you from a purely optimization point of view.  If I had to recommend a more focused set of powers, I would say - change improved reflexes: 1 and combat sense: 2 to improved reflexes: 2.  You lose a net of one die for defense, but gain an extra initiative pass (good for defense, too - you can take full defense as an interrupt action).  The eidetic sense memory and improved scent are fun powers, so I would say keep them; you don't want nothing but min-maxed powers, that's boring!  But great leap: 3, meh.  I don't see it coming into play that much.  I would change it to getting that third level of improved ability in pistols, and getting Attribute Boost (Agility) at rating: 1, which is the cheapest Agility improvement you can get for a non-augmented adept, and definitely worth it.  The single point of Drain, you should soak easily, while rolling 6 dice will usually give you at least one or two points of increased Agility.

From a background point of view, where does that high athletic ability come from?  You seem to see it as a fairly significant part of the character, but unlike the hacking, shooting, or armorer skills, I don't see it addressed in the character's history.