| Body | Agility | Reaction | Strength |
| 5 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
| Charisma | Intuition | Logic | Willpower |
| 1 | 5 | 4 | 5 |
| Edge | Magic | Essence | Initiative |
| 2 | 5 | 6 | 9 |
| Skill | Rating |
| Spellcasting | 6 |
| Counterspelling | 4 |
| Summoning | 4 |
| Binding | 1 |
| Assensing | 1 |
| Perception | 1 |
| Pistols | 1 |
| Etiquette | 1 |
| Physics | 5 |
| Magic Theory | 5 |
| Spell Design | 2 |
| Street Drugs | 1 |
| Regional (Seattle) | 2 |
| Law | 1 |
| Economics | 1 |
| Geography | 1 |
| Engineering | 1 |
| Russian | N |
| Or'zet | 4 |
| English | 3 |
| Japanese | 1 |
| Lightning Bolt | |
| Stunbolt | Stunball |
| Heal | Levitate (Physical) |
| Detect Enemies, Extended | Trid Phantasm |
| Improved Invisibility | Metal Wall |
| Increase Reflexes |
| Form-Fitting Body Armor Full Body Suit w/ Nonconductivity 6 Mortimer Greatoat Line w/ Gel Packs, Fire Resistant 6 SecureTech PPP Shin Guards, Upper Arm Casings, Upper Leg Casings (Total 13/11 B/I, Encumbrance 10/10) Force 4 Power Focus Force 3 Health Sustaining Focus Tag Eraser Earbuds R3 w/ Audio Enhancement 3 Goggles R6 w/ Image Link, Smartlink, Vision Enhancement 3, Vision Magnification, Flare Compensation 1 R4 Fake SIN w/ R4 Fake Licenses (Concealed Carry Savalette Guardian, Magic) Savalette Guardian w/ Barrel Extension, Underbarrel Weight, Personalized Grip 50 rounds Stick-n-Shock 50 rounds Regular Ammo Hidden Gun Arm Slide 5 Spare Clips for Savalette Guardian AR Gloves Subvocal Microphone Magecuffs Magemask White Noise Generator Hermes Ikon Commlink w/ Novatech Navi OS & Biometric Lock -Analyze 4, Browse 4, Command 4, Edit 4, Reality Filter 4, Scan 4 AREs: Virtual Surround Music, Virtual Pet Contacts (13)
7BP left to spend. No clue how to most effectively spend it. |
I'd say ditch the ork part personally, unless you REALLY want to be one. If I remember right, you lose out on the maximum for your hermetic drain stat as an ork. (Then again, I prefer to change a little line I've seen a few times away from pushing ork more toward "be human unless you really want another 'race'".)
On other notes, I'd say to ditch Dodge and divide the points in it among Assensing and either Summoning or Binding (whichever you'd rather have higher). Also, I'd drop the Ball Lightning and Stunball (especially the former, the drain on it is ridiculously high). Don't worry about Edge, really, I don't think it's worth buying up, but a lot of the times I've spent Edge, I've just gotten "okay, your target is spending Edge too".
On other notes, I'd say to ditch Dodge and divide the points in it among Assensing and either Summoning or Binding (whichever you'd rather have higher). Also, I'd drop the Ball Lightning and Stunball (especially the former, the drain on it is ridiculously high). Don't worry about Edge, really, I don't think it's worth buying up, but a lot of the times I've spent Edge, I've just gotten "okay, your target is spending Edge too".
Any particular reason on these? I like being able to avoid being shot at when the crap hits the fan. As to Ball Lightning and Stunball, I'd like to keep at least one area-effect option for combat, for that room of hardened armor fuglies that are entrenched and beyond the gunbunny's reach. Also, sorry to hear about the Edge bit, but I see a lot of people around here commenting on Edge needing to be higher than 1... not sure if that's your DM or a common issue.
Technically Ork is not a metavariant. Only the variants in Runner's companion are. But you went with Ogre so it's all good.Ogre is what I was speaking of in the notes.
You also missed this tidbid: A free negative quality all of your own for no points. (p103, bottom right)Hm. Oops. I did miss that. Oh well! Adding.
"All the advanced character options in this book automatically suffer the effects of Distinctive Style and do not get a BP bonus.", at rating 1
+3 on perception checks to notice you
+3 on checks to track you down
So add 'Distinctive Style (rating 1) to your negatives list for no BP. (so effecitvely your ogre includes this but gains the ogre stomach which is a fair trade in my book)
In your case, actually watcher spirits CAN kill you. You have no astral combat abilities whatsoever... at astral speeds a watcher can attack you, and you can't defend yourself (astral combat is trained only). So the only thing you can do is soak the 2 damage they'll do each time on willpower alone... and occasionally they will manage to scratch you. Not to say you won't be able to nuke them before too long with a mana spell... you just can't defend yourself from their initial astral combat attack. Considering your character can barely assense... I don't see him switching to astral much though.Eh, a Force 6 Stunbolt is enough to drop a Watcher, I think, given they can only ever be Force 1. I just feel it's a bit cheesy because of that.
You might consider a genetic heritage and grabbing a small amount of bio/cyber (1 point of essence max)... and getting the one which increases your logic natural max by 1 point. Another option since the cheese (runner's companion) is in full play is taking a surged quality and buying the metagenic improvement logic. But what you're doing isn't much different than another archetype... the troll street shaman (which suffers through it's own reduced charisma drain stat). The main way that 5->6 helps a lot is in raising the augmented max from 7 -> 9. (later on you might quicken a increase logic... or invest in cerebral boosters if you have a little bit of room for cyber/bio).I dunno if I'd call RC 'cheese', really. And I can't really afford Metagenetic Improvement (Logic) - it's 20 BP, which means the rest of my positive qualities would have to go to fit it in under the 35 BP limit.
You can regain 25BP for these uses and more by dropping your magic from 6 to 5... you really don't need 6 magic especially with that rating 4 power focus. (there's really only a few rare cases where hard maxing out a stat is worthwhile). I didn't do all the math to see if you did it, but hard maxing a stat is 10 for the stat then +15 more for the hardmax (max one stat).I'd really rather not softcap Magic if I can help it. Yeah, I know, it's an easy 25bp freed up, but there's something about being able to overcast to Force 12 over Force 10. Those extra two points really say something.
Especially given your low charisma... you really should have a point in etiquette. Lets put this in perspective... you default a charisma check to avoid offending the gang across the street... you roll 1-1 dice... 0... care to longshot that with edge?! Etiquette 1 (street specialization +2) probably is a good thing to look at spending some karma on early.Hmm. Etiquette is one of those often-overlooked skills. I might see what I can do about Dodge and spreading some skill point love around... I still don't see why anyone would want to not have dodge, though.
Overall though, not a particularly bad first character.Not my first character; just my first Hermetic. And I'm pretty bad at spotting holes myself, so I typically ask a third party to look things over and see if I've missed anything huge.
The major drawback is opportunity cost - you could have had a spirit of man with Stunball and orders to help you out if you get into a fight, instead.
and 4 is a nice breakpoint because at either 4 or 5, you need a force 5 sustaining (health) focus with Increase Reflexes to jack it to your maximum of 9, and down the road, that's a nice thing to have.
Hm. So, I've long been a proponent of hardcapping your Magic stat. But now that it's staring me in the face with 25 bp freed up to use for other things, I can't actually figure out what the benefits of having Force 6 spells over Force 5 spells are. Force 5 cost the same drain as Force 4 spells, whereas Force 6 is a +1; about the only benefit I can see is for those 'oh drek' situations when you want to overcast to the max, and Force 12 is bigger and moar dakka than Force 10. And +1 dice to Magic tests really isn't worth it for 25bp from what I'm coming to see.
About the only thing I can see worth the 25bp is story reasons for being Big Stompy Mage type; which I've done in the past, but I think most of the characters I've made with Magic 6 woulda done just as well with Magic 5.
Thoughts, anyone? If there's any real arguments for keeping Magic at 6, I'd like to hear them, otherwise I'll be modifying with certain suggestions in mind.
Magic 6 really isn't worth it. Very very few people benefit from hardcapping anything at chargen. And keep in mind, it's only 30 karma to get it after chargen so it's not like you'll never have it.
Alright, it's been updated. I have 7BP leftand no clue how to spend it effectively - I hate the "leftover BP blues". Thinking of just buying a few specializations, despite it being better to buy those with Karma, or another Contact or two, or a new active skill, a specialization and some extra nuyen...
Charisma is a nebulous attribute. More than just looks, Charisma rep-resents a character’s personal aura, self-image, ego, willingness to find
out what people want and give it to them, and ability to recognize
what she can and can’t get out of people. A whiny demeanor, a me-first
attitude, or an inability to read body language or subtle hints are just
a few traits that can give a character low Charisma [note how none of these are being ugly]. A character with
high Charisma might simply enjoy entertaining others, may excel at
making friends and/or manipulating people, or may be all flash and fun
with whomever it is today [again, note how none of these are being pretty]. A high-Charisma character might deliver
jokes at the right moment, have a sexy way of carrying herself, or com-mand respect because her timing is always impeccable. [Again, no mention of being pretty. Maybe elves all walk sexy.]