Shadowrun

Shadowrun Play => Character creation and critique => Topic started by: Ympulse on <06-06-12/1425:06>

Title: First attempt at a Shadowrun char
Post by: Ympulse on <06-06-12/1425:06>

Hello folks. first attempt at a fully fleshed-out character for Shadowrun. Have mercy!

(And yes, the character concept is extremely tRope-ish, but I figured that I should stick with the familiar for the first couple characters I make that are actually thought through)




Name: Jason O'Keenan
Alias: Mick
Race: Human
Sex: Male
Nationality: UCAS
Lifestyle: Low

Physical Description:

Jason is of somewhat above-average height, standing a modest 5'10, but is built strong and compact, like a linebacker. He has brownish salt and pepper hair, which looks like it was once kept in an acceptable, professional style. (When he was last sober, at least). His faded brown eyes are those of a haggard, grizzled man that looks like he's had a few too many but still needs a few more. A mixture of desperation and apathy found in so many addicts, the stubble on his face betraying the lack of basic maintenance he keeps on most days. He normally wears middle-of-the-road corporate looking two-piece suit in whites and subdued greys that always seem to be on their second (or third) day's consecutive wear, complete with the top button always undone and lacking a tie. Over this, his heavy-looking grey-brown longcoat is almost always on, maintaining the 'been working for three days straight' look that seems to fit him so naturally. It, as well, is weathered with use, but in good repair.

He does, however, reek of alcohol.

Personality/background

Jason didn't used to be this way. A long, long time ago he was a bright-eyed, ambitious young man. Anxious to work for the famous Lonestar company. Since his home city of Seattle had no state-run police force to speak of, Lonestar was the de-facto "Seattle Metro". He always had a sense of law and justice, and wanted nothing more than to do his part for his city.

His time as a beat cop hardened him. He saw things no man really wants to see, and was forced to do some things he's not really proud of. He befriended his partner, an O'Brien. They shared old Irish family names (as diluted as the bloodlines were), and became fast friends, more than once going out of the way to ensure the other was taken care of in hard times. After a few years of working with Lonestar, he met his future wife, Lisa. They began living the corporate-approved dream. A modest apartment in the better side of town, enough money to buy the corporate-sponsored Bioware they always wanted to get, with enough left over for the wife to buy an outfit in this season's style. In the years that followed, he continued to work diligently for Lonestar, cleaning the streets of undesirables, shadowrunners stupid enough to get caught, and from time to time taking down some Yaks. He proved to be exceptionally good at the last, being recognized, and then promoted to Detective, working on a task force  dedicated to stopping the Yaks from making a significant foothold in the city. Again, he worked as hard as any man could, doing the legwork himself most nights, and also going undercover when the need arose and noone else was trustworthy enough for the job.

One fateful day, he discovered, in his investigations, an alarming amount of corruption within Lonestar concerning the Yakuza and many higher-up officers making behind-the-scenes deals. To allow the Yakuza to operate freely in certain areas of the city. To Jason, this was absolutely appalling and disgusting. He brought it up with his superiors, who were equally outraged, but at the idea of a lowly detective accusing high-ranking Lonestar officers of doing such things. "Your information must be faulty" they said, "It's possible, but aside from conjecture, where is the proof?" others debated. Jason decided that he had to get that proof.

The next two years were spent on long nights and little sleep. Jason found it necessary to get a sleep regulator installed for himself. 6 hours a day were a few too many. His relationship suffered. He dug into every rat hole, every false lead, and every tip that he got, often times spending weeks undercover trying to get to the bottom of the lead. And his relationship suffered. Eventually, he turned to alcohol to get himself to take a step back from the hunt, oftentimes spending days or sometimes weeks so drunk he had trouble focusing his eyes. And his relationship suffered.

Eventually, Lisa left him for a low-level corporate officer. He took a month of saved-up sick leave after the one-sided divorce, which left him with nothing but his paycheck and his guns, and wasted the time on booze and the visits from his old friend O'Brien, who convinced him that he needed a small apartment, at least, so that he could at least sleep in a bed. He went back to work a shell of the man he used to be, only doing what was absolutely necessary. This lasted for a few months, and then the break in the corruption case came. An RFID chip planted on an official's personal car was traveling into the Yak-controlled part of town, and wasn't showing any signs of deviation. Jason, for once in six months, broke through the fog. He was in his unmarked squad car and gone in a minute, knowing where the meeting was most likely going to take place.

He found a good overlook position, and watched as one of the corrupt Lonestar officials got out of the driver's seat. He began recording on his cybereyes. Then the official moved to the passenger door, opened it, and Jason nearly passed out from shock. None other than the man in charge of the entire city's Lonestar operations stepped out of the car.

Jason retired from the company without mentioning a word about what he saw, saying that the meeting was a dry hole, a known undercover agent making a meeting of little importance. For his exemplary service, Jason was given three month's salary and his old unmarked squad car (In reality, noone wanted to go through the process of getting the stench of alcohol out of it, but everyone played it off as a gift) as seperations gratuity, and he was on his own.

Since then, Jason has spent the last year drinking his life away, only rousing for his weekly visits with O'Brien, whom, for some reason, was still only a beat cop. Those were the only days Jason was sober.

Lately, the money has become tight, and, with no real prospective legitimate jobs available to a low-level ex-Lonestar detective, the only profession that would pay anything was Shadowrunning, he surmised. Picking himself up from his drunken haze, he drove to the nearest known Shadowrunner bar, and began patronizing them with his presence.

Jason wasn

Attributes

Body	Agility	Reaction	Strength
5	3(5)	5	3(5)
Charisma	Intuition	Logic	Willpower
2	4	3	3
Edge	Magic/Resonance	Essence	Initiative
2	0	3.6	8

Positive Qualities
Blandness
High Pain tolerance (3)
Will to Live (2)

Negative Qualities
Addiction (Severe): Alcohol
Gremlins (2)
SiNner (1)

Active Skills

Athletics Group - 2

Firearms Group - 4

Dodge - 6

Shadowing - 3

Unarmed Combat - 2

Knowledge Skills ( [Logic + Intuition] x 3 free points)

(The builder tool I used only allowed me to enter in custom Knowledge skills, vice selectable ones. This is just me 'winging' it)

Criminal Hangouts (Yakuza) 2(6)
Local Gangs (Beat Area Only) 2(6)
Police Beats 2(6)
Security Procedures 2(6)
Street Drugs 2(6)
Yakuza (Cultural Nuances) 4(8)

Languages:

English - Natural
Japaneese - 5 (8 )


Cyber/Bioware

Cyberware	Essence	Notes
Aluminum Bone Lacing (Alphaware) cybereyes (4) Datajack Spatial Recognizer Muscle Augmentation (2) Muscle Toner (2) Orthoskin (2) Reflex Recorder (Firearms Group) Sleep regulator	0.8 0.5 0.1 0.1 0.4 0.4 0.5 0.2 0.15

Gear
Ares Predator IV (x250 Regular Ammo / x100 Stick-n-Shock Ammo)
Remington 990 (x20 Regular Ammo)
Streetfire Special (Holdout) (x10 Regular Ammo)

Lined Coat (6/4)

Autopicker (6)
Optical Binoculars
Concealable Holster
10x Datachip
Hidden Arm Gun Slide (Holdout)
Keycard Copier (6)
Underslung Laser Sight
Micro-Transciever (1)
Sound Suppressor
x5 Spare Clips
Subvocal Microphone
Tag Eraser
White Noise Generator (4)



Vehicles
Chrysler Patrol-1 (Unmarked)

Contacts

Contact		C/L
Officer O'Brien (Beat Cop) Nate Bringham (ID Manufacturer)		3/6 1/4

Build Point totals:  400 = 220 (Attributes + 116 (Active Skills)  + 50 (Gear) + 14(Social) +/- 0 (Qualities)
Nuyen Used: 245960 / 250000

Title: Re: First attempt at a Shadowrun char
Post by: All4BigGuns on <06-06-12/1432:11>

First off, you have no melee skills, and thus that high Dodge skill will do you little to no good unless you go Full Defense rather than attacking. Also, Infiltration would be better to have than Shadowing since Infiltration is the main 'sneaky sneaky' skill. I don't really think most of those positive qualities are very good ones for their costs, and you really don't have very many skills on the whole. That Charisma of 1 could be a problem too, since there are a lot of GMs out there who'll aggro the crap out of you for it.

Title: Re: First attempt at a Shadowrun char
Post by: RelentlessImp on <06-06-12/1434:09>

Just a quick thing here that leaps right out at me.

Quote

Ex - Police Detective (Lonestar) - 5 (8 )

Is this supposed to represent knowledge an Ex-Cop would know? Or is it supposed to cover knowledge about ex-cops in general, with a focus on Lone Star? The former is way too  inclusive for a knowledge skill and would be better represented by a small grouping of related Knowledges, such as Street Drugs, Local Gangs, Police Procedure, Security Procedures, Criminal Hangouts, Police Beats, and so on.

Quote

First off, you have no melee skills, and thus that high Dodge skill will do you little to no good unless you go Full Defense rather than attacking. Also, Infiltration would be better to have than Shadowing since Infiltration is the main 'sneaky sneaky' skill. I don't really think most of those positive qualities are very good ones for their costs, and you really don't have very many skills on the whole. That Charisma of 1 could be a problem too, since there are a lot of GMs out there who'll aggro the crap out of you for it.

And since you have no melee skills a Strength of 4 is doing you very little good...

Title: Re: First attempt at a Shadowrun char
Post by: All4BigGuns on <06-06-12/1436:49>

Quote from: RelentlessImp on <06-06-12/1434:09>

Quote

First off, you have no melee skills, and thus that high Dodge skill will do you little to no good unless you go Full Defense rather than attacking. Also, Infiltration would be better to have than Shadowing since Infiltration is the main 'sneaky sneaky' skill. I don't really think most of those positive qualities are very good ones for their costs, and you really don't have very many skills on the whole. That Charisma of 1 could be a problem too, since there are a lot of GMs out there who'll aggro the crap out of you for it.

And since you have no melee skills a Strength of 4 is doing you very little good...

To be fair on this point, several of those Athletics skills do go off of Strength.

Title: Re: First attempt at a Shadowrun char
Post by: Hawke on <06-06-12/1452:21>

His qualities remind me of Max Payne, minus lost loved ones.  I like that.

Some folks may say having Gymnastics and Dodge is overkill as they are similar in many ways, yet still different.

I am looking, but I don't seem to see a way for your to have multiple initiative passes.  Is this planned in the future, slipped your mind or you are just deciding to not have it?

The strength probably could go to a 3, and your athletics skills could be dropped to a 2 or 3 and still maintain reasonable effectiveness.

You have edge :D

I don't know.. It just seems like you should have more active skills... Perception , Intimidation, etc.  Police type skills, not including first aid, pilot ground vehicles and maybe pilot aerospace depending on his duties.

Title: Re: First attempt at a Shadowrun char
Post by: All4BigGuns on <06-06-12/1457:51>

Most recent post reminded me of something, you might want to drop a couple of those Edge points for more skills. While some people seem to argue that it's supposedly such a great stat, the fact that it's consumable and entirely up to the GM on when it refreshes reduces it's effectiveness to me. That and you might run into the "oh you spent Edge, the enemy spends it too, so nyah".

Title: Re: First attempt at a Shadowrun char
Post by: Ympulse on <06-06-12/1501:06>

Quote from: All4BigGuns on <06-06-12/1432:11>

First off, you have no melee skills, and thus that high Dodge skill will do you little to no good unless you go Full Defense rather than attacking.

Doesn't Aluminum bone Lacing make unarmed attack deal "Lethal" damage?

Quote

Also, Infiltration would be better to have than Shadowing since Infiltration is the main 'sneaky sneaky' skill.

Duly noted

Quote

I don't really think most of those positive qualities are very good ones for their costs, and you really don't have very many skills on the whole.

To be honest, I'm a bit limited in what I have available to me, as I was only able to find the S4A hard copy online without shelling out, and like I said, the skills were seat-of the pants improvisation. Any suggestions?

Quote

That Charisma of 1 could be a problem too, since there are a lot of GMs out there who'll aggro the crap out of you for it.

I had hoped that 1 Charisma was indicative of a on-the-verge of burning out dunkard on his last legs kind of depserate man. Wrong concept of charisma? (I always defined it as force-of personality, vice anything physical)


@Relentlessimp

The Ex-Police Detective (Lonestar) skill was meant as an aggregate of all the things a man that was a former detective would have learned over his service period. again, the skills were me trying to make do without many options available, so any suggestions and tips to get to the same end would be greatly appreciated. (And the 4 strength was a holdover from the pre-shadowrunner character, since I would assume you need to be stronger than the average guy to go paramailitary/private police in the first place)

Title: Re: First attempt at a Shadowrun char
Post by: RelentlessImp on <06-06-12/1507:57>

Aluminum Bone Lacing does make unarmed attacks do Lethal damage, but you have no Unarmed Combat skill to back that up, so you'll be rolling your Agility-1 dice pool every time you make it, and defensive options for melee combat are, IIRC, Skill*2 (for parries and blocks, I believe?). The -1 is the penalty for defaulting on a skill you have no ranks in.

And as I said, a small collection of skills would better represent the knowledge an Ex-Lone Star cop would have. For example, since he was a beat cop, you would replace that knowledge with...

Street Drugs (Local drug of choice) 2 (+2)
Local Gangs (Choice of biggest gang around) 2 (+2)
Police Procedure (Lone Star) 2 (+2)
Security Procedures (Lone Star) 1 (+2)
Criminal Hangouts (Yakuza or Vory if Seattle, for example) 3 (+2)
Police Beats (area he mostly had as his beat) 2 (+2)

Total of 18 knowledge skill points (12 knowledges, 6 specializations).

Title: Re: First attempt at a Shadowrun char
Post by: All4BigGuns on <06-06-12/1513:51>

Quote from: RelentlessImp on <06-06-12/1507:57>

Aluminum Bone Lacing does make unarmed attacks do Lethal damage, but you have no Unarmed Combat skill to back that up, so you'll be rolling your Agility-1 dice pool every time you make it, and defensive options for melee combat are, IIRC, Skill*2 (for parries and blocks, I believe?). The -1 is the penalty for defaulting on a skill you have no ranks in.

And as I said, a small collection of skills would better represent the knowledge an Ex-Lone Star cop would have. For example, since he was a beat cop, you would replace that knowledge with...

Street Drugs (Local drug of choice) 2 (+2)
Local Gangs (Choice of biggest gang around) 2 (+2)
Police Procedure (Lone Star) 2 (+2)
Security Procedures (Lone Star) 1 (+2)
Criminal Hangouts (Yakuza or Vory if Seattle, for example) 3 (+2)
Police Beats (area he mostly had as his beat) 2 (+2)

Total of 18 knowledge skill points (12 knowledges, 6 specializations).

The skill + skill is for melee full defense, otherwise it's just skill (you would only get dodge or gymnastics once for ranged full defense). Having the Unarmed Combat skill is necessary to actually use that damage for bone lacing--though it isn't much damage with a 4 Strength (I believe like 3P with no armor penetration).

As to what I mentioned with the Charisma of 1, the problem isn't how it's explained, but more that any attribute at 1 has a high chance of drawing GM aggro down on your head, which is a good thing to avoid at all costs.

Title: Re: First attempt at a Shadowrun char
Post by: Hawke on <06-06-12/1518:15>

For RP, Shadowing is more in line than infiltration.  As you basically follow criminals around, and see if anyone is tailing you.

In game terms, you should get a roll if someone is following you.  Whether by you or by the GM. 

Just my opinion on that.

Title: Re: First attempt at a Shadowrun char
Post by: Hawke on <06-06-12/1521:47>

Oh, the biggest question, what do you plan on him doing?  What do you see his role in your group to be?

I know what he smells like, but why would a runner want him to back them up?

This might help to see what suggestions would be viable with your vision.

Or do you want to make an ex-cop and roll with that in the group?

Title: Re: First attempt at a Shadowrun char
Post by: Ympulse on <06-06-12/1531:54>

Quote from: Hawke on <06-06-12/1521:47>

Oh, the biggest question, what do you plan on him doing?  What do you see his role in your group to be?

I know what he smells like, but why would a runner want him to back them up?

This might help to see what suggestions would be viable with your vision.

to be honest, his role wasn't clearly defined in my head, but a bruiser/dependable guy that gets things done would be the most accurate descriptor. And although Shadowrunners are a very "Self-First" community, I would assume that his former ties within Lonestar would be enough for many to want to keep his dunken ass around.

That and he would, presumably, drag everyone out of the fight when things got rough. I didn't make it a very prominent point in the description, but he is meant to be a very loyal character, at least to his comrades-at-the-time.

Quote

Or do you want to make an ex-cop and roll with that in the group?

That was the main character hook I wanted to go with.


@all: I'm taking everything in, and am going to re-create him shortly with the suggestions provided.

Title: Re: First attempt at a Shadowrun char
Post by: RelentlessImp on <06-06-12/1537:56>

You may also want to look into having a few of your contacts be Criminal Informants from his cop days, just to keep the feeling of an ex-cop going. Loyalty 1, Connection X contacts in gangs he most frequently had issues with, but as a beat cop they'd probably be pretty low on the ladder, like street pushers and runners of front businesses.

Title: Re: First attempt at a Shadowrun char
Post by: Hawke on <06-06-12/1602:23>

Good for you.  It is important to have your concept (which you have his background and demeanor) and then figure out how he will be implemented within the group. i.e. skills, equipment, gear, cyber, etc.

Title: Re: First attempt at a Shadowrun char
Post by: Ympulse on <06-06-12/1638:00>

Changes made to OP. Notably base stats were shuffled to take into account the fact that edge is the anti-GM stat, and skills were fix'd(ish)

Title: Re: First attempt at a Shadowrun char
Post by: Hawke on <06-06-12/1644:05>

Heh, if your GM does not like edge, then it should be removed from the game.  My GMs not only allow edge to be used, but reward good RP with renewal of edge throughout the session.

Plus edge is replenished at the start of a "mission", or when GM says "all full" so to speak.

I mentioned it before, but I guess it was missed...

Do you plan on having Wired Reflexes? Only one initiative pass is... well, not normally done.

Title: Re: First attempt at a Shadowrun char
Post by: Ympulse on <06-06-12/1649:04>

Quote from: Hawke on <06-06-12/1644:05>

Do you plan on having Wired Reflexes? Only one initiative pass is... well, not normally done.

With my limited scope of mechanics understanding, I wasn't able to make a survivable character with more than 1 Initiative Pass without turning them into a Gunslinger/Gunbunny, which this guy is not about.

Am I missing something?

[edit] And I don't have a GM at the moment. I only discovered Shadowrun a few days ago. Still looking for a PbP game (Since there are not games in my area that I can find)

[edit edit] It's my 4am, give me a break >_<

Title: Re: First attempt at a Shadowrun char
Post by: Yogi on <06-06-12/1659:59>

Wired Reflexes doesn't automatically imply/make a gunslinger/gun bunny. 

Title: Re: First attempt at a Shadowrun char
Post by: RelentlessImp on <06-06-12/1743:46>

Basically, most people who intend to go into combat are going to have multiple passes. Not having more than 1 pass means you're going to be standing there for at least two seconds (in-game) or two 'rounds' while everyone else resolves their combat turns. Which can take a few minutes in RL, a few days on PbP, etc. Also you're a sitting duck without them.

Title: Re: First attempt at a Shadowrun char
Post by: All4BigGuns on <06-06-12/2239:12>

Perception is a pretty important skill to have, especially for an ex-cop.