[SavarWallk]

What am I to do now?

My parents have nice respectable jobs. My dad is a governmental spokesman for the Seattle city. My mother is a professor at UCAS Seattle. My uncle Bob doesn't, he owns a bar and facilitates deals.

I grew up in a family of thought. I was encouraged to notice everything around me. I became quite perceptive, as a younger child that caused some issues until I learned to control my mouth also.

Early on I was tested and found to have magic. As I grew older, the magic was found to be weak. I managed to do some small increase in my magic. However to the disappointment of my parents I was only an adept. One of my abilities was to see magic, I worked hard to use that ability. I learned how to react faster and notice threats before they happened.

I loved to study how magic affected living things. This love and my mother got me a job with the university as a teacher's assistant. This also got me involved in the martial arts, learning some unarmed and club work. I was pretty good too have around so a number of the professors that went on field expeditions had me come along, that taught me a few things about the outdoors.

As a side job to teacher's assistant I tutored.  I learned more about teaching by doing it one on one. Some of the students taught me things as thanks. One student gave me a staff he had created in an advanced shop class.

The least field expedition was a pile of drek. One of the teachers I work for that had corporate sponsors asked me to come with on a trip to South America. It was odd that, it was suggested that I bring a personal weapon. It became more interesting when we did a night drop, I begin to have suspicions. Nothing much happened, we found some interesting specimens. Most exciting thing was I seen a bunch of Death Spirals.

After a week we packed up and started back. After a few hours into the flight the professor the “research” assistants and two ”guards” started screaming. I commed the pilot to set us down. After the first Death Spiral erupted out of the professor's back, I started stunning people. As they were busy having parts of them ruptured it was pretty easy to stun them. When we were down I asked the pilot to pop the back hatch and pushed the people out. I took down a couple of the butterflies that had escaped in the vehicle and had the pilot take off and shut the hatch.

The coyote wasn't to happy but he seemed to think I possibly saved his life. Knowing that if I went back it would be bad for me and that it could cause my parents some trouble I asked the coyote how far he could get me to my uncle's place of business. He got me close enough to use a taxi to get within a block then I walked to the bar.

My uncle seemed to know I was in trouble as soon as I entered the place. He knows people, he managed to get me a different is and he said he might be able to find me a job. While I was staying with him a few days discovered people were looking for me I seem to be worth some ¥.


Human 0 (1)
Attributes 4 24
Magic 1 Adept 2
Skills 4 46/10
Resources 1 50K ¥

Human male

BOD 3
AGI 3
REA 4(5)
STR 3
WIL 4
LOG 5
INT 6
CHA 4
EDG 2
ESS 6
MAG 3

Mental: 7
Physical: 5
Social: 6

Init: 10(11)+1D6(2D6)

Powers
ASTRAL PERCEPTION
COMBAT SENSE 1
IMPROVED REFLEXES 1

KARMA (1)
PERCEPTIVE 2
COLLEGE EDUCATION
ASTRAL BOUNCER
WANTED
NATIONAL SIN (UCAS)
ASTRAL BEACON

WAY OF UNIFIED MANA (HAPSUM-DO)
Mana Choke
Counter Strike
Mana Strike

Skills
A Astral entities 6
A Critters 6
A Parageology 6
A Parazoology 6
A Parabotany 6
A Magical Theory 6
A Seattle politics 4
A UCAS Seattle academia 4
English N
Perception 6
Assensing 6
Unarmed Combat (HAPSUM-DO) 6 (
Etiquette 6
Instruction 6
Clubs 5
Exotic Ranged Weapon (Staff Taser) 4
Computer 3
Astral combat 3
Athletics 3
Outdoors 3
Stealth 4

Contacts: 12
Uncle Bob 5/2
Coyote 3/2

Equipment
Credstick (standard) 4,420+3D6×60¥
Lifestyle (low) 1 month paid
Custom stun staff (stun baton/taser)
Staff Weapon Foci 3 (unbound)
Armor clothing 6
Helmet
Flare compensation
Image link
Vision enhancement 4
Commlink Transys Avalon 6
sim 100
Trodes (headband) 70

<fake id>
Commlink Renraku Sensei 3
sim
Fake SIN 4
Fake Lic 4 stun staff
Fake Lic 4 taser
Fake Lic 4 weapon foci

Glasses 4
Flare compensation
Image link
Vision enhancement 2
Ear buds 3
audio enhancement 3
Medkit 3

Custom Stun Staff ¥ 2,000
Counts as a staff.
One end has a concealed dart taser (see Yamaha Pulsar) w/laser sight
Other end has a concealed stun baton.
Wireless: The stun baton recharges by induction, re-gaining one charge per full hour of wireless-enabled time.
The concealment can be retracted with a simple action, if wireless enabled, it is a free action.

[Csjarrat]

Looks OK as a fun character but doesn't really tick many shadow running roles outside of being a melee fighter. There's loads of tweaks you could make to get more oomph out of this chap if you're interested

[Ogrepot]

3 in AGI for a melee fighter means you're ... well... dead.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

3 in AGI for a melee fighter means you're ... well... dead.

It's a fair point.

I like the idea of an academic melee type... but the way the priority system works it really punishes trying to do two concepts at once.  I don't like that min/maxing actually builds fundamentally more capable characters- but it is what it is.  You pretty much have to use Sum To Ten to do any kind of hybrid character, and at least you're already on that track.

So I see two constraints that in of themselves aren't killers but are forcing themselves to be worked around:
The character is a melee type with good mental stats
The character is an adept without maxing magic

I'd consider maybe tweaking your Sum-To-Ten array.  Get more Magic to buy attribute boosting powers, and you can maybe sneak by affording that by dipping your attribute points. 

OTOH If you like the idea of only being 3 magic, maybe consider picking different magic powers (for example, Improved Init is doing almost nothing for you 10+1d6 is guaranteed 2 passes, and 11+2d6 is guaranteed 2 passes but only a ~17% chance of 3 passes).  There's lots of kinds of melee combatants.  If you're going to stick to 3 Magic, you'll need to really pick one aspect of combat and wring everything you can out of that.  Is he going to be Dodgey McYouCan'tHitMe?  Is he going to be a sledgehammer that doesn't need to hit often because he ends fights by hitting once?  Is he going to be a ninja that does his fighting by ambushing targets from stealth so that they don't get a dodge test to avoid your attack?

You went to the bother of combining high mental stats with college education and he still really only has one subject his knowledge skills can help with.  Having so many as three different magical "threats" skills is probably the most you'd plausibly need.  Perhaps as an alternative to the magical knowledge skills you have might be Magic Theory, Magical Threats, Parazoology.  Call them all 6s, and you'll cover 95+% of what you have now but also have 3 more 6s to spend on other academic skills to greatly broaden your ability to be relevant in situations other than answering questions about magic drek.

The biggest opportunity to make your character more capable is in the Active Skills.  You went all in with the A priority, yet he's still basically a melee/backup face.  There's a lot of ways to wring more advantages out of as many skill points as you have.

[ShadowcatX]

From an optimization stand point, and honestly from a roleplaying stand point, you are doing some things that don't make a whole lot of sense and I think you are doing it because you feel that being an academic means you really need skills A. It doesn't. A high logic and intuition with your qualities will be more than enough to make you a good academic without boat loads of active skills. Also, the double D pick is kind of bad mechanically and adding nothing roleplaying wise to the character. (A high tech force 3 weapon focus is not something a student makes in shop class, even advanced shop class, trust me I've done the math for a monowhip foci and can link it if you like.)

I think if you wanted to go with Attributes: A, Skills: C, Nuyen: C, Race: C, and Magic E, you would build a character more in keeping with what you really wanted (unless adept is really important to you, but you don't talk about it in the concept) and find that you could have the story you wanted better. High edge will serve you well, C nuyen is enough to get you a cyber arm to allow you to do some level of combat and give the character an interesting twist for an academic.

[evilaustintom]

I know you built him as an adept, but if you consider going mage or mystic adept, you may want to look at the Academia quality from Forbidden Arcana (I may not be spelling the quality correctly, since I don't have the book in front of me).  You get benefits in casting for each 2 academic skills you have at least 4 ranks in...and a mystic adept can still be a melee-focused guy.

[firebug]

Oh, an academic adept.  I made one of these myself the other day!  I'd say you went a little overboard with the skills; Adepts are best when they specialize, and you had more skill points than you knew what to do with.  Try investing more points into MAG/RES so you can have more powers and fill a stronger niche outside of your knowledge skills.  If you wanna compare and contrast the academic adept I made, I'll post her.

[SavarWallk]

Originally I was going to make this char The Aware. It was pointed out that for the same table cost could just make an adept. I liked that thought as I could give the char the awakened martial art form. I see the point of improved reflexes I could drop that, and shift one point of magic back to Edge. Take another point of combat sense.

Part of the char was that he didn't plan for the shadows, they found him. So the combat he knows is lousy and he doesn't know it, he if surviving will want to work on his combat.

As for academic knowledge skills I see a couple things where I went wrong at this point with the feedback I think I can do better.