[Darrian Wolffe]

OK, and now for the PC rewrite.  Recognizing a good thing when I saw it, I borrowed heavily from Omae's Spirit Medium.  It's not identical, of course, and some of the things that probably drove you batty about the PC the first time are still there - there's parts of the PC I'm not willing to give up for the sake of mechanical efficiency.  But this is probably a stronger build overall...


Metatype: Elf - 30 BP

Attributes - 180 BP+10 EDG+50 Magic
Body - 3
Agil - 4
React - 2
Str - 1
Cha - 7
Intu - 4
Log - 2
Will - 5
Edge - 2
Magic - 5

Active Skills (Knowledges/Languages TBD) - 70 BP
Spellcasting - 5 (Manipulation 7)
Summoning - 4
Counterspelling - 4
Assensing - 1
Influence Group - 1
Perception - 1
Automatics - 4

Qualities - Net -10 BP
Magician (Shaman)
Mentor Spirit (Dragon; +2 negotiation dice, +2 on Manipulation Spells)
Restricted Gear (Power Focus)

SINner (non-criminal)
Incompetent (Hardware) (tends to let all the blue smoke out)
Sensitive System
Records on File (S-K)

Spells - 27 BP
Increase Charisma
Increase Reflexes
Heal
Alter memory
Control Emotions
Control Thoughts
Influence
Stunbolt
Powerbolt

Contacts - 1 BP
Tabby (L2/C4) (this is evidently now a free contact; +1 BP added to upgrade Loyalty to 2)
 (L1/C1) - free, dunno what yet


Important Gear - 35 BP spent on gear, 7 BP spent on foci bonding
F4 Power Foci
F3 Sustaining Foci

R4 Fake SIN (Day-to-day) , R4 licenses for practicing magic, carrying foci, driving, and CCW
R4 Fake SIN (Nefarious purposes), R4 licenses for practicing magic, carrying foci, driving, and CCW
FN 5-7C Machine Pistol w/ Gasvent III, Internal Smartlink, Chameleon Coating, & personalized Grip (total 5 points of RC), gel rounds, FMJ rounds, & EX-explosive rounds
2 months Low Lifestyle (safehouse, connected to R4 Fake SIN - day-to-day)
Rating 4 Monocle w/ Smartlink, Image Link, Vision Magnification, R4 Vision enhancement)
Rating 4 Microtranceiver
Earbud with skinlink, Audio Enhancement R3, and spatial recognizer
Nanotech Airwave Commlink w/ Iris Orb OS & AR glove & R3 Browse/Edit/Analyze (hidden mode)
MetaLink Commlink with Vector Xim OS (public commlink)

2nd Skin Armor (houseruled to provide the same armor-stacking bonuses as FFBA, given that it's 3 times as pricy) with R6 Nonconductivity
Armor Clothing w/ attached PPPS Vitals & Arm/Leg casings

BMW 300GT (used) w/ Normal Smuggling Compartment and R1 Pimped Ride (Chrome car w/ metallic purple hubcaps) - priced @ 10,200 base cost

Rating 6 Medkit
x2 Rating 3 Stim patches



Important Dice Pools
Spellcasting: 14 dice (16 for Manipulation spells)
Drain Resist: 12 dice
Automatics:  10 dice when shooting FN 5-7, plenty of RC and ability to reduce range penalties
Armor: Ballistic 10 / Impact 4
Summoning: 13 dice
Social Skills: minimum 8 dice (10 on negotiation), but will be wildly variable due to various magical effects.  I can cap out on social skills pretty easily with those going.

Tactics
Are largely the same as the Spirit Medium, combined with what I outlined above.  Let Spirits of Man and their innate Increase CHA effects increase my CHA when possible during social to-dos, and stack Influence/Control Emotions effects to make people love me, with Alter Memory and Control Thoughts for more brute-force issues or legwork.  During combat, Increase Reflexes goes into the Sustaining Focus, and I can play around with spirit shannanigans, as well as being able to target living or non-living targets with Stunbolt/Powerbolt (not having an AOE spell sucks right now, but that's something for an early Karma expenditure).  Automatics has improved in skill and utility from before, and the Chameleon coating will aid in keeping the slightly larger weapon out of sight (on my list is to pick up some sort of customized armored longcoat with a built-in concealable holster that isn't going to have a 6 Ballistic Rating.

For those curious - the reason I went with automatics instead of the more concealable pistols is that mages with pistols are done to death.  This feels more novel.  Plus, a machine pistol is still fairly concealable for basic work, and this way I have the option of throwing around SMGs or ARs later on if I want to (or when I don't care about concealability), while with pistols I'm basically limited to, well...pistols.  Plus, y'know, you see a guy with just a pistol in a gunfight, and that usually screams "mage!"  Since the first rule of combat is "geek the mage", carrying around different stuff may keep me lower on the target priority list.

In the end, s/he's not fully min-maxed by quite a bit, but it feels a lot tighter and more effective than what I had before.  Thoughts?

[Demerzel]

Good call on the pistols. If you can throw a stunbolt naked and face minimal drain you don't need a concealable pistol . . .

[UmaroVI]

That would actually make me want to carry around an assault rifle most of the time too. An Ares Alpha with Gas-Vent 3 is a very solid weapon. Own a Gyromount and you can use full auto properly when you have time to put it on.

Spellcasting 5 is the only problem I see. You should really, really have 6. It's 12 karma to get that later, or 4 bp now. You could, for example, cut Perception and then buy Perception 1 for 4 karma, saving you 8 karma.

[Tsuzua]

That is a much stronger build.  Just a few suggestions/comments/corrections:

1.) I'll get spellcasting to 6.  You'll be rolling that extra die a whole bunch of times over your life.

2.) I'll also skip on powerbolt and instead grab an indirect P damage combat spell of your choice.  You're only rolling 14 dice on a threshold 5 test (the vast majority of things you'll be pew pewing are drones and vehicles).  That's fairly iffy odds.  Indirect spells work quite well for zapping stuff.  With 12 drain resist, it'll hurt but survivable.  That or get your spirit to do the robot smashing.  Picking up an indirect AE is another valid choice.

3.) Vision Enhancement caps out at rating 3.

4.) If you want to save points, you could lower Summoning to 1 and then specialize.  You save 10-12 BP and you lose only 1 die for the spirit type *coughMANcough* you'll use 9 times out of 10.  12 dice lets you summon large enough Man spirits to do your bidding well without GM aggro (force 5-8).

5.) You did about what I would do with a mage with a "shooting" backup.  10 dice isn't great, but that's the best you're going to do.  During play, I'll look into heavier weapons like a super-pimped out assault rifle.  An HV Ares Alpha is quite possible with a gyromount harass. 

Going for Heavy Weapons instead of Automatics might be a good idea.  Background Count 6 places are extremely rare and when you do find one, you're not going to simply walk into it.  The crazy blood mage in his murder dungeon doesn't care how concealabe your machine pistol is versus a HMG.

Honestly, that's why I wouldn't worry too much about that high of a background count.  Sure, it's nice to always have an option, but unless you're running at ground zero at Hiroshima or you move to Bug City, you aren't going to encounter it.  You might be better off saving the points and putting Cleansing on your high priority metamagic list.  It's not that hard to cleanse even the most stubborn background counts for hours. 

6.) I still see issues with your armor.  Did you rule that Second Skin doesn't count towards encumbrance or does it work like FFBA?  FFBA is halved (round down) for encumbrance, not completely ignored.  I'm going to assume you're doing the half for encumbrance reading for the houseruled Second Skin.  Securetech PPP also just adds to armor both for protection and encumbrance. 

Either way, I think you can do armor better.  With Second Skin being 2/0 for encumbrance, that means we have 4/6 in our "budget" for the rest of your armor.  While Armor Clothing is pretty nice in the ballistic department, it's terrible in the impact department.  Even in a non-SnS world, impact is important.  There's your sword using adepts, flechette armor, explosions, and paracritters.

I would check with your GM about the armor clothing in Arsenal.  Synergist Short Jacket + Slacks + PPP Vitals Protector + PPP Forearm and Shin guards gives you 4/6 armor and is reasonably discrete.  In addition, you get a -2 conceal to your machine pistol!  You can also go Steampunk or even wear an Ares High Jacket depending on your tastes

Edit- If you do have Second Skin ignore encumbrance, I would buy an Armor Vest with PPP forearm and shin guards.  That's 6/6 armor and gives you flexibility on normal clothing options.

[UmaroVI]

Also, I would replace Powerbolt with either Stunball or your choice of a P-damage indirect AE. You are more likely to fight groups of enemies than opponents that require Powerbolt, you don't have enough dice to reliably overcome OR, and you can at least shoot drones if you have to fight them. I would be using Stunball, but something like Blizzard is a defensible option. Alternatively, take Metal Wall instead and deal with groups by putting them in a dome. It's Manipulation so your bonuses help more, and it has other uses.