[Aethelwulf1972]

Assume an Adept for whom the Concept is to when he can hunt supernatural and paranatural threats in order to end any threat to "innocent" victims. While Ending the threat could involve Negotiation (or animal handling) to convince the threat to leave for a better "habitat", I want to focus this topic on Methods and corresponding equipment for a more violent solution, anywhere from tranqing the target to killing/destroying/disrupting the target.

so, Ways, Mentor Spirits, Qualities, Weapon types,. and/or adept powers, and does such an adept NEED things like weapon foci etc. or would that be just a good idea.

I have an inspiration for this character, so I already know that for combat skills this adept will be using a pistol, a shotgun (i have settled on the remington 990) a sword shaped blade of some type, and possibly unarmed combat.  Mostly what I am looking for in terms of weapon advice is ammo types, should I bite the bullet and take firearms instead of pistols and long arms, should get the close combat group or only unarmed and blades.

[falar]

Just for general opinions:

Don't bother with getting the whole Firearms skill group. It's not worth it. Personally, I'm not sure that Longarms/Pistols is worth it compared to just Automatics, but it's your concept. In fact, consider swapping out both Longarms/Pistols for Archery. You're already going to be pumping Strength for Sword/Unarmed damage. Archery will give you long range with bows, concealability with slingshots and stealth options with the pistol crossbow. Invest in narcoject and stick-n-shock arrowheads with static shafts.

As for Swords/Unarmed - drop back to one of these two skills. Even though you're an adept, grab some Spurs (wolverine claws) or Retractable Claws. They use Unarmed, if paired get +1 reach and have the AP/Damage you want from swords. Either that or get bone-density implants and striking calluses. This will give you good damage and only use up one skill.

You must be wondering - why am I cutting out so many combat skills? The answer is, you don't need combat skills as the primary on your concept. You have enough to spend skills on without sinking 28 points in 4 combat skills. You only need two - a close-up option and a long-range option. I recommend Archery and Unarmed for that. You might want to splash in some throwing weapons and automatics, but only with 2 points and a specialty each.

Tranqing the target is always going to be the safest bet. You can accomplish this with SnS + Static Shafts for sweet, sweet 12S(e) AP-5 damage and with Narcojet injection arrows and capsule rounds.

[Jack_Spade]

Pistols and longarms are a very viable combination.

Tasers are universally helpful if you don't want to kill critters/monsters.
The dragon slayer mentor is a very fitting mentor spirit: +2 to a social skill of your choice, danger sense and improved accuracy for a weapon of your choice (the Defiance Ex profits from a boost to ACC)

Being an Elf would improve your chances with negotiation/animal handling. If you invest into Voice of command you can just take leadership and ignore the other two skills, forcing them to let them be bound by you.

As weapon focus I'd suggest you get either plaststeel boots or knucks and invest in unarmed attacks, since that will let you grapple and subdue

Also: Pepperpunch grenades are cheap and perfectly viable if you have to deal with swarms of critters.

If you have the German Schattenhandbuch 2 have a look at the Mannlicher Marpingern Pro D hunting rifle. Two shotgun barrels and for long reach a 6 shot magazine on a sniper rifle barrel. A perfect hunting weapon.

[Reaver]

IMO: weapons are a matter of style. Pretty much any combo of weapons works...

But you will need/want a weapon foci and astral perception. Without AP, some baddies (like shadow spirits) will be all but impossible to find and deal with, leaving them free to use their influence powers to drive you nuts...

[Marcus]

When I built a monster hunter I did it, as an escaped member of an extremist humanitis church in the CSA, the head of the group used Sim-sense to addict the parishioners and the action arm to a BTLed feeling of Righteousness.  The action arm from which the pc escaped were the purifiers, and the adept members were the hounds of heaven. All using magical swords builds, with augmented sense of smell, and the skill to use it to track. The rest of the group used golden assault rifles with under-barrel flame throwers. It was a pretty good story, we had a couple really good fights with the purifiers over the course of the game.

Keep it simple is my advice, pick your prefer magic weapon, (Unarmed or melee), get skills for hunting, get knowledges for knowing about magic threats, a couple useful contacts, and some spicy qualities for flavor.

[Aethelwulf1972]

Being an Elf would improve your chances with negotiation/animal handling. If you invest into Voice of command you can just take leadership and ignore the other two skills, forcing them to let them be bound by you.

If you have the German Schattenhandbuch 2 have a look at the Mannlicher Marpingern Pro D hunting rifle. Two shotgun barrels and for long reach a 6 shot magazine on a sniper rifle barrel. A perfect hunting weapon.

Actually the plan for metatype is Nocturna for the extra Agi which I am leaving 1 point off max for eventual in game advancement.

and I do not have access to any of the German books

[Aethelwulf1972]

IMO: weapons are a matter of style. Pretty much any combo of weapons works...

But you will need/want a weapon foci and astral perception. Without AP, some baddies (like shadow spirits) will be all but impossible to find and deal with, leaving them free to use their influence powers to drive you nuts...

what about unarmed+killing hands+spiritclaw or something like that paired with astral perception?  as it is my resources will be limited by my attribute, quality, and skill choices and we are using the street level max availability of 10.

[Beta]

I think a key part of the 'job' would be being as resistant as possible to likely critter powers (poisons, gasses, paralyzing howl ....).  So being effecient in the offense, to allow for more resistance (and perception/tracking  to help find them in the first place) seems to make sense to me. 

[Reaver]

Also remember, you are not going to be able to do everything right out of the gate..... there is just too much ground to cover, and not enough resources to spend.

"Monster hunter" is a good concept, but starting out you may have to focus your resources into a more narrow role, then expand as the karma comes in.

Adepts are hard in this regard. They are resource intensive right out of the gate. Over compensating by taking some racial types (while it may sound nifty) can actually cripple your build: some races karma costs just don't pay off for what you can actually spend on their stats.

Meaning: while the 3 armed lemur race sounds great, after you pay its karma cost, and allocate your stats to your liking, you have nothing left over to pay for skills and gear.... was that 60 karma worth it for that 3rd arm coming out of the fore-head of the Lemur?

Add to the fact you need a good. (Not average, not great) strength to be viable against astral enemies means you have to be careful on how you assign your points.

The good news is: adept powers can help fill in some of your weak points, but again, you are dealing with a finite resource that other choices can reduce.

One trick I use when building with Karma is to reverse build the character. Start with skills, then gear, then stats. What I have left over determines what race I can be. Then adjust as needed for the race.

[Aethelwulf1972]

Reaver - what exactly do you mean by cripling a build.  I have always like High Agility type characters for better accuracy and or avoidance.  (and I have no idea why you chose a 3 armed lemur as a metaphor because it results in me almost not understanding what you are trying to express )

[Reaver]

Lemur reference was to not pick on any racial construct in the books. Some people love them all... some don't.

Agility IS by far one of the most important stats.... its just tied to so many stats, not to mention combat.

But there is a huge difference between 'good' agility and 'max' agility. Especially with karma build costs. Having a huge agility pool can be a determent (believe it or not).

If having a huge agility stat comes at the cost of more rounded other stats, you have hurt yourself. Being abke to smack something EVERYTIME is great.... until the target takes NO damage cause you don't have the strength to back up the attack. (Sams don't have this problem cause its a gun that does the damage).

From what I read, you have several stats to worry about.
Agility (natch)
Strength (damaging astral baddies - guns just don't do it)
Charisma (for you Con/social tests to get an entity to leave peacefully)
Body (for physical damage)
Willpower (for resisting mana attacks - the most common attacks of most astral baddies).


Thats a lot of stats to spread a limited amount of points.. is having your agility 'one off max' worth the loss in other stats?

As I mentioned before, some adept abilities can help shore up some low stats, but they have costs as well, or are limited in their application.

There is a balancing act you have to play.... are you limiting your scope, or are you settling for lower then you want pools?


Character creation can hurt sometimes.

[Aethelwulf1972]

so if I am understanding what you are saying, I should consider just going with a standard elf, which saves some karma i still get a decent agility, and need to put fewer points into charisma? (starting to think it would be just easier to tranq things, relocate them and be done with it )

The inspiration for this character is from a series of novels, and is a Shapeshifting Vampire hunter... I am obviously dropping the shapeshifting and using adept in it's place...

Im wondering (due to gear limitations) if I should just consider focusing on paracritters and infected, "learn" to fight spirits "in game".

give the character something to build towards..

so far for qualities I have Guts, Hawkeye, Perfect time, Sensei, and sharpshooter.  Sensei, like the Nocturna choice, made sense when I was building backstory...

adept abilities so far: Improved reflexes 3, combat sense, and thinking about nimble  fingers, rapid healing and killing hands with a few points left to spend.

I think I tend to fall into the trap of wanting abilities that I like in general, and not knowing what abilities would work better for a given concept

[gradivus]

My 2 cents: fighting something like a shadow spirit not only require astral perception but also a ran attack that can be ranged in astral space since their drain power is LOS: meaning you'll need a spell. Therefore instead of a ranged weapon skill, I suggest stunbolt learned with a fetish (You can then cast it at Force 7 for the minimum 2 drain). This will require to learn Spellcasting but you're just swapping Ranged Weapon 6 for Spellcasting 6 so your not losing any more skillpoints.

A Nocturna is no more expensive than an Elf- they're the same from priority E to priority A.

May I suggest Mentor Spirit-Shark: free killing hands and +2 Unarmed Combat
AGI 7 + Skill 6 + Specialization Ninjitsu 2 + Mentor 2 + Improved Ability 3= DP 20
With Spirit Claw and MR ^ thats anothe 3 against materialized spirits.

Martial Arts Style: Ninjitsu, Maneuvers Kick, Flying Kick and Counterstrike
You may or may not be able to afford all the maneuvers at chargen.

And of course plasteel boots as a weapon focus is a must for this type build. Agan you may or may not be able to afford this at chargen.

Lastly a word on softcapping AGI... you say later you'll bring it up to 8..well this is your stat with the highest cap...going up to 8 will cost 40 Karma while going up 1 in any other stat will cost at most 30 for going 5 to 6 except CHA which could go to 7. As an adept your Karma needs to go into initiation so you can learn Masking, Centering and for your concept Exorcism (need Spiritual Way) plus Power points...40 points and change allows you Gain Spiritual Way, Initiate and be partway toward MR 7 which  gives you another PP.

[bdyer]

A vampire mage with the shapeshifter spell could do the shape shifting like you talk about.

There needs to be 2 parts to this build:
Find the monster:
Some combination of investigation, charisma to interrogate people, survival, or detection spells. 
Without this part you could have an outifit that locates issues and you are sent in as pure elimination.  You would have to been connected to this outfit in some way.
This part is really the hard part.

Kill the "monster"

In my opinion, a detection mage also focusing on astral combat fits these roles better. 
Use the detection Magic to locate issues and then project to the site.  If your focused on astral then you should slaughter anything dual natured.  Anything not dual natured, you drop a spirit on and there's not much they can do.

By virtue of where you put your attributes too, you should end up being a decent face.

If you do go adept I second a melee weapon type build ( unarmed or weapon foci) and archery as well.  I would put more pp into being able to find where the "monsters" are tho

[Aethelwulf1972]

bdyer - i think you are misinterpreting what I said about dropping the shapeshifting part.... I DON'T WANT to be any kind of shapeshifter. also Why are you suggesting a Mage when as the title of the topic says, I am looking for advice on options for an Adept.

gradivus - First I am not sure my GM will even throw anything like shadow spirits at us.... Second, I want to avoid the martial arts because I can't find a straight answer on them, and I get the impression that most folks believe that not only would I have to pay the 7 karma for it to be a specialization but another 7 karma to actually learn the art....

also if I were going to go the unarmed combat route it would be with adept powers like killing hands and spiritclaw.  Personally when I think weapon focus I think of something that is an actual weapon, like a knife or a sword...