[LeVentNoir]

Upon realising how horrendously vulnerable Dual Natured characters are to astral attacks, I've realised that my character ShagGoth is simply unable to survive.

The basics of why are a MAG 1 score, being a rigger, and having agility 2.

Here's the character sheet

I welcome any advice on making this character more effective as either a rigger or more effective at resisting attacks from the astral.

[ZeldaBravo]

It's not that bad really. As long as you're behid a solid barrier (like inside your car) you're invisible to astral on the other side. Unless CGL errata'd astral perception when I wasn't looking...
The one glaring flaw I see is the lack of Electronic Warfare skill, it is vital for a rigger, and you can also use it instead of Perception as long as you have sensors somewhere on you or your vehicle.

[adzling]

obviously we disagree on how limiting dual-natured is and it seems you were a bit confused on the rules for same but nonetheless:

This is going to sound daft (and it is, but hear me out), get a one person pop-up tent.

Ok it's daft but really if your that scared of getting caught in the open by a flying astral opponent a tent with the bottom cut out would pretty much solve your problem.
Pop the tent, jump in and walk around like normal and laugh at the flying spirit that can't target you.

It's pretty silly but if you're that worried about being targeted by astral flyers with ranged attacks this solves that quite easily.....

Although you should really get some unarmed skill so you can get to grips with that astral nasty if they close with you.

Another option would be a paint grenades loaded with the stuff that blocks astral vision, i forget the specific stuff but it's an option.

Running into a ward without pre-knowledge will almost never happen, except perhaps riding in an elevator in a corporate facility so the risk for that is also very small.

These are all, pretty much, situational risks that can be ameliorated by running/ hiding/ taking cover etc.

BTW I find a Sasquatch with uneducated a particularly strange and debilitating choice for a rigger.

[Kuirem]

Would something as thin as a tent really be enough to block astral? In that case covering yourself in clothes and putting on a helmet/hood/cowl should be enough right? Which means it could be used by mage to assense discreetly, only your face would expose you but anything behind/above you won't notice that you are a mage.

By the way is their a book about how much material block Astral vision? Like could you see through a window or a sheet of paper?

[adzling]

clothes and other items you wear or carry become part of your aura.
So clothes et al would not.

The rather silly "tent" idea would work, in theory, provided it has a significant offset from the person (which a tent typically does).

Anything material (drapery, leaves, bush, sheet of paper, window) will block astral vision.

[Jack_Spade]

Honestly, with that build, attacks from the astral are the least of your problems. Your Willpower is to low for someone who will have to deal with a lot of dumpshock. Having no Electronic Warfare is just no option now with Rigger 5 out.

Is there a special reason why this concept needs to be a Sasquatch?

[RowanTheFox]

clothes and other items you wear or carry become part of your aura.
So clothes et al would not.

The rather silly "tent" idea would work, in theory, provided it has a significant offset from the person (which a tent typically does).

Anything material (drapery, leaves, bush, sheet of paper, window) will block astral vision.

Hey, if it sounds stupid, but it works...it ain't stupid. 

[adzling]

"what's that 3 person dome tent doing running down the block?"

"that's our rigger, he's a sasquatch and is trying to avoid getting ganked by that spirit flying around the astral"

to me that's a pretty darned silly situation, regardless of the effectiveness of the tent ;-)

[RowanTheFox]

"what's that 3 person dome tent doing running down the block?"

"that's our rigger, he's a sasquatch and is trying to avoid getting ganked by that spirit flying around the astral"

to me that's a pretty darned silly situation, regardless of the effectiveness of the tent ;-)

Pfft, that's just another Tuesday in Seattle.

[Reaver]

Question (because I can't determine it looking at your sheet):

Did you buy back your magic to 1 with ability points or Karma?

Because each hit to your essence from cyberware reduces your magic rating... in your case, the first piece of ware your got would drop your magic to 0 from 1.



page 278 CRB

Magic
Magic is a special Attribute that measures a character’s
magical power. Characters do not have a Magic Attribute
unless they select one of the priorities that specifically
provide one (see the Priority Table, p. 65). Magic
has a starting value from 1 to 6 (or 7 with the Exceptional
Attribute quality), but you don’t have to settle for
that limit forever. You can go through a process called
Initiation (p. 324) that can enhance your abilities. The
maximum value of your Magic Attribute (if you have
one) is 6 + your Initiation level.
Anything that reduces your Essence also reduces
your Magic rating. For every point (or fraction thereof)
of Essence lost, both your current Magic Attribute and
your maximum Magic Rating are reduced by one. If your
Magic is reduced to zero, you can no longer use any skill
requiring the Magic attribute, even if your maximum
Rating is still greater than zero (but you can still raise the
attribute with Karma and then get back to the spellslinging).
If your maximum rating falls to zero, you’ve burned
out, losing all magical abilities, including astral perception
and projection. You are mundane forever. Burnedout
magicians retain all magical skills and knowledge,
but they lack the ability to use them. All Magical active
skills except for Arcana become Knowledge skills.

additionally, you have a lot of technical skills, which the uneducated quality makes VERY expensive for you.. (did you remember to pay double the skill costs for your technical skills, PER rank?)


CRB page 87

Uneducated
Bonus: 8 Karma
An Uneducated character is not mentally impaired—she
just never had the opportunity to learn. Whether because
she and her family were isolated squatters, or were SINless,
or otherwise underprivileged, she was denied access
to the education system. She has only a rudimentary
knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Characters with the Uneducated quality are considered
“unaware” in Technical, Academic Knowledge,
and Professional Knowledge skills they do not possess
(see Skill Ratings, p. 129), and they may not default on
skill tests for those skills. The gamemaster may also require
the character to make Success Tests for ordinary
tasks that the typical sprawl-dweller takes for granted.
Additionally, the Karma cost for learning new skills or
improving existing ones in these categories is twice
the normal rating (including at character creation), and
it’s possible the character will never learn some skill
groups belonging to these categories.

[LeVentNoir]

The tent idea does absolutely zero to prevent a spirit walking into melee range, scragging me, then walking away. It does nothing to prevent it walking into melee range, scragging me, and standing there, knowing I'm unable to win a straight up fight. Where do you suggest I find the 5+ skill ranks I need to stand a chance vs a weak spirit?

I see no pressing needed for electronic warfare. I'm not at all convinced of its utility. The GM has said that the perception skill may be used through sensors.

I don't plan on taking dumpshock as this is an AR rigger, and the GM has said I can use Log in AR.

ShagGoth is a Sasquatch because it's cool.

Magic was bought with Karma.

Technical skills have doubled karma cost in gen, but not double knowledge skill point cost. In fact, they have a half knowledge skill point cost because of technical school education.

[Jack_Spade]

Yeah about that: Neither do you have any good defenses against some mundane coming near you and fragging you. Your Int is a mess and your ability to shoot someone with a gun even more. The spirit has to find your aura before he can attack and it can't do that through a wall (be it tent or car).

Electronic Warfare is used for sensor locks which drastically improves the to hit chance for your slaved drones. It's also useful to break sensor locks. Look up the other actions in Rigger 5 for EW.

If you rely on AR, you are not a very good Rigger. You are usually limited to two actions per round, one of which you need to use to control your vehicle.

Them's the breaks with the special snowflakes - It's why there are generaly only very few pixie grappler builds...

[Kiirnodel]

First up, I wanted to chime in on the topic of the Dual-natured. As a Rigger, you could play up the concept of being the dedicated driver and spend a majority of your time in your Rigger-van. The vehicle would block line of sight on the Astral and if you're still attracting astral attention, you probably have bigger problems. I'm not going to go further into that topic than that, I would like to make a big write up with all of the intricacies of what it means to be dual-natured, but this isn't the place, and I haven't put in that time yet.

Someone also mentioned buying your Magic back up, if the dual-natured really feels like a problem for you, then don't. If your Magic attribute hits 0 (and you don't buy it back up) you lose access to all of your Magic-related critter powers. Which for a Sasquatch is Mimicry and Dual-Natured. So you would lose part of your ability to communicate, but it would also eliminate your problem with being dual-natured.

The bigger issue I wanted to bring up was about the Uneducated.

LeVentNoir, your last comment about the Technical skills has me a little confused (based on your wording), but from what I can tell, I think you might have overlooked a bit of the impact the qualities have.

Uneducated doubles the cost of all Technical Active skills (pretty much all of the skills listed on pages 143 - 145), which includes all of the mechanic skills, Hardware, computers, etc. So it probably will affect a fair number of the skills a Rigger cares about (not the direct Pilot ones, but a lot of the supplementary ones.
Uneducated also doubles the cost of all Professional and Academic knowledge skills.

Technical School Education only affects Professional knowledge skills (and even then, only changes the karma costs post-chargen). It also only reduces the cost by 1 for each rank, so normally raising a knowledge skill to rank 4 would cost 4 karma, and Technical School Education bumps that back down to only 3 karma.

So having both, Professional knowledge skills would cost double then back down by 1. So rank 4 would cost 7 instead of 8. If your GM is nice they might let it go the other way (6, but you're still paying 2 more than someone with neither quality).

Now, there is a solution to all of that. It mentions it specifically in the text for Shifters, but Run Faster does talk about being allowed to buy off the Uneducated quality during chargen. I'm guessing you've already worked out with your GM why it would be feasible for a Sasquatch to be a Rigger in the first place, so you probably qualify for the "has a good reason" to be able to buy it off. During chargen you would only pay the karma cost (rather than double) so it would only cost 8 karma to buy it off and just not have to worry about it at all. Probably cheaper in the long run.

[ZeldaBravo]

The tent idea does absolutely zero to prevent a spirit walking into melee range, scragging me, then walking away. It does nothing to prevent it walking into melee range, scragging me, and standing there, knowing I'm unable to win a straight up fight. Where do you suggest I find the 5+ skill ranks I need to stand a chance vs a weak spirit?

Usually, spirits don't casually walk around Seattle Downtown just to kick some hidden sasquatch butt they randomly stumble upon. If you're fighting a conjurer then your main problem is that conjurer, not his spirits. Let your team handle the spirits if you are so afraid of them though.

I see no pressing needed for electronic warfare. I'm not at all convinced of its utility.

Do you like your drones jammed away from your control? Do you want the opponents to coordinate their actions freely? Do you like it when your team cannot use wireless bonuses? If the answer is 'yes' then go ahead and skip EW. These examples are just from the top of my head, there's probably more stuff EW covers.

ShagGoth is a Sasquatch because it's cool.

Yes it is.

Technical skills have doubled karma cost in gen, but not double knowledge skill point cost. In fact, they have a half knowledge skill point cost because of technical school education.

Which is stupid. I mean... you have education but... you're uneducated. That doesn't make sense. Talk to your GM about it. I know it is "free karma" to handwave Uneducated quality away but IMO it is retarded to have both TechSchool Education and Uneducated.

[Reaver]

Hey kiirnodel,

Are you SURE about the 0 magic rating and its effects on the dual-natured?


I am not sure where I read it (and could be remembering old editions too), but if a dual-natured critter ever gets a 0 magic rating, they die. Horribly.

As I recall, this was because the 'magic' part of their DNA requires it, and without it they die.

Now, I freely admit I am mostly remembering from Bug City and the collapse of the ghoul population from FAB3 eating their MR..... just can't remember where (or IF) I read that for 5e as well.... (I think under vamps and ghouls?)