[Gaunlet]

We are talking about a non-sense, super munchkin, min-max battle mage riiiiight?

so, here it goes:
- Race: pixie (SR Run Faster)
- Most/all karma goes to bounding foci (at least a +4 to reaction and +4 to intuition,  will too, if possible)
- Get Debt (-15) disvantage to get money for stuff
- Cast increased reflex (6) every morning and maintain it all day (-2 to all tests is ok if you get +16 to iniciative back)

You can get up to a whopping 22 in your modified reflex+ intuition! With your -2 penalty and incresed reflex, its 20 dices for defence and 26+4d for iniciative (you gona get iniciative 41+   40% of the time!!!!) If you cross a boss with a full auto big gun, just go full def for extra 10 dices on def...

The golden rule of a fight ("geek the mage first") will actually help your team, since you are almost impossible to hit.

If you go shaman, you can also do some face work with your high charism.

[cbsmith]

So, I can out munchkin Gauntlet without going all Pixie.

Race: Wakyambi
Priorities (Sum to 10): Attributes A, Meta C, Mystic Adept [Buddhism] C, Resources C, Skills E
Attributes: Body 5, Agility 6[9], Reaction 5, Strength 2, Willpower 5, Logic 2, Intuition 7[8], Charisma 2, Edge 2, Magic 6.
Qualities: Agile Defender, Mentor Spirit [Bear, Magician Powers], Prototype Transhuman [Wanted], Dependent 2, In Debt 15, Thrill Seeker
Augmentations: Cerebellum Booster 1, Muscle Toner 3
Active Skills: Monofilament Whip 6, Spellcast 6 (+2 Health), Summoning 4 (+2 Spirit of Man)
Adept Powers: Adrenaline Boost 6, Body Boost 1, Reaction Boost 1, Combat Sense 4
Spells: Acid Aura, Combat Sense, Increase Intuition, Increase Willpower, Increase Reflexes
Weapons: Monofilament Whip (Reach is 3 thanks to elongated limbs)
Armor: Sleeping Tiger

You summon a Spirit of Man to offload some of the sustain you might want. Body boost to body help you soak up Adrenaline Boost drain. If your are lucky and your Reaction Boost gets you +3 Reaction, your base melee defense is 20, before you get spells on you. A Combat Sense spell will get you another +4 defense, and Increase Intuition will easily get you another +3 to Intuition & defense (and that also means a +3 to initiative), though might not always be worth the sustain penalty. With Adrenaline Boost firing off, & Thrill Seeker kicking in, you've got a base initiative of 26 + 1d6, but you can cast Increase Reflexes every day as described by Gauntlet to get another +6+3d6 pretty easily. With that, you 46 for your initiative (not counting the effects of Increase Intuition)... which means 5 action phases per combat turn. Sacrificing one of those actions for Agile Defence to get another +9 to all your defense tests is a straight up good deal. So your max defense looks something like 32 (factoring in -4 from sustains), not including reach modifiers. Acid Aura gives your whip an extra +4 DP, and means people start losing armour when they attack you too. Arguably, you could go more tanky and get Resist Pain instead of Acid Aura.

All in all... don't make that guy angry at melee range.

[Gaunlet]

Very good cbsmith, this is a strong and original building.

But I´m not sure you have out munchkined my pixie, your def and iniciative are only slightly better than mine, and you are taking a big  drain every round and spending time casting/boosting yourself in the first round. And you wrote magic 6, but with your aumentations it would drop it to 5, wich would make unwise to cast a 6F spell (increased reflex) everyday.

Plus, the build I suggested is not the complete char, it can do things, like summoning a 6F angry air elemental and have it follow/protect her during the run, for example. Also, with 10 spells she can be very flexible (and very good at something with specialization, mentor spirit, power and spellcasting focis) and because its attributes are so high, she isn´t a one trick poney, she can be good at some perception and charism based skills.

But I adimit that if adrenaline boost and incresed reflexes really stack, its worth thinking about losing astral projection and pay 5 karma to be a mystic adept with adrenaline 4.

 

[Glyph]

He has the prototye transhuman quality, so he has a free Essence point's worth of augmentations that don't affect Essence or Magic.

Pixies make good mystic adepts, because they have astral perception as a critter power, so you don't need to spend any power points on it.  But it is better to go with Point Build if you make them as mystic adepts, because between 15 karma to be a pixie and 30 Karma for 6 power points, you barely have enough for a good mentor spirit.  The Point Build version will be "worth" less overall, but since the Karma is in one big pool, you can get power points and positive qualities and bound foci.

[Reaver]

I originally missed transhuman quality too and was going to ask how he has ware and a 6 magic. 

Too many qualities, hard to keep them all straight some times

[cbsmith]

Drain shouldn't be too bad. The attribute boosts are only 1 drain, so you're basically guaranteed to not take anything. The big one would be Adrenaline Boost, which is 6 drain. With a conservative +2 boost to your body, that is going to be 12 soak dice right there, but with increased willpower getting you an easy +4 to willpower, now we're talking 16 soak dice. That means on average you lose 0.6 stun per combat turn from drain.

That said, I'm still not sure I got something that is really better than your crazy munchkin'd Pixie. ;-)

[cbsmith]

I did some thinking on how to munchkin better with some help from nacro. Since it isn't covered by Prototype Transhuman (how weird is that eh? I'd have figured that ability would at *least* cover genetic modifications ahead of bioware... ;-), just take the magic penalty and work from there. Geneware is pricey, but it can be really helpful for this stuff. What I came up with was:

Race: Wakyambi
Priorities (Sum to 10): Attributes B, Resources B, Metatype C, Mystic Adept C, Skills E
Attributes: Body 5, Agility 3, Reaction 5, Strength 2, Willpower 6, Logic 2, Intuition 7[8], Charisma 1
Qualities: Drug Tolerant, Mentor Spirit [Bear] (Magician Powers), Astral Beacon, In Debt 15, Thrill Seeker (Daredrenaline)
Augmentations: Cerebellum Booster 1 (Alphaware), Nephritic Screen 1 (Alphaware), Daredrenaline, Narco, Reakt, Sync
Skills: Same as before
Adept Powers: Adrenaline Boost 5, Agility Boost 1, Body Boost 1, Reaction Boost 1, Combat Sense 5, Improved Ability Monofilament Whip 1
Spells: Same
Weapons: Same
Armor: Sleeping Tiger + Synergist Longcoat w/Elongated Limbs (I think I had that for the other one too)

I'm not sure if it is really better.

This guy trades off weak base agility and weaker magic for being able to charge himself up with drugs & attribute boost more. Ideally you'd bump up the nephritic screen some more to really get up there on resistance, but losing another point of essence just for that seemed hardly worth it, and I didn't want to give up on Reakt's defense bonus. Daredrenaline + having Increased Willpower available helps compensate for lack of nephritic screen.

The cool thing is how Narco gives you the flexibility to mix in your spell & adept power boosts with some crazy drug boosts as well. You can take crazy stuff like Cram & Kamikaze because of the -2 to stun damage (still hurts). Kamikaze alone puts you at 14 soak dice for adept drain and your initiative dice are high enough that there is likely little need to sustain an increased reflexes spell. Add in Body Boost and you are basically guaranteed +4 drain dice.  Psyche + Jazz + Reaction Boost get you +6 on your defense tests and some pretty good initiative.

[Gaunlet]

Lol!!!

You managed to mix magic, adept powers, implants and drugs in the same char!
You crazy, chummer...

[FST_Gemstar]

That In-Debt 15 is definitely not worth it. That's going to kill you faster than anything else. Owing over 100k, +10k/mo in interest, and taking 5 physical damage when you miss payment, and needing to save 30 karma to buy off the quality eventually. The character doesn't benefit enough to succeed in the jobs to get the needed paydays.

[dposluns]

CHA-mage. Too Pretty to Hit. Boom.

Or just the mere fact that your mage probably has a high or even maxed-out Willpower stat to combat drain already makes going Full Defense very effective. So if you're boosting your initiative with Increase Reflexes (or something similar) you can always spend some of that extra initiative to keep from getting hit. It's nice to have a melee defense option trained up as well (Gymnastics, Unarmed Combat or a melee weapon), so you can always toss that in for melee defense for an extra -5 to your initiative.

I think when we talk about initiative we mostly talk about getting extra initiative passes, but Full Defense to keep from getting hit is an awesome use of extra initiative; those extra initiative passes won't do you any good if you're bleeding out, after all.

[cbsmith]

CHA-mage. Too Pretty to Hit. Boom.

I think when we talk about initiative we mostly talk about getting extra initiative passes, but Full Defense to keep from getting hit is an awesome use of extra initiative; those extra initiative passes won't do you any good if you're bleeding out, after all.

Absolutely. Too Pretty to Hit & Agile Defender are all about Full Defense. I tend to look at Adrenaline Boost 5 as, "cheap defense booster that cost you 5 drain". ;-) For mages in particular, one extra attack phase tends to be worth a lot less than getting ~6-10 extra defense dice for all physical attacks.

I built a Dwarven heal mage where it was particularly good, because with 7 willpower I didn't need to spend any karma on Agile Defender or Too Pretty to Hit; I'd get +7 defense dice, sometimes as much as +11 if I had an increased willpower spell going on (spending a bunch of karma on Focused Concentration made that work better). Tough little guy to kill.