[Hobbes]

Your contacts have really high connection ratings, given how state politicians are 6~7 and mid-level execs in big Corps are like a 9. On the other hand, you're not a Face, so you don't have to spread them out as much.

I do think Connection 6 for a Street Doc is rather high, and the same applies to an Arms Dealer. If we look at SR5 for comparison, the default Connection of both is 4, so yours are rather high. Maybe it'd make more sense to have them 4/6 instead of 6/4?

Street Doc to the Stars.  Runs a private, cutting edge clinic for an exclusive list of clients.  Of course they can do Deltaware combat Augmentations.  Those celebs need to be able fend off hostile extraction attempts and still do love scenes/cheesecake/beefcake shots. 

Arms Dealer Connection Rating 6... someone somewhere is able to sell black market fighter jets and tanks to "Freedom Fighters".  You know them.  Mind you, asking such a connection to pick you up a new Gas Vent system is a little petty for them, but whattagonnado?  Basically Nicholas Cage's character from Lord of War. 

Connections are all about the story.

But I do recommend "Street Level" connections as well, especially when you've got so many points to spend on Connections. 

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Indeed. You're the Face, you should know someone to help with most foreseeable issues.  Be your team's own Fixer, and save everyone paying finder's fees to a NPC Fixer...

[jacx7]

Wow, thanks! Those examples were even more eye-opening for what I did there.. wich is probably not nescessary.
Will develop some Street level connections but also upper class probably. We'll see what I find to be valuable and give you an update in the next days.

Don't have the time right now for an update but hopefully can deliver after giving some thought into it.

So far it was a really comprehensive critique of you guys! Thank you.

[Ajax]

I’ve always found it helpful to have some of my Contacts know some of my other Contacts. It not only makes them feel like a more organic network of friends and acquaintances, but it also gives the GM something to weave into missions.

Do you have a Bartender contact? Have a Police Detective contact too? Guess where the cop goes to have a cold one after a hard day on the streets looking for stolen mnemonic augmentations....

Do you have a Salaryman mid-level executive contact? Have a Street Doc too? Guess where your Salaryman got those new (“gently used, one careful owner”) mnemonic upgrades to help give him an edge over his rival for that big promotion and guess who rents your Doc his off the books office space in an otherwise mothballed storage facility....

[PatrolDeer]

Be extremely careful about any skilled grapplers and sword fighters out there. They have a threshold of 1 (your current strength) to strip you off your weapon or get you wrapped up in a rear naked choke and break your neck.

Grappling an opponent:
Close Combat + Agility, net hits are added to follow up test, Attackers Strength attribute + net hits vs your Strength attribute, success means your character is restrained and gets -4 dice pool on Defence tests (Magic abilities can be used while being grappled). ALL subsequent attacker are getting an edge against you!

Damaging a restrained opponent is:
Attacker rolls Close Combat + Strength vs your character's Strength + Reaction. Your character also suffers -4 dice pool for being restrained. Attacker does Str/2 ' + net hits in Damage. Even if you have max + 4 bonus on Reaction, you still end up with a 2d6 to defend. Ouch! There is this pure evil tone in my voice as I will force you to re-roll your soak roll 

Here I would like to ask Dev team for clarification, as Break free action does not have specified against what the restrained character rolls, but I assume it's Restrained character's Close Combat + Strength (using Unarmed Attack rating) vs Opponent's Close Combat + Strength (and of course their Defence rating).  So a 7 die chance to get out of the choke. Grim.

Wrest action (2 edge): After successful Block action, Defender rolls Close Combat + Agility vs Attacker's (your character's) Strength attribute as a threshold. If the Defender equals the threshold, the weapon falls to the ground, if the Defender gets more hits, he takes the weapon from the attacker (your character). "Hey that is a fancy sword, I think I will take that from you."

Without a weapon, and magical augmentation, you will deal 1S base damage and you'll have Unarmed attack rating of 2.

Sure, you can increase your own Strength, but if that is the only way to fix the situation, Murphy's law dictates that that option will be denied. Also, if you are sustaining Increase reaction AND Increase strength, you have one free sustain on your teammate. That kinda defeats the 36 karma investment of Focused Concentration in my eyes and since you are a spell caster, geek the mage first applies to you too.

I mean no offence brother. I really like the concept of Mystic Social Adept. It has some good synergies, but going into close combat without strength is almost a suicide.

[Hobbes]

If a dedicated Brawler decides to Pancake the Face, the Face is in trouble.  Str  2 or even 3 isn't going to change that by much.  I wouldn't bother with an Escape check, I'd have a Spirit use a power or blast away with spells (someday) or something. 

[jacx7]

Be extremely careful about any skilled grapplers and sword fighters out there. They have a threshold of 1 (your current strength) to strip you off your weapon or get you wrapped up in a rear naked choke and break your neck.

Grappling an opponent:
Close Combat + Agility, net hits are added to follow up test, Attackers Strength attribute + net hits vs your Strength attribute, success means your character is restrained and gets -4 dice pool on Defence tests (Magic abilities can be used while being grappled). ALL subsequent attacker are getting an edge against you!

Damaging a restrained opponent is:
Attacker rolls Close Combat + Strength vs your character's Strength + Reaction. Your character also suffers -4 dice pool for being restrained. Attacker does Str/2 ' + net hits in Damage. Even if you have max + 4 bonus on Reaction, you still end up with a 2d6 to defend. Ouch! There is this pure evil tone in my voice as I will force you to re-roll your soak roll 

Here I would like to ask Dev team for clarification, as Break free action does not have specified against what the restrained character rolls, but I assume it's Restrained character's Close Combat + Strength (using Unarmed Attack rating) vs Opponent's Close Combat + Strength (and of course their Defence rating).  So a 7 die chance to get out of the choke. Grim.

Wrest action (2 edge): After successful Block action, Defender rolls Close Combat + Agility vs Attacker's (your character's) Strength attribute as a threshold. If the Defender equals the threshold, the weapon falls to the ground, if the Defender gets more hits, he takes the weapon from the attacker (your character). "Hey that is a fancy sword, I think I will take that from you."

Without a weapon, and magical augmentation, you will deal 1S base damage and you'll have Unarmed attack rating of 2.

Sure, you can increase your own Strength, but if that is the only way to fix the situation, Murphy's law dictates that that option will be denied. Also, if you are sustaining Increase reaction AND Increase strength, you have one free sustain on your teammate. That kinda defeats the 36 karma investment of Focused Concentration in my eyes and since you are a spell caster, geek the mage first applies to you too.

I mean no offence brother. I really like the concept of Mystic Social Adept. It has some good synergies, but going into close combat without strength is almost a suicide.

Yeah, the Points in AGI and Close Combat are merely to have anything to Defend if engaged in close combat not really attacking or putting out damage.

Break Free Action to me looks like it is no opposed test which would mean you only have to score 1 net hit out of 7 dice.
If it is an opposed test I would argue that you roll [Close Combat + STR] vs. [STR], since this is the roll required to grapple one in the first place. This is a tough task by itself!
But adding the attackers Close Combat & (!) DR... nowhere in the grappling Rules DR is mentioned so why would it now?
edit: after giving some thought it could aso be [Close Combat + STR] (grappler STR) so 7 dice against a threshhold of 6+ ... wait. this is quite OP

edit to adress other posts:
Best reaction on a skilled grappler engaging would be to talk him out of it .. or run if no other option. Sadly this character won't be able to get spirits to help him, because he can only use on class of magic as a mystic adept (spells in this case) but he could totally use these spells. Realised this was the Aspected Magicians section.


Does the skilled grappler also have a super low attribute? Decrease Attribute - BOOM - sleeping on the floor.

As an Example:
Sioux Wildcat Combat Specialist, Professional Rating 10, Logic = 4
The caster rolls a Sorcery (7) + Magic (6) vs. Willpower (5) + Logic (4) > 13 vs 9

Well in avereage you gain 1 net hit.. so probably should use something else for these enemies...

edit after rereading the following section:

Sure, you can increase your own Strength, but if that is the only way to fix the situation, Murphy's law dictates that that option will be denied. Also, if you are sustaining Increase reaction AND Increase strength, you have one free sustain on your teammate. That kinda defeats the 36 karma investment of Focused Concentration in my eyes and since you are a spell caster, geek the mage first applies to you too.

I put together this table to see what each (!) Increase Attribute (+4) gains any character at an invest of 12 Karma.

Base	-	-	-	-	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
Raise Target	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
cost of "Raise Target" Raise in Karma	5	10	15	20	25	30	35	40	45	50	55	60
Sum of Karma for 4 Level Raise	5	15	30	50	70	90	110	130	150	170	190	210

If a character has an Attribute of 1 she "gains" 70 karma, as long as the spell is sustained.
If a character has an Attribute of 6 she "gains" 170 karma, as long as the spell is sustained.

If a character has 2 Attributes of 5 and 1 Attribute of 6, investing/sustaining 3 Increased Attribute spells on these gains the character a maximum of 470 karma, given that he does not have any other augmentations on these Attributes.

The 3*12 karma is a great invest looking at these numbers.

The only case in which it would be a worse exchange is only getting one net hit (which is almost impossible at 6 essence, because you get 1 auto hit) WHILE raising Base Attribute of 1.

[easl]

In-universe, how on earth did you get 7 ranks in sorcery when you don't even know any spells?  THAT part is illogical

Illogical in a RL sense, but happens all the time in action adventure type stories. Call it the Luke Skywalker build: one day you're a farm kid, the next you're fighting the preeminent (former) jedi in the galaxy to a standstill.  It just take a montage!   "The force is strong with this one" might as well be in-game code for:
"You spent all your points on Magic and Sorcery, and didn't buy any spells?"
"Oh I'll buy those after session 2"

[CigarSmoker]

As an Example:
Sioux Wildcat Combat Specialist, Professional Rating 10, Logic = 4
The caster rolls a Sorcery (7) + Magic (6) vs. Willpower (5) + Logic (4) > 13 vs 9

Well in avereage you gain 1 net hit.. so probably should use something else for these enemies...

PR 10 Mage is really a bad example. He has Magic 10 that means his "Boosted Defense" Major Action lasts 10 Combat Rounds (p.143) so he will probably have that active unless the GM does not know what he is doing (poor NPCs then ^^)
Magic 10 means that the Sioux Wildcat is Initate Rank 4, meaning he has probably Shielding Metamagic further strenghtening the Boosted Defense (not listed tough, would be too complicated for a "Mook") but has not taken Shielding (poor Mook)

Further the Professional Rating 10 means the Sioux Wildcat has 10 Edge Dice to reroll Dice with for example ^^

And last but not least 10 Magic and Conjuring 8 (with a Specialisation an Expertise for Fire Spirits only, poor Mook) means he has 21 Dice for Summoning Fire Spirits. With his 10 Edge probably 2x Force 12 so you might have other problems then.

Better compare with PR 5 Mage ^^

Btw: I think the sample enemies are meant to be changed by the GM to adapt them for different Organisations they work for. So a different PR 10 Mage could have Shielding Metamagic instead of Quickening. Increase Attribute Spell instead of one the many Combat Spells and so on

[jacx7]

As an Example:
Sioux Wildcat Combat Specialist, Professional Rating 10, Logic = 4
The caster rolls a Sorcery (7) + Magic (6) vs. Willpower (5) + Logic (4) > 13 vs 9

Well in avereage you gain 1 net hit.. so probably should use something else for these enemies...

PR 10 Mage is really a bad example. He has Magic 10 that means his "Boosted Defense" Major Action lasts 10 Combat Rounds (p.143) so he will probably have that active unless the GM does not know what he is doing (poor NPCs then ^^)
Magic 10 means that the Sioux Wildcat is Initate Rank 4, meaning he has probably Shielding Metamagic further strenghtening the Boosted Defense (not listed tough, would be too complicated for a "Mook") but has not taken Shielding (poor Mook)

Further the Professional Rating 10 means the Sioux Wildcat has 10 Edge Dice to reroll Dice with for example ^^

And last but not least 10 Magic and Conjuring 8 (with a Specialisation an Expertise for Fire Spirits only, poor Mook) means he has 21 Dice for Summoning Fire Spirits. With his 10 Edge probably 2x Force 12 so you might have other problems then.

Better compare with PR 5 Mage ^^

Btw: I think the sample enemies are meant to be changed by the GM to adapt them for different Organisations they work for. So a different PR 10 Mage could have Shielding Metamagic instead of Quickening. Increase Attribute Spell instead of one the many Combat Spells and so on

yeah, you can't compete with the Shamanic Support. Thats true indeed. This is entirely different though as she would probably not try to grapple the Adept .. which she totally could do with her Close Combat 7 + STR 4 


Looking at the rating 5 Mage as you suggested, (Lone Star Combat Mage, WIL4, STR2) means 13 vs 6 dice with avg 2 net hits.

But of course first you would have to find out which attribute actually is the lowest of your target.
Can you do this with assensing?

[CigarSmoker]

yeah, you can't compete with the Shamanic Support. Thats true indeed. This is entirely different though as she would probably not try to grapple the Adept .. which she totally could do with her Close Combat 7 + STR 4 


Looking at the rating 5 Mage as you suggested, (Lone Star Combat Mage, WIL4, STR2) means 13 vs 6 dice with avg 2 net hits.

But of course first you would have to find out which attribute actually is the lowest of your target.
Can you do this with assensing?

There is a table in the book what you can see with assening - i would say seeing which Physical Attribute is the lowest would be the Major Action "Observe in Detail" and then Perception + Logic (seeing patterns).
But you could always make an educated guess

[PatrolDeer]

Yeah, the Points in AGI and Close Combat are merely to have anything to Defend if engaged in close combat not really attacking or putting out damage.

Break Free Action to me looks like it is no opposed test which would mean you only have to score 1 net hit out of 7 dice.
If it is an opposed test I would argue that you roll [Close Combat + STR] vs. [STR], since this is the roll required to grapple one in the first place. This is a tough task by itself!
But adding the attackers Close Combat & (!) DR... nowhere in the grappling Rules DR is mentioned so why would it now?
edit: after giving some thought it could aso be [Close Combat + STR] (grappler STR) so 7 dice against a threshhold of 6+ ... wait. this is quite OP
Best reaction on a skilled grappler engaging would be to talk him out of it .. or run if no other option.

Does the skilled grappler also have a super low attribute? Decrease Attribute - BOOM - sleeping on the floor.

The 3*12 karma is a great invest looking at these numbers.

Yeah I understand that every build has a counter to it and I did not want my contribution to sound like I despise your build. I don't, as I said Mystic Social Adept has some good synergies there, and I was thinking about making one myself.
That being said, I didn't know that you wouldn't use you character to attack, but rather to defend. Even though, grapplers and streetfighters are super dangerous threat.

On the other hand, I guess you will have no problem with a touch attack (decrease attribute) if you are in a grapple  that is clever !

I know that increase attribute is a solid tactic and possess a lot of benefits ( same as decrease) my point was that if you want to contribute to the fight you will have to buff yourself first in order to have some safety, which takes away the utility you provide for the team.

For example by using athletics, you could throw knives, shurikens(with high agility, you can palm them in your other hand and use multiple attacks action), grenades (needs strength), shoot bows (needs strength) and crossbows (no strength,injection bolts are a thing, later some enchanted bolts for delivering long range decrease attribute can come in handy) in addition to running, swimming, climbing (they also need strength) or escaping.

I feel that it is somewhat higher overall utility than close combat, especially if you have a specific build oriented towards boosting attributes. But it is a highly subjective topic and depends on context of your character and the environment.

[jacx7]

Yeah, the Points in AGI and Close Combat are merely to have anything to Defend if engaged in close combat not really attacking or putting out damage.

Break Free Action to me looks like it is no opposed test which would mean you only have to score 1 net hit out of 7 dice.
If it is an opposed test I would argue that you roll [Close Combat + STR] vs. [STR], since this is the roll required to grapple one in the first place. This is a tough task by itself!
But adding the attackers Close Combat & (!) DR... nowhere in the grappling Rules DR is mentioned so why would it now?
edit: after giving some thought it could aso be [Close Combat + STR] (grappler STR) so 7 dice against a threshhold of 6+ ... wait. this is quite OP
Best reaction on a skilled grappler engaging would be to talk him out of it .. or run if no other option.

Does the skilled grappler also have a super low attribute? Decrease Attribute - BOOM - sleeping on the floor.

The 3*12 karma is a great invest looking at these numbers.

Yeah I understand that every build has a counter to it and I did not want my contribution to sound like I despise your build. I don't, as I said Mystic Social Adept has some good synergies there, and I was thinking about making one myself.
That being said, I didn't know that you wouldn't use you character to attack, but rather to defend. Even though, grapplers and streetfighters are super dangerous threat.

On the other hand, I guess you will have no problem with a touch attack (decrease attribute) if you are in a grapple  that is clever !

I know that increase attribute is a solid tactic and possess a lot of benefits ( same as decrease) my point was that if you want to contribute to the fight you will have to buff yourself first in order to have some safety, which takes away the utility you provide for the team.

For example by using athletics, you could throw knives, shurikens(with high agility, you can palm them in your other hand and use multiple attacks action), grenades (needs strength), shoot bows (needs strength) and crossbows (no strength,injection bolts are a thing, later some enchanted bolts for delivering long range decrease attribute can come in handy) in addition to running, swimming, climbing (they also need strength) or escaping.

I feel that it is somewhat higher overall utility than close combat, especially if you have a specific build oriented towards boosting attributes. But it is a highly subjective topic and depends on context of your character and the environment.

No offence taken. It's just a really bad habit of me to instantly defend my opinions before reconsidering someone elses ideas..

[PatrolDeer]

No offence taken. It's just a really bad habit of me to instantly defend my opinions before reconsidering someone elses ideas..

I tend to be pretty straight forward too. We all have bad habits I guess