[Illume]

Put simply, he's built to blast. He's mostly going to be fire support, hanging out in the back behind the meatshields rest of the team. We have another mage in the group that can cover the astral side of things and spirits so don't really need to concern myself with that, though I do plan on picking up the conjuring skill group at some point and maybe astral perception through the adept power.

Name:
Alias:
Race: Dwarf
Sex:
Nationality:
Lifestyle:
Karma Spent:
Physical Description:
Personality/background

Attributes

Body	Agility	Reaction	Strength
4	2	3	3
Charisma	Intuition	Logic	Willpower
2	5	5( 8 )	6
Edge	Magic/Resonance	Essence	Initiative
2	5(4)	5.3	8

Positive Qualities
Mystic Adept(Hermetic)
Mentor Spirit(Shark)
Restricted Gear(Rating 2)
Negative Qualities
Allergy(Common, Mild)(Latex)
Distinctive Style(Rating 1)
Flashbacks(Uncommon)
Poor Self Control(Combat-Monster)
Sensitive Neural System
Knowledge Skills ( [Logic + Intuition] x 3 free points)

Security Tactics	3
Magical Theory	4
Security Companies	3

Active Skills

Summoning	2
Binding	2
Counterspelling	2
First Aid	4
Perception	1
Spellcasting	6

Language Skills

English	N
Turkey	5
Latin	4
Arabic	4
Japanese	2

Cyber/Bioware

Cyberware	Essence	Cost	Notes
Cerebral Booster(Rating 3)	.6	30,000¥
Enhanced Protein Exchange: Daredrenaline	.1	25,000¥	Spells Acid Stream Stunball Stunbolt Shockwave Increase Reflexes Trid Phantasm Improved Invisibility Levitate Physical Barrier Ice Cloud(Limited) Clairvoyance Physical Mask Gear Low Lifestyle(1 month) Leather Jacket Form-Fitting Full-Body Suit Clothing Power Focus(Rating 4) Sustaining Focus(Rating 3)(Health) Combat Fetish Manipulation Fetish 5 Fake Licenses(Foci/Fetishes)(Rating 4) Fake Sin(Rating 4) 4 Datachips 12 Light Sticks 2 Flashlights Backpack AR gloves Magical Lodge Materials(Rating 4) 4 Stim Patches 4 Tranq Patches 4 Trauma Patches Medkit(Rating 6) Autopicker(Rating 6) Miniwelder Wire Clippers Docwagon Contract: Basic Earbuds(Rating 3) -Audion Ench(Rating 3) -Spatial Recognizer Contact Lenses(Rating 3) -Image Link -Flare Compensation -Low-Light vision Monocle(Rating 4) -Vision Ench(Rating 3) -Vision Magnification 3 Credsticks Glue Sprayer Contacts Contact C/L Riveln 2/2 Morris 3/4 Build Point totals:  XXXXX = 25(Metatype)+170(Primary Attributes)+50(Magic/Edge)+25(Postive Qualities)-35(Negative Qualities)+11(Contacts)+41(Nuyen)+68(Skills)+36(Spells)+7(Foci) Anything you guys see that is glaringly wrong or redundant?

[UmaroVI]

You seem to have bought Mystic Adept, but not have any Adept powers. How many power points did you take/what are they? Mystic adept is pretty incompatible with a focus on blasting.

You have no mentor spirit which is foolish if you primarily care about blasting - pick up any of the various +2 combat/ +2 something else people.

You have 3 body, flashy explosions, and a pain editor that stops you from being KO'd and forces people to kill you in order to stop you. I see potential for dying early.

Pain Editor and Cerebral Boosters 3 are both availability > 12, but you only have 1 restricted gear; IMO, neither are worth it.

If you want to play an Aspected Magician for flavor reasons, go for it, but be aware that it is a pretty severe power hit; you would benefit a lot from, say, Summoning 1 with a specialization and a mentor spirit that adds +2 combat / +2 to that spirit type. Spirit summoning is much more drain-limited than Summoning dice pool-limited.

You have a wide variety of redundant ways to kill people. Manabolt is just a worse version of stunbolt for 99% of purposes. Lightning Grenade is quite iffy, and you appear to be blowing a sustaining focus to be able to walk around with a glowing ball of "PLEASE SHOOT ME" in case you need to throw it. Stunbolt, Stunball, [pick a single target P-damage elemental spell], [Pick an AE P-damage elemental spell] is plenty ways of killing people.

[Shinobi Killfist]

I appreciate the awesome of how many drain dice you will be rolling, but that has to be the shortest active skill list I have seen in a long time.  And while you technically don't have to take any physical adept powers as a mystic adept many GMs are not happy when a player ditches them in the initial build. 

[Tsuzua]

I appreciate the awesome of how many drain dice you will be rolling, but that has to be the shortest active skill list I have seen in a long time.  And while you technically don't have to take any physical adept powers as a mystic adept many GMs are not happy when a player ditches them in the initial build.

Overall it's 16 ranks in skills which is on the low end.  I do think the skills need to get reworked.  I'll keep spellcasting 6.  Most of the others need their values change.  Typically at creation you want a skill at 0,1,4.  There are exceptions if you really need to make a certain die pool size (buying hits downtime usually). 

I'll drop pistols since you shoot mind bullets and with an agility of 2, you aren't going to be too impressive shooting.  Raising counterspelling to 4 is a good idea.  I'll increase perception to 4 or drop it to 1 for breakpoint reasons.  I'll remove dodge.  You'll be blasting, not dodging.  You really should increase your body to soak the damage that'll be coming your way.  I would look into logic based skills since you're got a good logic.  First Aid is really nice if you allow the max healed boxes is the higher of your first aid skill or medkit rating.  Healing drain is quite nice. 

You are paying a lot for a drain pool of 20.  That's enough to soak almost 7 boxes of drain so unless you're casting high force fireballs or something, that's way more than you need.  Later on, you'll get centering and then you'll have a great soak pool either way.  I'll drop the non-health foci too.  The grenade spells are meh and just suck the -2 sustaining penalty for manipulation.  Then drop the pain editor or dareadrenline and get a force 4 power focus (with restricted gear).  I'll also drop heighten concentration to save points as well.  That'll give you a drain pool of 16-17 which is still quite amazing.

[Illume]

I appreciate the awesome of how many drain dice you will be rolling, but that has to be the shortest active skill list I have seen in a long time.  And while you technically don't have to take any physical adept powers as a mystic adept many GMs are not happy when a player ditches them in the initial build.

My GM said he was cool with me picking up Mystic adept at chargen without any adept powers, as long as I do plan on picking up some at some point. Only ones I really want are Mind Over Matter(Logc->Agility) and then maybe Astral Perception.

Overall it's 16 ranks in skills which is on the low end.  I do think the skills need to get reworked.  I'll keep spellcasting 6.  Most of the others need their values change.  Typically at creation you want a skill at 0,1,4.  There are exceptions if you really need to make a certain die pool size (buying hits downtime usually).

I'll drop pistols since you shoot mind bullets and with an agility of 2, you aren't going to be too impressive shooting.  Raising counterspelling to 4 is a good idea.  I'll increase perception to 4 or drop it to 1 for breakpoint reasons.  I'll remove dodge.  You'll be blasting, not dodging.  You really should increase your body to soak the damage that'll be coming your way.  I would look into logic based skills since you're got a good logic.  First Aid is really nice if you allow the max healed boxes is the higher of your first aid skill or medkit rating.  Healing drain is quite nice.

You are paying a lot for a drain pool of 20.  That's enough to soak almost 7 boxes of drain so unless you're casting high force fireballs or something, that's way more than you need.  Later on, you'll get centering and then you'll have a great soak pool either way.  I'll drop the non-health foci too.  The grenade spells are meh and just suck the -2 sustaining penalty for manipulation.  Then drop the pain editor or dareadrenline and get a force 4 power focus (with restricted gear).  I'll also drop heighten concentration to save points as well.  That'll give you a drain pool of 16-17 which is still quite amazing.

I dropped pistols completely, dropped perception to 1, and picked up First Aid at 4. And is banishing worth it to pick up the conjuring skill group at 2, or should I just buy summoning and binding separately and put those extra 4 points elsewhere? I also dropped Focused Concentration to pick up restricted gear(Rating 2) and dropped the pain editor and grabbed a power focus 4, and increased Body up to 4. Should I raise it a bit more, or is that good?

[UmaroVI]

Banishing is a trap - not only is it not worth the points, but if you got it for free it would still be primarily the ability to do nothing and occasionally make your face peel off.

[Illume]

Kay then, I bought up Summoning and Binding seperately up to 2, and freed up a couple of cash so I could drop my resource BP down 1 and grabbed a mentor spirit and grabbed a spec for my spellcasting(Combat Spells) since I had 2bp left over from dropping the manip sustaining focus.

[UmaroVI]

Looks a lot better to me. I don't think you have any major problems at this point so my further recommendations are smallish minmaxing tweaks or nitpicks, except for the armor.

Your armor is a bit off. You probably want to wear a combination of FFBA, PPP, and one other thing that gets you up to 8/8 for encumbrance purposes. A simple way to do this is FFBA (3/1 for encumbrance), PPP shin guards, PPP forearm guards, Vashon Island Steampunk Line overcoat and vest. There's various other ways depending on your personal style preferences.

I don't think Ice Cloud is all that great - if you can suppressive fire them, you should most often just kill them. It's not useless, but I would much, much rather have Heal.

Water is, IMO, not a particularly good spirit type. Man is probably the best all-around spirit type to focus on. I would consider going with Dark Goddess, dropping your summoning and binding to 1, raising your counterspelling to 4, and specializing your summoning and binding in Man. If you don't like Dark Goddess because you didn't pick up heal and thus don't have much Health magic worth raising, Sun (for either Fire or, if you change traditions to something with it, Guardian) is another respectable choice - guardian spirits are awesome if you take the time to pick up a Guardian Spirit Care Package of weapons and armor for it to wear but are shaky otherwise, Fire is good at burninating people but lacking in utility.

I would put Fetish on your shockwave, that has crazy high drain.

I would replace Physical Barrier with Metal Wall (fetished); the Metal Wall damages people who hit it (albeit not for that much damage) but more importantly is Opaque and thus blocks a whole lot of stuff.

[Illume]

Looks a lot better to me. I don't think you have any major problems at this point so my further recommendations are smallish minmaxing tweaks or nitpicks, except for the armor.

Your armor is a bit off. You probably want to wear a combination of FFBA, PPP, and one other thing that gets you up to 8/8 for encumbrance purposes. A simple way to do this is FFBA (3/1 for encumbrance), PPP shin guards, PPP forearm guards, Vashon Island Steampunk Line overcoat and vest. There's various other ways depending on your personal style preferences.

I don't think Ice Cloud is all that great - if you can suppressive fire them, you should most often just kill them. It's not useless, but I would much, much rather have Heal.

Water is, IMO, not a particularly good spirit type. Man is probably the best all-around spirit type to focus on. I would consider going with Dark Goddess, dropping your summoning and binding to 1, raising your counterspelling to 4, and specializing your summoning and binding in Man. If you don't like Dark Goddess because you didn't pick up heal and thus don't have much Health magic worth raising, Sun (for either Fire or, if you change traditions to something with it, Guardian) is another respectable choice - guardian spirits are awesome if you take the time to pick up a Guardian Spirit Care Package of weapons and armor for it to wear but are shaky otherwise, Fire is good at burninating people but lacking in utility.

I would put Fetish on your shockwave, that has crazy high drain.

I would replace Physical Barrier with Metal Wall (fetished); the Metal Wall damages people who hit it (albeit not for that much damage) but more importantly is Opaque and thus blocks a whole lot of stuff.

Already have Shockwave fetishedm actually, on my hardcopy sheet, just forgot to put it on here. Metal wall actually sounds like a good idea. And I have a question about the Sun's mentor spirits disadvantage. When you have a glitch, are you required to negate it? Or is it just if you want too, you have to spend 2 points of edge instead of 1?

[Onion Man]

I read that must to mean that if you have the 2 edge, you must spend it.

[UmaroVI]

I read that "must" to mean "it costs you 2 instead of 1," and I think the majority of GMs will agree with me. You can always ask your GM if you're concerned about it.

[Onion Man]

I read that "must" to mean "it costs you 2 instead of 1," and I think the majority of GMs will agree with me. You can always ask your GM if you're concerned about it.

Normally I'd be on that side, but the thing that has me on the other side is the Sun mentor spirits demand of perfection.

[UmaroVI]

The idea is that if you fuck up, Sun is very pissed at you, and demands more of your edge to fix your fuckup.

[Onion Man]

That would translate into a rule disincentivizing perfection, instead of demanding perfection.

[UmaroVI]

Eh? It means Sun wants you to either have a large dice pool so you don't crit glitch, or not bother.