[Cloudweaver]

A SINer who grew up in a privileged family. He’s a student at Pacific University (The PU), but he’s created an alias. Gandalf Risen is into shadorunning for the thrill, and the money. He hasn’t been running long, but he’s hooked up with a couple people he trusts and looks forward to popping some cram and engaging in some daring feats. Hopefully they don’t conflict with mid-terms.

Gandalf Risen
Metatype: Human
Name: Dustin Kelley
Ethnicity: White
Age: 18
Sex: Male
Height: 5’9”
Weight: 50kg
Total Karma: 0
Current Karma: 0
Street Cred:
Noteriety:

Attributes

Body: 4
Agility: 3
Reaction: 4
Strength: 2
Charisma: 2
Intuition: 3
Logic: 4
Willpower: 4

Edge: 5
Magic: 5
Initiative: 7
Essence: 6

Knowledge Skills

English : N
History : 1
Literature : 1
Economics : 1
Biology : 1
Chemistry : 1
Business : 1
Engineering : 1
Street Drugs : 1
Liqour : 1
Area Knowledge (Downtown Seattle) : 2
Dealers (Drug Dealers) : 1
Japanese (Wiz) : 3
Latin (Wiz) : 1
Depictions of Magic before the awakening: 3

Active Skills

Banishing : 2
Binding : 2
Summoning : 2
Counterspelling : 4
Ritual Spellcasting : 4
Spellcasting : 4
Longarms (Shotguns) : 1
Assensing : 2
Arcana : 1
Perception : 1
Unarmed Combat (Martial Arts) : 1
Dodge (Melee Combat) : 1

Positive Qualities

Trust Fund
College Education
Restricted Gear

Negative Qualities

Addiction, mild (Cram)
SINner
Focus Addiction, mild
Geas (Invocations)
Day Job 1
Incompetent (Swimming)

Weapons

Remington 990
Regular Ammo (10 shots)
2x Flechette Rounds (10 shots)

Armor

Lined Coat
+ Non-conductive coating (rating 3)
Form-Fitting Body Armor Shirt
Bike Racing Helmet
+ MAD Scanner (Rating 3)
+ Audio Enhancement (Rating 3)
+ Radiation Sensor
PPP-System Shin Guards
PPP-System Forearm Guards

Commlink

Commlink : Meta Link
OS : Vector Xin
Accessory : Sub-vocal Microphone

Equipment

Power Focus (Rating 4)
Endoscope
Cellular Glove Molder (Rating 3)
Fake SIN (Rating 3)
Fake Spellcasting Licence (Rating 3)
DocWagon Contract (Basic – per Year)

2x Cram
2x Long Haul
2x Psyche
5x C-Squared (Rating 3)
2x Stim Patch (Rating 5)

Spells

Heal
Physical Mask
Levitate
Increase Reflexes
Combat Sense
Knockout

Bound Foci

Unicorn Bracelet Power Focus (Force 4)

Contacts

Dylan Pike (L:2 C:5)
HOAA Head, Visiting Professor at PU

Jersey (L:1 C:3)
A beat cop and a new employee of Kights Errant. He’s a familly friend, but Dustin doesn’t dare risk exposing his secret life to his parents so He has a bit of blackmail information to prod Jersy into low risk actions.

Points breakdown

Metatype Points: 0
Attribute Points: 250 (180 on physical/mental attributes)
Qualities Points: 0
Skills Points: 94
Contact Points: 11
Gear Points: 23
Bond Points: 4
Spells Points: 18

[squee_nabob]

Banishing is bad, drop it.
Get summoning to 4, and Spellcasting to 6, drop longarms. With 5 magic, you are better Stunbolting than shooting people. Also shotguns in particular are very bad.

Get some combat spells, drop knockout for stunbolt, the drain increase is negliable and it doesn’t require a melee attack roll.

Get a sustaining foci for your increased reflexes.

Dodge 1 is bad, get Unarmed 1 specialization on martial arts.

You want Form Fitting Body Armor from Arsenal.

What is your Tradition? Grab a Mentor Spirit. I’d get infiltration but that’s just me personally. Cannibalize some unneeded attributes if you need points.

[beowulf_of_wa]

from reading the gear listing, my first question would be about the helmet, it says bike: do you mean motorcycle helmet? or bicycle?

i agree on getting rid of the shotgun, though possibly for other reasons, it'shard to conceal, attracts way too much attention and are way too loud. i'd go with automatics and carry both a heavy pistol and an ares squirt with at least 2 full reloads for each

[Tsuzua]

Nice job on the force 4 power focus.  It's a good grab at character creation many miss.

You suffer from average statitis.  The BP system is very much about softcap/hardcap or GTFO.  For you, I'll softcap Logic (I think you're a logic mage), Willpower, and Edge for 30 points.  To get the points, I'll drop agility to 2 or maybe 1 and find the points elsewhere.  Dropping the Longarms, Dodge and Gymnastics will give you the points needed.

As for skills, you want 1 skill at 6.  I'll not get the sorcery group 4 and instead get Spellcasting 6 and Counterspelling 4 for the same number of points.  Ritual Spellcasting is cool, but oh so very niche.  I'll drop the Conjuring group 2 and get Summoning 1 (Specialization 2).  Binding is quite nice to raise higher if you can find the points.  Banishing is sadly not worth getting.  Assensing 2 is a bad place to have it.  Make it Assensing 1 or figure out how to raise it.

I wouldn't get Foci Addiction.  It's -2 to drain tests and that hurts.  I'll replace with it another disads.

If you can find the points, I suggest a mentor spirit appropriate to your spirit type.  You'll want to be good at a given spirit type and have your summoning focus and mentor give you bonuses.  Ideally it'll be Type of Spell You Like to Use + Spirit Type you like to Use.

[Cloudweaver]

Thanks a lot for the advice.  I understand most of it, but I have a question about the advice for dropping dodge.

If I'm using knockout as a combat spell (I figure I can often overcast it at force 9 safely) it means moving into melee occasionally.  I figure this might cause me to get attacked with melee weapons so having an extra 3 dice (or 6 if I abort to dodge) seems like a good idea to me, why is it bad?

The helmet is for motorcycle racing and is found in arsenal page 48.

Tradition is Hermetic.  There's no tradition like a traditional one ;p

[squee_nabob]

1) Knockout is bad, Stunbolt is good. Don't get into melee combat, because that gives them more dice to resist.

2) Aborting to active defenses is giving up an action. You are better off taking it and flattening someone (or multiple people) with stunbolts and balls.

3) Unarmed does the same as dodge for protecting you in melee, but you can put on a shock glove and be sad that you are in background count and thus meleeing.

[Cloudweaver]

Ok maybe I'm misunderstanding the rules here.  Let's say I overcast knocout at force 9 and try to touch an enemy.

First I roll to hit with Unarmed combat (3) + Agility (3) +2 for a touch spell and they try to more than match my successes with their defense roll (just matching doesn't cut it here so It's almost like getting 1 free success in addition to the 2 extra dice).

Then assuming I hit I make a spellcasting check (13 dice right now) and add any successes to the force to get the DV for the enemy to resist.

Then I resist a drain of 1 with 8 dice.  It would be physical damage if I fail to resist, but that shouldn't happen often.  I know there's an optional rule about increasing the drain DV of indirect spells with extra successes, but my GM says he's not using it.

If I instead had stunbolt to get the same drain I'd have to cast it at force 5.

Then I'd roll spellcasting Dice and the defender would defend with willpower.

Unlike with knockout any hits the defender gets on the defense roll will reduce my damage as they are subtracted from my spellcasting roll, and not the unarmed combat roll.

Then the opponent rolls to resist damage like with knockout, except that the DV he is resisting is smaller by 4 (force) + the number of successes he gets on the defense check.

Then I resist drain as with knockout, but here the damage if unresisted will be stun damage instead of physical.

So where do I have the rules wrong here, because while there's clear advantages to having a LOS attack, I think knockout has its own clear advantages?

Thanks again.

[FastJack]

If you're a mage and you have to run up to the troll carrying a Panther Assault Cannon aimed at your head to touch him and knock him out, I think you'll be at a disadvantage.

[Cloudweaver]

Granted, and didn't say there weren't advantages to ranged attacks.  Still if that troll isn't getting help from a counterspeller isn't there a good chance I 1-shot him?

[kirk]

Provided he doesn't one-shot you first.

[beowulf_of_wa]

knock out seems to be more of a ninja spell then combat, sneak up on said troll, knockout spell, and walk off to get his friends.

[squee_nabob]

First, ties go to the defender, so you need to beat them with 8 dice.

You are correct their Willpower + Counter spelling test will subtract from the net hits (which are added to damage)

You are correct that at low optimization Knockout is arguably better than Stunbolt. Let us try at a larger DP:

Spellcasting 6
Specialization in combat: 2
Mentor with +2 to Combat
Rating 4 Power Focus
Magic 5

Now that is 19 dice of spellcasting (or ~ 6 hits). Instead of rolling Unarmed/Dodge/Melee + Reaction, you roll Willpower + Counterspelling to avoid being tagged. If you are not a mage or an Arcane Arrestor, and you have 5 willpower that’s only 2 hits (or +4 net hits).

Throw this on a force 7 Stunbolt and that’s 11DV which hits more often than Knockout (because mundane will have unarmed + reaction > willpower), and mages will add coutnerspelling but (like yourself) most people have unarmed or dodge just to avoid melee attacks.

The difference in drain is 2 points, (1/2 Force -3 vs. -1) for an increase in hitting (I have 19 dice to hit, you have 8, I am resisted by Willpower + Counterspelling, you are by melee).

Then we optimize the drain resist some…

We want willpower 5 for the extra stun box, and we are a logic mage, so we want logic 5 (softcapping both). We now look into ware, and get some cerebral boosters 3 (.6 essence), potentially some Genetic Optimization: Logic (.2), Daredrenaline (.1) (for willpower tests like drain resist), and round it out with a SURGE for Metagentic Improvement: Logic. You can alphaware the cerebral boosters for more essence space and get more ware. Buy up your Optimized logic to the new soft cap in character creation.

We went from 10 drain resist (5 + 5) to 15 drain resist before initiating for centering and a centering foci. At 15 dice of drain resist, there is an average of 5 hits. We have lost a point of essence and magic, reducing the spellcasting check to 18. 5 hits is a force 13 stunbolt with 0 drain. The new character with 4 magic can only cast up to force 10, but force 10 with 4 net hits (see above) is 14 DV. That will still flatten most people, even losing the two dice from their resistance test.

Say they have 5 willpower and 4 counterspelling (because they are a mage). That’s only 3 hits, or 13 DV. Still flattens them.

If you are a logic mage suffering from drain, you should think about increasing logic.

I think Stunbolt has it’s own clear advantages at higher levels of optimization? I do play on TR 6 (all NPCs have +6 dice on opposed tests), so I live in a world where melee attacks need 15+ dice to connect. I may be biased.

[Cloudweaver]

First, ties go to the defender, so you need to beat them with 8 dice.

but ...

If the result of the Opposed Test is a tie, the gamemaster may
choose to rule it as a grazing hit. A grazing hit does not do any damage,
but the character nevertheless makes contact. This allows certain contact-
only attacks (poisons, shock gloves, touch-only combat spells, etc.)
to still do damage.

I hear your arguments though ... I consider changing my combat spell.

Thanks

[UmaroVI]

I think you're confused about how Touch-range Direct Combat spells work. The lower drain is the ONLY advantage, and it is simply not worth the drawbacks for the majority of characters.

1) Try to touch them. You roll Unarmed+Agility+2 vs. Reaction + [best of dodge/unarmed/melee skill for which they have a weapon]. You need to at least tie them. The problem is that a lot of things have Dodge or a decent Unarmed or melee skill, and a lot of things have higher Reaction than Willpower. With 8 dice, you're going to have trouble touching a lot of people and your spell will fizzle frequently. Just pulling some random things out of the book, a Barghest has 9 dice to oppose you with, a force 3 Air Spirit has 10, a Lone Star beat cop has 7, and a Red Samurai has 11. This is a big problem.

This step is binary - you hit or you don't. Your net hits accomplish nothing.

2) Inflict damage. This is Spellcasting+Magic vs. Willpower+Counterspelling. No net hits = ping, otherwise, you do force+net hits in damage.

Stunbolt just skips Step 1.

Now, the low drain on touch spells IS nice, but it's really only a good idea (a) if you have other options, because some things will just not be melee-able and (b) if you have a large melee dicepool already. Neither of these is true for your character.