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Building an Augmented Adept. Looking for help

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Seraph

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« on: <08-26-11/1633:53> »
As topic says im building a special adept. Iīve been thinking alot about giving him loads of bio/cyber via the Type o system quality. This will be beneficial in the long run i think, but below average in the begining. Give me all feedback you can guys,
So here are my stats:
Body 4
Agility: 5 [7]
React: 2 [3]
Strength: 4 [5]
Charisma: 4
Intuition: 4
Logic: 3 [5]
Willpower: 5

Edge: 4
Essence: 6 [4]
Magic: 5 [3]

.:Skills:.
Stealth group 1
Athletics group: 1

Blades [swords] 3 [5]
UA combat 1
Perception: 1
Pistols: 2
Dodge: 1
Tracking: 1

R3 Skillwire
Locksmith 2
Forgery 1
Demolitions 3

He speaks many languages, just short of 10.
Knows some about security procedures and that stuff.
He is also an ex-military.

Qualitys:
Type O system -30p
Adept: -5p

in debt +30
day job +5 p [1000 Y]

Wares (mixed bio/cyber)
Muscle toner r2
Muscle augment r2
damage comp r4
mnemoric enhancer r2
synaptic booster r1
datajack
cybereye r2 [smartlink, vision enhance, magnification]
skillwire 3
internal airtank

Total essence is under construction right now...

Adept powers
facial sculpt r1
improved sense (bloodhound)
nimble fingers r1
traceless walk
astral perception
sustenance
total 3p powers (1 to go)

I have  maxxed out BP for cash so i can buy the lot of things iīve written here and the in debt also comes in to fill the gear compartment.

The thinking behind this char is that he will be some kind of information gatherer and infiltrator. Also combat formidable cause of the high agility. He is not for any reason the best char possible from creation but he will be rather fun to play and easy to advance from. He will also be the groups only astral percepter.


So do you have any sugestions?
« Last Edit: <08-26-11/1759:55> by Seraph »
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BSOD

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« Reply #1 on: <08-26-11/1647:43> »
I might question why you've payed for extra logic [cerebral boosters] when you only have one logic based skill. Other than your knowledge skills. Also if you have one power point left to spend, don't, drop your magic by one point to 5 [3] and spend the extra 25bp elsewhere. I might spend it on a few social skills if you want an infiltrator. For when those pesky guards find you hanging from the ceiling by a rope.

baronspam

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« Reply #2 on: <08-26-11/1654:19> »
First question- what books do you access to.  Can you use/do you have Way of the Adept?

Second question:  You need to firmly define in your mind what you want this character to be good at.  You can sneak, kinda, you can fight with blade, kinda, you have a number of odd skills at low level.  Your build is very scattered.  Define for yourself (and us, so we can help) what is your primary area of expertise (blade combat, infiltration, etc), what is your secondary?  Come to grips with the fact that some of those 1 rated skills are going away.

Also, and I say this with love, some of your adept power choices are hideous.  Once we know where you want to take this guy we can help reshape that a bit as well.
« Last Edit: <08-26-11/1658:41> by baronspam »

Seraph

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« Reply #3 on: <08-26-11/1724:46> »
so far so good, i like your comments. Itīs always nice to get objective response. The cerebral boost as you say is kind of not needed here.

I want him to be the character to physically enter a building, find and extract the "goods" and then get out. If he comes to a combat situation he is to work things out and be able to get away from there.
Facial sculpt and traceless walk are quite obvious what i got them for, nimble fingers works sometimes i hope, improved sense (bloodhound) for tracking when it is needed. astral perception cause we need someone that can do it. The sustenance is just for game flavor so he can work of his debts faster beside his s.running.

Im thinking on dropping the cerebral boost then and get some more charisma and put some points in con.

The GM has set a dice pool max on around 12-14 dice for starters so that the group is balanced. So with the skills i have i think many are right below the max. All the agility skills starts on 8 dice, which i think is ok.
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Seraph

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« Reply #4 on: <08-26-11/1805:14> »
He will be having different skillwire sets to so he can just switch areas of functionality, so one with computer so he can go in and fetch information/ware and maybe one with medicine and first aid. This is where i thought of the logic from before.
What swedish tanks canīt blow up is not worth destroying!

baronspam

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« Reply #5 on: <08-26-11/1817:49> »
this is not a complete overhaul, just some thoughts.

If sounds like your primary goal is to be able to physically enter a location by some combination of stealth and guile.  You primary skills are going to be infiltration, social skills, and few technical skills to support breaking into places.  Combat will be a third choice with what you have left.

If you have a skillwire don't buy skils at 1 with build points buy them with nuyen and slot them as needed.

I am not double checking all the math but it didn't look like you spent very much on skills.  Are the skills listed under "r3 skillwires" skill programs that you have or skills that you know?  If they are skills that you know dump demolitons and forgery, they are nice but not your core skill.

Break up the stealth skill group and get it at a higher level.  Adepts have a great power called improved ability.  It lets you add up to half a skill's unmodified rating to the base skill, and for non-combat skills it only costs .25 power points per level.  That means if you you take infiltration 6, Increase Ability Infiltration 3, maybe a specialization (urban +2) and your current agility you have 18 dice with infiltration.  If you are using the Way of the Adept book you can take a Quality called The Invisible Way for 10 points that lets you buy anther adept power that raises your infiltration even more.  Thats why you play an adept, for the ability to pick a skill and drive your dice pool through the roof.

I think Type-O system is too expensive for the amount of ware you are going to have.  If you can't get in under 2 essence points drop some 'ware.  Prime candiates;  Drop the cerebrial booster, replace the cyber eyes with a good set of glasses, the datajack is fluff and unneeded.  I would personally let the mnemonic enhancer go as well.

If you are taking the athletics skill group to let you climb/jump etc to access locations consider a implant called synthacardium.  it bonuses all althetic skills.

There is no mechanical reason to have dodge.  You have gymnastics at the same level (or maybe better with synthacardium) and you have melee skills.  In melee you defend with your melee skills and against ranged you gymnastic dodge.

Unless you want to use shock gloves consider dropping the unarmed, its redundant to the blades and you aren't very good at it.  I would peronally push blades to 4(swords 6) than have a point of unarmed floating around.  You have a decent melee attack that way.

Instead of pistols I would take automatics, and if you can find the points add a spec and/or a few more dice.  The ability to use machine pistols/smgs lets you fire wide bursts, which helps with accuracy when you have mid range combat dice pools.

Adept powers- dump astral perception.  It sounds like you don't have a mage in the party, but IMHO this doesn't help much.  You can't astral project, just astral perceive, and you don't have assencing skill to read auras or anything similar.  Basically, this just lets you go dual natured and get your face eaten if there is something nasty in astral space.  If there is a watcher or spirit on guard just astral perception alone isn't going to do anything about it before the alarm is raised anyway.  Sustenance and Bloodhound are cool in theory, but there are much less situational things to spend the points on, llike some Improved Ability, Increased Perception, etc. 

To back up facial sculpt you might pick up a power called Kinesics, and  the con skill.  You could end up with a dice pool in the 8-10 range to talk your way past a guard, and you will at least look like someone else if things go wrong.

Locksmith is good, but it only covers mechancial key locks.  To open electronic locks (mag locks) you need the hardware skill. 

It sounded like you planned on taking the max amount of money to start with.  My advice is to go through and figure out your gear/implants, and see how much you really need.  Don't spend money on things you don't need just because you took a crapload of money.  You might be able to sink thost points back into skills.

I am sure Umaro will be along soon to do a much more comprehensive job then I have, but this might get you going on the next draft.

Edit: apologies for the giant block of Italics.  Not sure what happened.
« Last Edit: <08-26-11/1829:56> by baronspam »

baronspam

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« Reply #6 on: <08-26-11/1821:22> »
He will be having different skillwire sets to so he can just switch areas of functionality, so one with computer so he can go in and fetch information/ware and maybe one with medicine and first aid. This is where i thought of the logic from before.

You can always get an agent program for basic computer activity if computers is away from your core compentency.  It's not hacker-in-a-can but its good enough for data searches and most non hacking tasks (even some basic hacking tasks if you have enough resources).  First aid can be bonused out sight by a fairly cheap medkit. 

Seraph

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« Reply #7 on: <08-26-11/1850:22> »
About the agent program, nice. THis is the first char im building and we are to play for the first time. And im not allowed to have dice pools higher then 12-14, so ivīe thought about breaking it to, but in the long run i will be needing the group for the GMs missions. One can never be sneaky enough when he leads the game. I think going for automatics will work, but pistol is more the way i imagined him. But power gaiming is nice and the automatics will be a lot better later ingame, so automatics it is i think. I havent checked the Y cost latley, and since i removed the cerebral boost and other stuff there should be quite some cash left for giving back for bp. The glasses is probably smart to, thought you could have just one type of enhancement in a pair of glasses, but if i can put all those in one pair, they get a lot better to.

Will find a way to boost the 2 groups i have, and i will look into the adept skills once more to modify it a little.


Thanks so far
What swedish tanks canīt blow up is not worth destroying!

baronspam

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« Reply #8 on: <08-26-11/1905:14> »
If starting dice pools are capped at 14 that honestly gives you alot of room and flexability.  While that is certainly a resonable choice for a GM to make, be aware that he is starting you guys out at about a 4 out of 10 on the power scale. 

Apply same principles to the reduced scale.  Get your infiltration to 14, get your combat dice pools in 12 range, try to add some social and cut some of the things I suggested to find the points for it. 

As a general rule, shadowrun mechanics rewards specialization and punishes over generalization when it comes to character design.  Be good at what you are good at, and leave the rest to team mates and your skill wires.  In a game where 12 dice is good at something coming up with 6-8 dice though a skillwire set is actually not that bad if its a secondary/non-critical skill. 

UmaroVI

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« Reply #9 on: <08-26-11/2117:43> »
Meh, if the GM is outright saying that 14 dice is the cap, that's fine if he hold everyone to it - it means you can go for more flexibility and less specialization. Your goal should be to try and get all your relevant skills to 14.

1) Type O System is not as good as you think it is, because it only halves the essence cost of bioware, not cyberware. It's not really worth it.

2) The skill set you need for B&E is:
Infiltration (definitely)
Hardware (definitely)
Lockpicking (kinda; an autopicker is "good enough" for most such problems)
Disguise (maybe)
Social Skills (maybe)
Astral Perception (not having this means spirits auto-spot you)

You probably also want to be at least competent at combat. You should start by deciding what you actually want to do, and then work on getting the stuff that makes you good at doing it. What you have right now is a lot of stuff that doesn't really fit together. The big thing is keeping track of what source does the best job at getting you what stuff. With 14 dice as the cap, it is reasonable to be pretty good at all of these things if you are careful.

Are you allowed to use Way of the Adept? What about Mind Over Matter (from WAR!)?

Glyph

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« Reply #10 on: <08-26-11/2240:32> »
1) Type O System is not as good as you think it is, because it only halves the essence cost of bioware, not cyberware. It's not really worth it.

In fact, it's not even as good as that.  It only works for basic bioware, not cultured bioware, so it would only lower the Essence cost of the muscle augmentation and muscle toner.  Definitely not worth it.

UmaroVI

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« Reply #11 on: <08-26-11/2302:35> »
Huh, I had not realized that "basic bioware" was a game term. But you are right, it doesn't work for cultured bioware; that's kind of the nail in the coffin.

Seraph

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« Reply #12 on: <08-29-11/0820:34> »
about type o system, of course only for bio and not cyber, the wording is very clear on that. But about basic bioware, that kinda sucks. Shall se if my GM makes an exception about that one and applies all bioware. If he doesnīt it not worth taking for anyone.

After some thinking i believe that if you are playing with type o system you really need to be a mundane so that you can fill your essence to the very limit, or only have a few points saved for adept powers.

THanks for all the help, but i think this character till be remade from scratch into another one.

Thanks for all the tips!
What swedish tanks canīt blow up is not worth destroying!

Thermo

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« Reply #13 on: <08-29-11/1612:53> »
I've built a couple augmented adepts, and I found that the biggest bang for the buck was to buy Magic up to 5, and lower it down to 4 by adding no more than a point of essence loss. Since the formula for essence loss accounts for bio+cyberware/2 OR cyberware+bio/2, the ideal combination is to add .7 Essence points of one and .6 Essence points of the other. One kinda cool route to go is to get the Restricted Gear quality and get a suprathyroid gland, and have .6 points left for two levels of reaction enhancers.

The Big Peat

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« Reply #14 on: <08-29-11/2012:34> »
I'm not sure those two stack strictly speaking RAW.