[redTroll]

My first attempt at a Ed4 character, i've been out since edition 2 and didn't manage to get much play in there either. I want him to be combat primarily an ex Special forces/ security type who worked in a team,primarily in building up intelligence before conducting an operation. The social skills are to help him get into/stay in places he shouldn't be or just to help blend in (looking to drop a point of Charisma i think). The first aid is to show he was the medic of the group. I think i've made him too unfocused but.... basically would he augment a team well or just take a back seat as the specialists handle everything.

Metatype: Ork

Qualities:

Scorched: got too cocky while digging deep into an organ legging organisation (Hey how hard can abusing the matrix be?) and was slappped with some Black ICE.

Mild addiction Stimulants: Had to use them on particularly long stake outs and started building up a tolerance to them, "You want some too?... trust me, I'm a medic"


Body: 5   Agil: 4 (6)   Reaction: 4 (6)   Str: 3(5)   Cha: 4   Int: 4   Log:3   Will:3   Edge: 2   Ess: 2.2

Pistols 4
Automatics 3 (sub +2)
Unarmed 4
Con 4
Etiquette 2
First Aid 3 (combat +2)
Perception 3 (visual +2)
Shadowing 3 (tailing +2)
Infiltration 2
Gymnastics 3
Hardware 3
Computer 1

Ware:

Cyber eyes:
Low light, Flare comp, smartlink, magnification, thermographic

Cyber ears:
Audio enhance 3, select sound filter 3, Spatial recognizer

Synaptic accelerator2
Muscle Toner 2
Muscle Aug 2

Weapons:

Colt L36, concealable holster, fake license 4, silencer

Ares Predator, Quick draw holster,

HK 227

Shock gloves

Gear:

Form fitting body armour with Ruthenium polymer coating.

He also has a stack off breaking and entering kit and Medkit/ patches, and other assorted stuff.

Any help greatly appreciated.

[CanRay]

If pulling surveillance, a sleep regulator is nearly an absolute must!  The ability to control how long you can go before sleeping, as well as getting a good bit of sleep in a shorter length of time is great, as you still need to be spelled out every now and then.

Also, a kaff pot and a lot of jars.

[UmaroVI]

Think very carefully about whether the cybereyes are worth it to you over just wearing earbuds and goggles/glasses/contacts with the enhancements you want.

If you care about social skills, you really should have Tailored Pheremones - it's cheap and highly effective for that.

For once I am going to say you have too few skill groups; if you're going to try to have a wide range of skills, the way to do that is low rating skill groups, high-ish stats, and skill boosters. Also, try to avoid rating 3 skills - it's 8 karma to get a 4, but only 4 bp. By comparison, specializing or buying skills from 0-1 or from 1-2 costs the same in karma as in bp.

Pistols/Automatics/Unarmed/Gymnastics are totally fine and don't need to be in skill groups.

I would consider just grabbing Influence instead of 2 of the skills.

I would definitely grab the whole Stealth group; disguise is useful, so is palming.

I would probably lower some of your skill ratings and raise some of your stats, as well as get stat boosters. EG, you have agility 4. For 10 bp, you could have agility 5, which is +1 to all your agility-linked skills, of which you have 4 (5 if you count Gymnastics), so you could in theory drop all of them by 1 rank and come out 6 bp ahead.

I don't think you're getting remotely the benefit out of Synaptic Booster's lower essence cost to justify it's price, as a mundane with mostly bioware already. You should strongly consider getting just Wired Reflexes 2, then using the mountain of cash that frees up to get Reaction Enhancers, PuSHeD, a cyberfoot with a Nanohive and Neocortical nanites, Synthacardium, maybe some Cerebral Boosters if you have space left over, maybe some reflex recorders.

While you are an ork rather than a human, this character is conceptually pretty similar to the Spook archetype (see my sig), you might want to check that character out for general ideas/stealable things.

[The Big Peat]

The one reason to get Synaptic Boosters here, other than taste, is so your character doesn't set off alarms due to the amount of metal in his body and steatlh. Check with your GM that your cyberears and eyes don't jeopardise you here. If they do, either ditch them, or just shrug and get Wired Reflexes.

Either way you save money!

I'd also shuffle the skills. I'd probably lose automatics and just rely on the pistols. Use that, and taking the Stealth Group, to boost ratings.

[redTroll]

Thanks for all the advice especially those templates UmaroVI they are absolutely amazing. There doesn't seem to be any rules for the board so i have posted the updated version that i will tweak offline with any further comments. i have 8 BP's spare so things to add, drop and tweak. I'm thinking of Synch purely for the extra combat die but maybe drop something and get electronics Gp1 or raise my stealth Gp? thanks again.

Alias: Saint
Metatype: Ork

Qualities:
Stim adidict (5), Scorched(5) for reasons in first post

B: 5         A: 5 (7)     R: 4 (6)        S:3 (4)       C:4 (6)         I:5         L:4 (6)         W:3        Initiative:9 (11)    Initiative passes:1 (2)        E:2       Ess: 2.6

Active Skills:
Pistol:4
Auto (sub+2):3
Unarmed:4
First aid:4
Gymnastics:2
Influence Gp:2
Stealth Gp:3
Perception:2

KnowledgeSkills:
Seattle Gangs 3, Lone Star Procedures 3, Organ Legging 3, Journalism 2, Drugs 2, Doc Wagon procedures 2, Military tactics 3, 1950s+60s Mowtown music 4

Languages:
English N, Or'zet 4, Japanese 3, Spanish 3, Cantonese 2, Sioux 2, Sperethiel 1

Contacts:         
Lonestar Cop C:2  L:3,  Fixer C:3 L:2,  Street Doc: C:3 L:3,  Journalist (street) C:2 L:2

Ware:
Cyberears: Audio enhance 2, Select sound filter 2, Spatial recognizer
Cyber eyes: Low light, Flare comp, Smartlink, Magnification, Thermographic

Reason i kept these is they are unobservable unlike wearing goggles/ glasses or even small ear pieces. They can fit with my fake SINS if discovered
Fake SIN 4 Street journalist - There recording equipment for news coverage, the weapons fit with the SIN with a bit of CON
"Officer, I'm trying to enlighten the Seattle public to the plight of the poor and oppressed. But I'm savvy enough to know that the most important thing about an oppressed troll on Nitro charging towards you with a combat axe is that he's a troll on Nitro charging towards you with a combat axe."

Fake SIN 4 Doc Wagon or similiar employee - " I prefer the hands on approach, I can use my ware to monitor things like breathing, heartrate, body temperature, and on a good day i can damn near see the what chemicals he's on in the DNA of his sweat!"

Synaptic accelerator 1
Muscle Aug 2
Muscle Toner 2
Cerebral booster 2
2nd hand Synthcardium 2
Tailored Phermones 2

MAD's I'm not so bothered about but with the bioware I get to avoid most problems with cyber sensors(hopefully!), He appears fairly unaugmented.

Gear:
Shock gloves
Smart Colt america, silencer, concealable holster, fake license 4, 4 clips reg 1 sticknshock,
Savalette guardian, quickdraw holster, fake license 4, 10 clips reg 2 sticknshock
HK227 10 clips reg
Fake Sin 4 Journo
Fake SIN4 Docwagon medic
Form fitting body armour full
Armour jacket
Medkit + 5 supplies
Truama Patch x 2
Stim patch L1 x 6
Stim patch L4 x 5
Low lifestyle 1 month
Erika elite, satlink, subvocal mike,
Firewall 6, Analyze 6, Browse 4, Edit 2, Cmd 3 (I hate my real life phone so find it hard to choose apps for my RPG one! this probably needs work)

Background to follow thanks for looking.

[UmaroVI]

I think that your character is pretty good now, and I'm just going to suggest tweaks. You can fight, sneak around, talk, and medic effectively enough to contribute in any of those areas, and all of them are useful to have a backup in even if your team does have a specialist.

Tweaks: You might consider just copy-pasting the Spook's commlink setup; yours is actually not legally built, since you have to buy an OS and upgrade it (thus, the max you can upgrade Firewall to is the base firewall + 2). It can do the stuff a non-hacker needs done well enough to get by.

Because you cannot upgrade 'ware directly, and have to rip out it and buy completely new stuff, you should try to get Synthacardium and Tailored Pheremones at rating 3 to start - it sucks to buy a 30000Y item, then need to chuck it for a 45000Y item, when you could just have started with the good one. You might also consider not starting with Synthacardium, starting with Tailored 3, and buying Synthacardium later to avoid having to junk gear.

You would benefit from an Attention Coprocessor 3 cyberware (9000Y, .3 essence, +3 perception), of course, it's cheap and you can always grab it later... but it's very cost-efficient.

Skills and skill groups at 3 are inefficient: you might consider, say, Perception 1/Autos 4 and Influence 1/Stealth 4 to start, since it makes it cheaper to buy them up later. As an example, starting with Influence 2 and Stealth 3 will cost you 55 karma to get to 4/4, whereas starting with Influence 1 and Stealth 4 will cost you only 45 karma to get to 4/4.

[redTroll]

Background:

Well that's just great! Like i need nothing more than for it to rain while i wait in this alley full of critter p*%$ for this punk to wake up and give me the info I need. I've never been much good at the macho intimidation stuff but the last thing he saw before i knocked him out was 3 of his gang mates expiring on the pavement and he'll wake up with my guardian in his face......should be enough leverage.The Nano paste is starting to itch as well, covered head to foot and with some fake horns i can pass for a small troll especially this time of night. Well enough for this nugget and his chummers to have a crack at me. That's the whole reason for being out in this god forsaken area of the sprawl, the organ legging market has gone nuts for troll parts lately. Must be lucrative because taking on trolls who naturally don't want to be parted from their necessities isn't the easiest way to make some nuyen....or keep your head on your shoulders.
Makes me wonder if i be in this kids place now if not for some drastic life changes. I'd probably had a similiar upbringing to a point, a few of us had started a small gang of our own, if you could call it that. We were really small time some mugging and burglary, liked to tell ourselves that it was only from people who looked like they could afford it and some minor drug trafficking. We got a little too cocky, too much swagger in our stride and it had been noticed by some of the big boys. They came to pay us a visit, i don't think it was meant to be more than a good kicking and a warning but one of ours mangaged to get a knife into one of there's and then their guns came out. A couple of us managed to get out of there but most were dead before they hit the ground. I'd been hiding out at my mothers house, she wasn't pleased to see me I only went there when i was in trouble. It's not the most secretive of bolt holes and sure enough that's where Lone Star found me. Charlie Hicks was one of the meanest looking and toughest cops in our neighbourhood, he was said to be wared all the way to his crown jewels. Most of us had seen him in action in the streets taking out local badasses without breaking a sweat, it was like a free show in those days. I've since learned that the ware rumour is all true mostly thanks to the UCAS marines. That's what he offered me that day, a way out after telling me that the other kids lucky enough to escape had been found butchered and i was the last. He's still mean and tough as hell but we share a soykaf now and then.
The next few years weren't as bad as i thought theyd be, as a young kid i got taught how to use a variety of weapons and where to hit a guy to put him down with 1 punch.....well unless he's a troll that is. But the subject i picked upon real quick in basic had been the combat first aid and i found myself "volunteered" for combat medic training. Now I'd flirted with trouble a few times in the marines maybe more than most but the brass would get flustered when even though they knew i was involved they had nothing solid to pin on me. My CO called me in to his office one day telling me he thought he had the perfect job for me. It was some sort of spook outfit that would put my "qualities" to better use than the marines and apparently my medic training would be valuable.
As it turns out it was, not only for the scrapes and bullet holes but to help treat Nick's embarrassing rashes. Nick was the human face of our cell and couldn't resist going that extra bit further to "seal the deal". He was also the magic muscle easily providing a distraction or a traight up fireball when required. Midge, a troll was our real muscle and she provided me with most of my first aid work, never for herself you understand but for the rest of us caught up in whatever s%$^storm she had managed to start. There was one thing she could do with finesse and that was rig any type of demolition you wanted, big, small, flashy, almost surgical. Obviously she preferred big and flashy but could knuckle down and be professional when required. Sarota was our elven matrix hound, making things quiet for us going into an operation, getting us the fake ID's and finding us nuyen when our cell handler was out of touch. He also our joker and liked giving us fake SIN's with outrageous names when he thought we could get away with it, although he never used the I P Freely line of cover names.
I mentioned the cell handler, this was how this outfit worked dissassociated cells with no awareness of each other controlled by one handler who none of us had met. He (If it was a he) hadn't shafted us since i was took on so iwas inclined to trust him. That's another quirk to them, they like bringing in new blood to an experienced cell and then they can mould you to what they want. We had been chasing down leads to illegal gene altering activity involving a megacorps that was using smaller companies (that appearred to have no links with the parent corps) to carry out the research. This wasn't some blue eyed hero of the hour stuff, The UCAS government had vested interest in other companies developing the same tech and we were to blow the cover on the rivals.
We had traced this branch of the project to a small facility on the edges of an unremarkable industrial area, the front was some sort of genetic food enhancement. The plan was for us to sneak in and plant a small explosive device, not enough to destroy the site but enough for the emergency services and primarily Lonestar to get involved and extract preferably with no discovery. Well the thing is with plans is that the never seem to take into account things like your common or garden bad luck. I still don't know to this day what twigged the security there but they had us cold after we had planted the device. On our way out thinking it was nearly all over we were hit by some seriously capable security Nick was the first to go down (always shoot the mage first right?) Sarota had his left leg shredded by gunfire and i'd taken multiple hits to my right arm and chest. Luckily my armour had deflected the worst but i had trouble breathing and still have a nasty scar on my shoulder and bicep now. Midge whipped to face them and opened up with his machinegun and i strapped myself up before going to the others, Nick was already a lost cause and Sarota wasn't going anywhere without help. I patched him as best i could and Midge kept their heads down as i dragged Sarota to the breach in the fence we'd made. I hadn't made it halfway when the facility went up, I don't know if Midge had detonated it prematurely in desperation or some of there security had tried to disarm it but the how doesn't really matter now. The blast picked Me and Sarota up and dashed us against the side of a heavy cargo hauler, I wasn't out for long but it was like a different world when i came to. There were no gunshots, just the roar of the fire we had started. I couldn't find Midge or any of the security, i did manage to find Sarota. His eyes were still open but there was no life there just the reflections of the flames, the shockwave must have sent him head first into the hauler breaking his neck. I'd picked up some nice extra frag in my ass and legs and was leaking like a seive, there wasn't anything more i could do for them and i could hear the sirens fast approaching in the distance, for a second time in my life i had to leave my buddies behind.
I'd managed to stay concious enough to get back to our safehouse and plug myself into our autodoc and start the nanites. The last thing i did before leaving one world and waking up in the next was to send a message to our handler "mission complete, request emergency casevac" and then it went black.
Waking up to the raoring in my ears i felt like the Renraku arcology had landed on me but at least I wasn't dead. Sunlight was blasting through the open curtains it must have been at least 12 hours since we'd hit the facility. Remeber the best laid plans? My comlink told me i had been out for nearly 36 hours, now that confused me. Either our handler had been made along with us and he was dead or being an expendable asset they had decided to let this untidy loose end expire naturally. The second option never made sense, you would think that they would send someone to make sure. The only thing i was sure about was that i was in bad shape and needed some serious medical help. I'd grabbed a handful of spare credsticks and headed for the nearest street doc.
And here i am a year later, damn rain. The cred was gone months ago and this isn't exactly paying well. I should take up my fixers offer for some more serious work and I'm pretty sure i've got over the feeling that i was bad luck to have on a team. These pro's have handles though, nicknames like Fastjack and Moonblade, who the hell would I be. Well one things for sure with my chequered past I aint no Saint.......aint no Saint....hhm.