[CulturalGeekGirl]

So I'm coming back to Shadowrun after almost a decade, with old experience in SR 2nd and 3rd. The changes to adepts and mages are a bit overwhelming and I've forgotten much more than I thought I had. I came up with a couple of concepts, but I'm having trouble executing them well.

For any of these characters, I could be an Adept, a Mystic Adept, or a flat-out Mage, depending on what is the best way to get there.

I'd really prefer not to be cybered. I realize this is gimping myself unnecessarily, but I was weaned on SR2 and raised on SR3, so I have weird roleplay-related views on essence. I realize that these are no longer canon and that I am limiting myself but hey... roleplay! If there wasn't something wrong with me, I wouldn't be a Shadowrunner.

Concept 1 - Ace

Ace is an unremarkable looking human female of indeterminate age and racial origin. She could be anywhere from nineteen to forty. You would never look at her twice, and it would be difficult to give an accurate description.

Ace is so not-a-face that she's almost a face. She masks her awakened state. She doesn't look out-of-place anywhere. She walks past security points because of course she belongs there.

She got nicknamed "Ace" by her first crew, who thought of her as their "ace in the hole." She'd be sitting there in a suit in the waiting room of the corp they were raiding, with the rest of the job interviewees, ready to do something unpredictable if things went south.

(what her surprise is could vary: spells, commanding voice, punching people in the face, stabbing them with ceramic knives. It's important to me that she be moderately durable even in what appears to be street clothes and have at least one or two pretty impressive combat tricks)

She rarely shows emotions unless she's "on the job," that is to say, pretending to be normal and fit in. This is because Ace is crazy. She was one a normal corp citizen with a SIN somewhere, probably. Years ago she had a psychotic break brought about by god knows what, and if she remembers any of her former life, she's not talking about it.

For me, the feel of this character is the most important. If I can't capture the idea that she flies under the radar until she suddenly, unpredictably explodes from the background, I don't want to just half-ass her.  I'd like to see people's takes on doing her without cyberware (because I'd like her not to show up on scans for weapons/danger) but I'm willing to look at builds that have a bit of it. (If I go with a cybered version, I think her origin will be that she was operated on against her will, and the installation caused her psychotic break.)

Concept 2 - Pinky

Pinky's part of a weird team. They already had their sammy, their shammy, their decker, and their face... in the form of Drew, a tough-as-nails ex-cop who knew his way around polite society but wouldn't hesitate to stick a gun in your face. Pinky just sort of joined up and tagged along. It's impossible not to like her. She's the good cop to Drew's bad cop. If a situation calls for someone to be scary and yell at you, they bring Drew in. If it calls for smiles and reassurances and maybe some slight magical manipulation, in comes Pinky.

I wanted to play an adept (which I'd only done once before), but some of the old-style adepts can't be replicated anymore. This character sprouted from the idea that the most plausible adept or mystic adept builds is a face or half-face. We already had a guy who was rolling a face, but he wanted to branch out into some combat too (with guns) so I suggested that I play a face-ish adept to supplement things, so we'd both have options in both combat and non-combat situations.

Note, it's very important to me from a RP perspective that Pinky have full essence. Yes, I know that I lose the standard pornomancer build if I do that. If I were using the standard pornomancer build, I wouldn't be here. Pinky's character hook is that it's impossible to tell whether this is all an act, or if she is truly the last nice person in all of Seattle.

The other half of our face team would have etiquette at 4, intim at 4, leadershp at 4. If I play Pinky, he'll let me take care of con and negotiate.

I'm also interested in links to existing builds that are uncybered adepts, mages, or mystic adepts with supplementary social and mental manipulation skills.

[UmaroVI]

Ace:
Ace's concept has one problem, which is that it's not very easy to hide that you are an adept from Astral Perception. 1 hit on Assensing will tell you "Awakened," 2 will tell you "Adept." You need Metamagic (masking) to do anything about this, and it lets you oppose Assensing+Intuition with Intuition+Magic+Grade. Whether this is a problem or not really depends on how confident you are of not running into high-force spirits that can see through your masking and/or people not really caring that you're an adept.

If you are OK with Bioware and just opposed to Cyberware you can do this perfectly well as a mystic adept. Adept is probably not a great plan; it's hard to be very effective with melee as an unaugmented human while also trying to be a good face; spells are probably a better choice for offense. You could also go pure adept and lean on Commanding Voice, but I don't think it's a good idea to depend that much on a single ability. Also, if you really really want to be the bestest at looking normal, you can't carry any weapons at all, not even ceramic knives, because of Cyberware Scanners; Ceramic Knives are what you get if you are a Blades user and you want a weapon that can get past MAD, not why you learn Blades.

I don't have an Archetype, but I will link you to a similar sort of character I'm currently playing, Abdiel.

Pinky:
Basically, being half a face is a bad idea. You can do it; just make a face, and take out Etiquette and Leadership (but why wouldn't the nicest person in Seattle have Etiquette?) The reason it's a bad idea is it's barely cheaper to be good at 2 social skills than at 4. There's not really anything particularly special you need here, I think.

Only semi-related, but check the first link in my sig for the Spirit Medium, an unaugmented Magician with a minor in Face.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Thanks a lot for your advice, you're right about the half-face thing. I'm just trying for versatility, and I'm not sure if they've made that harder or if I just didn't know that I was always making underpowered characters before.

For mages that are focused on spirit summoning... do you have any gameplay advice for that? Spirits always seemed kind of weird, rules-wise, so I always focused less on that than on conventional, spell-based magic. I can't remember the last time I used spirits for anything other than following someone or scouting a place.

[UmaroVI]

Spirits in SR4 are good, arguably broken. The main things are that spirit summoning is very versatile (because you can summon any of five spirit types to deal with whatever your problem is) and that a bunch of the spirit types are really good at fighting.

If you want to be good at summoning, the main thing is to have very good drain resist; having a huge summoning pool isn't necessary. It's not very hard to get spirits to show up, it's just drain-intensive.

[CitizenJoe]

For Ace's astral perception issue, you might be able to mask that physically.  If you're standing behind a wall, your aura can't be perceived.  If you have a toe sticking out, it becomes obvious.  Obviously clothes or a suit of armor doesn't mask you, but a car does (minus windows).  But here's the big question, what if you're behind a plant.  Something alive that has an aura to hide behind?  No, I'm not saying you should carry around a potted plant, but if you paint your body with pollen, that could sufficiently mask your aura, and thus your awakened nature.  Wear a flower and tell boring camp stories which explains why you're covered with pine pollen.  When you start pulling out your photo album when guards express an interest in you, they'll start to distance themselves to stay out of the boring vacation story trap.

[UmaroVI]

Nothing says unobtrusive like being covered in pollen.

[Tsuzua]

But here's the big question, what if you're behind a plant.  Something alive that has an aura to hide behind?  No, I'm not saying you should carry around a potted plant, but if you paint your body with pollen, that could sufficiently mask your aura, and thus your awakened nature.  Wear a flower and tell boring camp stories which explains why you're covered with pine pollen.  When you start pulling out your photo album when guards express an interest in you, they'll start to distance themselves to stay out of the boring vacation story trap.

By that logic, you shouldn't ever see anyone's aura.  You're covered in all sorts of microbes that have their own auras.  If your aura is bright enough to shine though clothes, it's going to overwhelm the hazy glow of pollen, microbes, spores, bacteria, etc.

[CitizenJoe]

By that logic, you shouldn't ever see anyone's aura.  You're covered in all sorts of microbes that have their own auras.  If your aura is bright enough to shine though clothes, it's going to overwhelm the hazy glow of pollen, microbes, spores, bacteria, etc.

Nope. FAB canonized that there is a threshold level that small biologicals become astral effective while below that they may just slow you down or act as pollution or haze.  I suggested pine pollen because it is fairly long lived and very large.  It is also readily available and sometimes used as a food source.  I'm not saying it will be easy to do, and you'll likely need a carrier medium so you don't look like you are caked with yellow powder, but the theory is sound.  Either that or FAB never worked and was just hype by Ares.

[UmaroVI]

This is like walking around inside a cardboard box and claiming you are invisible. Anyone who Assenses you will see that you are completely covered in pollen.

[CitizenJoe]

Which is why you talk incessantly about your boring camping trip... where there are trees... and pollen.    But here's the thing.  When a security mage is scanning, what is he looking for?  He's looking for spirits and awakened beings, which light up like christmas trees via astral perception.  Mundanes have an aura, and every aura is different.  Yes, you can take time and deeply probe an aura, but the first pass (1 hit check) is "Are there any awakened beings here?"  If not, there's hundreds of other people passing by that need to be checked.  Yes, you have a different aura because of the pollen, but everyone is a beautiful snowflake via astral perception so without careful scrutiny of everyone, the mask should hold.  The more likely scenario is watcher spirits that patrol looking for awakened and astrally active beings, then reporting that back to the security mage or even mundane security.  A watcher spirit is going to pass right by that plant person without a second thought because they don't have second thoughts.

Now, if every person entering goes through the intense scrutiny of a security mage at the gate, that company is dumping a fortune into security, it is breaching civil rights (not a problem on their own turf) and it is likely also doing the very obvious search on the order of TSA.  That really only happens in low traffic scenarios, like a top secret facility with 5 employees.  The concept give was a face in a crowd.  If there is no crowd, the concept doesn't apply.

[Tsuzua]

Nope. FAB canonized that there is a threshold level that small biologicals become astral effective while below that they may just slow you down or act as pollution or haze.  I suggested pine pollen because it is fairly long lived and very large.  It is also readily available and sometimes used as a food source.  I'm not saying it will be easy to do, and you'll likely need a carrier medium so you don't look like you are caked with yellow powder, but the theory is sound.  Either that or FAB never worked and was just hype by Ares.

You mean the dual-natured bacteria*?  Yeah I guess if you cover yourself in dual-natured pollen that'll work just fine making yourself non-obvious on the astral plane.

*- The only non-dual natured version just glows on the physical plane when an astral form (not aura) passes though it.

[CitizenJoe]

FAB isn't dual natured.  If it was, mages could kill it from astral space.  It is just fat enough to stop astral beings when packed tight enough (in a floor/wall cavity) or slow them down when aerosolized.

FAB1 is the restricting version.  Pack it tight and an astral being can't pass just like it was a tree (or vines).  I think that may have changed in 3rd and 4th edition though, where it slows someone down but you can still get through.

FAB2 is the UV strain.  It works the same as FAB1, except that when you shine a UV flashlight on it, it glows in the visible spectrum.  The idea is that you flood an area with it, then look for the light distortions around the space of the astral being.  Then hit them with a FAB netgun.

FAB3 is the magic eating strain.  I'm not sure if it is dual natured.

Pollen is the low tech way of doing the same thing. 

[Tsuzua]

FAB isn't dual natured.

FAB I isn't dual natured.  But it also doesn't slow astral forms.  You're thinking of FAB II.  FAB II and FAB III are dual natured (SM 126-127).

Air borne FAB II does give people a -2 to astral perception.  There is the Espirit Grenade (Arsenal 65) that disperses FAB II into the air as a fine mist and slows down astral forms.  It also explicit just increases the threshold of assensing rolls by 2.  So I guess you can cover yourself in dual-natured bacteria and give people +2 threshold to assense you.  However, you're also covered in dual-natured bacteria and that's not going to be subtle.

[CitizenJoe]

Ok, that's another change going into 4th edition.  But if FAB II is dual natured then it can be attacked astrally.  Which makes its usefulness pretty limited.  Originally FAB I and II were not dual natured, and it was specifically commented upon in the flavor text.

Here's the acid test...
If you get swallowed by a whale, can someone astrally perceive you from outside the whale?
What if it was a python? 
A bush?
Where is the line? 

I believe that line to be at the FAB level.  I believe that pine pollen is significantly larger than FAB.  Thus I believe that it  can mask you if you put it on heavy enough (i.e. not a simple dusting).  Note that it is rather easy to determine if it works.  You just get a friendly astral perceiver to check for you.  You can even run tests to find out how long it lasts, what side effects there are, etc.  If the ref says it doesn't work, fine you've still got (presumably) some mad skills in mana theory and botany... you know what's in botany?  Drugs, poisons, food, etc.

[Tsuzua]

Ok, that's another change going into 4th edition.  But if FAB II is dual natured then it can be attacked astrally.  Which makes its usefulness pretty limited.  Originally FAB I and II were not dual natured, and it was specifically commented upon in the flavor text.

Here's the acid test...
If you get swallowed by a whale, can someone astrally perceive you from outside the whale?
What if it was a python? 
A bush?
Where is the line? 

I believe that line to be at the FAB level.  I believe that pine pollen is significantly larger than FAB.  Thus I believe that it  can mask you if you put it on heavy enough (i.e. not a simple dusting).  Note that it is rather easy to determine if it works.  You just get a friendly astral perceiver to check for you.  You can even run tests to find out how long it lasts, what side effects there are, etc.  If the ref says it doesn't work, fine you've still got (presumably) some mad skills in mana theory and botany... you know what's in botany?  Drugs, poisons, food, etc.

The change has to date to at least third edition.  FAB I was mundane, but FAB II and FAB III was dual-natured (Magic in the Shadows 90).

There is definitely some amount of pollen that'll cover your aura.  However that amount is beyond practical.  Sure they'll have problems assensing though your pollen suit, but you're now a dude in a thick all body covering pollensuit which I'm sure people wear all the time and is totally stands out less than just being an adept.  You could also just drive around in a Horseman for the same effect.