Ultimate Face

I don't have specific stats, because we're trying to figure out what BPs to use, but here's the generic concept:

Human, Adept
Max Charisma
High Edge
4 Magic, which is reduced to 3 due to Bio/Cyberware

3 Points of Adept Powers:
Commanding Voice
Linguisitcs
Melanin Control
Voice Control
Kinesics 1
Facial Sculpt 4

Qualities:
First Impression
Astral Cameleon

Key Skills:
Influence Group 4
Disguise 5
Forgery 5
Perception 5

Key Bio/Cyberware:
Tailored Pheromeones 3
Skillwires 3
Maybe Cerebral Boosters and Reaction Enhancers

Concept:
This character is throwing about 10-12 dice for every social test. Additionally, he's effectively a shapeshifter and can impersonate nearly anyone due to his adept powers and the disguise skill. The skillwires are needed to give applicable knowledges/languages/skills that the impersonated target might have. Add specialties to taste on most of the skills. The character would probably roll with a Fubuki with Stick n Shock on burst fire and a Stun Glove or Taser to disable targets. Makes an excellent spy, intelligence gatherer, etc. Obvious upgrades would be to increase magic to improve kinestics.

Let me know what you guys think. It should make a pretty fun character to play. Thanks!

You could go aspected magician or mystic adept and use the physical illusion spell (phantasm?) instead of face sculpt (which has a much more limited time it can be maintained).

Also, analyze device, while not as good as skillwires, doesn't reduce essence. Therefore your magic doesn't need to be reduced as much. I don't have my book so I can't check the essence loss for your bio/cyberware. I'd do my best to keep it at 1.

The tailored pheromones(tp) gives you a nice boost without the opposed roll suffered by control emotions(ce), but you also have a higher max possibility with ce so it really comes down to averages. The effectiveness of ce is up to the GM more than anything else, so you may have an even easier time of it just using the ce and not having to work as hard at a social test. Not being a mathematician, nor trusting to the kindness of GMs, I'd probably stick with your choice of tp because you only have the one opposed roll instead of two, and that's easy math! Does suck on the loss of magic though.

Another reason why I like aspected/mystic adept, if he does get found out. He can wipe the person's mind with Alter Memory.

You'll also want to buy cellular gloves and have a nice commlink to program them with, they are only as good as the system rating that programs them.

You bring up an interesting point, and one which I considered. The problem with the Mystic Adept approach is that you end up splitting your magic in a way that your spells are realitively hard to pull off. Additionally, by maintaining a spell on yourself, you have an aura due to your spell. So it's good against some things, but bad against others. The good thing with facial sculpt is that it can bypass any magical detections, especially with astral chameleon. The good thing with facial sculpt and melanin control, you can basically change your appearance in bad circumstances to avoid capture.

Alter memory is probably the best thing you can get from the mystic adept path. With some specialization and aspects you could probably get the dice up fairly high, but just seems like a sizable trade-off for that one trick. The rationale behind the high Edge is to give yourselve some leeway in case the dice screw you. That way, you'll never have to rely on something like Alter Memory.

*chuckles* there are ways of finding out about memory altering types of spells,,,wonders of video/audio record links from cyberware. Some of my characters use it alot for just such occasions.

There ways around everything, the beauty of the game, wearz.

I'm confused about how an adept who is currently using an ability doesn't show up on the astral. The way I understood the rule was that any magically active person\object shows onthe astral.

Astral chemelion will reduce the amount of time it takes for his signature to fade, but it doesn't effect what he is currently doing. For that he'll need Masking.

I'm starting to think that dropping all the 'ware to bump kinestics is probably better. It would give more bonus dice more often and is not reliant on proximity and smell. This would maybe allow you to go mystical adept and add a few spells.

I agree with klinktastic; although the max is 3, it's worth getting. Mystic adept can be a lot of fun for a social adept.

Also note: you can only have 2 skills at 5 on start.