Character Consepts: Mages/Mystics/Adepts

True, we could make him part driver as well, he is already the get into any place humanly possible person, sort of, possibly think about upgrading that skill group.

lets do some things, take out the throwing weapons, we don't need it with all the firepower that we have. We could also find another use for the killing hands points, since he can quick draw both weapons, its going to be insanly hard for him to not be with a weapon, besides stun stacks with physical damage towards knocking someone out.

as for driving, we can buy him a vehicle, and maybe put 1-3 points into it.

The handgun as a whole can have a holster, and you don't have to take off the bayonet, but we are going to have it on a hidden gun arm slide anyways.

so lets add the following things to our character and see where we are on points, using my previously posted character sheet:

• Take out throwing weapons
  
• Amp up blades to a 4 or 5 and keep the katana specialization
  
• Add the Two Weapon Style Maneuver
  
• see if we can amp up our stealth skill.
  
• Lets add a motorcycle of some sort and the pilot groundcraft skill, just so he has something to move around on.
  
• If anyone can think of anything else, i'm open to ideas.
  

oh and the book (SR4 and Arsenal) says that EX-Explosive ammo is +1 damage -1 AP, Explosive ammo is just +1 damage. I know the Char-gen says different, but the book is our bible

Really? I'm reading the SR4 book, and it says in both the descriptive paragraph and the chart:

Explosive: +1DV -1AP
Ex-Explosive: +2DV -2AP

Of course, my book may be an older print. Maybe there was errata?

anyways, what else you got for me Wreck, and you might want to post in kuro tenshi, its getting really dull.

Okay, implementing the changes you suggested. The BP total, by my count - please check, should be 393 before the three maneuvers you purchased;Maneuvers: Iaijutsu, Set-up, Finishing Move (6PB). With those three Maneuvers, it's 399.

Changes were:

Drop:
Throwing Weapons (Shuriken) : 2 (4)

Bump:
Stealth Group by 1 (10BP) to a total of 3
Blades(Sword) by 1 (4BP) to a total of 4(6)

Buy:
Pilot groundcraft (bike) (6BP) : 1(3)

Dropping the Throwing weapons paid for the Pilot Skill and the Boost to Blades, So only the Stealth Group increase actually cost anything.

I've got gear sitting at 9BP with NY890 to spare.

Dropping Killing hands for a choice of: Mystic Armor level 3, Counter Strike level 2, or Combat Sense Level 1.

We haven't discussed this one before, but... I thought I'd mention it since it does some of the things we were looking at maneuvers and martial arts for. Namely: +1 to Reaction for Surprise Tests AND when defending Against ranged or melee attacks.

If we took Combat sense, we could drop the Dodge Specialization and buy another maneuver.

Attributes
Body: 4
Agility: 5 (6)
Reaction: 5 (6)
Strength: 3
Charisma: 2
Intuition: 4
Logic: 3
Willpower: 2
Edge: 2
Magic: 5
Initiative: 10
Essence: 6

Active Skills
Stealth Group : 3
Blades (Swords) : 4 (6)
Dodge (Ranged Combat) : 5 (7)
Pistols (Semi-Automatics) : 5 (7)
Unarmed Combat : 4
Perception : 4
Etiquette (Corporate) : 2 (4)
Pilot Ground Craft (Bike) : 1 (3)

Knowledge Skills (13 out of 21 free bp)
Corp. Sec. Tactics: 3
Sec. Procedures: 3
Magic Background: 2
Safe Houses: 1
Poisons: 1
Ares Macrotechnology: 3

Qualities
Positive
Adept (5bp)
Ambidextrous (5bp)
martial arts (Ninjutsu 5bp)
martial arts (Fire Fight 15bp)
martial arts (Krav Maga 5bp)
Negative
Addiction, moderate (-10)
Allergy unc/mod (-10)
Sensitive System (-15)

Weapons
Katana
+ personalized Grip
Ares Predator IV
+ personalized Grip
+Melee Hardening
Hidden Gun Arm Slide
Silencer
+ additional clip
12x EX-Explosive Rounds (10 shots)
10x spare clips

Armors
Securetech PPP leg and arm casings
Securetech PPP vitals protector plate
Lined Coat

Commlinks
Subvocal Microphone
OS : Iris Orb
Commlink : Novatech Airware


Equipments
Fake License (Rating 4)
Fake Sin (Rating 4)
DocWagon Contract (Gold - per Year)
Glasses
+Smartlink
+Thermographic Vision
+Image Link
+Flare Compensation
Earbud
+ Audio Enhancement (Rating 2)
+ Spatial Recognizer

Powers
Improved Reflexes (level 1)
Improved Physical Attribute (level 1)
Mystic Armor (level 2)
Counterstrike (Level 1)
.5PP left for additional Power

Contacts
Tanaka, Akira (L:2 C:2) Hawk, What does he do?

Maneuvers
Iaijutsu
Set-up
Finishing Move

Special skills and Effects

• Reduce ranged combat "Attacker in Melee combat" mod by 3 total(2 firefight, 1 krav maga) (thus able to use your gun freely while in melee combat)
  
• +1 on Melee Dodge (Not block or parry) (thus offsetting the specialization on dodge somewhat)
  
• +1 to infiltration tests
  
• Iaijutsu: May make a quick-draw test (weapon skill + reaction threshold 3) to draw any weapon with a reach of 1 or less
  
• Set-up: May make an attack test to deal no damage but to add her net hits to the next following attack; may be used with finishing move.
  
• Finishing Move: A character with this maneuver may follow up a succesful attack, whether it deals damage or not, immediately with a move designed to take out the enemy. this allows the character to make an immediate follow-up melee attack in the same action phase. Finishing move counts as an interrupt action and uses up the characters next available action.

do it, we can stand to lose a -1 in ranged to gain a +1 to dodge in ranged and melee, considering we will probably be dancing on the bleeding edge of both, emphasis on the bleeding with the skills that we have. Then we add two weapon style maneuver and we are a near perfect killing machine.

Okay, after dropping Dodge (Ranged) 5(7) to just Dodge 5, we are sitting at 397. We have enough BPs to buy 1 Maneuver.

So far we have three maneuvers, we can buy a max of 10 (25BPs worth of Martial Arts Quality/5*2). But they cost us 2BP each. So to get more than the 1, we need to drop something else. I vote either 1 rank of Etiquette, or the Etiquette specialization: corporate.

Hawk, if any of that cuts into Background, say so. I it's not nerfing if it's for RP.

i have an idea: buy the maneuver : TWO WEAPONS STYLE that ive been saying for the past 5 posts. we could in theory lower perception by 1, gives us four more bp, for a total of 5 to play with, and lets put a point back into the contact, we do kinda need something better than a 2/2 what ever he is anyways. and the power combat reflexes would rock on toast for us, help us against surprises and give us the +1 to dodge against ranged and melee.

Heh, Okay man, Two Weapon Style. Hawk, that sound good to you? If we drop that Perception by one, then we can still buy two more styles. What should they be?

By the way, Multi-strike and Two Weapon style both say they are for melee only, but we get around that sort of by using the blade on the ares... just can't shoot it under those rules.

here is the cute loop hole though, 'two-weapons' says you must have two melee weapons (which we do technically), but it says nothing about the attack having to come from a melee weapon.

the second loop hole is in multisrike it says 'apply the dice pool modifier when you attack more than one opponent in the same action, or attacks with two melee weapons at once.' which would be kinda funny firing the gun at a guy 6 feet away, while you chuck a katana at him, so in essence, yes we can stab one guy and shoot another at the same time and still get the bonus, which the total dice for that attack would be 14 dice split between the two people, you get 6 agility, since it is the lowest skill 4 for actual combat skill, then plus 4 for our specs, rightous eh?

anyways that leaves us with 3 points after buying multistrike. what should we do next?

Everything's looking good. On the char sheet that was posted last though, it still had the Krav Maga martial art listed. With Iaijutsu, it's redundant now, unless we want to take a different bonus from it? I'm at school and don't have my books right now, so I'm not sure what else there was to take. If we don't want it for something, that gives another 5bp to work with, right?

Two-weapon and multi-strike are a must, even if whoever gms a game with him decides that he won't allow shooting with the ares in multi-strike.

Set-up is useful for the finishing move maneuver, so it works. Is it necessary for it though?

Ground bike skill is fine, I get this image of him riding in pursuit of someone, pulling out his katana as he gets close to them, and going at it like a mad cossack.

Combat senses are great. We might be able to take a point out of dodge (though maybe leave the ranged specialization so that it doesn't lag too far behind melee) and put that somewhere else, like into pistols or blades, or wherever.

His contact, Tanaka Akira is a Johnson who works with Ares. Sorry, I shoulda cleared that up a while back. Do you think that we should either add in a weapons dealer to reflect the primo gear he's got, or beef up Tanaka a bit to reflect it?

That's all I've got right now. I'll check in later, got to go get ready for a test.

The Krav Maga advantage we chose was :Reduce "Attacker in Melee combat" modifictaion by 1. Iaijutsu is being used so that you can quick draw you sword and attack with it with one complex action vs only being able to draw it with a simple action.

actually wreck, you might have that backwards. With Quick-draw you can draw and attack as a simple action, versus having to take a complex action for the same thing.

Set-up isn't neccessary for finishing move, and finishing move isn't neccessary for set-up, its just they compliment each other by being able to take an attack and effectivly double the damage, well more or less double. so if we wanted to we can take set-up and/or finishing move out and use the points elsewhere.

our contact is an ares corporate johnson, maybe we should have a second contact as a black market armorer, that way we have someone that knows equipment, even the not so street legal ones.

Something i forgot though, has anyone actually looked at counter strike, on a successful block or perry of a melee attack our next action gets 1+net hits. with this in mind lets take a look at our maneuvers that we have and one that i've just read:
[list]
[*] two-weapons style: may coose to apply full dfense option using only one weapon and still attack with the other weapon.
[*] multi-strike: +1 dice pool for attacking multiple enemies in the same action
[*] iajutsu: quick draw anything
[*] Set-up: May make an attack test to deal no damage but to add her net hits to the next following attack; may be used with finishing move.
[*] Finishing Move: A character with this maneuver may follow up a succesful attack, whether it deals damage or not, immediately with a move designed to take out the enemy. this allows the character to make an immediate follow-up melee attack in the same action phase. Finishing move counts as an interrupt action and uses up the characters next available action.
[*](now check this one out, keep counterstrike in mind) Ripsote: a character with riposte who successfully parries or blocks a melee combat attack may make an immediate attack on her attacker even if it is not her action phase in the turn.

thanks for putting that point into reaction, i kinda didn't remember that's what you use in defense, oops.

So I went back to re-read the Iaijutsu maneuver. It says we can quick draw any weapon with reach 1 or less and attack with it as a simple action. However, it continues on to say that if attacking with that weapon requires a Complex action, you may draw and attack using a Complex action. SR4 says that Melee and Unarmed combat attacks require Complex actions. It would be OMG awesome if we could draw and attack with a Simple action, but unless we can find a way to attack in Melee as a Simple action... we're stuck as is. We can still draw the Ares and shoot with it though.

Yeah, I've been staring at Riposte since yesterday. I was trying to figure out how all of these would play out together.

Two Weapon lets us use our off hand for full defense, but full defense is a different defense option from perry. I say we focus on the Perry/Reposte track.

Correct me if you think this is wrong (or way too godly).

Using the Riposte Maneuver, he successfully perrys an attack. He also gets an immediate attack (which will use up his next available action) with a +1 + net perry hits as an automatic bonus to the hits generated towards the Riposte attack. THEN he can use Finishing Move to attack AGAIN (using up his NEXT, NEXT available action) in an attempt to kill that opponent. The down side is... he can't do anything for the next TWO initiative passes.

While it is implied that these attacks should be with a melee weapon, they don't specifically say that. So, let us assume that he perrys while wielding the ares. He could then SHOOT his opponent... TWICE!

Have you ever seen Equalibrium? You know, the gun-fu movie with Christian Something-or-other? Toshio seems to be becoming a "Cleric"

I think you had that backwards Wreck, hey at least we have the ares 4 predator, just block with the sword and shoot twice, works for me.

Our current Maneuvers are:

• Two weapon Style: allows us to full perry or full block and still attack.
  
• Iajutsu: Lets us quick draw any weapon that we have.
  
• Multi-Strike: gives us a bonus for attacking multiple enemies during the same action
  
• Set-up: make an attack to add dice to our next attack
  
• Finishing move: upon a successful attack (damage or not) we can make another attack
  

I was looking over our powers and Maneuvers and i saw something that struck my mind with a jackhammer. Set-up gives us a boost when we make an offensive attack, letting us deal more damage when we use Finishing move.

A power that we have is CounterStrike, which effectivly on a successful block or perry gives us 1+net hits to our next action.

Then i found the maneuver Riposte: Upon a successful block or perry we are allowed to make an attack, whether it is our in the action phase or not.

Essentially, for offense, we use the Set-up->finishing move to do a double attack and deal a crap load of damage. And for defense, on a successful block or perry we can now shift directly into an attack (riposte, which is boosted by counterstrike), and then shift into finishing move, A SECOND ATTACK!!!

the tree would be as follows:
Offense: Set up-->Finishing move

Defense: Counterstrike + Riposte-->Finishing Move

The way i see it with our character we are heavily cheating the system, this is loopholes worthy of a U.S. Politician, effectivly none of the attack maneuvers say we have to use a melee weapon, just block a melee attack. So the way i see it we use his first turn to get up close and personal, maybe take a shot or two, but then stop next to a baddie. When they try something, anything for that matter, we turn him into swiss cheese and have him beg us to make him into a sandwhich.

This characters sheer speed equals Jotunn's strength and equals Taviro's adaptability. if we put a fourth character with these three that is good with technology then we have a team that can take on just about anything.

that is Equilibrium with Sean bean and Christian Bale, and they use what is called the Gun-Kata.

Your right on some parts Wreck, we wouldn't be able to react on our turn, but why bother when we get two or more attacks during their turn. We just end up in mondo turn debt. We still get free actions during our turn.

As for full defense 'use the whole quote or none at all' Full melee defense comes complete with a gymnastics defense, Perry Defense, and a Blocking defense. so yes being on full defense is basically our characters offense.

And the book says we get to make An (read: one) attack when we block or use the maneuvers, so we get to either shoot once or slice once per counter attack.

Your right, I re-read the Full Defense, I thought it was listing those as all separate Defense option, but they are just sub catagories... That is messed up!

gun-kata, so more karate vs kung-fu, I can dig it.

It seems though, that after his initial attack, he's pretty much digging himself a hole of major debt on actions.

Worst Case Scenario: He's only got two initiative passes, so he's going to run out of actions after his first attack or defense. Best Case scenario: He can attack, and then gets stuck defending himself... Which isn't all that bad considering he gets two attacks when that happens.

You were right about Multi-Strike too. It's +1 to the dice pool when ever he attacks multiple targets OR (not as good, but meh) when he attacks with two melee weapons at once. So you could shoot one guy and stab another, or you could stab two guys or stab the same guy with both the sword and the bayonet.

actually riposte lets you dig into your next combat turns as well, same with finishing move, so we may be in turn debt upto our eyeballs, but it doesn't matter considering we still get our free actions to run to meet the enemy head on, and the coolest part is that with all the abilities we have, we don't have to worry about him since if anyone attacks us, we block/perry and shred them.

That's why I said Worst/Best... GMs have been known to overrule things. Either way I say DO IT!!! It's freakin awesome!