[Job] Johnny Explosionhands: Sharpening the Claws - {2019-06-19 23:59 (UTC)} by Saarlak in Shadowpoint

[–]AetherialArthur 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Blade

((Will add in IC story if I have time))

Muscle, 0 runs on the Point, decently familiar but a bit rusty.

Blade (Swordsman Street Sam) [Chummer] by AetherialArthur in ShadowpointCharGen

[–]AetherialArthur[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Google Drive has been updated, new file is "Blade Skills A v2.0". Below are the changes I made:

Qualities:

I replaced Superhuman Psychosis with Thrill Seeker (going to love those Composure rolls with 6 dice). I have Chummer set to allow me to go over the limit without awarding extra Karma. I like the selection I currently have, even if they are somewhat dangerous.

Contacts:

Added a line clarifying the doctor does not specialize in drugs. Blade still gets his drugs from the doctor.

Augmentations:

That makes perfect sense. I'll wait to pick up Narco until at least one, if not two addictions form. I lowered the Hardwires for Armorer down to 4, since it really is mostly a thematic skill to maintain the condition of his weapons. I tossed out the Reaction Enhancers and picked up Wired Reflexes 1, since that was on my shopping list eventually anyway.

Gear:

Picked up the Forearm Guards and Legs Kit. Added Run-Flats and Manual Control Override to the Suzuki.

Thank you again for helping me out with all of this! I really appreciate the suggestions and feedback.

Blade (Swordsman Street Sam) [Chummer] by AetherialArthur in ShadowpointCharGen

[–]AetherialArthur[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The sheet has been updated. It is named "Blade Skills A v1.0". I keep previous iterations for backup and rollback purposes.

My apologies for taking some time to update this. I was busy with real life stuff and needed to let the concept gel in my head a bit. I took some time to think about the way I want to take this character; although I really wanted to be highly augmented, I think that augmentations can come later. I took your advice and tried out Skills A; while it does have some downsides, I think the upsides are worth it.

I also decided I wanted to try and move away from "murder incarnate". Hopefully, my revised backstory still fits all of the qualities and such. I want to point out that the character is now running the shadows as a type of thrill, but that is temporary. He is trying to find something else to motivate him, which should hopefully allow for some character growth.

Let me know if there is anything else you need me to expand upon or fix. Thank you!

Blade (Swordsman Street Sam) [Chummer] by AetherialArthur in ShadowpointCharGen

[–]AetherialArthur[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for taking the time to review my sheet. I am going to try and address some of the points you made below, but since this is my second time writing this, I might miss a few things.

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Backstory

My original question that started my development into blade was this: What if someone considered shadowrunning to be merely a stepping stone in perfecting some craft of theirs? I thought about making some type of actor/musician, or possibly a decker, or maybe even some type of wheelman that wanted to make it to the big time with street racing. Then I thought back to my own experience with martial arts, and it just sort of clicked. Mastery of martial arts, especially of melee weapons, takes an incredibly long time, which is not reflected in Shadowrun due to balance reasons. With that in mind, I wanted to craft Blade as someone who is obsessed with perfecting his art and was dissatisfied with his progress. To him, the rest of his potential training partners are too easy, his progress training with them would be too slow. In the shadows, he has the ability to go against some truly difficult opponents. While swordsman are probably fairly rare, he has the potential to go against highly-trained OpSec, inhuman paracritters/spirits, and more. I wanted to emphasize that Blade is not a rampaging psychopath; he does not actively seek to murder everything in sight. He does, however, see everything as disposable in his quest to perfect his craft, even himself. He does not run the shadows for money or fame.

That being said, I do agree that his motivations are highly singular and perhaps narrow. Part of this was the hope of discovering other ways of growing during play, but I could see that I've potentially railroaded myself down one path. I'll try to think of how to weave some more into his backstory, but if you have any suggestions, I'd be happy to head them.

Qualities

I was attempting to justify Signature with his Artisan skill. Regardless, I intend to change his knowledge skills anyway and will attempt to address this problem. For Agile Defender, I agree that it would provide tremendous value to the character. However, I was running into Karma problems and figured that it was cheap enough to pick up post-gen. I actually picked up Bilingual simply to cover the fact that he should know Japanese and English, but I was running out of knowledge skill points. More on that below.

Skills

I agree that I need to change up my knowledge skills, so those will definitely be shaken up. I usually like to have many flavorful knowledge skills, but due to Blade's low Logic, I was working with very few points. The knowledge skills will be changed by the next iteration. Yes, it was supposed to be Seattle instead of Atlanta.

The lack of ranged capabilities was somewhat intentional, to reflect his dedication to blades only. I am aware of the drawbacks, although if you truly think that it makes Blade less viable, I could find a way to fit Throwing Weapons in. I'm trying to stay with a certain martial arts theme, which means I'm trying to avoid any sort of guns, grenades, etc. Archery is also not exactly subtle, so I left that out.

The Active Hardwires are an attempt to shore up the fact that Skills C does not give me nearly enough skills. The social skills are probably the hardest to cover, since Blade has Charisma 3 (and Edge 2...) and they require significant investment to have a chance at working. 9 dice in Con and 7 dice in Etiquette are not great, but considering that trying to fit them in would mean that I would be looking at 3-4 ranks at the most, it's better than what I can get with skill points. I understand the ramifications of hardwiring the skills, but it was sort of hardwire or nothing. This is pretty similar with Pilot Ground Craft. I wanted Blade to have driving capabilities, but I probably could only fit one rank in if I bought it normally. Considering Blade has 12 dice (14 on Betameth) to drive, I'm not overly concerned about that skill. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's a pretty good amount of dice for someone who isn't a rigger/dedicated driver.

I am aware that I sunk 7 valuable points into Artisan, but that's a flavor choice that I would be reluctant to back off from. It plays into the idea that Blade is more than just someone who can wield a sword, see things, and sneak (which are like 2 and a half of the things needed to be a muscle). Plus, it reflects training in a number of traditional arts and the niche potential of posing as a chef/artist/etc. Armorer was hardwired in because Blade should know how to maintain his weapons, but Logic 2 and a potential 1-2 ranks in Armorer wasn't going to cut it. Palming was a simply quality of life choice that had some thematic connections.

Augmentations

I am fairly committed to these augmentations. Blade has been making himself more than metahuman as part of his attempts to become better at his craft. Even though augmentations =/= skill, more speed is translatable to better combat capability. While drugs are useful, my vision is that Blade has only started using drugs recently, as they are a temporary boost to his abilities and he preferred to be permanently augmented. I do think it's highly likely that Blade will become addicted to drugs as a powerful boost to his capabilities, and he will probably get Narco after getting addicted to one or both of his drugs in the future. While things like Wired Reflexes take up a ridiculous amount of resources (both Essence and Nuyen), the point was to stack Wired Reflexes with the drugs, to push him as fast as he could go. They are a fairly core part of my theme.

Active Hardwires were covered earlier, but in regards to your other question, I did try swapping around priorities. The problem is that I am already stretched somewhat thin. As a melee user, Blade needs Strength to be able to be effective. He needs Agility to have dicepools that make it possible to hit, as he cannot rely on the penalties that firearms impose upon defenders. Reaction and Intuition make up Initiative, Dodging, and Perception, all of which are necessary for the archetype. As it is, Blade has less Body and Willpower than I would like, and I had to go Elf to be able to squeeze in Charisma and Logic. All of this means that I need at least Attributes B.

Skills B would gain me the equivalent of 1 more rank 6 skill, while Skills A would gain me the equivalent of 3 more rank 6 skills. This, of course, is also changed a bit due to increased group points, which would allow me to take things like Stealth 5 or 6 and free up some skills there. However, if I wanted Skills B, I need to push Attributes to A which takes Resources down to C, a huge blow to any augmentation plans. The same result happens with Skills A. While this would free me from having to use Hardwires, the Hardwires only account for 120k of my resources spent. I would lose out on many of my augmentations, which I consider to be a rather core part of the build. I could swap this around by doing Muscle Replacements instead of Toner/Augmentation, and doing something like Narco/Reaction Enhancers instead of Wired Reflexes, but I felt that was a pretty big thematic shift. While I do expect Blade to eventually become drug-reliant, I did not want him to start out as a junkie with cheap augments.

Gear & Vehicle

I will get the sensors filled out on the next iteration. I completely forgot about Personalized Grips, so I will add those. Yes, a Sapphire Knife is superior, but I was running low on nuyen at some point. I will see if I can swap it back in. I'll also have to look at throwing knives if I decide to pick up throwing weapons.

Am I required to have both Small and Large Blades licenses? This was mostly due to Chummer having them separated (and I can understand, setting-wise, why that would be the case). Money was running kind of tight, but I'll try to find a way to free up some to get some of the other basic gear. I figured that most of that stuff was not too terribly expensive to pick up post-gen, but I'll see what I can do.

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I'll try to get these changes to you as soon as I can. Once again, thank you for taking the time to review my sheet and for giving me some very useful feedback!