Shadowrun: For Us It Was a Tuesday [OOC]

They gave you TWO katanas? And a Fichetti?!

Aw man. AW MAN. Now I want to redo your character from scratch for you. It hurts, man. It hurts. :)

The Fichetti is garbage. It shoots 'flechette' rounds, which are antipersonnel bullets that work kind of like high-tech hollowpoints. They do serious tissue damage, but armor stops them cold. You are better off in literally 99.9594% of all engagements just bringing a bigger gun that shoots real bullets. If you want that kind of action, you can buy hollowpoints for your real gun.

The Ruger and the Crusader are good choices from that limited batch. Normally I'd say ditch the taser and just buy Stick'n'Shock clips for your heavy pistol, but that's not the best choice for the loadout they gave you.

Ares Alpha is a great gun though, and will probably be your 'go-to' gun for most engagements.
 

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We are not through the first door, and I don't plan to update the next post until Monday or Tuesday anyway. So if you act quick, I will allow Shayuri to help edit his character.
 

I've got Stick'n'Shocks for the AA and the shotgun, explosive rounds for pretty much everything (except the machine pistol and light pistol). The Fichetti did come with a concealed holster, so I take it the only real use it might see is if I'm deliberately going into a situation, like maybe a swap in a public place where we're both supposed to be unarmed. Which obviously Salva is not the ideal woman for, but I guess Be Prepared was the motto for this character. I'm also guessing Resources were a pretty high Priority for her, as I still have a decent chunk of nuyen left over. The corrections from that earlier post involved getting money back, so apparently the designers underspent even more than they thought.
 

I'm rewriting Queenie's character as I post, but if you want I can give Sal a pass too. I've got Chummer, so it's pretty quick work for me.

Just give me an idea of what you want out of her. The crucial branch points for a weapon specialist is do you want cybernetic augments, or not.

You don't -have- to have them. There are ways around the worst detriments of lacking them.

...but they are nice, if you don't want magic. :)

The downside of them (healing penalties aside) is that they do require a fairly serious investment in Resources. Without that, we could probably knock yours down to C or even D and still give you a great outfitting.
 

If you feel like taking crack at it, hey, be my guest. :)

I do like the idea of the character as just an all-around combat specialist without magic or much in the way of cybernetics. The pregen had a cybernetic arm, but if it were me I'd probably have gone for cybereyes instead-- whatever is going to help her shoot better.

I was also a fan of the spread of Knowledge Skills the pregen had. As seeds to latch onto, soldier from Colombia wasn't a bad one, since it did get me to learn more about the war in Bogota between Aztlan and Amazonia.
 
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Hup. Embarrassment. The Fischetti isn't the fletchette gun. I was thinking of the Ares Slivergun, which is a heavy pistol. Doh. That's what happens when I post from work. ;)

It's not a bad gun, the Fischetti, though the Colt light pistol looks better to me.

Unsung, I'll see if you like what I come up with.
 

And here is what I came up with!

I dropped a lot of stuff from the inventory, and with the freed up Resources I was able to drop it's Priority, giving more attribute points and so on. I was sorely tempted to drop that sniper rifle. It came out to 18,000 nuyen when I was done with it. But oh, that rifle. Oh that damage. No, you're keeping the rifle. One day we will need you to play God, up on high, smiting men and beast with but a touch of your fingertip. And you will. You will.

So, I hewed closely to the spirit of the original stats, but I made changes to help turn your character from a jill of all trades at which she is indifferent at, into someone who is uniformly deadly across a wide spectrum of weapons, who has some survival skills and military skills to boot. A big part of this meant spending a lot more on augmentation, so I could get your Agility high enough to compete with more heavily augmented characters. Your only cyberware is your eyes and datajack though. All other work is bioware. This makes it expensive, but it also keeps the essence loss down. Despite the more extensive augmentation, your essence is still 5...the same as before.

Your challenge in combat will be twofold; first you will have to deal with your Initiative rating. In a world of adepts and cybered up razorboys, you will not be going first very often. This is one reason I stepped up your protection, and increased your High Pain Tolerance. You'll not usually shoot first...so you want your shot to finish things. Your other challenge will simply be 'what gun do I want to finish this guy with?' You have a lot of guns, and pack potentially the biggest ranged punch in the group.

Your Ares Alpha is a monster. A MONSTER. One good burst will finish off a burly guy in heavy armor, if you're using your APDS rounds. A single ROUND could kill someone in light armor EASILY. Your dice pool for the weapon is not the BEST, but it is very GOOD, considering your very light augmentation. The grenade launcher will mow down ROOMS of people at a time...sadly, I couldn't afford as much ammo for it as I'd like to...but that will be easy to pick up after a payday.

Sniper Rifle. Let me put it this way. Imagine a giant troll, wearing heavy military armor. Your Alpha will do, maybe 2 or 3 points of damage a pop. It will take probably 5 or 6 hits to take him down...during which time he can shoot at you too. Anything LESS than that, he will laugh at. And then kill you. Your sniper rifle, on a good hit, will one-shot him. If you screw up, it'll be a twofer. So...yeah. That's a thing that you have.

And then you have your combat knife and taser and backup pistol (which is silenced and has taser bullets because at this point, WHY NOT?) and...you won't be wanting for weapons! Okay? Lets leave it at that. :)

[sblock=Sal 2: Electric Boogaloo]Handle: Salvatierra
Name: (?)
Metatype: Human

BOD 4
AGI 6/8
REA 5
STR 3
WIL 4
LOG 3
INT 4
CHA 3
ESS 5.0
EDG 5

Condition
Monitor (P/S) 11 / 10
Armor 14
Limits Physical 6, Mental 5, Social 5
Physical Init 9 + 1D6

Active Skills
Blades (Knives) 2, Etiquette (Mercenary) 1, Gunnery 3, Heavy Weapons (Grenade Launcher) 5, Intimidation 3, Navigation 2, Perception 2, Pilot Ground Craft 2, Running 1, Sneaking 2, Survival 2, Swimming 3, Throwing Weapons 2, Tracking 2, Unarmed Combat 2
Skill Group: Firearms 5

Knowledge Skills Bogota 3, Catholicism 1, Military Procedures 4, Politics 3, Psychology 1, Sociology 1
(You get 14 points on knowledge skills and langauges, and aren't Bilingual anymore, so you may need to shuffle these around a bit)
Languages Aztlaner Spanish 1, English N, Latin 1, Spanish N

Qualities Addiction (Mild, to alcohol), Guts, High Pain Tolerance (2). SINner (Aztlan? UCAS?)

Augmentations
Cybereyes with Image Link, Smartlink and Flare Compensation, .2 essence, 9000ny
Datajack, .1 essence, 1000ny
Enhanced Articulation (Automatics), .3 essence, 24,000ny
Muscle Toner 2, .4 essence, 64,000ny

Gear
Armor Jacket (12), chemical protection 2, nonconductivity 3
Helmet, low light vision and thermographic vision
Lined coat (9), concealed holster, nonconductivity 3
Earbuds [Capacity 2, w/ spatial recognizer]
Renraku Sensei commlink
Rating 4 Area Jammer
Fake SIN [Rating 2]
Gas mask
Low Lifestyle (1 month)
Medkit (Rating 2)

Weapons
Ares Alpha [Assault Rifle, Acc 5(7), DV 11P,AP –2, SA/BF/FA, RC 7, 42(c), w/ Gas Vent 3 and shock pad, 4 spare clips, 84 rnds APDS, 84 rnds regular
Ares Antioch 2 [Heavy Weapons, Acc 4(6), DV 16P, AP –2, w/ 8 high explosive microgrenades (included in stats)], and 8 flashbang minigrenades
Ares Predator V [Heavy Pistol, Acc 5/7, DV 7P, AP —, SA/BF, RC 2,40(c), w/ silencer, 4 spare clips, 50 rnds of stick and shock, and 50 rounds regular ammo]
Ares Desert Strike [Sniper Rifle, Acc 7, DV 13P, AP –4, SA, RC 2,14(c), w/ shock pad and silencer, 28 rounds APDS ammo]
Combat knife [Blades, Reach —, Acc 6, DV 5P, AP–3]
Defiance EX Shocker [Taser, Acc 4, DV 9S(e), AP –5, Sa, RC—, 4(m), w/ 20 taser darts]
Thermal smoke grenades (5) [Grenade, DV —, AP —, Blast 10m Radius]

Contacts (You only have 9 points to use on Contacts, so this list will need some trimming :))
Arms dealer (Connection 2/Loyalty 3)
Bartender (Connection 2/Loyalty 3)
Fixer (Connection 2/Loyalty 2)
Mr. Johnson (Connection 4/Loyalty 2)

Starting ¥ 13 + (4D6 x 100)¥
[/sblock]
 
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Much appreciated. I don't know enough to know how good I've got it, but I'm sure we'll be finding out in the game still to come. I don't doubt you when you say the Ares Alpha has been pumped up. I don't know what Gas Vent 3 and shock pad do mechanically speaking, but I could hazard a guess. As an example of which, APDS must surely stand for 'Antipersonnel'...does...something, and if 84 rounds is enough, it must be one hell of a something.

For SINner I guess she'd probably be Aztlaner, or possibly Colombian if it hasn't been annexed yet. I don't know how to pare down Languages or Contacts. For Languages I guess it depends on how important or enforceable that is by the rules of Shadowrun. RP-wise I'd be inclined to say she's a Spanish native speaker, but obviously English is more relevant to have in this group.

As for contacts, I think I've gotta keep bartender and arms dealer. Somebody else has probably got a fixer or Mr Johnson, right?

Thanks again! I owe you, but I have no idea how I'd pay this kind of thing back.
 

No payment needed. I like making characters. :)

To answer!

The gas vent system and shock pads are recoil compensation. They let you fire more consecutive bursts before your attack pools begin to seriously be affected by the weapon's recoil. This means you can lay down devastating sustained fire.

APDS stands for Armor Piercing Discarding Sabot. They're penetrator rounds that have small, superdense elements that break free while the bullet is in flight, concentrating its kinetic energy into a smaller impact area. In game terms, it reduces the armor rating of the target by 4 dice over and above any armor reduction the weapon naturally has. An Ares Alpha naturally reduces the AR by 2...meaning that you can reduce it by a whopping 6 points! To put it in perspective, normal armor clothing only HAS 6 points of armor rating. It is completely nullified by this ammunition in this weapon. Heavy military-specification full body plate armor has AR 18...so your rifle reduces it by a full third of its total value.

This is very good. Your sniper rifle, loaded with APDS (the only ammo I bothered buying for it) has an armor reduction of 8!

What kind of knowledges would you say your character has? That's not just languages, but also things like military tactics, mercenary units and their commanders, maybe she follows a sport or has a hobby activity she knows about... A Knowledge Skill is pretty freeform, and just represents a subject the character can answer questions about, if not necessarily do.

Think of the difference between a Knowledge Skill and an Active skill like the difference between being a football player and a football fan. A fan knows a lot about the game, but probably can't PLAY it well. A player knows a lot AND can play. We've already covered your active skills, but now you can decide what she's knowledgeable about in addition to those things.

Bartender and arms dealer are great choices. That may even be enough, if you have strong relationships with those two. I might also suggest a street doctor, if she gets hurt a lot. :)
 

Sweeet. I am a fan of economy in killing. I wasn't very close with the acronym, though. But oh well.

Ideally she won't get hurt a lot. :) From the sounds of things she's equipped to dish out the hurt from a distance, which would be the goal. But maybe a street doctor as an acquaintance. Something to grow on.

I noticed that about Knowledge skills being freeform, but I'm not totally clear on how much they cost or how many of them I have. Of her skills I think I'd be willing to drop Psychology and Sociology altogether, maybe drop one point of Politics and pick up one in Catholicism, and probably increase English to near-fluency while keeping Spanish as native. Possibly drop Latin and up Aztlaner Spanish, too. Is that doable with the points I've got?
 

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