LibriumArcana.Games

Okay, so 20th anniversity edition came out awhile ago and sadly, if there's Shadowruning about Frigid has to GM. What with things the way they are, if I GM Shadowrun, it's 3rd edition. But I have some of the books for 20th anniversity because... Well fuck you, I don't need to justify having Shadowrun books to you.

Moving on.

In this thread, I'm going to see if I can create a decent starting mage. I will first do so using only the main book. And then by using in addition to the main book, the shadowrun companion full of fun funky stuff.

Let's start with build A:

In this version of shadowrun you have a point buy system (people's who first experience with point buy was Eclipse Phase are already running for the hills). You start with 400 BP (Build Points).

First thing you do is pick your metatype. Which is fancy talk for picking your race. In basic shadowrun you have your choice of the 5 races of metahumanity. In alphabetical order they are:

Dwarves (Homo Sapien Pumilionis they cost 25 BP and you get thermographic vision, +1 Body, +2 Strength and +1 Willpower. You also trade in the ability to reach the top shelf for the ability to pull off the mother of all nut shots.

Elves (Homo Sapien Nobilis they cost 30 BP and you get low light vision, +1 Agility, +2 Charisma, and +1 Intuition. Also, they totally didn't get to pick their scencifitic name and any suggestions otherwise are just mean rumors from jealous orks.

Orks (Homo Sapien Robustus cost 20 BP and you get low light vision +3 Body and +2 Strength. Additionally you get to appreciate the irony of you being more feared then elves when they've swiped at least 2 countries that people know about and you can't even get into decent housing. You are also not bitter at all!

Trolls (Homo Sapien Ingentis cost a whopping 40 BP, why? Because you get thermographic vision, +1 reach, +1 natural armor, +4 body, +4 Strength and YOU GET TO BE A TROLL! You also get the ability to win all board games, on account of being able to rip people's arms off if they annoy you.

Humans (Homo Sapien Sapien cost 0 BP! You get +1 Edge. You also never have to worry about sticking out of a crowd because 60% of the planet is human.

I will be making a Human Mage, because this is a trail run and I am boring like that. Shut up and buy your own book and make a Troll. Actually make two Trolls.

After this, you pick qualities. Qualities are negative and positive things that cost or give you bonus BP. I'm just gonna grab the Magician Quality that cost 15 BP, it doesn't give me much... JUST UNIMAGINABLE MAGIC POWERS!


*cough* right. Current BP left is 385.

Now we do attributes. There are 4 Physical Attributes and 4 Mental ones. There's also Edge, Essence, Initiative, Magic and Resonance.

Edge is basically good karma from 3rd edition. Essence is the basic wholeness of your spirit and body, getting cyberware reduces essence, as will drug addiction, being attacked by a vampire, losing a limb so on and so forth. When you lose Essence, you lose Magic. Magic users try to avoid losing Essence. Magic (the stat) is your raw talent and ability to tell the laws of physics to go sit in a corner and shut the fuck up. Resonance is your raw talent and ability to be one with the internets Matrix. Basically a man with high Resonance don't need no stinkin computer to hack your bank account, so be cool omae.

You start with 1 in each Physical and mental attribute. You start with 6 essence, you cannot buy more essence, you can only lose essence. You start with 0 Magic and Resonance unless you buy a quality to get your first point beyond that you have to buy more. It cost 10 BP for each point in your stats. You can only spend up to 200 BP on your physical and mental Attributes. Remember that your first point was free.

For baseline humans, the range is 1 to 6, (a note to move a stat from 5 to 6 cost 25 BP!). So a guy with 6 in agility has the raw talent to get to the olympics (still need a skill or two) while a guy with 1 agility lacks the ability to walk and chew gum at the same time. Let me show you what I did.

Body: 3 (20 BP)________________________________Magic: 5 (40 BP)
Agility: 3 (20 BP)_______________________________Essence: 6
Reaction: 3 (20 BP)_____________________________Edge: 1
Strength: 2 (10 BP)_____________________________Initiative: 6
Charisma: 3 (20 BP)
Intuition: 3 (20 BP)
Logic: 4 (30 BP)
Willpower: 5 (40 BP)

I have spent 180 BP on attributes and 40 BP on Magic.

I have 165 BP left. Now we move on to skills. Now you start with 0 in each skill. Skills run from 1 to 6, someone with 1 is barely trained, someone with 6 is badass (well skills actually go up to 7 but you can't get there in character creation so don't worry about it). To get a point in a skill cost 4 BP. I know what you're thinking AHA! That's really cheap, we can spurge out on skills. And you can... expect you also need BP to buy gear and if you're a mage like me.... spells. Cause a spellslinger who has no spells looks pretty silly right? On the flip side you can buy a skill group. This is a bundle of skills that are heavily related. Each point in a skill group is 10BP. The issue here is that you have to spend points in game to raise the group not the individual skill. I decided this was worth the cost to get my spell slinging up to par. Additionally, there are Skills are divided between Active and Knowledge Skills. Below are just the active skills, I'll do the Knowledge skills next.

Active Skills:

Skill Group Conjuring 5 (50 BP)
Banishing
Binding
Summoning

Skill Group Sorcery 5 (50 BP)
Counterspelling
Ritual Spellcasting
Spellcasting

Infiltration: 2 (8BP)
Pistol: 2 (8BP)
Blades: 2 (8BP)
Etiquette: 2 (8BP)
Arcana: 2 (8BP)

As you can see I'm pretty damn good at the magic shit. And slightly below average at almost everything else... You get what you pay for... Anyways I spent 140 BP on skills. That leaves me 25 BP.

Now Knowledge Skills don't actually cost BP! *HOORAY!* You get your Intuition+Logic x 3 points for knowledge skills. If you really want you can spend BP for extra knowledge skills but I'm just gonna work with what I got. You can pretty much make up knowledge skills as you and your GM see fit. You also buy languages from this pool. Luckly you get one language, your native language for free. You mark that with an N.

Knowledge Skills:

North American Politics: 3
Magical Creatures: 3
Seattle Street Gangs: 4
Spirits: 4
North American History: 3

Languages:
English: N
Japanese: 4

Spells at last! Spells at last! Thank GOD ALMIGHTY WE GOT SPELLS AT LAST!

Spells cost 3 BP a pop, thankfully you don't have pay for each force point (3rd edition thing) because that would be ruinous. I won't go to indepth on the spells just a quick rundown of what the do and why I took it.

Increase Reflexes: enhances your Initiative, letting you go faster and more often. Trust me that's a thing.
Armor Physical: Because I am squishy and every fucker with an assault cannon is looking for me!
Heal: START THE BREATHING! STOP THE BLEEDING! TREAT THE WOUND! TREAT FOR SHOCK!
Stunball: When you absolutely have to knock out every fucker in the room! Take Stunball!
Manaball: This is an area attack spell that you have to resist with Willpower. Most frontline brawlers don't have high Will. They tend to come in groups. Take Manaball.
Powerbolt: A individual attack spell that you resist with Body. Mages tend to have low Body. Guess who this spell is aimed at. Do not shoot the cybered up Troll berserker with Powerbolt. Just don't.
Improved Invisibility: If they can't see you, they can't aim at you. Nor will you leave behind incriminating photo/video evidence of you doing naughty things with this spell.

That's 21 BP worth of spells. This leaves me 4 BP. You buy money for gear with BP. 1 BP = 5000 nuyen (yeah the money in this setting is the nuyen, Imperial Japan is a thing again, roll with it). I won't be buying gear here because there is no game running.

So I take you're happier with the mage building in the new edition?

It's about equivalent to the 3rd edition. Although in 3rd I was usually able to get more skills due to Sorcery and Conjuring each being 1 skill instead of 3.

But will it blend?

-stares-

Sorry, someone had to be a smartass here.

Not bad. How's it work for Samuri?

I have no doubt that it's pretty easy to make a bad-ass cyberwarrior in the system, that was never really a failing of the series. That said, I may try my hand at a few character concepts later this week myself.

If we get enough interest, we should do a Run,chummers

Okay the tricked out version. Since I've already trotted out commentary I'll wait til we get to qualities.

Character Name: Tobin (400BP)
Metatype: Human

Attributes:
Bod, 3 (20BP)__________________________Ess, 6
Agi, 3 (20BP)__________________________Mag, 5 (40 BP)
React, 3 (20BP)________________________Int, 6
Str, 2 (10BP)__________________________Edge, 1
Char, 3 (20BP)
Intu, 3 (20BP)
Logic, 4 (30BP)
Wilpo, 5 (40BP)

Active Skills:

Skill Group Sorcery 5 (50 BP)
Counterspelling
Ritual Spellcasting
Spell casting

Skill Group Conjuring 5 (50 BP)
Banishing
Binding
Summoning

Inflitration: 2 (8 BP)
Pistol: 2 (8BP)
Blades: 2 (8BP)
Etiquette: 2 (8BP)
Arcana: 2 (8BP)

Knowledge:
North American Politics: 3
Magical Creatures: 3
Seattle Street Gangs: 4
Spirits: 4
North American History: 3

Languages:
English: N
Japanese: 4

Spells:
Increase Reflexes
Armor Physical
Heal
Stunball
Manaball
Powerbolt
Improved Invisibility

Contacts: I missed this last time, you have to spend BP to buy contacts, which irritates me but nothing I can do about it. You buy Contacts using two different stats, how connected they are and how much they like you. Both go from 1 to 6. I'm buying 2 contacts

3/3 Contact (6BP)
2/2 Contact (4BP)

Leaving 6 BP for gear. That's 30,000 nuyen.

Now as you have been waiting, qualities.

Positive:
Magician: COSMIC POWER! (15BP)
Erased: Someone/thing is cleaning up your records, keeping you under the radar (5BP)

Negative:
Incompetent (Drive) (-5BP) Okay... Tobin? Can't fucking drive. Not even a little. He's saw someone drive in a trid once and that's about as far it goes.

Vendetta (-5 BP) Blood feud! Kanly! You and another guy/group are at war to the last man standing (psst, that should be you.) You have to take Enemy (with an incident rating of 4) if you encounter your enemy you must make Compound (3) Test not to get violent.

Enemy (-7 BP) This is a man who wants you dead. He wants your family, dead. He wants your friends, dead. Your pets, dead! Your neighbors, Dead! Their friends who meet you at the block party, DEAD! EVERYONE YOU KNOW AND LOVE DEAD, EVERYONE Molari.

Enemy (-7 BP) This is a man who wants you dead. He wants your family, dead. He wants your friends, dead. Your pets, dead! Your neighbors, Dead! Their friends who meet you at the block party, DEAD! EVERYONE YOU KNOW AND LOVE DEAD, EVERYONE

One thing I've always admired about you is your endless ability to stir people's great passions and ambitions.

Okay so to sum up.

Magical abilities. I kinda let a number of special qualities that would add bells and whistles slide. I did it to bump up my actual meat and potatoes skills. As a mage you will live and die based on how good you are at casting spells and dealing with spirits. Never let that slide. Those skill group are the vast majority of points spent on skills. Hell I spent 100 BP on them, that's about half of what I spent on my stats. It's also the overwhelming majority of what I spent on skills.

Getting a 5 in Magic costs about 55BP (15 for the first point, 40 for the additional 4).

Then there's the spells. You want a good selection of spells. While my spells are combat focused, Heal, Improved Invisiblity and increased reflexes give me flexibility. For that matter Stunball means you don't have to kill unless you want to. People always seem to think Shadowruns should be a bloodbath, but that's what provokes Wildcats or Red Samurai kicking down the door to your safehouse. If you can avoid a murder, do so. That said if you're paid to blow a guy's head off... You blow his head off. That's biz. Those spells were 21 BP.

Just using those (never mind one of my contacts has to be in the business of selling magic or I got problems, or the points I spent on Logic and Willpower to be a decent mage, every group has that problem) expenses, the cost for being a mage for this was 176pts out of 400. About 45% of the total more or less.

Now some will argue that I could have went with a lower magic rating. My reply is if you're not willing to commit to being a mage. Don't bother playing one.