[Mercy Merchant]

Hey Irish.  It is good to see you back.

[gilga]

Mechanically it makes most sense as there are very few drawbacks of having astral perception as focus. It goes to a list of adept powers that are better as focuses. Marco also has the karma for that, but from an RP perspective I kind of want him to gain astral sight gradually as his he acquires the spiritual way. There is also the RP consideration that Marco will not bind focuses before he initiate and conceal his magical potential. Even post initiation (that would be some time into the game, Marco will only be able to conceal one focus in his aura so I was thinking the most robust one will be a power focus, as it helps in all aspects of magic and even some adept powers.

So no on Qi focus - especially as Jed cannot afford it and probably needs some magic stuff for himself. Tough purely on RP Marco will be very tempted to take a shortcut and just install 'astral glasses' rather than explore what caused him to lose his sight to begin with. Perhaps this can come up in RP.

[SmilinIrish]

No problem.  Don't mind spending the cred when I get it.  My concept of Jed is one that has him not being wealthy.  Whether that is from always paying off "debts" to people, or some other reason.  I'm intending on purchasing a F1 sustaining health focus for him, but the thought of him presenting Marco with the focus while teaching was a cool idea, as long as it fit into your vision (which it doesn't).  No problem.  Lots of RP potential.  Jed has lots of knowledge points invested in various magical skills, including 6 ranks plus a specialization in magical theory.  I figure that should give him a pretty broad awareness of what is possible with magic. 

[gilga]

Should be interesting, Marco has 2 or 3 ranks as young as he is.
You might want to consider purchasing the quality focused concentration 1 for 8 karma. It is more expensive karmawise than the focus but you can sustain any F1 spell including for example a reagent enhanced invisibility, a debuff spell or even some buff spells like combat sense.  It is 8 karma instead of 2, but you get to select the magic category so it is more robust.

[Shaman_Yuri]

The scary warning from Google is gone so I can post again :-)

Still, don't expect much of me until after Kitten is back home. I'll do my best to at least keep Firefly preoccupied.

[SmilinIrish]

Jed has focused concentration 1.  I weighed the efficiency of converting some nuyen to karma, but at $2k per karma, that's $14k Nuyen worth.  this is $8k nuyen worth.  I can use the Foc Con 1 for my levitate or invisibility, and use the health focus for my increased reflexes spell.  As long as I have Smiles blessing, I'll probably convert more nuyen to karma than the other way around.   The concept is a noir detective who is versatile and can adapt to any situation.  Noir detectives are not wealthy. 

My non street version of this build uses Focused Concentration 5.  He starts with Intuition at 5, and sustains a Increased Intuition spell all the time for bonus to all Intuition skills (perception, assensing, matrix search, drain stat, initiative, and defense, composure and judge intentions).  I'm of the opinion that intuition is the most important stat in the game.  I don't think I could build a character with it less than 5 (maybe 4).  14 drain resist out of the gate is nice. Casting the clout spell with a fetish lets me reliably cast it at F9 with no drain (9S + net hits and -9 AP). 

My spell load out for this evolved some after I started playing this game.  Less combat spells, more detection spells, and watchers instead of remote sensing for the ritual spell.  This spell load out is better suited for combat (indirect spell stun for normal use, indirect physical for barriers (and people), and direct mana for high armor or for use in the astral.  My other build only uses one combat spell. 

By the way Gilga, I'm open to putting some karma towards artificing so that we can cooperate on making our own Foci.  Wouldn't mind building a F3 power focus, if you think we can pull it off with 2 ranks of artificing for me, teamwork and some bound spirit help.  It wasn't part of my build plans, but if Marco suggests that he wants to learn that and asks Jed to work through it with him, Jed would do it.  2 ranks would cost me 4 karma and 3 days training time.

I've also come to agree with you on the Greater Ritual Metamagic.  Makes for some interesting possibilities.  If you added some ranks in ritual casting, and had the feat, we could cooperate on watchers.  My dice, your boost with the meta, would be interesting.

We'll make a real mage out of Marco yet. 

[gilga]

Jed powerfocus sounds great we are limited at time.

With 2 dice of artificising we get 6 magic + 2 = 8 + cooperation dice from Marco (2) =10 dice
the formula resist with 2 dice + 3 dice for object resistance that means:

10 dice for us  vs - 5 dice for the power focus.

it is possible but it may take time we do not have but we can clearly make a F1 and F2 focuses quite reliably. Spirits cannot help at this magical task. F3 power focus requiries luck.

There is one aspect that spirits can help, as they have power that prevent critical glitch - if you do that in artificising you lose a piece of your essence so a spirit help for safety is advised. It make the focus creation a bit more expensive but not by much.

[gilga]

By the way Smiles - don't we get some epilogue where we read what happened to our beloved Stardust and so forth? it is kind of 'sad' in that sense that the next story is so near in the future as we might actually miss the closure of events.

[ismilealot]

I was planning a 'trix news event at some point in the future. I knew y'all would want that closure.

Also, payout from Blake is 60k each and 15k each from chopping the van and selling it's equipment for a total of 75k each.

Irish, a case you investigated over a year ago has come to a settlement agreement and you've finally gotten paid. 30k, and that'll teach you to get your money, plus expenses up front instead of promising to wait and see if your intel really put the screws on.

[SmilinIrish]

Thank you ma'am.

[SgtBoomCloud]

Much appreciated, miss GM

Preliminary purchases for downtime (are you enforcing the two-skills trained per downtime limit?):

Gunnery r0-4: 20 Karma (10 days)
Pilot Aircraft r0-2: 6 Karma (3 days-r6 Tutorsoft via Marco)

(If allowed) Con r0-1: 2 Karma (1 day - Marco tutoring)

I am still working on cash purchases.  That may take some more time

[ismilealot]

Yes, all limits are in play.

[gilga]

Okay that took some creative thinking as i planned to give Marco like 6 new skills at low levels. I wasn't aware that I can only take two. Marco plans to spend his time mostly with Jed studying binding as a student and trying to learn artificing as peers. Marco will use this opportunity to craft focuses for him and Jed. Power focus for Marco and sustaining focus for Jed.

So Marco's karma expenses are:
1. binding 0-->1, 1 day, 1 karma
2. Artificing 0-->2, 3 days, 3 karma
3. Crafting magic focus with Jed's assistance 2 days, 3 karma (turned out to be F3 focus)
4. binding focus 18 karma. (3 hours)
5. Spiritual adept way 20 karma. GM dependent time to acquire (Acquiring the way will mean Marco get to follow a new mentor spirit and is able to perceive the astral again. )

Overall karma spent: 45 karma since Marco currently only has only 36 so he will convert 18k nuyen to karma. In his time limitations there is also a crafting of a focus for Jed.

Out of the 75k Marco got for mission reward.
50k will go to fund augmentations for Yelena.
18k converted to 9 karma.  - (down payment to the soup kitchen project?)
5k paid for lifestyle.
2k for expenses (all sort of magical bits and pieces).

Driving and other minor skills are now no longer possible as Marco made his choice of 2 skills to advance. They'll have to wait for some future time.  The fluff is not right as I was not aware we had such a strict limitation on the number of skills we can train. Perhaps Marco can become too busy to study driving when he and Yelena decide to finance expensive and difficult to attain augmentations.

[Mercy Merchant]

The number of skills learned is determined by your logic.  The magic number is LOG divided by 2, rounded up.

[gilga]

Some rolls:
1.  Negoation for Yelena: 16d6t5 5
If we need negotiate the price of the package.

Now to even find these things - (we may need networking and so forth)
Negoation for Yelena: 3#16d6t5 7 2 6
Marco will use edge on the 2 - to fix it as he does not want to disapoint his new super girlfriend.
Negoation for Yelena edge reroll: 18d6t5 6
so 2 -->8.

so 7,8, 6 - success in finding these things it is a matter of time but Marco should be able to find all of  them. I kind of feel like Marco is born to network for hard to get pieces of equipment.