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Combat Medic

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eshoup1

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« Reply #15 on: <07-22-11/1617:41> »
Cyber augmentation is very useful for your character. Mnemonic enhancers to remember all of that medical knowledge. Cerebral boosters to help you process the information coming in.
Nanites can up your logic skills or PuSHeD genetech. Heck, grab a cyberarm and stick a biomedical suite in it. That way you'll always have your tools on hand.

One thing to think about... Chemistry and biotech link to logic. And it is within the realm of possiblity that as a doctor you would have some knowledge of various pharmacuticals.
So being able to cook your own pharms is always fun. And if you already cooking things it is a short hop to cooking demolitions.
And demolitions also links to logic. So you'd be a super-smart, drug-dealing, buliding-leveling, life-saving sun-of-a-gun.
And having played this character, i can say it was tons of fun.

Or you could do down the hacker route, as both hacking and biotech utilize logic.

UmaroVI

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« Reply #16 on: <07-22-11/1736:48> »
What Tsuzua is getting at is that being an unaugmented mundane is playing Shadowrun on Very Hard Mode, and if you're doing that, it should be because you really, really want to be an unaugmented mundane in a world of killer cyborgs and magicians.

You can make "combat medic" work as a mundane with augmentations well, or as a magician, or as a magician with augmentations. Which would you prefer?

Tsuzua

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« Reply #17 on: <07-22-11/2010:03> »
Being new to the system and world I have a hard time imagining cyber augmentation in a way that I could play.  I am ok with Technomancer and Mage, but I don't understand the requirements for technomacer much.  I first thought about playing a combination of a mundane first aid provider, and a magic healer.  Obviously he'd have to be a mage or adept.  But when I tried to build something like that I ended up with a mess.  That is why I had casting spells in version 1. They where left overs.

Any suggestions on how I can combine this concept with that of a mage would be greatly welcomed.

 That's fair.  Shadowrun is unfortunately extremely unforgiving to unaugmented mundanes.  Thankfully medics and mages go well together.  We'll make him unaugmented as well (there's a lot of augmentation that help medics, but we don't need them).  This should at least give you the basis for you to flesh out.
 
 First off, we need to get points to afford magic.  We'll want a magic 5 and willpower 6 (70 points).  One quick and easy way to become a dwarf.  That will save you 15 points (10 saved from body, 20 saved from str, 10 saved from willpower increased, -25 for the cost) and lose 1 point of edge.  Until we're sure we can afford it, we'll have to go down to 1 edge.  That leaves us with 35 of the 70 we need.  If you want to stay human, get a 5 willpower instead and you'll need to find 5 more points somewhere.
 
 Sadly the skill system of shadowrun is very much "way more skills that you can possibly afford" style system.  So a lot of just cool to have skills will have to be removed.  First on the block will be less useful skills, instruction and parachuting.  They sound cool, but they aren't going to help much.  That's 20 saved right there.  15 more to go. 
 
 Firearms seems like a good skill group, but you're going to be casting as your offense.  Let's go with a good sidearm and just get pistols 4.  That will give you 9 dice (3 agility + 4 pistols + 2 smartlink) which is passable.  That saves us 14 points (30-16).  Giving us 1 more point to dig up.  I'm sure we can find it so let's consider it done for now.  You can easily drop this for more points.  You could also go with automatics or even heavy weapons with the idea you'll want more heavier firepower when you can't cast spells.

Now we need skill points to cast spells and summon spirits.  Spirit summoning is surprising easy.  If we can get a force 4 power focus (more on this later), it's quite easy so let's get Summoning 1 for now.  However for spellcasting, we're at a crossroads.  I'm not going to kid you.  Spellcasting 6 is what you want.  However that means you can't have first aid 6.  First aid 4 is quite good if the GM uses the Augmentation "use higher of skill or medkit rating" for the highest number of boxes you can heal.  If you want to stay at first aid 6, I won't hold it against you if you do it knowing what's your paying for it.  I'm going to assume you did downgrade first aid to 4 and bought Spellcasting to 6.  This shouldn't change the math too much either way (one's going to be 4 and the other 6).

So we need First Aid 4 (we're just going to swap the points from First Aid 6 to Spellcasting 6), Summoning 1, and Counterspelling 4 (gotta stop those spellcasters!).  That means we need 36 more points [(4+1+4)*4] for a total of 37 needed.

I noticed that you got the Outdoors, Influence and Athletics groups at 2.  This is a bad place to put them.  Outdoors is less useful than you think and your high willpower means you're good at living in the woods.  So let's drop that completely.  Influence is more iffy.  You clearly want to have a bedside manner, but you'll never be a face.  Let's get Etiquette 1 so you don't end up with foot in mouth disease, but drop the rest.  As for Athletics, we're got to cut more so let's drop that too.  After all of this, we've gotten back 36 points (20+20-4+20).  We've got that 1 little point from before left over.

Now we need spells.  The spells you really should get are stunbolt, improved reflexes, and heal.  You're a medic and stunbolt is the go to pew pew spell for mages.  There's a lot of good (and bad) spells so let's say you want 4 more.  That's a total of 7 spells for 21 points needed.

One easy way is to add more negative qualities.  I'll let you figure out what you want, but I suggest getting all 35 points worth.  That give us 20 more points.  We're now down 2 points.

Now let's cover your positive qualities.  To be perfectly honest, they're bad (I can explain why but this is getting long enough already) and we need the positive quality points.  You want Magician, Mentor Spirit, Restricted Gear (power focus 4).  I'm not sure if you want anything else (let's not touch SURGE).  This will give you 10 points back.  Leaving you now up 8 points!  Let's put those points into cash for 40,000Y.  More on this latter.

So right now the sheet looks like this:
[spoiler]
Metatype : Dwarf

Attributes (220 spent)
Body: 5
Agility: 3
Reaction: 3
Strength: 3
Charisma: 3
Intuition: 2
Logic: 5
Willpower: 6

Edge: 1
Magic: 5
Initiative: 5
Essence: 6
 
Knowledge Skills
English : N
Military : 4
Lone Star Procedures : 1
Bars : 2
Hong Kong Triads : 4
Security Companies : 4
Biology : 4
       
Active Skills (116)
Spellcasting 6
Summoning 1
Counterspelling 4
Pistols 4
Etiquette 1
First Aid 4
Perception 4
Intimidation 2
Pilot Ground Vehicles 3
 
Positive Qualities
Magician 15
Restricted Gear (Power Focus 4) 5
Mentor Spirit (Your Pick) 5
       
Negative Qualities
Sensitive System -15
-20 Worth of your choice

Spells:
Increase Reflexes
Stunbolt
Heal
4 others of your choice

Gear: As before + 40000Y
[/spoiler]

I just want to make this everything so far is cool before we start trying to find cash for your foci.  You may end up cutting deep for a force 3 sustaining focus and force 4 power focus, but it'll be worth it.  We'll need 90,000Y more and 7 BP to bind them for a total of 25 BP.

We may also return to look at your attributes.  Sadly Shadowrun doesn't follow the golden mean when it comes to attributes.  You'll want them really high or really low.  You may want them high enough so that the GM doesn't single you out for punishment though.  Ideally we'll want to increase your initiative and that means buffing reaction and/or intuition. 

On a final note, logic actually has a good amount of traditions to go choose from.  I'll go with what you feel like being.  From there, we can decide what type of spirit you want to summon.  This along with what type of spells you want to cast (my guess is combat or healing) will help us narrow down what mentor spirit you want.

This character is a logic mage who's handy with a medkit (15 dice before mods means 2-3 boxes healed).  If that's okay with you, let's continue.  If not, I suggest you go with cybered mage or mundane.  That's where you get high first aid checks. 
 

 

Teabeeyea

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« Reply #18 on: <07-22-11/2137:17> »
WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW!!!!!!

Thanks for all the help!

Yes this is looking really good. So based on what you did, I've taken a little more focus on the COMBAT aspect of the concept.  For a Mentor Spirit I took - Wolf for the +2 Dice to Combat Spells.  For spells I took Lightning Bolt, Flame Thrower, Ball Lighting, Mana Ball Stablize, Heal.  If I add some kind of scope to a long arm I can use the scope to extend the rage of my LOS spells?

For the VAN.  I have in my mind an Urban US Army 997 HUMVEE 4 Litter Ambulance.  Is there a way to do that in this game system?  If you don't know the 997 is an uparmored HUMVEE that has 1 inch kevlar armor throughout.  So can I buy enough armored vests to line the inside walls of the van?  Is there a skill to do that properly?  I want the van to look mundane from the outside and out.


Onion Man

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« Reply #19 on: <07-22-11/2139:57> »
Talk to your GM, but I'd let you use the DocWagoin Ambulance in Arsenal refluffed to be the 2070s version of the 997.
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Tsuzua

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« Reply #20 on: <07-22-11/2345:52> »
Awesome.  I'll help you with finding the cash for the foci later. 

As for the spell, I'll suggest dropping lightning bolt and ball lighting.  Flamethrower is now your go-to shoot drones spell.  Lightning bolt really doesn't do anything flamethrower or SnS rounds can't do.  Ball Lighting is really nasty drain that even with a 11 drain pool.  You'll likely be taking a decent amount of drain.  I'll get powerball instead if you want a big "kill people and machines on an average roll AE."  Stabilze seems like something that would be useful, but it's not as much as you would think.  You bleed out 1 box every (Body) combat turns.  So unless you hang out with 2 body dudes, there's a good chance the combat will be over by the time they bleed their first box.  After that it's a very easy first aid check to heal. 

As for Wolf, personally I think he's cool (I've been meaning to make a shark guy myself someday).  Beast spirits aren't the best spirit type, but they are still spirits and thus full of winning.  But you will have to keep in mind that you'll have to make a not guaranteed roll to run away even from a really dangerous fight.  There's a non-zero chance it'll kill you one day.  As long as you're fine with that, that's cool. 

Now for the van, there's the GMC MPUV which is basically a military humvee in MilSpecTech.  It's 16000Y and has roughly the same stats as a GAZ P-179 with off-road suspension and multi-fuel engine.



UmaroVI

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« Reply #21 on: <07-23-11/0711:53> »
I would take Tsuzua's advice and drop Ball Lightning for Powerball, and drop Stabilize (as mentioned, not very useful unless you are terrible at first aid) for Detox, which is much more helpful.


Cass100199

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« Reply #22 on: <07-25-11/1313:59> »
Something to think about, being a Combat Medic isn't about "healing". It's about stabilizing. It doesn't mean you don't have medical knowledge and can't do minor level treatment of the sniffles and aches and pains, but your primary focus is stabilizing combat trauma until evacuation to higher care. I'm a Combat Medic, so if you want to PM, go ahead. If not, it won't hurt my feelings.

I think some re-focusing of your skills is in order. When you got out of the service/ corp, were you a grunt or an NCO? If you weren't in leadership, you can probably save some points by focusing on Soldier skills and not so much the leadership and Instruction stuff. Also, any former Soldier type is gonna have a 3 level of training, at least, in those related skills.
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Teabeeyea

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« Reply #23 on: <07-25-11/1331:45> »
Thanks.  Actually, I am former Army Combat Medic that spent his time in FSBs and an evac driver.  So there is a slightly different role than the platoon "Doc".  But with the changes to add spells, I was going for the Shadowrun version of the DnD cleric.  Your right of course about the leadership point buy.

Tsuzua

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« Reply #24 on: <07-25-11/1406:56> »
Now for foci.  There's two types of foci we care about at creation, sustaining and power.  I'll get a force 3 health sustaining focus for your Increase Reflexes spell.  It's an easy way to get +2 initiative and +2 IP.  It isn't as reliable as ware due to background count and wards so I'll bring some cram just in case.  That's 3 BP to bind and 30,000Y.  We have 40,000Y to spare so that covers the cost and 2 BP to bind.  We'll have to find 1 more BP.  I'll say downgrade the Bulldog van into something like the GAZ or the MPUV.  That frees up 3 BP or so leaving 2 behind.

After careful review, a force 4 power focus is more debatable.  It's 29 BP now or 32 karma and 100,000Y later.  It'll depend on how much karma and money you get.  The more you get per adventure, the less you have to wait.  There's also that you might your karma to go somewhere else like initiation, high force sustaining focus, magic, or a centering focus.  You will want a power focus eventually.  It's a huge buff to your magical power. 

If you do go for the focus (which I normally do), you'll need 27 more BP.  You'll have to lower skills to do so.  I'll say intimidation, pilot ground vehicles, and maybe pistols are good choices to drop.  You may also want to drop an attribute by 1 as well.

On that note, you have a lot of attributes at 3.  Sadly SR hates you for doing that.  It's better to have one high attribute than two average ones.  It's cheaper on the karma and having a 5 dice pool is so crummy for most things that you might as well have it lower.  I'll say increase reaction and intuition.  Both help you fight better and help out with skills like driving or perception.  You'll have to lower your charisma and agility to cope with that. 





Cass100199

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« Reply #25 on: <07-25-11/1440:15> »
Then yeah, I'd drop several of those kinds of skills and boost your "fighting" skills. Also, any reason to have swimming, running and climbing?
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Teabeeyea

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« Reply #26 on: <07-26-11/1106:26> »
I have Running Swimming and Climbing as Background/RP flavor.

Charybdis

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« Reply #27 on: <07-26-11/1747:08> »
I have Running Swimming and Climbing as Background/RP flavor.
Picking these up as part of the Athletics skill group will also save you some points...and get Gymnastics as a freebie thrown in :)
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Shinobi Killfist

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« Reply #28 on: <07-26-11/1813:55> »
Running, swimming, and climbing do come up.  Sure if your stats are awesome enough you can default to them but I have to make run, swim, and climb tests often enough in the game that they are kind of core skills for everyone to take.  Also I just can't comprehend someone growing up and not having at least run and climb, swim I can accept since not everyone lives near water or has the opportunity to learn.  If I wasn't running or climbing somewhere as a kid I was riding a bike probably off a home made jump. 

Cass100199

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« Reply #29 on: <07-26-11/1829:43> »
Well sure, running and swimming is one thing, but doing it at an athletic, competitive level is another. I'm not saying they aren't useful skills, just that not having a point in it doesn't mean you don't know how to run. I would imagine that most runners don't do triathlons in their spare time.
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