[Morihei]

So this is my first time playing SR5, first time doing an adept, so please bear with me.

The idea is to make a melee specialist, ex-corp bodyguard, with great perception and stealth. Not finished yet, but please let me know what you think, what I missed, etc.
A bit lost on gear, still have a 20k to spend.

Street Name: Task
Ork

== Priorities ==
Metatype: B - Any metatype
Attributes: A - 24 Attributes
Special: C - Adept, Magician, or Technomancer
Skills: E - 18 Skills/0 Skill Groups
Resources: D - 50,000¥

== Attributes ==
BOD: 8
AGI: 5
REA: 5 (8 )
STR: 8
CHA: 1
INT: 5
LOG: 2
WIL: 4
EDG: 3
MAG: 6

== Derived Attributes ==
Essence:                   6
Initiative:                13 + 4d6
Astral Initiative:         10 + 2d6
Physical Damage Track:     12
Stun Damage Track:         10

== Limits ==
Physical:                  11
Mental:                    5
Social:                    4
Astral:                    5

== Active Skills ==
Assensing                  : 1                      Pool: 6
Blades                     : 6 [Swords]             Pool: 11 (13)
Etiquette                  : 2                      Pool: 3
Gymnastics                 : 1                      Pool: 6
Navigation                 : 1                      Pool: 6
Perception                 : 6                      Pool: 11
Pilot Ground Craft         : 1                      Pool: 9
Running                    : 1                      Pool: 9
Sneaking                   : 6 [Urban]              Pool: 11 (13)
Survival                   : 1                      Pool: 5
Swimming                   : 1                      Pool: 9
Tracking                   : 1                      Pool: 6
Unarmed Combat             : 1                      Pool: 6

== Knowledge Skills ==
Cantonese                  : 2                      Pool: 7
Fashion                    : 2                      Pool: 7
Magic Groups               : 2                      Pool: 7
Small Unit Tactics         : 2                      Pool: 7
Triads                     : 4                      Pool: 9

== Contacts ==
Triad Fixer (4, 3)

== Qualities ==
Adept
Low-Light Vision
SINner (Corporate) (Ex-Corporate)

== Powers ==
Astral Perception
Combat Sense Rating: 1
Improved Reflexes 3

== Lifestyles ==
High  1 months

== Armor ==
Armor Jacket                        12
Helmet                              2

== Weapons ==
Combat Knife
   Pool: 11   Accuracy: 6   DV: 10P   AP: -3   RC: 3
Katana
   +Personalized Grip
   Pool: 11 (13)   Accuracy: 8   DV: 11P   AP: -3   RC: 3
Unarmed Attack
   Pool: 4   Accuracy: 11   DV: 8S   AP: -   RC: 3

== Commlink ==
Renraku Sensei (ATT: 0, SLZ: 0, DP: 3, FWL: 3)

== Gear ==
Certified Credstick, Gold
Certified Credstick, Standard x2
Climbing Gear
Contacts Rating 3
   +Flare Compensation
   +Vision Enhancement Rating 2
Earbuds Rating 3
   +Audio Enhancement Rating 2
   +Select Sound Filter Rating 1
Fake SIN (John Doe) Rating 4
Goggles Rating 6
   +Thermographic Vision
   +Vision Magnification
   +Flare Compensation
   +Image Link
Medkit Rating 3
Respirator Rating 6
Slap Patch, Stim Patch Rating 6 x2
Slap Patch, Stim Patch Rating 4 x2
Survival Kit
White Noise Generator Rating 6

[Glyph]

With D Resources, you might look at getting a Force: 4 qi focus.  If you took that for your astral perception power, you could free up a power point to get (for example) Agility boost: 1, enhanced accuracy/blades, and critical strike/blades.

[8-bit]

Well, you've used 5 power points out of your available 6. There are a lot of options, but you can take Glyph's suggestion of getting a Force 4 Qi Focus for your Astral Perception. That frees up 2 power points you can use creatively to get more powers. If you have Street Grimoire, you might want to check out some of the more infiltration specialized powers if you're looking for stealth.

[ZeldaBravo]

Priority E for skills really cripples you everywhere around. If you switch to Attributes A, Meta B, Skills C, Magic D, Cash E you'll have a more capable character. I'd also grab a wolf mentor spirit and natural athlete quality. Maybe a catlike quality too.
You also have 1 attribute point overspent, I assume that you've bought a point in logic for karma.
I suggest you to take 1 point from body and put it to willpower.
Assensing means temporarily becoming a dual-natured creature and exposing yourself to the astral plane. You can see spirits but you can't do anything with them. Astral perception may be a good idea if you don't have any other magic users in the group but even then it's a pain to waste a whole PP. You could use more powers to enhance your combat ability. You're building a combat oriented character but your dicepools are not that high or versatile.

[Csjarrat]

i'll add my vote for being too low priority on skills.
Also, you might want to look into a martial art to enhance your swordfighting

[Morihei]

Yeah, we were supposed to play SR4, which was easier for me since there was no priority table. With priorities I always feel like I'm handicapping myself somewhere, especially if you want to be metahuman AND have magic. Thank you for your suggestions, this is still a work in progress, I'm reading more books and doing some changes today/tomorrow

Moving Magic to D could work, because with Ork(4) I can make it 6, leaving edge 1 (which I can raise later), even if this is supposed to a limited run of 6 game sessions. The reason why I had gone for 3 was because I was thinking of taking exceptional attribute magic and start with 7.

Initially I wasn't going to have astral sensing, since we will have a Mystic adept with the power, but he suggested I grab it as well as a backup. I was trying to avoid, since it would be one less thing to "worry about". I'm also not exactly sure I understand how it works, maybe you guys can help:
1 - I can "turn on" my astral senses and see both "worlds", but I'll be at -2 to skills
2 - I can fight astral beings that manifest, anyone can (right?), using my normal melee stuff, no need to sense
3 - I can fight astral beings that don't manifest, but doing so means I use astral combat, which will suck, right?

Is there a way to fight astral beings with my Blades skill?

What do you guys think of going for magic 7 to start? Or maybe leave 7 karma free and try to initiate ASAP
Another option I was considering was burning 1 magic to install some cyberware? With resources C there is plenty of things I could get for 1 essence.

[Csjarrat]

Magic 7 to start is great, but it takes a good chunk of karma and its a question of how much more bang you get for your buck than investing that karma into other things. for example if you have 6pp put into combat stuff and you want to get a 7th PP for astral perception, its often better to just take Oracle as your mentor spirit for 5 karma or buy a qi focus for it instead.

IIRC, when you "turn on" astral, that's all you see, you are literally perceiving the astral plane, not the "real" world. you can still see auras and such, but non-living objects are really dull.
Anyone can fight manifested spirits yes, anyone can. if astrally perceiving then iirc you can fight with normal skills if you have a weapon focus (this means that astral beings can just "fly" and stay out of your melee range though whilst pounding you with spells)
If you take astral combat, then you can fight using that whilst perceiving. its a bit sucky, so most awakened either ignore it or just use spellcasting instead.

[Glyph]

I assumed you only had astral perception because being able to see auras would complement his high perception skill.  But your current setup only lets you perceive - you don't have the astral combat skill to fight purely astral entities (and that would usually be a losing proposition anyways).  You might want to ditch the ability altogether - it costs you a power point for  something that, at the moment, comes with some downsides.

Skills: E is not bad.  You are using it like I do - three skills of 6, then some low-rated skills bought with Karma to round out the character.  However, I usually do this with straightforward muscle.  With your focus on sneaking and perception, you only have one melee skill at a high rating, and no ranged skills, which can really wind up hurting you.  So skills D might be worth it, even if only four more points is not a lot.  But it will let you either get a ranged skill at rating: 4, or drop either perception or sneaking to 4 (or drop both to 5) and get a ranged skill at rating: 6.  Because I feel a ranged skill is essential to have, especially for a combat-focused character.

A starting Magic of 7 is always good for an adept, meaning an extra power point, at the easily bearable cost of having an Edge of 2 instead of 3.  The real cost is in the quality.  But definitely something worth considering.

[Morihei]

You guys make some really good points, being melee only would be quite limiting, this is not D&D after all. It also seems like I will never be good in Astral stuff, so I might just drop that point.

So it seems I have 3 options:
1 - Get more skill points and add a ranged combat skill, possibly Bows or Pistols. Problem here is lowering resources to E only gets you 4 more skill points
2 - Change to Mystic adept and have spells, this could cover ranged combat, plus I would get utility from spells. Problem here would be the 30 karma needed to buy the PP, and also spreading a bit too thin
3 - Maybe switch to a gunslinger adept, I quite like that concept/look too. Problem here, its a different character

Sidenote: When I first saw the rules (before errata), with PP cost at 2 karma, a Mystic adept with starting magic of 7 and 7 PP was a really strong build and would only cost 28 karma, now it costs 49.

[Csjarrat]

well perception doesn't need to be that high, with your 50k resources you can pick up some nice image enhancing glasses and audio enhancing earbuds to offset the loss of 3 points.
pistols 2 (semi-auto +2) and a pistol with a laser sight for an extra +1 gives you a dicepool of 10 which isn't bad at all as a backup.
You could alternatively go automatics 2 (machine pistols +2) and get an FA capable pistol with laser sight. using bursts is a good way to get hits through as you can pile a lot of -ve mods on the enemy dodge dicepool.

[ZeldaBravo]

1 - Get more skill points and add a ranged combat skill, possibly Bows or Pistols. Problem here is lowering resources to E only gets you 4 more skill points

That's why you should go for skills C or don't even bother with changing priorities.
And you can pick throwing knives and grenades for a backup.

[Glyph]

Priority C skills is hard to swing for an awakened ork, though.  You definitely want A and B for Attributes and magic, and C is as far down for metatype as an ork goes.  The difference in skills is mediocre at D or E, but I don't see C for skills - that would gut the character concept.  I see three possibilities: 1) Swap metatype and magic, changing from a bonus skill of 2 to a bonus skill of 4 at the cost of 2 points of Edge.  Not a really good option.  2) Swap resources and skills, getting 4 more skill points and probably spending 10 karma to get starting money back up to 26,000 Nuyen.  3) bite the bullet and lower perception and sneaking to 4 to get a ranged combat skill of 4.

[ZeldaBravo]

1) Swap metatype and magic, changing from a bonus skill of 2 to a bonus skill of 4 at the cost of 2 points of Edge.

But it is a good option. It takes 10 karma to get that edge to 2. Task will benefit greatly from some skills and qualities.