[Unisus]

Hi!

I was reading through the rulebooks and am now trying to make acharacter like this:

It should be a black panther shapeshifter girl with adept powers and some martial arts knowledge being able to fight without a weapon (as she won´t be able to bring one with her in panther form) or with improvised weapons in melee and ranged combat. When not in combat, she should seem like a harmless girl who needs to be protected (ok, as long as you look at her without astral perception)

From the background i imagine her coming from the wild and having her problems with computers and all this technical devices, but already long enough in town to have adapted social skills. Maybe she could be an athlete in normal life (im not sure, if shapeshifters are allowed at the Olymic Games).

The character is for a session where starting characters are made from 1000 Karma, i´d like to give her the negative quality of Gremlins at a higher level and keep her clean of CW/BW (as both would be worthless in human form), so she would most likely have most points going into attributes and skills. I also thought i had seen a quality somewhere which made the character look harmless (with mali on intimidation as a sideeffect) but can´t remeber where this should have been.

As for the adept powers, i would go mainly for unarmed combat enhancement, maybe throwing enhancement and eventually for magic armour, as she will wear seldom more than what is necessary to be not nude (but i´m stlii searching for clothing that won´t rip when shifting to panther form).

By the way: do shapeshifters really shift in only three seconds? As shifting is a complex action, it should be done in one combat round (=3 seconds), not to mention that a shapeshifter with 4 IPs could shift twice from one form into the other and back again in the same time - would like to see an elephant shapeshifter do that *gg*

If my English seems a little odd, it´s just because i seldom write more than a few words in other languages than German.

Greetings

Unisus

[Irian]

Honestly, I think thats pretty min/maxing. If the character looks like a little girl, then she should have the stats of a little girl and be a little, young female panther, giving her below average combat stats (and making her pretty useless). And I also wouldn't allow such a character having extreme magical abilities - magic 1 or 2 perhaps, yes, but not more. If you want a combat character, I would advise to play an ADULT panther shapeshifter at least.

[Unisus]

Sorry, maybe i wrote this a bit misinterpretable. I didn´t think of a little girl, , more of a young woman, which would not be looked at as a possible danger. Of course it´s a subjective estimation, if someone looks dangerous.

As for the min/maxing - a liitle bit of this is in every character, at least in those which are specialized, and i personally like it more to make a specialised (and mostly min/maxed) charakter at first and fit him/her into a backgroundstory afterwards, making him/her a little bit more rounded. Actually my chars often happen to be less effective than others while being a lot of fun to play with also for the other players.

Greetings

Unisus

[AJBuwalda]

Altough I furiously oppose min/maxing for RP reasons, I do not oppose it for "gun bunny groups". There are those groups who just want to kick the door in, shoot everybody and be done with it. There is nothing wrong with that and SR4 with a couple of tweaks could be a great system to do that in. There is however a problem with having a walking, talking deathmachine: they do little else. If you are bad with tech, have lacking social skills and little else than ass-kickery you are going to hit a wall when you are outside of combat. You have little to offer than and might get bored. I'd advice you to try and find a secondary utility for you character.

[Unisus]

Ok, here a rough idea of what this girl´s part in action should be: i don´t see her as a one-woman-army (ok, maybe the thread-title is a little misleading here), more someone to infiltrate where weapons are not possible to bring in while it could be dangerous to be unarmed and get cought. So a deal of skillpoints will go into stealth and in some social skills. She should be able to keep herself alive and the alarm down, when someone finds out that she is up to something.

[AJBuwalda]

That a good concept. The Influence skill group is an obvious must. Also having a decent infiltration and lockpicking skills might be good.

[esprism]

I'm currently building a character with this idea in mind but mine won't be a true fighter, more spy with a very high perception dice pool and good infiltration and support skills.

I choose grime lvl 2 and neoteny so the character look like a child (13 max) even if adult.

In term of rules, you only have 6+body/2 for physical condition monitor and of course social "differences". There's no attributes limitation but a child with 6 str or body would'nt look harmless ^_^.

A classic "adept / martial art" build with some social traits for the "harmless woman" side like "first impression" for exemple should be enough. I think you can chose the way your are playing your social skills, it's up to your GM.

[Nomad Zophiel]

I've been messing around with a non-shapeshifter changeling version of a similar idea. Basically building an infiltrator who needs no gear. If you're going Adept, consider a few of the following:

Increased Ability: Stealth
Killing Hands+Elemental Strike (Lightning). Its more for the electricity attack itself than the hand to hand damage.
Sustenance because wild survival types would focus on things like needing less food
Enhanced Perception
Improved Sense - ultrasonics for hearing ultrasound sensors so you can avoid them
Motion sense for seeing around corners
Traceless Walk
And, of course, armor never hurts.