[squee_nabob]

Looks good

[UmaroVI]

His detective seemed more crime scene detective than legwork detective, which is probably why his contact list is sparse for most detectives. 

"It looks like the victim was dressed up in a Jester costume, and was shot in the back with armor piercing flechettes. What do you think was going on, here?"

"It looks to me like.... Harlequin's back."

YYYYYYYYYEAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[Earthshaker]

*Lurk mode off*

Heya Umaro - First off you've done a huge amount of work and opened my eyes to a few interesting facets of the new system and the way everything works together. So thanks this post is great.

Next a little critique.

Whether you know it or not it seems that you have become a bit powergamey/minmaxer in your character builds.

Those characters you've created (i've only gone through a few so far) are beasts, i'd hate to see a maxed power-gaming character you created (I realise several parts of your character sheets are cut and pasted ie all  have ruthenium overcoat and awesome sensor packages)

I find the lack of presence of the most common race in your list a bit telling, the other races have better stats ... but where is the Human Magician who glorifies in just being a Wizard and who has just enough touches to the design to make him effective as a Runner.

And if you've considered all that before, can I put in a request that you include a plain jane Human Magician .. not super optimised, just the same level as the other cool characters.

*Lurk mode on*

[UmaroVI]

If I add more characters (which I am considering, although possibly only after giving them a bit more time for discussion/feedback), my first priority will probably be more humans (unless there's some overlooked niche that humans don't fill well).

[Blitz66]

Thank you, Umaro.  Awesome work.  Learned a lot from these builds.  I like your design philosophy.  Really, having a well-constructed baseline to work from is extremely beneficial.

[baronspam]

*Lurk mode off*

Heya Umaro - First off you've done a huge amount of work and opened my eyes to a few interesting facets of the new system and the way everything works together. So thanks this post is great.

Next a little critique.

Whether you know it or not it seems that you have become a bit powergamey/minmaxer in your character builds.

Those characters you've created (i've only gone through a few so far) are beasts, i'd hate to see a maxed power-gaming character you created (I realise several parts of your character sheets are cut and pasted ie all  have ruthenium overcoat and awesome sensor packages)

I find the lack of presence of the most common race in your list a bit telling, the other races have better stats ... but where is the Human Magician who glorifies in just being a Wizard and who has just enough touches to the design to make him effective as a Runner.

And if you've considered all that before, can I put in a request that you include a plain jane Human Magician .. not super optimised, just the same level as the other cool characters.

*Lurk mode on*

I will admit that these builds are highly optimized.  But they were built for a specific purpose, missions, and they were built so that they could be effective at a table with more experienced characters, if i read Umaro's notes correctly.  I think its a good example to know how to build this kind of character, even if you choose not to.  As Umaro said its easy to tone a character down, taking them the other way is more challenging.  These characters would not be appropriate for every campaign, but that is true of just about every character ever built everywhere. One of the unstated assumptions of these characters is that the table they were designed for expects you to have 15 or more dice in your core competency.  Studying these will teach a person some ways to do that, which is a good  player skill to have, even if you end up in a campaign with a different set of expectation. 

[Shinobi Killfist]

Has the latest season of missions upped the challenge a lot.  From what I remember of missions is even poorly optimized characters heck probably all but the worst SR4A sample characters could steam roll through every mission I saw. 

[Onion Man]

Has the latest season of missions upped the challenge a lot.  From what I remember of missions is even poorly optimized characters heck probably all but the worst SR4A sample characters could steam roll through every mission I saw.

No, it hasn't.

I went into Origins with an optimized character and left with the feeling that if Bull hadn't arranged for the last one to be turned up to 11, I could have soloed them all with minimal hassle.

For me, providing replacement characters is less a matter of having optimized toons to give to incoming players as it is to avoid having to explain the how and why of "You really don't want to play X", Like the weapon specialist that isn't very good at using any of their weapons, has more weapons than any complete team should ever be carrying around at once, and has poor initiative and only one pass...

[baronspam]

Has the latest season of missions upped the challenge a lot.  From what I remember of missions is even poorly optimized characters heck probably all but the worst SR4A sample characters could steam roll through every mission I saw.

No, it hasn't.

I went into Origins with an optimized character and left with the feeling that if Bull hadn't arranged for the last one to be turned up to 11, I could have soloed them all with minimal hassle.

For me, providing replacement characters is less a matter of having optimized toons to give to incoming players as it is to avoid having to explain the how and why of "You really don't want to play X", Like the weapon specialist that isn't very good at using any of their weapons, has more weapons than any complete team should ever be carrying around at once, and has poor initiative and only one pass...

Have to agree here.  The sample characters should be teaching tools.  Just because you can make an optimized character doesn't mean you have to, or that you even should, depending on the campaign, but you should know how.  The sample characters in SR4A range from meh to scary bad. 

The only really important thing with power levels is to get everyone at the table on more or less on the same page.  A good GM will challenge you no matter what your power level is.  The difficulty  comes when you have a weapon specialist who has fewer dice with his primary skill set than the face does with his combat secondary.  You want all the players to feel their characters are good at what they are good at, and that everyone brings something to the team.

[Tsuzua]

Has the latest season of missions upped the challenge a lot.  From what I remember of missions is even poorly optimized characters heck probably all but the worst SR4A sample characters could steam roll through every mission I saw.

Personally, I miss the TR system.  Sure it was a shameless dirty hack that caused weirdness especially on the matrix and when both sides normally rolled small dice pools on opposed test, but it was a simple way to scale from characters that the weapon specialist would feel at home to guys like the archtypes to prime runners. 

[squee_nabob]

+1 on TR love. It had some weirdness issues like nodes that have 2+TR stats would roll Firewall (TR+2) + Analyze (TR+2), +TR (or TRx3 +4), and similar issues with spirits, but at least it scaled the chalange. Hopefully there will be some super difficult Season 4 missions coming out eventually (and not just prime runner ones).

[UmaroVI]

The only really important thing with power levels is to get everyone at the table on more or less on the same page.  A good GM will challenge you no matter what your power level is.  The difficulty  comes when you have a weapon specialist who has fewer dice with his primary skill set than the face does with his combat secondary.  You want all the players to feel their characters are good at what they are good at, and that everyone brings something to the team.

This is the core of it. It isn't too hard to take any given adventure and ramp up the challenge as-needed for a uniformly strong group, but it is really hard to GM for a group with wildly different power levels.

[UmaroVI]

Quick note: the Transhuman Mystic had two banned-from-SRM qualities, Genetic Heritage and Augmentation Addict. Fixed the sheet. The link now leads to v1.1 with a changelog at the bottom; you can of course still find the old sheet in the collection.

[UmaroVI]

Aside from the request for more humans, are there any other types of characters people would like to see? By "types" I mean stuff like metatype, general function, etc, rather than highly-specific things, since I want to keep them generic.

[JoeNapalm]

I can see why Mind Probe is not allowed. My Occult Investigator has it (never looked at the Archetype, just thought it would be handy). In fact, it its so handy that I am considering asking our GM if I can swap it out for something less tempting -  our team has a habit of just v&ing people and having the Mage scour his mind for what we need.

When you have a big hammer, everything starts to look like nails.

-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist