[Sincereagape]

In my opinion and game-play, contact ratings are those that the contact has for you.  Because of the structure of Missions, this has to be generalized for everyone, but in a standard game, this should be flexible.  A fixer might have a Connections 6, but if he isn't going to go out of his way to shake all the trees for ya, then it's only effectively a 1.  Maybe he doesn't like you - or maybe he likes you just fine (Loyalty 5) but isn't willing to front you to other people (Connections 1).

I have, in the past, had several PCs have the same fixer as a contact, each with their own loyalty/connection ratings.  Worked very well for RP purposes.

So you are saying it would be okay I have Miles Lanier or Lofwyr was a corporate contact at rating C1/L10?

I agree with the others, the contact ratings are pretty off, especially the club owner who should be at least connection 4. Nightclub waiter or cook I can see at 1. Nightclub bouncer or bartender 2, nightclub DJ 3, owner a least 4

[martinchaen]

Your opinion has been noted, Sincereagape.

[Sincereagape]

They are very deep and intriguing contacts.

It is just that the connection rating does not match up with the descriptions.  For example the night club owner has been in the business for over 6 years and has a weapon foci, but only connection of 1. 

The shaman talismonger is one of the premiere experts in magical artifacts from Portland but only a connection of 1.

The street doc is a noble from the Tir but only connection of 1.

5th edition has placed an emphasis on the description and connection/loyalty ratings for contacts much more then 4th edition did.  Trust me, I ran into the same problem when I was creating my character, the descriptions or images in my head of the contacts that I wanted were to low for the amount of free points I received for contacts.  It is frustrating a bit, but that would be my one true critique of the character is that the connection ratings do not match up with the power/description of the contacts.

[martinchaen]

Your opinions have been noted, Sincereagape.

[Poindexter]

it's CRAZY how much starting karma i blow on contacts, just to get them how i want them.

[martinchaen]

Well, that's certainly a choice, Pondexter.

[ikarinokami]

this seems like a really good 4E mage, doesn't really take advantage of 5E rules.


not having a power foci 3, is going to cripple you for awhile. spells are resisted by two attrbitues now, you are just not throwing enough dice.

focus concentration 1 is ok but what you really want is focus concentration 5 or 6, so you can cast a force 5 or 6 improved attribute ( drain attribute), drain is a beast in this edition.

you dont have improved reflexes or combat sense. you need these, the game has become far more lethal. you need at least 2 force 1 sustaining foci and a stash of reagents so you can always have these up, and still be below the addiction threshold.

you character is playable,but you are going to have a beast of a time, with drain, and with getting enough hits, espically on manipulation spells.

magic/edge/resources/foci are more imporant that attributes and skils to a mage.

karma efficient is not the same as game effecient.  your character is very karma efficient, but not very game efficient.

[JackVII]

I'll just say that I do agree that you really should have an initiative booster of some form, whether that is a spell or drugs is up to you. I wouldn't agree with a lot of the other suggestions, the build seems reasonably good otherwise (although I'd try to find some additional points for summoning). I would suggest that a casting dice pool of 11 to 15 is fine at the start and having the max drain dice possible without getting exceptional attribute and/or relying on a permanent boost to a drain attribute is just fine at chargen.

[ikarinokami]

he has 13 dice for his maipulation spells.
 that is going to be his main thing.

1. you need high force, otherwise the person is going to be break free, because force acts as minus dice pool on your targets resist to break free, which is super imporant.
2. you need a lot of dice for this because only net hits count for the effect and the target is resisting with logic + willpower.
3. if you are using manipulation spells, thats a minus -2 for sustaining, which means he's down to 11 dice. ( 9 dice for everything else)
4. manipulation spells have high drain codes, and need to be cast at a high force to be effective. ( having a draining boost attribute is not a luxury)

5. the charecter won't even be able to do his shitck well, he doesn't have  improved combat reflexes, he mind controls the troll sam but since he doenst have any passes left he can't command troll and the troll gets multiple chances to break free before the combat turns end and the mage gets to command the troll.

6. worse yet, now the character is really crippled and in a world of hurt. that manipulation spell requires high force and has to be sustained. so now he's at a minus 2 for everything.

he doesnt have combat sense- so his dodge is going to be awful, hes getting hit. he doesnt have heal,

combat sense is not really optional . taking damge has a greater impact on a mage than any other class, because any damage you take is damage you can't take as drain. which is why combat sense is always better than armor. things hit alot harder now, you are better off trying to dodge the attack with combat sense (which also has the nice effect of stacking with improved reflexes (for dodging) and bonus to suprises and prevents being suprise) than trying to soak the damage.



his dice pool is horrendous. he is 13 dice for manipulation and 11 dice for everything else. the first time he has to sustaining a spell, it's over. his dice pool of 9-13 dice is going to be opposed by 6-11 dice, those are terrible odds, since he has to resist drain regardless of whether or not he suceeds on the test.


I'm not saying his character won't work, im saying it's nowhere near reasonabley good for a 5E game, at least for a while.

to be an effective mage in 5E

you need to be sustaining combat sense/improved reflexes- every point of damage you avoid is another point of drain
you need a power foci because defense against spells got a massive bump in this edition - spell casting test with 12 dice are not trivial in this edition, there is a huge difference between 12 and 15 dice, and the chasm only widens as you begin to take penalties
you need to boost your drain because alot spells, mind control, indirect combat, attempting to affect anything technological, require alot of hits and high force to be effective.

[JackVII]

He has 15 dice. Magic 6, Spellcasting 5, Manipulation Specialization (+2), and he has a Trickster Mentor Spirit (which would presumably be based on Raven as the trickster mentor in the BBB) (+2).

That 15 dice pool is typically going to be resisted by 5 dice, using basic mooks of PR0 to PR2 (excluding Lieutenants, who generally have 6 dice) from the books, which is what chargen runners should be facing. Most of said mooks aren't going to have initiative boosters either. Once snared, they can try to resist, using the same 5 dice with a penalty of the Force of the spell.

Based on my experience of playing two mages in 5E games so far, you don't need most of the stuff ikarinokami is suggesting.

ETA: I did want to comment on your spell selection..
Armor - The 4 bonus dice for manipulations make this a decent choice, but most people prefer Combat Sense. Avoiding an attack altogether is almost always better than trying to soak the damage.
Fling - I probably wouldn't take this one, but I am guessing it fits your concept.
Ignite - I really am not a fan of this spell, mostly because the rules concerning it aren't all that clear.
Mob Mind - The drain is high on this one. The single target spell can often cause a lot of havoc in and of itself. If you get one dude shooting his friends, it can cause quite a bit of chaos.
Physical Barrier - It can have its place, but the way the barrier works usually means you need a really high force for it.

[martinchaen]

ikarinokami
Thank you for your input. If I were planning on playing this character in a game where you were GMing, I'm sure I'd have made a more optimized character.

As I'm sure you can tell, this character is supposed to be young, reasonably inexperienced, and as such likely won't be going up against CorpSec any time soon. We simply have different views on what is "acceptable" in terms of dice pools, because we obviously have different expectations of the level of the opponents. That's fine; saying that the character is "nowhere near reasonabley [sic] good for a 5E game" is in my experience patently untrue, seeing as I did in fact get to play a few scenarios with him and I enjoyed myself quite well, thank you.

I see where you're coming from, I just don't agree that your assessment of what is required for a mage to be "effective" is a concrete fact. Thank you for voicing your opinion, though.

And JackVII has it on the nose; the character is using the Raven Mentor Spirit (similar archetypes are mentioned as being Deception and Mischief), his highest non magical dice pool is 17 (Con 5 + CHA 8 + Mentor Spirit 2 + First Impression 2), he rolls 15 dice Manipulation spells, and 13 to resist Drain. He's more of a Face than a fighter, and more of an social infiltrator than a sneaky one (hence First Impression and Fast Talking specialization).

The spell selection is also geared towards supporting his primary and secondary roles (Face, Social Infiltrator); Physical Mask and/or Influence enable the character to gain entry where needed; Trid Phantasm and Influence can help act as distractions, Ball Lightning, Armor, Mob Mind, and Physical Barrier are mostly combat oriented, but can also perform utility, while Fling is for surprise attacks, as using Fling to hit unaware subjects with injection darts full of Narcojet is far more efficient than using pistols or crossbows. Mind Probe is entirely utilitarian, as is Ignite; I don't see Ignite as combat spell, but as a utility spell.

As a comment to your comments, JackVII, and thanks for voicing them;

What I've gone for is a non-traditionalist mage type. Armor is not necessarily for me, but for team mates who could use even more armor; cast at Force 1 with Edge or Reagents and sustain using Focused Concentration. Combine with Trid Phantasm to make it appear as if the enemy is being overwhelmed, or create mirror images of the main combatant, and you've got a situation the kind of opponents I visualize the character going up against might not be prepared for.

Fling; see above. Injection Darts with Narcojet is a Manipulation mage's best friend. Against unaware targets (and chances are they will be, because the character is a social chameleon) all I need is 3 hits on my spellcasting test, which means Force 3. The target then has to resist 15S with a normal Toxin Resistance Test of BOD+WIL, and needs a total of 4 or 5 hits to not be knocked straight out, and even if he doesn't it is more than likely unaware of where the dart came from.

Ignite; "Build a man a fire, and he's warm for the night. LIGHT a man on fire, and he's warm... for the rest of his life." Seriously though, this is more of a utilitarian type spell than it is a combat type spell; I see it as potentially being useful to create distractions, used to cover the teams exit in combination with a Physical Barrier spell, you name it.

Mob Mind; Agreed, the drain on this one is not pleasant. This is one of those spells you cast at high force and Edge the drain resist to my mind (heh!). Make sure the AOE is large enough to catch several members of the opposing team, and you can have a fight go from "impossible" to merely "we might just live through this".

Physical Barrier; I don't see this as a combat spell as much as I see it preventing pursuit. Shooting through a barrier? No problem. RUNNING throught it? Not happening. Damaging barriers with penetrating weapons is (ironically) difficult, after all.

So yeah, thank you both for the feedback; I do see where you're coming from, less so in the case of ikarinokami because we apparently don't play the same kind of games, but I hear what you're saying.

[firebug]

No offense Ikarinokami, but you're making wild accusations that almost no one else I've seen on the forums make about what a magician absolutely needs to be effective.  I have already GM'd a game with martinchaen playing this character, and I do not go easy.  If you think a magician with high skill in manipulation magic is absolute trash unless he also does absolutely everything in his power to be amazing at combat, how on earth do you think non-combat archetypes like the Face or the Decker work?

Three dice is nowhere near as humongous a gap as you think it is, and 13 dice is not some horrendously low pool.  Three dice is one hit on average.  A difference?  Certainly.  But not end-all-be-all.  This character also has significant Drain Resist dice.  Most characters I see have 10 to 12 and are not suddenly absolute shit like you seem to think.

I find it very rude that someone seemingly inexperienced would essentially tell someone their character is complete shit, using language to suggest your way is the absolute only way and nothing else could possibly be right.  Some of what you said isn't completely accurate, either.  You're new to the forums, I see, but just be careful.  If you don't change your tone, you're likely to start a lot of arguments and get banned because of it.

[Celtibero]

I'm not saying his character won't work, im saying it's nowhere near reasonabley good for a 5E game, at least for a while.

to be an effective mage in 5E

Why in the 9 hells must everything be min/max? as for being reasonable I think it has potential, i particularly like the background level of detail, the contacts etc etc, the trouble with min/max is that the GM will have to level the field of play, ok so you create the uber mage, face, whatever, the other players do the same, what does the gm do? ....   

so he is not perfect on what it refers to the numbers, so what? is that so bad (besides, you're sometimes discussing a 13 vs 16 dice.... wanna do the math on the avg hits over time?)?

and as firebug has already pointed, its rather... shall we say uncouth? to come into a forum, gunsblazing and posting in that sort (a bit crude if you ask me) of manner... yes its a matter of perspective and opinion, but instead of doing what you did you could have gone like: ok, i don't agree, i think you could improve it by doing X and Y.

instead you where like: for it to work it needs X and Y imperatively or else it will not be able to fly, period.

notice a difference?

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

So you are saying it would be okay I have Miles Lanier or Lofwyr was a corporate contact at rating C1/L10?

Absolutely.  They won't do anything for you, but they'll sure take your call and go out drinking with you. They might suggest to one of the lowest flunkies they have to help you out in a 'no skin off my nose' situation, but they'll greet you with great greetings any time you manage to get into where-ever it is they are - or, you know, wave aside their bodyguards so that you can get to where they are.

[Sincereagape]

So you are saying it would be okay I have Miles Lanier or Lofwyr was a corporate contact at rating C1/L10?

Absolutely.  They won't do anything for you, but they'll sure take your call and go out drinking with you. They might suggest to one of the lowest flunkies they have to help you out in a 'no skin off my nose' situation, but they'll greet you with great greetings any time you manage to get into where-ever it is they are - or, you know, wave aside their bodyguards so that you can get to where they are.

Those are really good perks for a connection 1 rating. 

Taken from page 387 "virtually no social influence; useful only for their knowledge skills." Regarding connection rating 1

5th edition has defined contacts in a thorough manner.

The way you are describing it is under the guise that he PC has Lofwyr at 12/1 (can't start off with a connection higher then rating 6)

Connection determines how powerful and how much influence they have

Loyalty determines how far and how much they will do for you.