Day 5: E-2 the Test Subject
#CharacterCreationChallenge
For the final entry in my series of “mystic approach” characters, I have the most challenging character - a Technomancer that can do anything a Rigger can (kind of). Now, back in 4th edition, this was fairly simple (easily achieved with Sprites, in fact)… but in 5E and 6E, there is a complication in that emulating a Riggers abilities requires Submersion, not just once, but several times. On the upside, it is actually possible to undergo this process during character creation, whereas in the past this has very much been a mid-to-late game thing. For those new to Shadowrun, Submersion (and its magical counterpart, Initiation) increases both the magical/technomantic power a character can achieve, but also gives them access to special supernatural realms and, finally, enhancements to their abilities known as Echos (for Technomancers) or Metamagic (for Magic users). And those Echos are where the Rigger powers - that let the character “jump in” to a vehicle and control it as if it was part of their body - are locked away…
Appearance and first impression
A young woman with a completely bald head, usually wearing simple, light clothing. Her skin is covered in surgical cars and she avoids eye contact. Only when she gets to interact with machines, especially drones, does she relax. She talks to her drones and other machines. In combat, she is utterly methodical and cold, as if an entirely different personality took over.
Backstory
E-2 (short for Experiment 24601) does not remember what her name was, or how she ended up in the laboratory. She does distinctly remember being cut open, connected to machines, and endless injections and blood samples. Then the instruments and computers started talking to her, and different experiments followed, where she had to try and control machines, and travel away from the material world into realms of pure information. She preferred those experiments, there was no cutting. One night, the others came. Others like her, but from outside. They took her and told her she was now free. They explained that she had always had the potential to be a Technomancer, but the experiments she had undergone had been designed to trigger and strengthen them. She started learning about outside, and that she would need money to live and keep herself secret from the people that experimented on her. They put her in touch with “Shadowrunners”, and helped her get drones that she could work with, and she is starting to even think about stopping those that hurt her from doing it to others.
Character Creation Overview
I once again used the Sum-To-Ten method with a B-C-C-C-D spread - none of the options needed to be at A, but neither could any be dumped to E. Because E-2 needed several levels of submersion - 4 to be exact - and this costs a lot of Karma, I had very little Karma to play with and needed to take several fairly limiting negative qualities.
Priorities
Most of the priorities ended up on C, with only Attributes higher and Resonance lower, and neither by more than one step. The final spread was:
B: Attributes (16)
C: Metatype (Human, 9)
C: Skills (20)
C: Resources (150,000)
D: Resonance (1)
Attributes
For a human, adjustment points can only be used for Edge and Magic/Resonance, everything else had to come from Attribute points. E-2 has only minimal physical attributes, as she barely acknowledges her physical existence. Mentally on the other hand, she runs circles around most people, her connection to the Resonance is extraordinary for someone so young, and she has occasional strokes of incredible luck:
Body 2
Agility 1
Reaction 1
Strength 1
Willpower 4
Logic 5
Intuition 6
Charisma 4
Edge 5
Resonance 6
Skills
With her main focus on drones, the two most important skills for E-2 are ENgineering (which includes using vehicle-mounted weapons) and Piloting, but even those are not as critical as most other characters’ skills - they both end up on 5 at this stage, with neither maxed out. Cracking and Tasking are also important and go on 4, and Electronics down on 2. Everything else can be ignored for now - note that she does not have any personal combat skills. That’s what Drones are for.
Knowledge Skills
With her high logic, she actually has a couple of free knowledge skills. Her native language is English, and her other Knowledge skills are
Drones
Weapons
Resonance Realms
Ares Research Projects
Magical Theory
The idea here is that the corporation that experimented on her was Ares, in one of their many attempts to create weapons against the insect spirits (or weaponize them…). As a result, aside from obvious choices like Drones and Weapons, E-2 also picked up a significant amount about Magical Theory and has learned more than she ever wanted to know about Ares research methodologies and projects.
Qualities
With Karma being at a premium for E-2, she has a number of negative and few expensive positive Qualities:
Analytical Mind: Just as with Lurtz, this is just too good to pass up for its cost, and E-2 actually will use Logic quite a bit. Cost: 3 Karma
Focused Concentration at rating 1 is the only relatively expensive quality she has, because it is just so useful to be able to sustain one of her Complex Forms without penalty (but only one at a time). Cost: 12 Karma
Low Pain Tolerance doubles all wound modifiers. E-2 should stay out of the physical action as much as possible anyways, but this could hurt from matrix combat, fading or dumpshock - but alas, the 10 Karma are needed.
Uncouth provides 6 Karma in exchange for an inability to use Edge on tests using Charisma. Being almost unable to have social interactions will do that (although it might be worth negotiating with the GM whether this applies to non-social Charisma tests, namely Fading resistance and Strength tests while jumped into a drone.
Allergy (Soy, Severe) provides a whopping 17 Karma, but in exchange, being in contact with Soy products (about 80% of food in Shadowrun) causes ongoing damage and dice pool reductions. Better be very careful about going anywhere people eat…
All in all, she ahs a net gain of 18 Karma from qualities.
Complex Forms
Resonance Channel needs to be sustained and reduces noise penalties on Matrix connections (including controlling drones remotely), which may be caused by distance or interference.
Enhance Autosofts needs to be sustained and improves the benefit a drone or similar device gains from autosoft programs, which generally act a bit like skills for the drone
Submersion
E-2 has undergone four ranks of Submersion, which means she can access the Resonance Realms (places on the Matrix that should not exist and that are directly linked to information of certain kinds. It also means she could theoretically increase her Resonance up to 10 (but it would cost a lot of Karma), and most importantly, she has the following for Echos
Living Network allows her mind to become part of a Personal Area Network, which means she can directly control a variety of devices and prevent hackers from accessing them without going through her first.
Machine Mind acts like a basic Vehicle Control Rig, which gives some advantages when controlling a drone or adapted vehicle, and lets E-2 control such vehicles as if they were part of her.
Living Command Console allows her to control a number of drones at the same time more effectively and share autosofts with them
Software Emulator allows her to absorb software and then “run” it on her mind - particularly useful in command with the Living Command Console Echo because it allows her to use autosofts for her drones.
Gear
Weapons
No personal weapons, but see the Vehicle section below
Armor
A simple set of Armor Clothing that appears just like cheap, basic street clothes.
Vehicles
GMC Bulldog” An armored delivery van that doesn’t stand out anywhere. Equipped with Rigger adaptation, and a protective Rigger Cocoon that E-2 can stay in while she is controlling her drones.
2 MCT Hornet drones, small, insect-like flying observation drones. They each have an injector filled with Narcojet, a fast-acting tranquiliser, and E-2 has a few doses to spare.
5 MCT-Nissan Rotodrones, mid-sized flying drones that are popular as flying weapons platforms. 2 of them have AK-97 assault rifles for suppressive fire and longer-distance attacks (each with Smartgun systems, one loaded with explosive rounds for extra damage, one with gel rounds for a nonlethal option), 2 haveMossberg CMDT shotguns for heavy, shorter-range attacks, and one has a Shiawase Blazer flamethrower because you never know when you need to kill it with fire.
2 Nissan Samurai anthrodrones - upright walking and roughly humanoid (and with functional arms), these have a sharp blade at each limb, and an Ingram Smartgun Submachine gun on each arm. The one on the left arm is filled loaded with explosive ammunition, the one on the right with gel ammunition, because having options is still useful. Note that the rulebooks seem to have missed out on providing any cost for the fuel tanks for the flamethrower, so I assumed 100 Nuyen per tank which seems about in line with similar things.
In addition to those vehicles, E-2 also has (or rather had as they have all been absorbed into her living persona now) a range of autosofts, all at the maximum available rank of 6 - they act as a skill of the same level for drones.
Clearsight acts as Perception for all drones
Evasion is to defend againstt attacks for all drones
Maneuvering isthe piloting skill - a separate autosoft is needed per drone model, and she has it for all the models she has (Hornet, Rotodrone, Samurai)
Targeting acts as a weapons skill - a different one is needed for each weapon model, and she has them for all her drone weapons except the Hornet stingers (AK-97, CMDT, Blazer and the blades of the Samurais).
Other stuff
A decent (rating 4) Fake SIN, a Gold Certified Credstick and a month of Medium Lifestyle (mostly so she has space for all her tools and Drones).
An Engineering Shop and an Electronics Kit (basically lots of Engineering tools and some basic ones for Electronics).
Rating 5 Goggles with Low-Light Vision, Smartlink, Thermographic Vision and Vision Magnification - note that goggles are quite bulky and obvious.
A Flashlight, Gas Mask, rating 6 Respirator and rating 6 Medkit for emergencies.
Adding it all up
Altogether, our gear adds up to 165575 Nuyen. 150,000 comes from the priorities, the rest costs 8 Karma, leaving 425 Nuyen to start the game with.
Spending our Karma
Between the Submersions, Qualities and Gear, we have 10 Karma left. This goes into one point of Stealth, and a specialisation in Engineering (Gunnery)
Finishing it up
Contacts
Jeeves is a human fixer E-2 met through other Shadowrunners. He finds her creepy but cannot deny her usefulness. Connection 4, Loyalty 1
Anny Whitecloud is a Salish weapons smuggler. She does not trust Technomancers but as long as they pay, she sells. Connection 4, Loyalty 1
Uncle Hito is a used car dealer who also stocks drones. He acts as if everyone is his best friend, at least as long as he sees a chance at making a sale. Connection 4, Loyalty 1
Sister Ellen is a leader of a tribe of Technomancers and Shadowrunners - she was part of the team that freed E-2. Connection 3, Loyalty 2
Xie is a dwarf, originally from China, and a street shaman. She is interested in the similarities between magic and technomancy… and possibly more personally interested as well. Connection 2, Loyalty 2
Calculations
Attack Rating:
Matrix combat: 10 (can be increased through living persona configuration)
Unarmed: 2
Smartgun XI (on drone): 13/11/8/-/-
CMDT (on drone): 6/13/9/-/-
AK-97 (on drone): 6/13/11/9/3
Blazer (on drone): 14/12/10/-/-
Samurai drone blades: 6
Defense Rating
Physical: 4
Matrix: 9 (can be increased through living persona configuration)
Initiative
Physical: 7 + 1D6
Matrix AR: 7 + 1D6
Matrix VR: 11 + 3D6
Notable Dice Pools
Attacking with a Drone weapon: 12 (13 if smartlinked, i.e. AK-97, CMDT or Smartgun XI)
Hacking: 9
Piloting a vehicle through Rigger controls: 12
E-2 has much lower dice pools than most of the other characters I created here - her main strength is in having multiple drones in play at the same time, so she can effectively be multiple medium-strength combatants instead of one high-end one.
Condition Monitors
And there we are
The final version of the worksheet can be found here .That’s it for Day 4 of the #CharacterCreationChallenge
Published at NZDT