Day 19: Pryde the Wild Cat
#CharacterCreationChallenge
The next entry in the metavariant series is a Dryad, an Elf metavariant with some peculiarities that make it more suitable for NPCs than PCs, but… I’ll give it a try anyways. Pryde is a Face/Mage hybrid, making use of the fact that Shamans and Faces both need high Charisma and Dryads have an unusually high Charisma maximum. She is also a member of the Sorbian minority that have a strong relationship with the awakened Spreewald, the forest growing around parts of the river Spree.
Appearance and first impression
Slender, with pale skin, green eyes, almost white hair and a constant almost preternatural grace about her, Pryde could be mistaken for a regular elf by anyone unfamiliar with Dryads… She wears light, well-fitting clothes and no visible armor or weapons of any kind.
Backstory
Pryde was born and grew up among the Sorbs of the Spree Forest just outside Berlin. Both of her parents were Dryads and shamans like her, but when she met Cat, the mischievous streak she always had became stronger, and she left the Spree, beginning to explore Berlin and eventually made her home in the Kreuzbasar.She ferociously defends her neighbourhood and the few people she considers friends, but most of the time her playful nature is what is on display.
Priorities
In order to make the hybrid work, I needed three categories on B or higher, so I used another Sum-to-Ten approach - and because Pryde is not really going to use Spirits (or Enchanting), I made her an aspected Sorcerer, which gives us an extra point of Magic. The Dryad Metavariant costs 5 Karma, so all in all we have:
B: Magic/Resonance (Aspected Sorcery, 4)
B: Skills (24)
B: Attributes (16)
D: Metatype (4)
E: Resources (8,000)
Attributes
Far and away the most important attribute is Charisma which gets maxed out at 8 Also important is Magic which goes to 6. Everything else is secondary, but we want a bit of everything, so we end up with:
Body 2
Agility 3
Reaction 2
Strength 1
Willpower 3
Logic 2
Intuition 2
Charisma 8
Edge 2
Magic 6
Skills
For the Mage side, we want Sorcery (which gets maxed out) and a bit of Astral. For the Face side, Influence and Con. Decent Stealth and a bit of Perception is it for now, although we want a bit of Athletics later:
Sorcery 6
Astral 4
Con 5
Influence 5
Perception 1
Stealth 3
Knowledge Skills
German is the native language (but we get Sorbian as well, later) and the only two knowledge skills we have at this point are Awakened Spree (relating to the river and surrounding forest) and Magical Security, because she knows about both of those.
Qualities
This is the sink for a lot of our starting Karma.
First, we get a Mentor Spirit (Cat), which provides boni for Stealth and Illusion Spells. In exchange we can’t use attacks and spells that cause lethal damage without some problems, which suits Pryde just fine. She’s all about smoke and mirrors and sweet-talking, not brute force.
Sorbian Blood gives her the language “Sorbian” as a second native language, and means none of the creatures of the awakened Spree forest will attack her unless she attacks first or blatantly disrespects nature in it.
Focused Concentration at rating 2 is expensive - 24 Karma - but means she can sustain two spells at a time without any problems. Given many illusion spells are sustained, this is worth it
Finally (on the positive side) she gets First Impression - there’s just something about her people want to like, at least until they have been stung the first time.
On the negative side, she has Impaired (Body) at 3 - she can’t raise her Body attribute above 3, which is probably as far as it was ever going to go.
Oh, and she has a severe Allergy against Silver. No, she’s not a werewolf, but the legends about werewolves and silver come from the idea that silver is particularly pure and harms evil or somesuch, and given some of the superstitions about magic, well, she may have internalised some of that. Either way, touching silver or getting shot with silver bullets will hurt her.
Finally, as a Dryad, she also has three inherent Qualities: Low-Light Vision which does what you would think, Glamour (which gives a bonus Edge to all non-aggressive social actions but also makes her easier to remember due to appearing radiant and unearthly) and Symbiosis (a negative quality that ties the character to their neighbourhood - if it is thriving, they gain certain benefits, if it is not doing well, there are disadvantages; also leaving the neighbourhood and staying away are difficult).
Altogether the qualities have a net cost of 24 Karma.
Magic Spells
Pryde starts with 8 spells. Half of those are Illusion, which is her specialty.
Stunbolt and Stunball are mostly nonlethal attack spells - one for individual targets, one for groups.
Mind Probe does what you would expect - depending on how successful it is, it can allow anything from “read surface thoughts” to “dig through the target's suppressed memories”.
Chaos is an illusion spell that overwhelmed a target (living or machine) with sensory input and makes it difficult for them to do anything.
Improved Invisibility and Physical Mask are classics - both prevent living and artificial observers from seeing the target at all or as it is, respectively.
Hot Potato gives the target the overwhelming sensation that whatever they are holding is causing them pain and the urge to drop it. Protip: use right before they are throwing an armed grenade.
And finally, Animate Wood allows her to, well, animate an object made mostly of wood, allowing it to trip or trap or even hit others, open or close doorways and similar things.
Gear
Armor
A basic Armor Vest that can be worn under clothing is the only kind of armor Pryde wears at the moment. She is maybe a little too confident in enemies not shooting what they can’t see.
Magical Gear
A Magical Lodge of rating 6 is a necessity for learning spells.
Vehicle
A Dodge Scoot “motorbike” isn’t fast, or manoeuvrable, or armoured, but it does the job for getting from A to B.
Other stuff
Mostly the usual, plus some climbing gear here. An Invisibility spell means that climbing up the side of a building is a possible way in even in broad daylight.
Adding it all up
All in all, the gear costs 18,960 Nuyen, which is a bit over 10k more than the priority table gave us, so we have to spend 6 Karma and start with 1,040 Nuyen.
Spending our Karma
After the Qualities, Gear and Metatype, we only have 15 Karma left. These go into a point of Athletics, and Specialisations in Sorcery (Spellcasting) and Con (Performance) which is never defined anywhere but I assume means general deception not covered by other specialisations.
Finishing it up
Contacts
Marina Amsel the fixer and Silke Meier the Talismonger are the same contacts Castle from yesterday has as well - but they both have greater loyalty to Pryde.
Markus Lisser is an elder of the Sorbian clan that Pryde stems from. They are not particularly close, but family is family, and he has a fair amount of influence in the region. (Connection 5, Loyalty 3)
Kazimira Burakgazi is the current owner of Cafe Cezve, and one of the leading figures in the Kreuzbasar neighbourhood that Pryde has made her home. She is well-connected and appreciates Pryde’s interest in the wellbeing of their home. (Connection 6, Loyalty 4)
Bygul is a free spirit taking the shape of a cat, with significant influence in the local spirit world and able to teach some spells and other magic (Connection 5, Loyalty 6).
Calculations
Attack Rating:
Unarmed: 3
Astral: 14
Defense Rating
Physical: 5
Astral: 2
Initiative
Physical: 4 + 1D6
Astral: 4 + 2D6
Notable Dice Pools
Spellcasting: 14
Other Sorcery: 12
Drain Resistance: 11
Con: 13 (Performance 15)
Influence: 13
Stealth: 6
Condition Monitors
Physical: 9
Stun: 10
And there we are
The final version of the worksheet can be found here .That’s it for Day 19 of the #CharacterCreationChallenge
Published at NZDT