Not too familiar with all the intricacies, so I'm looking for information/suggestions. My character concept is a kind of infiltrator/techie, who is probably an Argonaut leaning towards Anarchist, basically he's mainly interested in the open source idea (both for technology and programs). I'm looking for a suggestion on first morph. I'm kind of looking at the first pre-gen, and notice it's a Bouncer. I basically don't know what would make sense for this character.
Thanks.
Well the guy that I just made and sent to Dom is an Argonaut infiltrator/hacker as well but there's more than one way to skin a cat in this game. The big difference with the guy that I made is that he's an infolife(an AGI)...he started his existence as data. AGIs (AIs with cognitive capacities equal to humans or higher) are not generally trusted because AGIs are a good part of the reason why Earth was massacred. A My character is also more research/science based and is not a social skills powered character. Food for thought for chargen going forward. Our characters might make a good double team. Also my guy isn't too hot on modifying items, like making personal gear.
Here's starting morphs for you. You have to use CPs to buy your starting morph and some are more expensive than others. Since chargen is a point-buy system, the more CP you spend on your starting morph the less CP you have to spend on extra stuff. So it's up to you to conceptualize how much you want to put into your starting morph. I spent 70 on mine (a Ghost morph) and had -plenty- for other stuff.
Here's some ideas to put things into perspective...
Flats are normal humans that you can add modifications to. They're free but they don't get the biomods for free either, you've got to buy those.
Splicers are genetically fixed humans. Think of a splicer morph as the main morph that many of the NPCs in the game will be. Think of splicer morphs as the "basic" morph, whereas the Flat is like the -1 crappy morph you take to have more money to spend stuff on.
Exalts are a step up from Splicers. They're genetically enhanced and designed for specific traits. This is a nice pick because you can set a +5 to three aptitudes of your choice to kinda represent "this body was made for spy work".
Olympians designed for olympic level athletics, which could be a factor in spywork. Do you want your guy/girl to be an overall physical specimen?
Sylphs are the hotness. Is your guy a con-artist james bond style espionage person? If so this would be a good pick.
Bouncers are designed for zero-G and microgravity, but they also have prehensile feet to start which can turn into all kinds of ninja/climbing/hanging from ceilings awesomeness. This would be a good pick for spy work because of that.
Ghost This is what I chose, and they're designed for infiltration. They have chameleon skin that helps them with disguise checks, adrenal glands to manage their cool under fire, and their grip pads basically allow them to spiderman crawl on walls.
Neo-Hominids Be a chimpanzee with prehensile feet? Running, gunning, climbing all over the place?
The main thing to remember is that this game is more like shadowrun than D&D. In fact it's made by some of the Shadowrun guys. You're not so much picking Race and Class. You're just making whatever the fuck you want. You can pick the uplift background (former animal that was uplifted to sentience, like a chimp/octopus/dolphin) that wears a morph sleeve that looks like Brad Pitt. Likewise you can pick a guy who was a janitor on earth that's chosen to wear the morph that looks like a silverback gorilla (neo-hominid morph). I did the Pinocchio thing and made an AGI that is wearing the body of a ghost and is getting the full tactile human experience.
So approach chargen like you're "arming up" for the game, taking what you want and leaving the rest behind like a salad bar.
The next step really is to conceptualize what you wanna do with your aptitudes. The morph adds bonuses to your aptitudes, so these should be kept in mind as well. These could be useful in determining your "infiltration/spy" style.
COG - Cognition = memory/problem solving
COO - Coordination = Manual dexterity/balance, guns, infiltration(sneaking).
INT - Intuition = self explanatory, but also factors into linguistics, the perception skill, and investigation skill
REF - Reflexes = dodging/piloting/zero g movement skills affected here.
SAV - Savvy = social ability. Persuasion, networking, impersonation skills affected here...
SOM - Somatics = strength/endurance = unarmed combat, freerunning, blades, climbing, clubs skills affected
WIL - willpower = not used on many skills(psionics) but there -is- a sanity check element of the game.
You have to spend 105 points on these, and they all start at 5, leaving you with 70 points left to allocate. The normal human standard is 10. You could choose to set all to 15 and let the morph benefits choose the additional bonuses or tweak them however you want them.
Say you want your guy to be a naturally good shot with a gun? Okay so say you set COO to 15, and your morph adds 10. After this process you'll have a Coordination of 25. So when you go to buy your beam weapons skill (a coordination based skill) it'll start for free at a 25 and you'll use your CP to buy it up from there.
Once this is done, you're basically free to spend CP on whatever else you want with some guidelines that are set in the book. 400 points on active skills and 300 on knowledge must be set.
It SOUNDS a lot more daunting than it really is, TRUST ME. It's just got that new system oddity, but the spreadsheet does all the math for you.
If you wanna skype and go over this let me know, my skype is "lockenstock". Dom and I went over stuff today and when you use that spreadsheet it's a cinch. I don't keep skype on in the background so just gimme a time that you'll be there and we'll voice chat through it.
