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New player having a question on making characters

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Mon, 2012-06-18 18:28

Lorsa

New player having a question on making characters

While we haven't actually started playing EP yet, me and some friends are quite intrigued by this game and hope to start a campaign soon enough. The thing is, since I (we) have never played this game before making a character is... well interesting. You never know what to expect once you end up in actual gameplay. So what I want to know is what traps to avoid, what are good stats to have, if there are any powerstats (and why and how you houserule them away) and if there's anything you are just really stupid not to have. For example, would I be suicidal if I started with only basic moxie score? Is it laughable to have WIL 10 from start? Is it best to stack one aptitude from start or to keep them somewhat even? Also, as a personal note I thought it a bit weird that you could gain extra cp during character creation from having negative traits on your morph. Depending on the campaign of course but it seems a bit cheap that you can resleeve away something that gave your points to boost your ego.

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Lorsa is a Forum moderator [color=red]Red text is for moderator stuff[/color]

Mon, 2012-06-18 22:42

DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture

Re: New player having a question on making characters

Regarding skills The core rule book has a side bar on p. 176 that describes necessary skills. These skills include: Fray (to avoid being hit in combat), Perception (it is the primary skill that allows you to see things), and Networking (as who you know is very important in this game). The distribution of 400 cp worth of active skills, and 300 cp of knowledge skills should help to keep your character somewhat balanced. I advise however that you select knowledge skills that could tell you more about the world you are playing in. Its easier to image a fantasy world set in the past (because you can read up on what actually happened, or watch some documentary), than a sci-fi set in the future (which would require some imagination). A good coverage of knowledge skills should hopeful allow you to get information regarding the context in which your character is involved in. Academic skills cover serious book learning stuff, and would be good choices for characters who know how advanced EP technology works. Interests skills covers any topic your character may have an interest in. Profession skills would tell you how people go about doing things. For instance, interest: habitats could be used to ask the GM to explain to you what a torus habitat is, or what is the difference between an O'Neill cylinder and a Hamilton cylinder. If there is a power stat you should keep high, it might be COG. COG is the linked aptitude for many skills, most of which are field skills. If you intend to be a brainy character with lots of knowledge skills, you probably do well to have a high COG score. It'll reduce the cp you need to spend on such skills, and you'll achieve better results when you must default to an aptitude for such skills. However, considering that morphs have aptitude caps, and most can grant bonuses to various aptitudes, you don't need to worry about keeping any one aptitude very high. A character with COG 20 in a menton morph is going to have its COG raised to 30 (and all linked skills will be raised by 10). Your aptitudes are more easily increase by equipment (your body in this case) than what would be the case in other game lines. As such, you should try to keep your stats even as your choice in morphs make your aptitude values more flexible. Regarding dumping negative traits to morphs. You can gain no more than 25 cp by dumping negative traits to morphs that you will not be using. You can't get any more than 50 cp altogether so it shouldn't matter much. Chances are, your dump morph will not be so burdened by negative traits as to render it unusable. Still, you GM may rule that you can't dump negative traits to morphs you will not be using (it wouldn't be much of a burden to begin with). Plus considering the demands for physical bodies, you might even be able to sell it (even defective flats and cases might have buyers).

Mon, 2012-06-18 23:24

shark3006

Re: New player having a question on making characters

As stated, Fray and Perception are really important to have. I'd also add Freefall to the list (if you want to be able to move around in zero-g well), as well as Interfacing (so you can better use the technology in the world of Eclipse Phase) and at least one firearm skill (trust me -- being able to kill things is important). WIL is also used by your character to determine Lucidity (which are your mental health points) and to keep your shit together. A higher WIL means you're less likely to go insane, just as a higher SOM means you're harder to kill.

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So on our heels a fresh perfection treads/ A power more strong in beauty, born of us/ And fated to excel us, as we pass/ In glory that old Darkness: nor are we/ Thereby more conquer'd, than by us the rule/ Of shapeless Chaos.

Tue, 2012-06-19 02:14

Tyrnis

Re: New player having a question on making characters

One issue that you may run into is that AGI can be significantly more point-efficient than anyone else thanks to the cost modifier on technical skills. They're not going to be your social character, sure, but an AGI is typically going to be able to specialize in hacking at very low cost, leaving them plenty of points to specialize in something else that a non-AGI wouldn't have. I haven't actually decided on houserules to do away with this yet, but the next time I run an EP game, I'm very likely to eliminate the cost break/penalty on skills for AGI in favor of giving them a set of background skills like everyone else to bring them more into parity with the other backgrounds.

Tue, 2012-06-19 05:10

Lorsa

Re: New player having a question on making characters

Thanks for the input guys. :) So, what about moxie? Can you live without it or does every PC need at least 5? :)

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Lorsa is a Forum moderator [color=red]Red text is for moderator stuff[/color]

Tue, 2012-06-19 05:38

Pyrite

Re: New player having a question on making characters

Personally, I'd houserule that you can't have morph penalties that exceed the CP cost of your morph. And if you resleeve that morph away, the other players will have an opportunity to sell their morphs for cash or rent them out, while you'll be lucky to not be fined for littering if you left it in a corridor. Also, if new morphs are provided by Firewall on the typical 'first-come-first-slotted-into-what-we-have-lying-around' basis, the sort of luck that got him such a messed up morph in the past might conspire to make future morphs almost as interesting. But that's just how I'd run it.

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'No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself.' --J.R.R. Tolkien

Tue, 2012-06-19 07:40

Decivre

Re: New player having a question on making characters

Lorsa wrote:
Thanks for the input guys. :) So, what about moxie? Can you live without it or does every PC need at least 5? :)

Moxie can be quite powerful, and I highly recommend purchasing a large amount of it when you're playing for the first time. Having plenty of re-rolls and extra chances with the dice can be handy when you don't know what you're doing. To be honest, I almost always purchase 10 points of Moxie for my characters from the get-go of creation. If you need more CP later on, you can always reduce it before you finalize your character.

Pyrite wrote:
Personally, I'd houserule that you can't have morph penalties that exceed the CP cost of your morph. And if you resleeve that morph away, the other players will have an opportunity to sell their morphs for cash or rent them out, while you'll be lucky to not be fined for littering if you left it in a corridor.

A better way to do it is to restrict players to purchasing an equal amount of morph positive traits to balance out the total value. In effect, the total CP value of a morph, including all traits, cannot go below 0.

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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Tue, 2012-06-19 08:39

Xagroth

Re: New player having a question on making characters

The biggest trap a new player can fall in EP is the gear and morph sections: while it very tempting to gear up with a lot of implants, in a "default" (that is, "you are Firewall operatives") gameplay it is very likely that you will be changing morphs a lot, and while at the beginning a GM might let you get a morph with the same gear the one you have has, I wouldn't count on it. Another misconception is that "swords are cool": you want a character that can fight? Go for Projectile Weapons, and ignore the melee ones. And if you go around "cloacked", it is usually a free kill anyway if you sneak well enough. In a starting character do not get any attribute over 25, and actually having more than 20 in is risky. However, you can invest 20 CP in two advantages to raise the "cap" in +10 for both you ego and the morph you are buying (or consider Infomorphs, whith a 40 points limit on attributes), and start with COG 30 for a VERY huge amount of knowledge skills (not to mention some of the best supporting skills in the game: programming, infosec, interface...). Personally, when I make a new character, I go for a slightly generalist one, topping the skills at 60 (so I only pay 1 CP per point), meaning a lot of knowledge skills, that can be really useful to give bonus to active ones, or even better, to save the group from trouble. As stated before, an AGI, while useless in social situations at character creation, can reach a efficient investment of CP on several technical skills, effectively giving it more than 10% CP reserve if it spends the smallest possible amount of CP in networking and other social skills (so this AGI will be heavily dependant on the other members of the group).

Tue, 2012-06-19 12:14

Tyrnis

Re: New player having a question on making characters

Decivre wrote:
Lorsa wrote:
Thanks for the input guys. :) So, what about moxie? Can you live without it or does every PC need at least 5? :)
Moxie can be quite powerful, and I highly recommend purchasing a large amount of it when you're playing for the first time. Having plenty of re-rolls and extra chances with the dice can be handy when you don't know what you're doing. To be honest, I almost always purchase 10 points of Moxie for my characters from the get-go of creation. If you need more CP later on, you can always reduce it before you finalize your character.

While I don't go nearly as far as Decivre, I typically consider 4 Moxie to be the minimum that I'll create a character with, and raise it higher if I've got the points left after getting the character where I want it. I've had more than one PC in my games play Moxie 1, and while it's not a death sentence by any means, it does mean they're heavily reliant on rolling well. If you find you normally roll very well on dice, you can get away with lower Moxie; if you normally roll less well, you'll be well served raising it higher.

Tue, 2012-06-19 14:37

#10

Lalande21185 Lalande21185's picture

Re: New player having a question on making characters

Regarding Moxie: Check to see how your GM is houseruling moxie (and they all houserule moxie, it's some sort of compulsion, they can't help themselves) before deciding how much to get. Also check out how they intend on handling hardening (p. 214, ep): if they ignore it, then a very high moxie is OK. If they intend to use it then you might be better getting a slightly lower moxie in case your maximum MOX decreases.

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[url=http://awdaberton.wordpress.com/about/]Eclipse Phase Adventures[/url]

Tue, 2012-06-19 14:43

#11

Geonis

Re: New player having a question on making characters

My views: Combat is deadly and can be over with fast, a plasma rifle can do of (3d10 +20) *2 damage in one shot (page 194-5) with an addition +10*2 from a MoS 60+(page 192). If you are expecting combat heavy situations, be geared for it. Healing can take some time. (page 208) Moxie cap can decrease, maxing it might lead to lost CP in heavy mental stress game play when you become hardened. (Page 214-5) However, moxie is very powerful, re-rolling failures, upgrading a normal success to a critical (ignoring armor in combat) and removing negative modifiers (page 122) Taking a morph with heavy negative traits might end up setting you into Rez debt early, at the GMs discretion (page 153). Also, you can only have 25 negative morph trait points (page 136) and a total of 50 (ego and morph added together), while maxing at 50 positive. Also remember the [b]Ultimate rule[/b]:

Page 114 wrote:
One rule in Eclipse Phase outweighs all of the others: have fun. This means that you should never let the rules get in the way of the game. If you don’t like a rule, change it.

Talk about any issues over with the group that you can see coming up before hand. If you are doing something that will take away from the fun of other players or the GM, I suggest rethinking it. The biggest issue with Eclipse phase rules, they are everywhere and spread out. A lot of cross referencing will be needed. In short, the best advice I can give is this, start with a concept and go from there, make something you will enjoy and won't hinder other peoples enjoyment. Most important Have fun.

Tue, 2012-06-19 14:46

#12

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Re: New player having a question on making characters

Moxie is very powerful (but also very expensive). Still, if you can afford it, it will pay for itself. re: Stats -- you want to hit at least 60 in any skills you want to be useful in. It's very easy to crank it up to 99+ though, after modifiers, so bear that in mind. In general, EP is one of the easiest games to break in regards to character balance. As a GM, I focus on getting people to play characters, not the numbers. re: Gear -- Also very powerful, but easy to lose (or get). My first character had a case with one leg. My brother was rolling in a tricked-out reaper. In the first mission he RULED, but by the second, I was equal to him in equipment, and his superior in stats (because I swiped a morph). Find out how attached to equipment your GM is, and plan accordingly. Unfortunately, psi isn't very potent, and the weird biomorphs tend not to be worth their cost. Hopefully that'll change in the future.

Tue, 2012-06-19 18:58

#13

Decivre

Re: New player having a question on making characters

nezumi.hebereke wrote:
Unfortunately, psi isn't very potent, and the weird biomorphs tend not to be worth their cost. Hopefully that'll change in the future.

I disagree with this. Most psi-chi sleights are the effective equivalent of various implants and positive traits, granting a bonus that carries with them from biomorph to biomorph. Psi-gamma sleights range from damn powerful to absolute crap. Subliminal and mimic are both extremely potent sleights with a wide range of uses, whereas psychic stab is effectively worthless. The problem with psi isn't the abilities so much as it's the roleplaying. Most players can't handle portraying a character with fixed personality traits, especially when those traits are forms of madness. More often than not, I have people who try to play asyncs but are unable to portray a character with serious mental disorders (and more than one at that).

—

Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Thu, 2013-05-09 16:51

#14

Re-Laborat Re-Laborat's picture

I agree with much of what has

I agree with much of what has been said, but I would argue that it is worth the extra 2 points to have several skills at 61, because when calculating the bonuses for complementary skills, the range of 31-60 gives at 20% bonus to the primary skill when rolling... But at 61 you get a +30% bonus instead, and you can apply that to any skill roll which you can reasonably make good use of that skill in. So for 2 points you are effectively buying a +10% bonus to a wide range of skills.

Thu, 2013-05-09 19:06

#15

Arquebus

It will pay off to get a

It will pay off to get a skill up to or slightly higher than the closest critical so that you don't get a critical failure if you miss by say 3. example if you skill is 30 make it a 33 so that you have 4 chances to get a critical success. Even better make it a 35 so that if you get any bonuses say +20 you will get a critical if you roll 55. Your Primary attack skill should be a 68 so if you get bonuses you will still succeed on a 88 and you will get the +10 to damage if you roll a Mos of 60 or better. Your Fray should be a 44 66 or 88 so that you also get better chance to roll a crit when its halved.