(waves) Major Depression or Type-2 Bipolar. Also, meant no offense, I got my BA in Psych and a lot of my terms and heuristics are tailored to that perspective. It should also be noted that I still haven't even bothered to check if the DSM-V has even been released yet (I was trained to the -IV). So things like "Multiple Personality Disorder" (Transhuman p154) bug me because I was taught to "Dissassociative Identity Disorder". For purposes of discussion, I was taught that a disorder can be classified as such when it has a "measurable negative impact on the subject's quality of life". So I can be perfectly neurotic about lighting torches in Dark Souls, checking the front door is locked, and checking the oven is off, but it hasn't developed into any form of OCD. Meanwhile spending months on end with crippling low self esteem and contemplating suicide *does* have a measurable negative impact. Therapeutically we are supposed to acknowledge a subject (or "person in recovery") as "someone who has this mental disorder", but there are many times when the patient can have trouble separating their "ego" from the disorder itself. From personal experience, it can get very hard - I'd even say that what I've gone through did substantial ego-rewriting on par with major psychosurgery, but I'd still file my psych experience as "relatively minor" and "liveable". And I certainly agree with a weighting system, especially since some disorders are simply easier to live with than others. A character with Schizophrenia is going to have a tougher time than an arachnophobe, but one with Arachnophobia+Triskadecaphobia could hit a similar level of trouble more... evenly? Omega brings up an excellent point, though: the WM-Exsurgent strain is rewriting core code of your ego. Which brings up another excellent idea - why select full disorders when you can select for symptoms? That would (more or less) eliminate the need for a psychological "weighting" system and plays up the mystery of diagnosis. It also means that "simpler" disorders (like phobias) are somewhat easier to catalogue. It also means that temporary derangements can be selected from a pool of related symptoms - it follows standard doctrine that high stress can evoke worse responses than a low-stress/controlled environment (and means other "nice" things like a character you've developed a deep understanding for gets neuroses along your lines of thinking instead of, say, becoming a pyromaniac out of the blue). So, for example, a character who starts with impulse control symptoms (say OCD) when exposed to sufficient stress to cause a derangement, takes on exholalia (mirrored speech) as a symptom. If they continue to accumulate stress, they begin demonstrating echopraxia (mirrored movement). Then, when they've had the chance to cool off for a while, the symptoms fade and they know a little more what disorder they've got. Also Body Dismorphic Disorder is pretty much my favorite choice for an Async (inasmuch as that can be counted as "fun") since it really props up the cthuloid horror.

Titanbuster - Titans, exsurgent minions, and the Lost have psi almost as a matter of course. One of the most effective psi-busting builds focuses almost entirely on the defensive. The gear I've laid out above (medichines, toxin filters, nanophages, guardians, and a firewall) are a useful baseline. If you can fit it, take on the Dominant Strain and Morph Fever Resistance traits - the former is obvious, the latter means that you can use a pod morph. Pods are useful because they force a -30 penalty to all incoming psi usage, but still allow you to use your own sleights (at a -30 but *only for sleights that require rolls*). By taking on the traits Ambience Sense, Downtime, Predictive Boost, Unconscious Lead, Psi Shield, and Static you can wreak havoc on your enemies without taking the pod's penalty to async sleights - meanwhile incoming psi usage takes a -60 penalty for as long as you can hold Static up, and that's before your mental armor! If you can afford it, tack on a Multiple Personalities mod and load in a second copy of yourself - you can now alternate which ego takes the worst of the SAN damage and have one ego maintain Static (or use Downtime) while the other manages the curbstomp. Mind Knife - Psychic Stab is the only direct-fire psychic attack, with the troublesome bits being it only works on organics, and it's touch ranged. If you know that you are fighting other asyncs, the range goes up to 5-10m but it's still easier to just rely on a gun (or when fighting synths, the Cauterizer program). if you absolutely insist on using it, take the Potent Mind & Zoosemiotics traits and the Penetration & Downtime sleights to back it up. With that build on hand, you can deal 2d10+(WIL/10) damage with variable AP. On a good roll with 30 WIL you can spike the damage to 2d10+3, or even double it on a crit (taking 1d10/2 SAN damage in the process). For frame of reference, your average NPC will have a Sanity of 30/60 with a Trauma Threshold of 5; a more willful character will have a Sanity of 60/120 with a TT of 12. With this setup you can usually inflict a minor derangement with every strike - an average character can even be struck with 2 or 3 derangements in a single attack. Also remember, there is a lot of good to be said of synthmorphs now that the Brain Case mod is an option. I use a variant of the Titanbuster build with Multiple Personalities and it works very very well.

jKaiser - For lack of social cues, I like to make sure I didn't offend. I try very hard not to take things personally, but even I get riled up - I like to go the extra step to make sure the people around me are ok too. Kojac - just glad my work is good ^_^. I hadn't noticed you said investigators *and* social, so here's the useful powers (in no particular order): Filter, Pattern Recognition, Predictive Boost, Sensory Boost, and Savant Calculation. Of these, I think Pattern, Predictive, and Savant are your most useful passives. I'm actually not too impressed with Sense Boost, since you mostly use Perception when you don't know something is coming, but YMMV. The active powers from my above social list can also be used by a smart investigator.

Factions are useful (though somewhat mechanically limited) components of any character creation. They give bonus skill points to an array of skills which somewhat regrettably are applied before (in lieu of after) skill point expenses. They are, however, an extremely useful boost to your starting CP and should not be thrown out the airlock with the bathwater. The general purpose for Backgrounds and Factions is to give you +40 CP in skills. All of your average backgrounds (Drifter, Lunar, Martian, Indenture, Nomad, Hulder...) and Factions (Argonaut, Barsoomian, Brinker, Belter, Europan, Solarian...) give you +40 to an assortment of skills that are influenced by that faction's goals and personality. When choosing factions *by the numbers*, not all skills are created equal. The tricky part of choosing B&F is not wasting points wherever possible; Re-Instanced gives you a bonus to groundcraft, for example, which is not useful except in certain scenarios. As a general rule, the most useful skills are generic "+x to any skill", followed by "+x to any Networking skill". When the B&F break into specific skills, select based on the relevant skills you were planning on using, or skills that you want but aren't sure if you can afford with your starting CP. With +Networking, be sure to choose useful rep networks! The least useful skill bonuses, in my opinion, are the + Knowledge skills - generally speaking you will be fine if you make a character who adheres to the bare minimum of invested KS points, but it is very very easy to completely run out of Active Skill points. As far as cherry-picking backgrounds: Isolate is the single best "standard" background package - you gain +20 to 2 skills of your choice, and lose all of 1 CP (10 Rep) for the guarantee of not losing any skill points on poor investments. It's just good math. Meanwhile, Hyperelite gives subpar skill payoff, limits your morph option, and is only distinct because of bonus starting credits, which is effectively equivalent to a "+10 to any skill" bonus. The best "general use" backgrounds appear to be Fall Evacuee and Re-Instantiated. Fall Evacuee can count its +10 Pilot: Ground as a loss, but you still gain +10 Networking and +15 CP from a bonus +1 Moxie, at the expense of 2.5 CP in credits - unfortunately, this does not stand up to scrutiny. Almost every other Background gives +40, and Fall Evacuee gives only 32.5/40 CP. Meanwhile Re-Instanced gives you +10 Groundcraft, +10 Networking, +30 (+2 Moxie), -5 Credits, & -10 from Edited Memories. Technically, this gives RE a wobbly +35/40 even if you can find a use for Groundcraft, but I am actually a fan of the Edited Memories trait and count Credits as a disadvantage that can easily be taken in stride. As such, I still consider RE to be conceptually viable even if it is not mechanically ideal. The base Uplift background is a fairly strong background not strictly on its own merits (+10 to Fray and Perception is nice, and +20 to 2 Knowledge skills - a default value of +60 CP) but mostly because of the Uplift- Only traits, like Heightened Instinct (THp84), Predator (THp86), and Social Animal (THp86). If you are determined to play an Uplift, I would strongly encourage you to look at the Transhuman examples for specific Uplifts as well. Their average CP value is +50, and some throw in extremely useful Edges as well (Cetacean is actually the most bang for your buck as far as point values are concerned, while Feral Uplift would be the most challenging to use). As far as AGIs, there are really two ways to approach the issue. If you want to have a generalist who is competent in social interactions, the Humanities infolife is really the best way to go (+60 with only the Real World Naivete and Stigma (AGI) traits to compete with). Emergent AGI and Machine Infolife are both very high point value, but they also take serious flaws that reduce their value. Instead, consider the Infolife background - there are no other backgrounds that give a better point-economy than Infolife, if you are willing to make sacrifices. The short and sweet: If you make a character with the Infolife background, you can easily get 3 (even 4) skills up to 80 or higher for the price of one (or two); you can then use a good rep-network faction to gain social skill points for no increase in cost. Simply put, there are ways to make other factions good (or even great) hackers, but none can make an excellent one quite as easily as an Infolife. Lost is one of the trickiest backgrounds to pin down. Their biggest advantage is the free Psi-1 trait, but they suffer by gaining +20 to 2 Knowledge skills, a bonus mental disorder, social stigma, and being forced to start with the Futura morph. They are tricky because being Lost means that you can make an Async with an additional +20 CP of traits, at the cost of beng hunted while also being buggier than a bag of crickets. As someone with a strong Psychology background, it's tough selecting not just 2, but 3 mental disorders to inflict on my character. On top of that, if you really wanted to play a different morph, you'd need to burn 15 of those 20 CP on the Second Skin trait, which is useless after character creation. Some GMs may allow you to burn 40 CP to have a "backup" Futura in a body bank somewhere while you rampage around in your killbot, but that's still 40 CP in the hole. So Lost is really most useful if you want to play a very traits-intensive Async who is sleeved into a Futura for the foreseeable future. ====== As far as factions are concerned, strongly consider what Networking skills you want. Criminal and Anarchist are very good backgrounds because they give +30 Networking to one group (especially useful for the Infolife background). Extropians, Hypercorps, and Lunars can directly gain a notable bonus to 2 separate networks for your more Requisitions Officer-oriented characters. Mercurials and Ultimates are very good general purpose Factions. Out'ster is most useful for non-social characters, especially pilots. Both the Pilot: Space and Interfacing play very well into shuttles and such. Unfortunately, just like Fall Evacuee, your +15 points from Moxie are countered by -15 for Shut-In. As far as the Shut-In trait is concerned, the actual CP value is -10 per rep network below 60, and -20 for every rep network below 80. So unless you are planning on sticking to lower-grade favors or putting in a little extra time (or cash) into every interaction, do not use this faction in conjunction with someone who has to spend a lot of face time. If you want to play a combat oriented character, Mercurials are good because many of them gain bonuses to Fray and some gain combat skill bonuses as well. The best 2, however, are Jovians & Exhumans if you can deal with limited morph choices or being battier than a belfry. Singularity Seeker is an extremely high value Faction for highly intelligent characters, especially for those of hacker or other technical backgrounds. ======= A final note, since I found it while running through research: Phoenix is nominally a good cost-to-payoff trait. 10-20 points for a +20>+30 on WILx2 tests for Continuity. However, you can also invest 25 CP (total) to get the Hardening trait and become totally immune to the entire concept. Hurray!

Preface: I'm re-re-reading the rules on this, so... yeah. A continuity test is a WILx3 test. Phoenix has 2 levels, 10CP (+20) and 20CP (+30). Hardening costs 10CP, but also lowers your Moxie by 1. Moxie takes 15CP to buy back. So Able with 20 WIL has a base 60 TN. If you buy Phoenix-2, your TN goes up to 90, and if you roll 91-98 you can spend Moxie to swap the rolls to make them 19, 29, 39... and it costs (ignoring the base WIL) 20 CP. Baker with 15 WIL (TN 45) doesn't want to deal with that - best he can get is a 75% chance of successs. Instead he buys Hardening (10CP), and his Moxie drops by 1. He then buys +1 Moxie for 15 CP. With the benefit of Moxie, Able has a 2% chance (rolling 9,9 or 0,0) of taking SAN damage without modifiers for +20CP. Baker never has to roll, and spent 25CP. Modifiers are the odd part here (this is where re-re-reading the rules comes in). Modifiers on the Continuity test only change the damage value of the Lack. The standard damage is 1d10/2 to 1d10, with the absolute minimum of 2 & absolute maximum of 1d10+2. I suppose you could say that "under standard rules" where modifiers alter your TN instead of the damage, it's *considerably* safer to just take Hardening, but in terms of probability you can make either work with a WIL of 20 or higher. Of course, if you roll in an Alienation test, the damage goes up (unfortunately Hardening does not help with this). A bad Alienation test for an average character (INT 15, TN 45) can hit +10 SAN damage, and with the absolute max penalty (not knowing if/how you died, with a gap greater than 1 day) that's a base 1d10+2 SV. So all told, the average SAN loss for the most painful input is 17.5 (5.5+2+10) which Hardening can cut to 10. Finally, because I feel like writing numbers, here's the chance of failure of Phoenix for different WIL base values with the assumption that you can use Moxie to swap the digits of your original roll. If your GM doesn't let you spend moxie this way, then you are basically stuck on rerolls which is easier to plot, and linear to boot. 40 (TN 120+0) 1% (0,0). 35 (TN 105+0) 1% (as above). 30 (TN 90) 2% (9,9;0,0) with Phoenix 1 (TN110) 1% (0,0). 25 (TN 75) 10% (7,7; 7,8; 8,7; 7,9; 9,7; 8,8; 8,9; 9,8 9,9; 0,0) with Phoenix 2 (105), 1%. 20 (TN 60) 16% (6,7; 7,6; 6,8; 8,6; 6,9; 9,6; 7,7; 7,8; 8,7; 7,9; 9,7; 8,8; 8,9; 9,8 9,9; 0,0); w Phoenix 2 (90), 2% I'm.... not going to plot out the lower numbers, you get the idea. Anyway, the lesson here is that if you are willing to spend Moxie on the opening rolls of the game, then they can mathematically break even with the right build. Hardening is conceptually identical to using Moxie to buy an automatic success on all relevant rolls, while the above math is you spending moxie to buy a higher chance of success on the same. After doing the math, I'd probably advocate Phoenix for WIL of 20+, and Hardening for 19-

The rule of thumb I stick to is one my older brother taught me for Shadowrun. An Active skill focuses on the knowledge of how to implement what you know off hand in the most effective way. A Knowledge skill encompasses the background understanding and most up-to-date theories on the subject. So you can technically use one in place of the other, but it takes a penalty (so someone with book-learning of first aid is still better off than someone who's never even heard of CPR, but training helps). Having *both* means that you have the necessary skill and the active study to apply new techniques even if they are not common practice. For examples, let's go with engineering and medicine. In the modern day, I would count an Engineer (say, mechanical or civil) as someone who has the theoretical knowledge of how to build things and make them work, even optimize existing designs. However, engineers still depend on electricians, mechanics, and carpenters to make their ideas work better. Older days, there was less theory and limited skill, someone could be reasonably expected to know how to design a castle and then stack rocks. Nowadays there is an understanding of materials science that makes doing both impractical a lot of the time. Interestingly, this marks one of the only cases where someone with the Profession or Academics [Engineering] skill is more expensive than someone with Hardware [Industrial]. At the same time, it's pretty obvious which one can be most *useful*. The example I was taught on was Shadowrun's Biotech (EP's Medicine skill) vs the knowledge (EP's Academics or Profession) skills Medicine, Triage, Epidemiology, Chemistry (pharmaceuticals)... Someone with only Biotech is by nature a good field medic or trauma doctor. They patch holes, stabilize the patient, and pass them on to specialists. They aren't general practitioners because they lack the background knowledge, but that doesn't make them less valuable (especially to mercenaries in either game), and it does mean that they still have basic medical academic training (like knowing nomenclature or very basic drug interactions). A diagnostician is more like a detective - they aren't the quick-fingered rugged field types that you would want to have patching holes, but their background in Academics: Epidemeology, Medicine, Drugs & Toxins means that they can identify the symptoms for more rare or atypical cases and pass them on to the people who have the skills to treat them. Again, someone with academic knowledge is still going to be able to do limited emergency work but it's going to be untrained and messy (I know from research how to do a tracheotomy with a knife and a pen, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't rather have a doctor do it instead - same time, if someone would die without it, I'd still have a chance of saving them). The big picture, though, is the background knowledge both helps the active skill, and shapes the expression of their medical knowledge. Someone with Medicine [Trauma Doctor] and Profession: Coroner is invaluable to a detective, but I'd be leery if they tried to tell me to turn and cough. Mechanically, any character with an Active or Knowledge skill can use that skill *at a penalty* to fill in for one they do not have (so using Medicine to fill in for Epidemeology is harder than using it for Pharmacology), and this works in either direction. At the same time, neither skill can fill in for an absent Chemistry skill to know how to make the drug in the first place. From the personal/practical perspective: I have a BA in Psychology. That is equivalent to Academics: Psychology. My mother has her masters in Counseling. That is equivalent to Medicine [Psychology]. My uncle has his doctorate in psych, he has both and Profession [Psychology].

R.O.S.S.-128 wrote:

I bet that makes for interesting dinner table conversation. "And how does that make you feel?"

It gets really weird when they start asking "*why* does that make you feel?"

R.O.S.S.-128 wrote:

Some GMs might even allow you to default to them in certain situations, some might instead have you default to your aptitude and take the knowledge skill as a complementary bonus.

In practice, it's probably easier to just roll the skill as is at a (hefty) penalty. Now I need to look if the max bonus you can get from complimentary skills is capped by your base skill modifier... (scuttle scuttle) Nope! So anyway, if the GM says you have a KS that applies to the test, the SOP in the book is roll it at a -30 penalty. Since this will rarely be more beneficial instead of buying the skill, I'd encourage GM's to use that instead (but still recognize when the KS is not applicable).

R.O.S.S.-128 wrote:

Of course, if it's something so out-there that nobody can possibly know, the GM won't allow the roll in the first place.

Go on, read the book. Sure the letters hurt your mind, but it's really interesting!

MrWigggles wrote:

I get that having Knowledge X and having Application X do mean two different things. What I was trying to convey, that efficiency build wise, there isn't much bang for the buck.

Well the intent is that having the Active is always better than the Knowledge when it comes to straight tests. Academics: Medicine or Interest: Firearms can never really trump Medicine or Kinetic Weapons (resp). Same time, it fleshes your character out a bit and can be used for useful bonuses. Deception + Profession (miner) can get you through checkpoints if you can prepare. Networking (G) + Interest (Firearms) can get you that *exact* gun you wanted down to the grip. Investigation + Medicine can help you read defensive wounds. As my "Fashion Souls" buddy mentioned yesterday, it's not always about the math, it's how you play it. This is why I was really emphasizing your skill spread in earlier posts. Active skills perfectly sum up what your character can do. Knowledge skills should (at the very least) cover weaknesses or expand on the base skills your character relies on.

simspaces would be useful for psychosurgery, but you'd also have to deal with SAN damage from isolation if you're spending a month alone. If you really wanted to give your GM a headache, invest in the Psychosurgery skill & some Profession [Psychology], load up an Alpha in cold a storage server, and hop in when the need arises. Technically, you could easily use this as the therapist-inna-box for the entire party (especially cyberbrain-to-cyberbrain). Might have to wipe it every once in a while so it doesn't go batty, which leaves its own moral/ethical conundrums but conceptually it should work. At the same time, you now have a vulnerable copy of yourself that knows everything you (and your party) do if it ever gets forknapped. Guard with your life. Meanwhile, I need to stop being a lazy ass (more specifically writing my own RPG, playing Destiny and restarting Fallout 3) and actually write a rulehack for hacking post.... soon... The Wasteland needs me!