Character Concepts (Read 1st Post)

[Xisdor]

Thanks for the insight. Allow me to explain my characters offensive characteristics then as meelee was only ever a secondary weapon type thing for my character. Firearms3+dex 3 + rifle specialty + calibrated weapon + strong weapon + potentially either hollow-point, FMJ or match-grade makes my character quite scary. Im considering a pistol sidearm with rifle stashed away combat-ready in my house, if that makes sense law-wise in California(would have to research concealed carry law in California for that) Obviously my character is a lot less scary if you take the specialty, match-grade and 1 point of weapon strength away, but he still hits like a truck at around 9 or 10 dice - enemy defense modifiers. And Im not ruling out buying a shotgun(in-game) thats within my characters meager strength 2 requirement and shoring that up with Dragons Breath shells. Im also considering having a (sharpened) heavy knife with L3 and hairspray flamethrower off athletics 3 dex 3 on my character as secondary and tertiary weapons respectively. So while this post is not intended as min-maxing combined with the other things Ive said in the other post, I just wanted to add this post to explain that Ive definitely thought about combat against up to heavily armored and hardened combatants, and been running quite a few stories in my mind myself about just such an eventuality(pvp or pve against top-of-the line adversaries). I hope that this is appropriate for this thread.

As far as your second point goes, Free Council and T.E.L.M. Trust is a nice idea and lets me play slightly meaner on the corporate/stock front, but also has the "free", aka demcratic, and authority sharing side, which doesnt really fit the MO for my character, though the rebel part surely does. It looks to be a better fit though than I first thought, so ty. Because on the other hand my character isnt really a judge either, so in either direction there is potential conflict there for my character.

I also have some questions, how much XP does reducing wisdom give per dot of reduction and would you accept resources 4 for my character? Furthermore, if I got resources 4 and I start off with 30 XP, rs4 would take 20 of those..... I would still assume I get high speech and an additional dot of occult for free on top of xp as per usual character creation?
Furthermore, Ive a general question regarding personal portraits, and, not knowing which thread to use to ask general questions like this, I will ask this here: I read that only changelings get portrait faces, but I see all characters have portrait faces of some type so I dont understand this contradiction. Would I be allowed to choose a random image from a person online to act as my characters portrait or do you have set templates I should use use? For this account the big "X" I think is appropriate for me, but I will of course change it if this is frowned upon.
I hope this post is not too long....

[Vincent]

Don't build your character for combat or a specific specialty, otherwise you'll be disappointed when that kind of content doesn't get played out a lot.
What Xander is trying to say is that it's fairly easy to obtain high armor. Right out of chargen, most primary armors will sit at 3 (though some mage armors add defense and not flat armor) and it's trivially easy to get bullet proof items or to enchant clothes/add some more armor. The average armor (magical + gear) is probably around 6, so realistically you're hitting people for a reduced pool of 4-7 dice.
Rather, make a character you'll enjoy playing in every situation.

[deltadream]

California is definitely not weapon friendly. Good call to research the laws as the game does hold to them and characters *have* had their weapons seized by NPC law enforcement.

As far as your face claim, all characters get one. I believe the rule variation for changeling is that the face claim for the mein (forgive me if I got the wrong word- I’m not a Ling player atm) can be a bit more art than straight photograph. On account of not being able to actually get photos of faerie face elements like fur/feathers/horns/etc …

Everyone else needs to have a real photograph of a real person. Random person on line is fine, though usually most go for an established persona so that they can get additional future photos.

[Xisdor]

This was just meant to show I have also thought of combat. My character is not exclusively combat-oriented, but he does come from a rural area so he knows how to hold a gun. I also wanted to show I have theorycrafted a bit to make sure my character doesnt get insta-killed and has a fighting chance to survive at least some time in this world. Do these pictures qualify under fair use? And, If I call my character something and use the picture of a celebrity with a different name, especially if that person exists in-universe, doesnt that cause a plot-contradiction with my portrait?

[Xander]

Rules on dropping wisdom for xp are in the book and the wiki, so I won't reiterate them here. Resources 4 is fine, and you might want to check out our equipment pages on the wiki for weapons and such. If you want to be a gun owner that's fine, but bear in mind the pistols are tightly regulated and require enabler merits (also on the wiki).

I can tell you the one plot in the venue at the moment isn't a combat oriented one and I don't intend to introduce serious combat until I have a few toons that can consistently hit things, so don't feel like you need to come out the gate swinging. You can if you want, my current ling is a beatstick with presence 4 so I totally get it. It sounds like you have a decent handle on the combat so I won't go any further. Just see the weapons page and it's HR's to figure out how you want to get your guns (or if you want to get them after you enter play).

As for avatars, the rule is that changeling can use animation or drawings for their mein as Delta stated. Generally speaking we all use public pictures of public figures, usually performers, models, or athletes of some variety. I think a few people have used personal photos of themselves in the past, but I've never been brave enough for that personally. I wouldn't overthink it. I wouldn't pick Chris Evans and walk around talking about the avengers IC, but my last mage was a living Tron Legacy reference and John Wick is walking around Mage right now. I just wouldn't make direct spoken references, though I think this is more of a social norm for the site then a hard rule.

[Xisdor]

Sorry about that stupid question regarding wisdom XP, it was answered in the character creation process yesterday, during the hands-on task of assigning dots and re-reading key rules, and should have been answered before, I guess I should have known better. No matter, not my first mistake and no doubt not my last. Please bear with me. I also wanted to ask, regarding weapons, can I elect to purchase them during play, or would that not be appropriate for my character? I assume I should have at least a rifle as play starts, and I was hoping that it could be a 1-dot SKS. If its not, and I dont have the necessary xp, then I would have to respectfully ask that wisdom be degraded to 6, so I would have the xp to purchase them with the resulting XP, or from reallocating some of the starting 7 dots to free up XP. (I hope this is possible). Anyway, speaking of mistakes, I spent a good portion of yesterday on my character submission which I hope you have received. In this, I guess looking back I made the further mistake of assuming things, like that being part of an order gives an automatic and free extra dot of occult, and the merits occult status 1 and high speech for free, and that I can fill in Acanthus`s 1 extra dot of composure immediately in the character submission, as per my interpretation of E1 character creation rules, and that I could fill those in on my end immediately. Sorry if part of that was wrong. Forgive me if the following is too foreward, but, having read your post regarding rule changes on you becoming storyteller from the end of March(must-read I assume), Im curious about how you want to integrate things from Second Edition Mtaw rules into the baseline first edition we are using(in this example regarding mage armor and sight, but also in general if we are using other effects from Second Edition not mentioned on the wiki). Are you handling this as a house-rule on existing 1st gen mage armor and sight rules to change the mechanics of how the effects work to their E2 effects, like life being split between defense and armor, instead of just armor as in Mtaw1? Or do armor and sight now not count as spells(and towards spell cap) and instead as attainments and are you including the mechanic of attainments in general? The last option I think is unlikely as Ive not seen anything about attainments on the wiki, but Im still curious.

[Xisdor]

On that note, as far as mage sight goes, are you changing the underlying mechanics of how how veiling and unveiling works, and how investigating magical mysteries works, to "opacity layers" as in second edition, and adding peripheral, active and focused mage sight, with their respective mechanics? Needless to say, this doenst only affect mage sight, but how magic interacts with the world on a fundamental, metaphysical and lore level.

[Xander]

Unfortunately, it looks like the submission didn't go through. Depending on how long you took it might have timed out. Try resubmitting with your corrections and we can continue the convo about chargen there. Remember that Resources are spent separately from XP and make sure you read the wiki and core rulebooks thoroughly.

As for house rules, the only change is the effects of the sights and armors. They are still cast like spells and no other mechanics from 2E are included (or planned to start including).

Sorry for the brevity here, trying to rush to catch up on everything before I crash for the night.

[Xisdor]

I hope the submission works this time.

[Xisdor]

What is going on with my character submission? I submitted several attempts a week ago and somehow none of them went through? How long can you take with a submission before it times out?