5punk

Transhuman is the first expansion book for EP that I recommend everyone with any interest in playing EP gets. Its basically a players guide for EP, with things like alternative character generation rules (which, cunningly, result in characters that are totally compatable with the regular chargen rules, meaning it totally doesnt matter what process you use to make your characters!), some additional content (new morphs and suchlike)and, most helpfully in my opinion, some advice for new players about making characters.

Character creation is quite a bit different in EP to most games, not just in the way it works but in the things you should be focussing on. The big one is the split between gear and stats: traditionally gear is as important (or more important) than your stats, which is why games like D&D put such a big emphasis on teh lootz. In EP you could (and probably will) lose everything up to and including your physical body at some point. This means someone who goes through character generation picking out the most badass combat morph with implants up the wazoo (mabe literally) and pimped out high tech weaponry is going to be severely boned if, for example, their expensive body is thrown into the sun on their first outing (I have not played an awful lot of EP, but I have seen that exact thing actually happen. Death by Sun is not the most unusual way to croak in EP either.). A character who spent more of their character generation stuff on attributes, skills and reputation will just use thier wiley ways and great many friends to supply them with a shiny new (but not too shiny new) morph and resleave from backup, basically no worse off for having died a superheated fiery death. Captain Death Robot would probably be better off scrapping their character and rolling up a new one.

This is all covered in more detail in the book, along with other similarly good advice and explanations. Grab it, its free (Creative Commons FTW).

Also, my name is in the back as one of the kickstarter backers

Nice, I'll look it up. EP books are worth the read regardless of whether you play or not. Also, now I'm concerned my character is an expensive death robot (but I love his back story so much).

I wouldnt go so far as to say you cant make a death robot as a starting character, but just be wary. When you make a character, think to yourself "how screwed am I if the morph gets destroyed and everything he is carrying goes with it?" If the answer is "Probably not very screwed" you are all good. If the answer is "maybe a bit screwed" you might want to take a few of your shinier bits off and trade them for skills and suchlike. If the answer is "utterly, totally screwed" then scrap it and start again.

I would probably advise against going deathbot right out of the gate though. Maybe start off with something cheaper/easier to replace and work your way up?

Eh, fuck the robot body. It's the character and story that makes it for me. It would be a shame to lose that part of the character in the first adventure though.

Ive just had a quick look over your character again doggers, having had a good read through the character creation advice in Transhuman. The robo-death-morph itself is probably OK. Its probably right on the limit of what you want to be spending on a starting morph, but it wouldnt cripple you to lose it and have to replace it with something slightly less fight. A more common problem with going too balls-out spendy with your starting morph would be that it might be illegal in some places, or raise too many eyebrows. You dont want to be floating through the middle of some peace loving habitat in a fully kitted out Reaper morph, for example. But for most people you will just look like any other member of the clanking masses, so you would only have problems with ultra-conservative types and frankly you are going to have problems with them in any kind of combat morph.

The super-decked out combat armour might be more of an issue. In a lot of places wandering around in that stuff would be like driving a tank to the supermarket: it might not technically be illegal but everyone will notice and the authorities will be hovering around you like flies on poop. I know you probably only intend to put it on when going in to some scary scenario, but do you really want to spend that much of your starting cash on something so expensive, when in all likelyhood you could get something similarly good on demand via you or your teams contacts if and when you need it?

I'd forgotten that I'd bought loads of combat gear. He's supposed to be a light infantry morph so maybe I overcompensated in my inexperience of the system.

Dog Pants wrote:I'd forgotten that I'd bought loads of combat gear. He's supposed to be a light infantry morph so maybe I overcompensated in my inexperience of the system.

Easy enough mistake to make when you are not familiar with armour values. At the moment he is less light infantry, more tank with legs.