First of all hello to you all,

I am all new here in New Seattle and I would like to ask you guys for some advice.

It has been bugging me for quite some time now, but I have this idea in my head for an antagonist in my campaign, and I just can't let it go. Essentially the idea is that to defeat this character, you would have to do so in all three realms: astral, physical and matrix at the same time. However intriguing I find the idea of a mage with living persona (technomancer ability) combination, the rules explicitly forbid it. However I thought you guys might come up with some interesting solution to the quality / skill / spell selection that would allow to at least partially fulfill this.

Imagine this character as someone, who was born in the badlands and as soon as his young eyes barely developed to see, the first thing he witnessed was a nuclear meltodown that struck him hard with radiation. This crippling his life for a number of years, he had to be treated, have his eyes replaced and pass genetic therapy. (Saeder-Krupp would pay for it, for non-obivous Draconic reasons yet to be revealed). During the treatment he was connected to the Matrix when Crash 2.0 came about, making him develop AIPS syndromes. How unlucky is that. But with great challenges comes great strenght ...

As for tradition, I am thinking that after his initial struggle and intertwining with technology, he would develop sympathetic attitude towards Chaos Magic and later Toxic Magic (Sterilist - Nuclear Radiation). I have this image of a dark green astral figure, who holds a sword focus that creates thick green engulfing toxic fog full of black tentacles covered with gazing eyes. In matrix he has a living persona, which he developed during the crash. He is able to use complex forms and sprites and maybe even take control over drones. No image of his matrix icon visual or his specific abilities came to me yet.

As for realization within the rules, I know I am asking too much and that system will have to be bent over backwards to handle this abomination. Would you suggest to use Magic as Resonance substitute. Or any other ideas? Maybe inhabiting a technomancer with Shedim? If you can't find any solution, please do throw at me some Cyber Mage builds (with hacking capabilities), I might do with that. I have been looking around for them, but frankly with Contact Lenses and Earbuds being a satisfactory replacement for cybereyes/ears, there seems to be little reason to screw up your Magic attribute. I understand it might not be possible to make this character even remotely "twinked", but if you can do so, please do. I want him to be able to defeat a moderate hacker in cybercombat while being very dangerous in astral and physical world. I want this one to be remembered by the runners forever.

Frankly, I do expect to get a laugh at this concept from you, but if somebody can come up with an inventive solution, I would be grateful. You might want to use him for your own purposes. Otherwise I might have to just drop it ...

Thanks in advance.

Well, if he's just your BBEG, he can do pretty much whatever you need him to. There's no need to restrict yourself to standard PC generation rules. Give him a resonance attribute and a magic attribute if you want, unless your players are mega-sticklers for the rules who'll quit if you do.

If you want a villain who has to be defeated 3 times in 3 seperate ways, why not make it 3 villains?  They could be identical twins who are bound either by a spell or a natural magical bond so that none can die while one lives, and they might have a telepathic bond that means they effectively act as one.  It could also be 3 souls stuck inside one body, or one person whose soul was fragmented into 3 parts that act independently.

As for the build, you want to challenge a specific group of runners?  Then give him the right dice pools for that.  If your hacker has 10 dice for cybercombat, give the guy 9-11 dice, or make him weaker but give him some agent/sprite friends (but not too many or your hacker will die instantly with the penalty for multiple enemies in combat).  Follow the general formula of giving the guy about equal dice to the person you want him to challenge.  That, or give him significantly more dice and force the runners to use a plan and not just try to headbutt him to death.  But as for "builds," you're trying to handwave a made-up abomination into existence, and you want builds?  You don't need builds, you just need to arbitrarily decide his dice pools and make him sound cool.

IMO, the biggest challenge for supervillains in Shadowrun is figuring out why the PCs want to fight them.  You don't want to railroad them, like they have to fight this guy or they die just because.  You have to give them a motivation.  And just getting paid might not be enough, if he's super crazy powerful they could just walk away from the job.  You also have the problem of survivability, too.  In the matrix and on the astral, it's not such a problem because your players can do a finite amount of damage.  But on the physical, they can always use 10 kilos of C-12 or an autocannon or something.  There are just too many offensive weapons on the meatside that nothing can actually survive against.  A single uber villain usually dies instantly if the runners are smart, often without any special preparations, they just shoot him with a sniper rifle or bunch of full auto bursts that nobody can survive, even a mega tank troll.  The scary thing is usually a BUNCH of villains (who are smart enough to spread out and not be killed by the same spell or grenade) because that ensures you're never going to end the encounter with just one combat turn of the streetsam firing his Ares Alpha.  The runners need to take cover and need to use tactics or they die, which is not usually the case against a single uber enemy.

@Tear: You know what? You are right. Makes more sense to eventually turn him into three separate incarnations, standalone there are just too many ways to hurt the character.

I like your idea about counter-balancing the players abilities by equivalent dice pool. It is simple and intelligent. Oddly, I don't find building the skills and attributes and powers complicated, it's just the sheer amount of ware, augments, equipment, explosives, ammunition from all the books that can turn mice into men ...

I am still interested in making the physical incarnation of this character as a toxic cyber mage build within 400 BP, since that's how he'd start his career out. Can you suggest qualities / skill selection / spells / ware? Make it "twinky" if you can, I can always change certain skills for more RP feel. I have been reading "calling all munchkins" thread and I noticed only two mages there. If you do have some uber insane cyber mage build, throw it at me, I wanna see what your evil mind is capable of :-D I have developed some basic concept that I can paste here, but I am not sure it's very good.

As for tactics, of course he's gonna have a team. That's most of the fun of this game. Bloody teamwork. I just need some time to get some visuals of people, who would like to cooperate with this guy. Was thinking a Tir Ghost sniper, chick Face Social Adept, one or two other mages for rituals (might just be astral entities that later enable him to cross over the realms), technomancer rigger, a dual pistol gilette and some uberagile dodgesam. If you have any suggestions, I am listening. Got 8 players, so the fight are vast. Let's build a dream team (you think its worth creating a thread here for this?).

As for motivation, the character will be closely intertwined with player's decisions, betraying them later in the story. Motivation is not a problem, I can play the player's tunes well. Been doing Planescape GM for more than 5 years ...

@Waffle: Wanted to stick to the player rules just for the feel of designing something interesting within the system. I know I can break/bend anything I want and I always do in favor of fun and intrigue ...

Whenever I'm making villains I don't build them completely.  I set all the attributes, armor, and main skills.  If he's a mage I pick a few spells I know he'll use and I leave the rest open for fluidity during the run.  If I have a group that suddenly figures out a way to bypass him and all his armor and social him, but I didn't figure out social skills beforehand I instantly determine how hard of a challenge he should be for that and give him that amount of dice.

That's it.  I find it is a lot easier than working on entire +sheets.  For thugs/goons, I do even less.  Figure out Willpower/Body, and the damage I want them to do and the style they are going to use.  If weapons, I just come up with something that seems right and go with that, and push forward.  Easy peasy.