Build them Faster, Stronger, Better...

[Lagos]

I honestly prefer the Technician classes, be it CS Tech officer or Operator. currently in a game I am a Vagabond with tons of Mechanical skills...long story with the game our GM had us play ourselves as characters rifted in for kicks as a joke but we liked it. And well after a few years I got skilled at mechanical skills enough to make any operator nod with approval. Well my first 'children' as I call them were a pair of Linclon Escalade luxury hovercars...30 MDC no weapons 1000 foot clearance off the ground. One month of work and a lot of scrounging about some deserted battlefields that the CS lost on and a lucky find of some NEMA equipment they had 350 MDC each, a NEMA lightning rail gun on a turret, a twelve Mini Missle retractable launcher on each of them. They had every known optical enhancement on the windows and could move at 250 mph and could seat 12 a pop in body armor with weapons. Later on after we got an Enforcer i had fun, tricked it out with added armor, bumped it up to 500 even, took off that mortar launcher and added on a micro missle launching system with 120 of them, took me like 50 million to do all of it. God I miss that Enforcer...it died against a nuke. We found out that yes we could survive being in it....it didn't. Fortunetly we were on the out skirts of the explosion so we lived through it all. But yah too many people over look the Technician classes and the support guys, even in game they'll ditch the mechanic to get the robot pilot...well unlearned gamers the Mechanic CAN pilot it and fix it as well as keep your **** running. My group found that out after they ditched me for dead in Minnesota...they thought that the GM fairy repaired all the equipment over night, no it was the mechanic that you guys left for dead.

[Vrykolas2k]

Different people like different things.
One of my friends always plays a City Rat with minour psionics, Machine Ghost and either Speed Reading or Total Recall.
Another always plays a full-conversion 'Borg of some kind.
I'll nearly always play a wolf-thing, like a Tri-Wolf or a Wolfen Fallen Cosmo-Knight, or Were-wolf.
My wife plays... whatever appeals to her, her current is a Dakini, but she played a Necromancer who became a Cyber-Knight, for a long time.
Another friend of mine ALWAYS plays a Techno-Wizard, and was SO HAPPY with the TW Class variants in one of my Rifters.
It goes on from there, I have a gaming group of 13... interesting number, non?

[Lagos]

The problem is playing a technician class gets boring as soon as you get to something more interesting than gluing rubies to plyboard.

you get a friend who's an Astral Lord or Astral Mage and you can disappear for 10 minutes and come back with a fully made magic item due to the time dilation (in Rifter #9)

that way you're almost constantly adventuring.

Ehehee....Mages kick ass, I love my Vanguard Savant Brian Kavanagh he equates into badass mofo. He's spying on like five groups while disguised as a Coalition Navy Lt.JG. it's fun he's got a special skill awarded for supreme bullshitting he has earned '********' at 40% it ties in with MA and PB both are at 16.

[Brian Manning]

Techno Wizards do indeed rock. If you don't have it yet (good luck finding a copy), Rifter #21 has TW creation rules (as well as PPE Channeling, so you can apply that to channeling PPE into TW devices), that really put some structure into building TW devices. It limits the TW, so he can't build anhiliation pistols over the weekend, but they do add the much needed "formula" that some are looking for (it's very similar to the Hardware character class from Heroes Unlimited).

I'm sure you could easily adjust the time requirements and penalties to suit your games, though.

My idea of a Techno Wizard is that crazy/cooky mad scientist-like dude that spends as much time making a TW sleeping bag with a footwarmer as he does on his TW Uzi that spits TK bullets. In time, I would imagine an ambitious Techno Wizard would have all of his "standard" equipment replaced with TW equivalents:

- TW Globe of Daylight lanterns
- TW Mystic Fulcrum jack (smaller/lighter, but the same lifting power) for vehicle repair
- TW TK-powered power tools (drills, screwdrivers, saws, etc)
- TW welders
- TW grappling hook

which would basically be a small ball with Carpet of Adhesion cast
on it, attached so a small thread enhanced by "force bonds" or whatever
spell makes small binds super strong.

- TW lighters (the "hello world" of TW devices ).
- TW stoves/heaters
- TW air conditioners/swamp coolers
- TW traps to catch rabbits and other small critters for eatin'
- TW shelters (a small generator that creates a "bubble" to protect against the elements

You get the idea. TW versions of radios/communicators, camping equipment, flashlights, emergency equipment, goggles, clothes (protection against the elements), toys, entertainment, etc...

[Svartalf]

City Rats rock, always underestimated. A City Rat computer junkie with a couple implants for jacking into things is a very useful character.

My favorite O.C.C. so far though, is the Tundra Ranger from the Canada Sourcebook.

Depends a lot on what kind of campaign you play in... I currently am in a "WoT" thing with a lot of outdoors adventuring, social interaction in primitive places, and semi straight dungeon adventuring (oh, yeah, LOTS of combat too) ... my character IS a tech type, but I'm very happy he has a Triax Predator and LLW powers (for when he's not wearing)... because otherwise, he'd have been close to useless, and I'd have been SOOO bored