Combat Oriented Character Advice, or ...

[Sir Neil]

"So You Want to Hunt the Supernatural"

To build an effective hunter, you need to have the right skills, powers, and equipment.

First, the skills. Hand to hand combat is the foundation, weapon proficiencies and physical skills the frame, for building an effective hunter. If you can get those skills free through your occupation, it leaves more skill slots open to flesh out your character. In that respect, occupations that give those are "better" for building a hunter than those that don't.

The "best" combat occupations are the assassin, bounty hunter, and police SWAT. All three give HTH Martial Arts and weapon proficiencies. Additionally:

*Assassins get a selectable striking bonus, but gains no skills as it advances.
*Bounty Hunters can select physical skills, including the elusive Acrobatics and Wrestling.
*Police SWAT gives multiple weapon skills and a striking bonus with guns.

Second tier combatants include Athletics (Fighting & Outdoors), Factory Worker (ex-Mil), Police (Officer & Detective), Private Eye (no adv.), Psychic Investigator, Security Specialist (no adv.). They typically give HTH Expert* and weapon proficiencies.

*Outdoor Athlete only has HTH Basic, but gets physical skills and a striking bonus.

Third tier combatants include the Comm. Engineer (ex-Mil), Espionage Agent (no adv.), and Professional Driver.

Honorable mention goes to the Extreme Athlete, for physical skills; and the Weapons Expert (no adv.), for weapon proficiencies and horror saves.

[Jefffar]

Ron Caliburn, for the Record, comes from the Weapon Expert grouping though has spent a lot of skills on physical conditioning and hand to hand training.

[NMI]

A. Pendragon is a Ghost Hunter with a skill package/background of police/SWAT (slightly modified to represent British SAS)

[Sir Neil]

Willie Long is a Genius/Natural with the Bounty Hunter skill set.

[Sir Neil]

For this topic, I'll divide the monsters of BTS into three groups: corporeal, incorporeal, and invulnerable.

Corporeal monsters have all the vulnerabilities of humans, and therefore require the least preparation. Best weapon is an assault rifle, but those may be less than legal, and aren't as subtle as one might hope.

Incorporeal monsters are typically vulnerable only to psychic attacks. Ghost hunters and mediums can deal with them right out of the box. Other ways to handle them are psychics with the powers Demon Punches (best), Mind Bolts, or Telekinetic Bullets.

Invulnerable monsters are typically vulnerable to special materials as well as psychic attacks. Any character with weapons utilizing the proper material can handle them. Best weapons are melee and shotguns.

Best Melee Weapons: Blunt or Sword.
*Blunt is best because you can always just tie a hunk of special material to the end of a stick and call it a mace. It's also the most legal option. However, the damage isn't great.
*Sword is best because it stacks with Fencing. Ghost hunters, I'm looking at you. May be less than legal in many areas.

Selecting Ranged Weapon Proficiencies.
*Handgun is best because you can holster it when you don't need it and it's concealable.
*Shotgun is best because you can stuff a wad of special material into a shell and let 'em have it.
*Rifle is best because you do the most damage at the most range. Least concealable.

Rifles are the best. They outperform all others in damage, capacity, and range. But they're difficult to conceal, and don't fit a lot of character concepts, so I can't give them a blanket recommendation. That leaves handguns and shotguns. Magnum revolvers and heavy shotguns do great damage, but only have six rounds. Hi-cap pistols do about 50%~67% as much damage but have twice to thrice the ammo.

Also consider the rest of your team. Ideally, everyone should have the same weapon made by the same manufacturer. If not, they should at least use weapons of the same caliber.

[Sir Neil]

In 1st edition, my favorite character was a game-show host turned arcanist. Those were the days.

One of the best things about the Lazlo site is that every character can contribute, especially the non-combat specialists.

If you want to whip monsters, though, I don't think you can beat a SWAT ghost hunter. To paraphrase Frank, I wish I had two extra arms so I could give that combo four thumbs up.

[Sir Neil]

Selecting a Combat P.C.C.

The top three "fighter" classes are 1) ghost hunter (duh), 2) physical psychic, and 3) psychic medium. They can handle any monster in the book, from entities to darotas.

If you discount incorporeal monsters, then the Genius/Natural shoots up to contest second place. They are roughly as effective as the Physical Psychic, and they aren't I.S.P. dependent.

[lather]

We use characters from a BTS-1 campaign run using mutant animals and humans as a government project to fight aliens and the supernatural threats to the motherland.

I just got BtS-2 a couple months back

Scotty is an Ordinary Person.
Katja is a Physical Psychic.