What about the idea which at first looks pretty cool but end-up at worst not bringing anything to the game at worst being boring to play ?
What about the idea which at first looks pretty cool but end-up at worst not bringing anything to the game at worst being boring to play ?
A few thoughts on my side.
The sniper : At a shadowrun game, created a sniper with an interfaced gun, like never miss a target, it’s pretty cool, I stay at long range while providing cover to the PC. This turns out in The PC are having fun doing the mission, my character stays out as support, time to play tetris because for the next 2 hours I won’t do anything
The Malkavian : If you take the VtM lore as written, it’s great you’re dangerous, wise, borderline frightening and could explode at any moment. Practically, it’s hard to play madness properly, especially on a frightening way, it’s even harder when you’re the clan without clear “combat discipline” meaning that other PC won’t really fear you, and without a GM giving you “secret informations to handle”. I tried a few time but never got a satisfying result
I got myself in character for playing a Malkavian by running the “Malkavian Bible” youtube series a good three or four times between sessions just to keep that strange-spooky-uncanny vibe to my character in the lunatic asylum for angels. The trick was to not deliberately shoot for menacing, frightening, or dangerous-- but to project a constant aura of Twin Peaks-flavor oddness. About as disturbing as a liminal space.
The longer you can keep this energy going, without breaking character, the more effective it gets until all you have to do is lob a smilingly-spoken non-sequitur out into the field to get everyone to stop and look around spooked; and a good Storyteller will work with you to facilitate these moments.
There is always that problem with the ranged character who is optimum at the edge of their range. But most maps don’t go that far and if they do you end up nowhere near the fun. The character also never gets hit or targeted so they are wasted hitpoints sitting in the back and bored. The tiny dungeon rooms from dungeon crawls mitigate this problem somewhat but its more fun to be right up in the action