it's still a vanishing prospect to play her long term, but i've theorycrafted it some and either I can play her like this and she'll hit her stride as a bioware queen with three autoinjectors and some antibodies to keep hustling, or her Body can be sacrificed to install a linear frame later down the line. There's no version of this build where she doesn't have a TECH and Int of 2. I can try, but the result is she's unable to perform called shots or confidently facedown since the deficit comes from her luck. In the long term any progression towards improving called shots improves her flexibility with her luck pool. That means better facedowns, and facedowns improve based on rep, so better rep and better called shots means she can luck dump for more emergent skills she might not be proficient with.

Prior, Stinger's four luck was this emergency exhaust valve I'd pull all of once when she needs to roll a half-proficient skill. That's cool, but after that four luck was spent, she couldn't perform facedowns, and facedowns were meant to be her greatest strength.

After? If the GM calls for a facedown, Stinger will succeed. I had a quite adversarial GM call for two in succession, one to waste my luck, and the other to make me fail so he could have his scripted combat encounter. This is against the rules. Once a facedown is resolved, it's final. The -2 penalty tends to be for PCs who don't want to back down. Anyway I succeeded twice. He had his encounter, but only out of stubborn bridge-burning fiat. She's able to put down about three luck for an emergent check, then five more for facedowns or called shots. Sometimes it's three for a facedown and five for a called shot, but what's a facedown but a roll that ends the encounter entirely as opposed to a roll that could