You know, you sound a lot like the people who complained about multiclassing in AD&D. a 2/2/2 fighter/mage/thief wasn't anywhere near the capability of a level 6 single class, and a 3/3 Magic 6 Mystic Adept in SR4 wasn't anywhere near the capability of a Magic 6 mage or adept.

Which is how it should be. Duh.

Don't forget the abbyssmal Quality.

Of course, you could always up payments on runs or choose to have ware installed instead of payment, etc etc.

Right, but that would be a houserule now. Since we have hard numbers to put to run payoffs. By RAW. And those numbers are damn near gamebreakingly low.

Except that Mystic Adepts in SR5 aren't like Multi-Class characters. To get your example of a 2/2/2 fighter/mage/thief requires 6 Levels worth of Experience split between three classes. Imagine if instead of being 2/2/2 with that amount of Experience, they were a 6/6/6! They pay exactly what the Level 6 single class Mage pays, but get the full benefits of additional whole classes at the same power level!

Clearly broken, yeah? That's my complaint. So no, I don't sound like someone complaining about multiclassing in AD&D - I'm actually advocating the concept of having to split your power between multiple classes, as we had to in 4E!

Why play a pure Magician or Adept in SR5 when you could play as a Mystic Adept with no real downside? The only time being a Magician would be preferable is if your character concept revolves around being able to Astrally Project, and there's literally no time whatsoever being a mere Adept would be preferable.

~Umi

SR4 was set aflame for lack of numbers, now we have numbers and they're not to the level you want. So why are you not still just making up better numbers?

Also, as a point of reference, if you have to steal something, are fighting against superior numbers of professional npcs running dice pools of 12+, but still pulled it off with impressive speed, you're looking at a pay of ¥18k per runner on that mission, minium, up to ¥36k per runner. And possibly expenses on top of that, if the GM is lenient.

That's too small a payment for you though? I've had to do runs more complicated than that for less in SR4 and previous. How much money was your GM dumping on you?

Also, regarding Mystic Adepts, that's already been stated that it's being addressed, so maybe we can set that topic aside.

Sorry Jhaiisiin, just feel like I gotta respond since I feel I was directly asked:To be perfectly honest, yes. Yes, I'm fine with Mystic Adepts not having Astral Projection and Magic -1 in additional Adept Power Points (after adjusting for the purchase of Astral Perception) for an extra 30 karma in this version of Deckerrun.

I've said my peace for this in this thread.

You can't just compare the flat Nuyen Per Mission reward between editions - you also have to factor in the steeply inflated prices for certain pieces of gear in SR5, notably cyberware. If you make 50% more nuyen per run in SR5, but the gear you need to buy now costs 250% more than it did, you're losing out.

Cost of living is a very real thing - if you can earn $100,000 a year working in one country and only $10,000 a year working in another, but if it costs you $95,000 dollars in yearly expenses to live in Country A and only $5,000 to live in Country B, you end up with a larger net gain in Country B! Even though at the end of the day you come away with $5,000 with either option, in Country B that's enough to live on for another whole year without having to work, whereas in Country A, it's a mere 1/19th of a year's expenses! So yeah, that $10,000 a year job is more profitable than a $100,000 a year one somewhere else!


As the way in which it has been stated that it will be addressed is, to many, not a sufficient measure, no I'd say that we can't set the topic aside, as many people still have legitimate grievances with the subject and how it is going to be handled. If you personally don't want to read about it for whatever reason, feel free to browse other threads.

~Umi

Then you either flat out don't care about blatantly overpowered character types, or you're not understanding the full implications of this. But since you don't want to continue the discussion, I guess that's the end of it.

~Umi

Let's go by the actual numbers in the book. You start with a base payout of 3000 nuyen per player. Then you increase that by 100 nuyen per net hit on the nego test. Let's assume the face is awesome and give him 16 dice to roll against the Johnson's 12. That's about 2 net hits, so now we're up to 3.2k per runner. Now onto the multiplier. Let's assume the highest DP of the opposition is also 16 (the big bad HTR lieutenant or something.) The multiplier is x4. Then you add +1 if the runners are outnumbered 3-1 in a combat situation (So for a five-man crew, they need to face 15 fucking guys in a combat scenario.) We'll skip that, because we're not trying to TPK the party. It's another +1 for PR 4 and higher enemies if they're outnumbered 2-1, so they have to face 10 guys of 12+ DP in combat scenario. Once again, we're not trying to TPK the party. At some point they'll run across a pack of Hellhounds (which also have a good chance of killing them), but we'll raise the multiplier by +1 to 5. They do it quickly, risking public attention, and face a well-known corp specop dude (the badarse HTR lieutenant.) That'll raise the multiplier by +3 to 8. 3.2k times 8? 25.6k per runner.

And that's for a job where they not only need to be awesomely quick, sneaky, risk getting arrested or publicly known, face a dude with equivalent DP and 12+ DP mooks, not to mention a pack (what counts as a pack? Let's say six Hellhounds), and they're also risking being delayed long enough to get HTR on their arse.

Now let's look at what it costs for a chargen samurai to upgrade from alpha WR1 to alpha WR2. Alpha WR1 = 46800. Alpha WR2 = 178800. It will take the same about 7 runs to upgrade - and that's assuming he doesn't spend money on /anything else/. (Like tutorsofts for his skills, rent, guns, ammo, gear, bribes, other 'ware etc. etc. etc.) And don't forget if they don't actually engage the badarse HTR lieutenant in combat (cause he's a badarse and the runners enjoy breathing air through the holes god gave them), then their multiplier starts at +3 instead of a +4, lowering the payment even more.

So yeah. That's a bit retarded.

And if you are a Troll?
Tough, you pay 50% more on all Ware.
And as a Dorf, you can't see in the Dark anymore, because you lost Thermographic Vision.

Let us not forget the opportunity cost of being practically married to Priority A Magic. Adepts can be done with much lower priority and can focus on physical attributes and skills, whereas the Mystic Adept is strechted very thin in regards to both. The Mystic Adept may have the same powerset as the Adept, but he has neither the skills nor the attributes to make the most of it. If he does, then his mage side seriously suffers. So no, they aren't getting 100% of what the Adept is getting. They are more like 150%, split as you please between mage and Adept, with a maximum of 90% efficiency on one side. Which seems fine, since 50/50 split characters tend to not pull their weight unless everyone has low to average dicepools in your game (Hi, TJ!) Also, you seem to underestimate the value of astral projection. Not having to participate in the flesh on a run is a privilege only Riggers (and to a lesser degree hackers) had in 4e.



Right now, I play a mundane Decker in one game and a Mystic Adept Ninja in another. I will pick up a Rigger as soon as the book with modding rules and and additional vehicles comes out. Vanilla Riggers just lack too many options right now.

Astral Projection
...or...
+2 armor +2 AGL + 1d6 iniative + 2 [weapon] skill

<exaggeration>Seems like a fair trade to me.</exaggeration>



Typo and... typo. Nice red herring.

it's in the book, as long as there is no official errata i don't care if it's SUPPOSED TO BE A TYPO . .
it's RAW. everything else is a house-rule. it's bad quality control.

Getting a little feisty aren't you?

I understand the full implications of Mystic Adepts in SR5 and I am ok with it.

All it takes for me to differ from you is a different value judgement them you have of the same fundamental facts.

My values differing from yours does not make either of us wrong.

How is your Mystical Adept going to be a better physical fighter and a better spell slinger then the pure archetypes? The Mystical Adept still has to split his attributes across more stats and skills then a pure mage or adept. Sure the Mystic might get more magical tricks, but can they use all of them as well as the pure counterparts? Maybe if you munchkin into specializing in one role at the cost of your other role, but why would you want that, when it'd hurt you in other roles you might need your awaken character to fill?

Say I make a heavy mage mystical adept. I ignore my physical stats. I can't astrally project, which is going to make astral combat much more difficult, since I'm tied to my meat body. So say there is an astral mage tailing the team, now your only way to stop 'em is to cast stunbolt, and lets be honest, that's not a lot of damage, how do you really expect to do anything against that? The projecting mage will also be faster than you, since he's using his mental attributes while you are stuck using your dumped physical stats. You know, it just sounds like bad news. It sounds like the mystical adept is not going to be able to offer as good of astral security for the team as a pure mage.

The same is true for a physical heavy mystical adept. Sure they'll be faster than the mage heavy built, but their casting will be terrible since they had to dump their mental stats for physical ones. But lets say a pure adepts gets in a fight with our physical heavy mystic. We can pretty safely assume that the pure adept will have higher skills and possibly higher physical attributes than our mystic. But our mystic will have a few more tricks up his sleeve, maybe turn invisible or fly, maybe cast really weak fireballs. But I really don't think 7 or 8 dice on spell casting is going to cut it against our pure adept, who would is probably rolling 10-12 dice to dodge.

So "Astral Projection" has the same value as "+2 armor +2 AGL +1d6 initiative and +2 [weapon] skill"?

Easily. If you ever do astral legwork and recon and other stuff to help you avoid needing those specific things.

Oh what's this here.
It appears to be a joint of Shade.
Hmm...For $200 I can easily avoid my ONE WEAKNESS.

Or what's this over here. A summoning skill.
It appears I can summon wholly astral entities to SCOUT FOR ME ANYWAY.

The thing with the wireless stuff is... it is not, that you couldn't use a cable.... they (the corps) just don't want you to.

There's a lot of weird balance issues in this edition. Here's some of the ones people have found:

1. The standard money per run is low and in some cases won't even cover expenses.
2. Mystic adepts are very strong, as mentioned before. Even with PP at 5 karma a pop, the benefits they gain are more than worth it (Wired Reflexes 3 at no essence cost for 17.5 karma, roughly equivalent to 35,000 nuyen).
3. Aspected magicians are weak compared with regular magicians. For all their downsides, aspected magicians are valued at only 5 less karma than regular magicians.
4. Summoning is very strong and is most likely overpowered. Force 6-8 Spirits can easily be summoned and are as strong as a starter-level combat-focused character. In emergencies, it's possible for starter characters to summon Force 10-12 spirits which are incredibly powerful and difficult to kill.
5. Control Thoughts/Actions and the associated AoE versions might be too powerful for their drain.
6. Reagents can obviate the need for anything beyond Rating 1 Sustaining Foci. Cast your sustained spell at Rating 1 and use reagents to increase the limit. This is strong, but isn't necessarily overpowered.
7. Technomancers compare oddly to magicians and might be a bit weak. The technomancer quality is valued at 20 karma more than magicians. Unlike mages, they have limited ability to affect things in the meat world. Complex forms tend to have higher drain and are weaker than comparable spells. Compare Puppeteer at L+4 to Control Thoughts at F-1. Compare Infusion of Attribute (which generally increases limits) at L+1 to Increase Attribute (which increases dice pools and derived statistics) at F-3. Compare Resonance Spike at L+0 and resisted by 2 attributes (how is it supposed to reliably deal more damage than the Technomancer takes in Fading?) to the single target direct damage spells at F-3 and resisted by 1 attribute. Also sprites accumulate OS which makes them riskier than spirits.
8. Rigger drones are fragile and expensive. They only have a condition monitor of 6+1/2 Body (less than comparable metahumans), and their Body and Armor stats generally aren't very high. Since they're also expensive, riggers can't afford to keep replacing them with the low money payouts.
9. This might be an errata issue, but currently vehicle crash damage is determined by the Body of the vehicle (maybe it should be the Body of the thing you crash into, somehow modified by your speed?). Crashing into a wall in a tank is fatal, while crashing into a wall on a scooter is a minor inconvenience.
10. I think there are some wonky vehicle speeds.
11. Grenades and indirect AoE spells can't be dodged. This makes them very deadly for anyone not built as a tank.

See, I NEVER thought that a Mystic Adept was subpar. The character I currently play may never have the bang for your buck of a Combat Mage or Adept Ninja, but he is massively useful, and can do things that the others only wished they were capable of. Our combat Mage still marvels at the sheer versatility of the character build, while he is still just plugging along with his Magic 6, Initiate 6 Badassery. He even has more Karma than the MysAd. It is all in how you play a character, in my opinion. THAT is what makes or breaks a concept.

Bought mine 10 years ago, it handles my Digital feed just fine. *shrug*