Improved Ability [Haking/Electronics Skills] (and at 0.25pp per Point, that was significant)...
Multi-Tasking...
Eiditic Sense Memory (Non-Hackable Storage)...
Analytics...

No worries.
Conveying opinions through text is sometimes tricky.

True.

But the points you lost choosing a adept to run the matrix still made you not quite as good. Just think of the cost of exceptional ability, exceptional skill, the qualities/powers you mentioned and the cost of choosing a mystic adept/adept....
and not one initiative pass added yet...

Magically unaware characters lost very little in the way of performance choosing to augment for the same bonuses and saving their karma for skills.

Um, hot sim VR? Two extra IPs right there (three if your commlink was modded up), and you can summon a spirit to watch over your meat body while you're in virtual space.

Improved Reflexes is only good if you're hacking in AR.

The improved skill adept power is way cheaper than exceptional skill and gives a larger bonus. Exceptional skill can even be picked up post-char gen (as the two stack).

Hot Sim is the largest contributor towards matrix initiative passes, though picking up bioware for +1 more is actually reasonable in terms of opportunity cost (the amount of magic it eats is less than the same benefit from powers).

So assencing, binding, summoning,

Magic points (3) taken away from for adept potential as well as karma spent.....

And everyone can get the extra IP's within HotSim. with or without previously improved initiative.

Indeed...

And why would an Adept Hacker need any of those skills (which is the majority of what you will see as an Awakened Hacker). And you definitely do not need to spend 3 PP on being a bad ass Adept Hacker.
A Mysad Hacker really only needs the ability to summon a Rating 1 Spirit (for Guard), so no real cost there either.

Methinks thou doth protest too much. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Assensing is useless for hacking. One Power Point on Astral Perception, and however many BP/Karma, better spent elsewhere. And binding a spirit is only necessary if your hacking jobs frequently take you beyond a sunrise/sunset to do; even then, hold your subscriptions and pop to AR as soon as you're alerted the sun has set and summon a new spirit, then jump back to VR once the new spirit is doing its job.

Not every awakened character can see or knows how to interpret auras. Frosty may be a full on and very experienced magician in the SR universe, but she's got 0 ranks in Assensing from every source of her stats I've seen.

If the opposition has no awakened characters to gauge the power of a spirit, a Force 1 spirit has the potential to scare the drek out of them.

Obviously angry spirit shows up, not everyone pulls a gun and shoots it. Too bad a fire spirit has to be Force 3 to get Guard. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/spin.gif)

Indeed...

Too True... I cannot tell you how often my MysAd's peasly Force 2-3 Spirits are so very, very useful. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

*LOL*

I'm with TJ here... mystic adept worked very nicely for an awakened hacker.

Currently my only SR4 missions character is this type and he's extremely effective even without the cyber/bio boosts.

The big key is the 0.25PP adept powers... which SR5 killed. Adepts now are a lot weaker than in previous editions. (I half think people forgot that a magic rating of 12 under SR3 is more akin to a 8 now... since initations included a point of magic as well).

It's very easy to put a mere 1PP into adept powers and come out with a strong hacking adept... 6(9) hacking skill, and 2(3) computer... for example... paired with multi-tasking & eidetic memory makes for a very strong hacker. You automatically memorize any password just by seeing it (eiditic sense memory). No spam zone penalties... and you'll generally have an easier time gaining extra IP's for AR hacking or branching out if need be.

Multi-tasking also works really well if you do some light rigging on the side... (the ability to be in and pay attention to multiple nodes at once with no penalties).


My one and only SR4 missions character is a mystic adept with 2 points magic. 3 Power points... the force 2/4 limit is no problem whatsoever. It's annoying at times, but the spirits make very useful allies on the fly (to keep an eye on a door... cast and sustain a buff on me... use a spirit power... watch out for astral threats since I can't assense... etc)

So you ignored electronic warfare and software for a character that's fun to play??
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/talker.gif)

Because spirits body/str are based on force the difference between a force 1 and force 6 spirit would be rather obvious. A good example would be elementals in D&D - size and power go hand in hand.

yes but to the average runner who's never seen a spirit for dealt with one, a Spirit bursting into life in a gout of flame or something of the like can be a staggering experience.

Also depend on the shape taken. Even a Force 1 could look like a flaming metahuman, granted a bit lightweight looking,but if its on fire, still going to be impressive.

Force one spirits are puntable.

Ahh, but without Assensing, how does someone know?

Probably not, he just did not augment them with Adept Abilities. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

Only if they interact with the opposition. Unopposed Spirit activity is powerful, irregardless of Force.

Yes, a Force 1 spirit is puntable, but the size and appearance of a spirit is not a measure of its power in Shadowrun. A Force 12 Great Form Spirit Of Man could look like a little 8 year old girl with pigtails sucking on a lolipop, and without assensing you wouldn't know its power until she bitch slaps you across a five lane highway. A Force 1 Fire Elemental could look like a roaring bonfire, but you won't know it until it tries to burn something and has trouble catching something in dead-tree-format on fire.

The mundane can recognize a materialized spirit pretty much no matter what (Street Magic, page 96, black box on Spirit Appearance), but without some obvious clues won't be able to tell type and power without someone who's able to assense it.

Zed: May I ask why you felt little Tiffany deserved to die?
James Edwards: Well, she was the only one that actually seemed dangerous at the time, sir.
Zed: How'd you come to that conclusion?
James Edwards: ... Then I saw little Tiffany. I'm thinking, y'know, eight-year-old white girl, middle of the ghetto, bunch of monsters, this time of night with quantum physics books? She about to start some shit, Zed. She's about eight years old, those books are WAY too advanced for her. ...

Just like TJ said, I didn't need to boost them with adept powers. I spent the powers elsewhere to make the character better rounded/more survivable. (attribute boost - reaction... which worked nicely with his rigging abilities... as well as dovetailing very nicely with 'increase reflexes' spell since it doesn't raise reaction at the same time).

You have a huge logical fallacy that a character needs to be completely optomized to be fun to play. Just because you're say 3 dice or so behind a well-optomized character doesn't mean that you are incompetent or incapable. Especially if you round him out in other ways (such as 5 edge).


The point of the example was merely to illustrate that it only takes a mere 0.75 PP or magic to make a hacker with 6(9) hacking skills. If you buy them as skill groups instead 4(6) hacking and 4 in the rest of the group is still pretty respectable (and the group is still intact at that point too I'll add).

EWar is useful... but not nearly as much so as hacking. Generally the ewar tests aren't opposed they're simply extended tests to a threshold. So it's a less important skill to buff than hacking unless there's some in-character motivation.

Same goes for software. It really only matters if you're writing your own programs. And even then it actually is Attribute + Skill... and it's far easier to augment logic to enhance the skill!. (especially on a character with Mind over Matter adept power using Logic in place of his Agility for skill tests!). For most characters 2 ranks from 2 ranks in the electronics sklll group is more than sufficient with a strong logic to back it up.

Aren't spirits their force in meters height?

I would think that characters should have some knowledge skill to know things about spirits, but maybe easy stuff is common knowledge.