Adept Metamagic Options

[Ghost_in_the_Sys...]

Instead of derailing another thread, I figured I'd take my response here (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

On the other hand, I also don't see the problem with the 'initiation gives PP instead of metamagic' option since there are only about 5 metamagics even available to adepts, much less actually useful ones, and the cost of a PP otherwise is beyond reason.

I really do not get Why people continue to perpetuate this myth...

I count 15 Applicable Adept Metamagics, Two of which may be taken multiple times....

Basic Metamagics:
Adept Centering
Attunement - Animals (Multiple Times)
Attunement - Items (Multiple Times)
Centering
Cognition
Divining (If Adept has Astral Perception)
Flexible Signature
Masking
Psychometry (If Adept has Astral Perception)
Sensing
Somatic Control

Advanced Metamagics:
Empower Animals
Extended Masking (Weapon Foci only, obviously)
Flux
Infusion

Okay, so maybe it isn't five with a few good ones, maybe it is five good ones. Or maybe I shouldn't say good, but that don't require a narrow specialty.

I'll certainly give you adept centering as being useful to nearly any adept, and masking as useful to many.

Centering hardly affects anything, as the only time an adept has to deal with drain is from using attribute boost, which in all honesty would take concentrated effort to actually cause enough drain to not be automatically resisted, much less make an adept think of getting centering. I would barely consider that available to an adept, much less actually useful.

Extended masking might be useful to the adept if they happen to use a weapon focus, but that is a minority of adepts I think.

Animal Attunement and Empowered Animals are both exceedingly niche metamagics. Infusion is actually quite good now that I notice the part where you get 0.5 per initiation grade. Flux can be useful in limited circumstances (more limited for an adept than a magician, because they don't have as many foci and don't need to worry about their wards and similar things).

Item attunement can certinaly be useful to a number of adepts.

Cognition is another fairly limited market sort of metamagic (especially with the 2 CT prep time). Somatic control is also limited, but likely less so than Cognition, though it does still suffer from the long set-up time.

Divining and Psychometry are both about as niche as the animal based metamagics.

Sensing is another highly niche ability.

Flexibile signatures only apply to signatures, which adepts don't leave, so it isn't something that an adept would actually take.

So, of your 15 there are:
2 useless metamagics (Centering, Flexible signature)
6 extreme niche metamagics (Divining, Psychometry, Sensing, Animal Attunement, Empowered Animal, Flux)
2 fairly limited metamagics (Cognition, Extended Masking)
3 somewhat limited metamagics (Somatic Control, Item Attunement, Masking)
2 generally universally good metamagics (Adept Centering, Infusion)

So yeah, I'll give you maybe 5ish metamagics that a normal adept would actually want, depending on their build. I'm not saying any of them are useless (except for the useless ones), and niche ones like animal attunement can be very desirable if you happen to be playing a particular kind of adept. Mages on the other hand have tons of (honestly, more useful) metamagics to pick from, yet initiation costs the same amount. Mages generally get initiation purely for the metamagic, while adepts generally get initiation purely so that they can get another point of magic for another PP to spend. I also figure PP is an adept's main form of advancement, just like cyber is a sammy's main form of advancement, except that for a sammy, they have to spend nuyen and can still spend karma on increasing skills and such, while an adept is stuck choosing between another PP and a swath of skills.

I suppose the counter to that is that adepts can cyber themselves out with the spare nuyen, but it is a much more costly experience due to the loss of magic (and thus PP) accompanied by doing so.