Twinking out a PhysAd Options

[Chiaroscuro23]

So before our Sunday session I was asked to help a new player twink out the blade-wielding physad she was creating. As it happened I knew relatively little of the magic system, but she needed help with buying skills and such so I was able to help her some. But I wished I'd been able to guide her a little bit better as to which powers to take. My initial assessment was that the temporary boost was better than the permanent boost for abilities, but that the bioware (for sams, not adepts) was better still. And extra IP were hugely expensive, though necessary.

I'm pretty sure I'm missing what the best way to build a PC is, and I couldn't find any threads looking through the archive. So, what's the feeling on this board about it? Always specialize with enhanced ability? Always boost combat sense super high? The PC ended up with only about 10 dice in blades and pre-boosted agility, and I'm afraid that will be insufficient compared to others.

Thanks!

[Taki]

The main thing is to be quick. It's easy to be good (10 dices is not bad - a specialist should have a bit more).
But if you are quick with any kind of boosted reflexes, you throw two or three times your 10 dices !!!
for adept and cyber, level 2 is much more interesting than the first one (cost in essence / magic point : 2 / 3 )
after that there is much to say and various possibilities of combination.
get 5 in magic (not 4, not 6 but FIVE)

armor is well interesting for slashers.
race : troll is very interesting too !!!

Taki

As a DM : use karma based or bp based character generation !!!

[Gothic Rose]

With german errata, the temp boosts suck. For a blade wielder, I would have gone with something along the lines of:

Improved Reflexes level 2 (3pp)
Improved Ability: Blades level 3 (1.5pp)
[Insert any abilities costing no more than .5 Here]

Or, buy a synaptic booster, which kills 1 essence/magic, leaving you with magic 4, but not needing to buy the expensive Improved Reflexes.

[ElFenrir]

yeah, if going blades...i'd actually stay human or elf myself, and twink out the agility and initative. Mystic Armor is good to have on the defense, offense, stick to imp. ability, reflexes, etc.

[Chiaroscuro23]

Why should magic 5 be better than 6? Because it costs more BP/point to get to 6?

And why would improved ability be good? It's essentially just spending your rarer magic-resources on a higher skill, which you could buy with normal points. Or am I missing something? By comparison, it's super-cheap to buy four levels of the ware that gets you higher agility. I mean, my face bought that stuff it was so great. With only Agility 3 and Firearms 2 he's throwing 12 dice with a predator; that's more than this combat-focused adept. So I figured I'd built the adept wrong.

There's nothing even vaguely as good in terms of BP cost as Muscle Toner for adepts, so I figured there was a different way to buff them. Or maybe that they needed to have a very specific focus.

Combat sense I can dig, because a high reaction is hard to get, and surprise tests are both common and very annoying, while going first is great and dodging bullets also wonderful. Plus it'll stack with your otherwise boosted stat to insane levels.

But there was nothing that stuck out as making adepts as strong as sams. So I figured I was missing something.

I also don't know how adept powers improve. ISTR that you need to boost your magic stat to get better, which means they're essentially frozen at chargen, since I strongly doubt our game will last for the very high karma levels needed to get a high stat improved. That's a lot worse than just buying them up like with skills.

Thanks!

[stormvane]

Step by step twinking for a blades physad.

Metatype.
This choice matters very little to start the game, but the highest agility clearly belongs to the elf, so that would be my choice.

Attributes
Standard advice applies for choosing attributes for a physical character: get four or better in your physical stats if you can afford it. A high intuition and willpower would also be in my thoughts for initiative and stun defense (and magic).

I have to agree with the previous poster that five is the lucky number for magic rating, its much more cost effective to max magic in play.

Skills
You should definitely take blades as a skill and avoid the close combat skill group. The logic being that you cannot specialize from the skill group. and since specializations don't have any negatives this will be something you want to do as soon as you max your skill.

Qualities
Clearly you want the adept quality or the rest of this post is moot. I would also think about the aptitude: blades quality and ambidexterity (more on this later). any other qualities, positive or negative, are up to the player.

Magic choices.
A lot of people get a little disappointed here as there seems to be less return on investment for power point investment versus essence investment. However, it did survive into fourth edition that health spells work better on high essence characters, so you will still be a favorite for your healing magicians efforts. further a lot of cyber is only good in specific situations and it comes with limitations that magic does not face. The trick to choosing good powers is to remember two things: 1) primary attack type, in this case blades and 2) you still have to defend against everything else.

That being said, the following powers should be avoided:
Missile Parry: seems cool, but only has limited use
Critical Strike: This only works for unarmed strikes iirc, but if it does work for weapons hold on to it.
Killing Hands: A waste because unarmed attacks are not your primary attack type.
Social powers: there are two social powers Kinesis and Mimic, both are entirely useless for hitting things with blades.

Must have powers include:
1. Improved Reflexes: To start i would go for level 2 of this power for a total of three ip and +2 initiative or reflexes or whatever.
2. Combat sense: any level of magic spent in this is a good level as it give you extra dice on surprise and extra dice for avoiding both ranged and melee attacks

The beauty of a physical adept is that, once you eliminate useless powers and have your gotta haves, then any other power you add will only help no matter what it is. Starting, I would seriously consider mystic armor as my final addition to the above powers. Save improved ability blades for after you have maxed your skill.

Suggestions on play style.
When the character starts the game, wield only one blade. This should continue until your dice pool for blades is maxed without magical assistance. Then as you gain initiate grades and more magic and power points. work on doubling this dice pool. If you follow the above plan this should begin when your dice pool reaches 14 dice (7 agility + 7 blades). improved attribute as the most expensive would be what I would work on first. This will bring you to 17 dice. Then get that last level of improved reflexes. after that the next power points should go into improved ability blades until you have 20 dice. Then start wielding two weapons. this should mean eight attacks a turn. You can continue initiating and adding improved ability blades as long as you want, but it becomes silly once you reach double dice pool. That would be my method.

[Kyoto Kid]

[Glyph]

The SR4 rules make is harder to twink out an adept. Before, Improved Ability was the main thing (with Ambidexterity coming a close second). This was because combat was an opposed dice contest, where initiative passes didn't matter as much (since Combat Pool only refreshed when a new round started), and where you could damage your opponent on their turn or yours.

With SR4, that has changed. With the elimination of SR3 dice pools, and with defenders no longer able to counterattack, getting a decent number of initiative passes is more important. And with Improved Ability limited to improving the base rating to 1.5, you will have more points to spend on it. Also, both Combat Sense and Mystic Armor have been significantly boosted. So one possible build, with 5 Magic points, would be Improved Abilty/Blades: 2 (assuming a skill of 5 and a specialization, that is a total of 9 dice to add to Agility, which I would recommend also be a 5), Improved Reflexes: 2, and either Combat Sense (slightly better, in my opinion) or Mystic Armor at 2.

By the way, another change from SR3 is that adepts can start out with bonded weapon foci. A force: 2 weapon focus costs 20,000 (4 build points) plus 2 more points to bond it - so, for 6 build points, get a force: 2 weapon focus of your primary weapon. Weapon foci add to the dice pool, not the skill, so they aren't affected by the modified skill cap. So with the adept abilities above, that would be a total of 16 dice for melee combat, quite respectable. You could get more, but when you min-max too excessively, you reach a point of diminishing returns fairly quickly.

[nick012000]

Pheh. I wouldn't care about the German Errata until it comes out in English.

Get Agility 5(+racial bonus, if applicable), Strength 5(+racial bonus, if applicable), Blades 6, Magic 6, IA: Blades 6, Improved Reflexes 1, and Attribute Boost (all physical attributes) 1. You'll be able to soak the drain on the Attribute Boost with ease, and the book doesn't state what sort of action activating it is, so we'll assume that it's nothing noticable. On an average test, it'll boost your attributes up 2 points for a fraction of the price of similar cyber, bio, or magic. Then go and pick up a nice cocktail of Jazz and Cram to boost your IPs up to the maximum of 4.

Buy a Force 2 monosword weapon focus, and bond it. When you use it, you'll be throwing out 7 Agility+6 skill+6 IA+2 weapon focus+2 reach, for a grand total of 23 dice (and 7.6 (repeating) hits, and you'll deal 7P damage before you start staging it up. When you consider that most enemies will be rolling 12 dice to resist at most, you'll be able to take down almost anyone in one go.

[Liper]

Actually get two force one foci, a knife (short concelable) and then a blade with reach.

Second, for a contact put a adept that's able to make fusion foci and has ties to a initiation group.

[PlatonicPimp]

It's out in english.
Errata version 1.3, on the fanpro site.

[Chandon]

[Mr.Platinum]

as soon as i get my book or the source books needed, i wasnt to make a

Physical combat technomancer mage.

[Chiaroscuro23]

[Moon-Hawk]

[Mr.Platinum]

[Moon-Hawk]

[Liper]

I don't allow imp ability to affect matrix actions =p

Programming yes, in matrix actions no, (not even ar)

[nick012000]

[RunnerPaul]

[PlatonicPimp]

He certainly has no RAW to back that up.

[nick012000]

No RAW from this edition to back it up. According to the SR3 FAQs, adepts with Improved Ability (vehicle skill) can't use it while rigging. There's probably the same idea here.

[Darkness]

[Liper]

Darkness you're so silly, and let me show you why.

[TheHappyAnarchis...]

Check out the other thread
Adepts and Hackers

FYI, my house rule is that matrix passes are dependant on access, not user.
It is in the second page, but it is a house rule.