?'s about Physical Adepts Options

[Cyber Watcher]

Hoi Chummers

I use to skulk in the shadows during 1ed and 2ed. And enjoyed it very much, must admit never got to play 3ed.
So to my questions, I like to play Phys Ads, one of the things I remember from 2ed, was that it was difficult to keep up with the Samies, that in order to progress you had to initiate. And that was the end of your characters development, because the amount of Karma required to initiate, ment your stats/skills changed rarely if ever and that was if you were willing to take on some geas or other to cut the cost down.

Q1 Are the costs of the Adepts powers slightly better balanced so that the Adept and the Samie, are on similar initiative and skill levels assuming they took similar stats, skills and powers/cyber/bio.

Q2 Is Initiating slightly easier and/or cheaper, allowing the Phys Ad, to develop in a similar way to all the other characters. And maybe bond a weapon focus.

TIA


Yours Cyber Watcher

[NightHaunter]

1: Sam's are better a Char gen, But an Adept will be better later.

2: Initiateing is the same for everone. Bloody Expensive.

[Shrike30]

The great balancing act between sammies and adepts has always been the Cash:Karma exchange. Ask your GM if he'll allow it, possibly under the understanding that the Karma is earmarked for something (like initiation or a stat) because you spent the money getting training, or sitting in a monastery getting hit with brooms, or whatever.

[fool]

some of the abilities are cheaper now, and some will give you abilities that the sammies just can't get, like magic resistance and astral perception, and don't forget the ability to use weapon foci.
Generally in terms of init passes, adepts and sammies will be about the same out of the gate, with the sammies having a slight edge (one or two points more of reaction.) But they'll also have better stats (from things like bone lacing and muscle augs.) than adepts.
Our group ran a campaign recently where the players were limited to 360 bp and only 125,000 yen. Everyone tool some kind of magic user with adepts being the most popular since they're the biggest bang for so little money.

[FanGirl]

There are also different levels of initiation: each level lets your raise your magic stat yet higher, and you get to pick an extra ability too.

[hyzmarca]

Actually, it is more costly in 4th since you have to raise your magic attribute seperatly.
As Always, adepts can make some absurd specialists. The Pornomancer, for example, with enough seduction dice to turn Jerry Falwell gay.

[Glyph]

The only trouble is that you need to spend Karma to initiate, then spend Karma to raise your Magic attribute. And currently most of the metamagics are pretty useless for adepts (Street Magic might change that).


One of the changes from SR3 is that adepts can start with bound weapon foci. That, or killing hands, make them a far better choice than sammies if you expect to go up against spirits. Sammies can overcome a spirit's Immunity to Normal Weapons power, but weapon foci or killing hands negate it, which is far more effective.

[Jaid]

also, it's worth nothing that it may very well be worthwhile to mix and match.

for example, while a synaptic booster costs essence, it will still cost you a lot less than the equivalent adept power will cost you in terms of magic lost compared to magic used.

that being said, depending on your other abilities you may wish to keep your magic score maxed.

but yeah, i would say that it all depends on what kind of adept you want to be. adepts can be very good at one thing, sammies can be pretty good at a lot of things. it's up to you which you feel is more important.

[Aaron]

Our adept is scary. I think she's doing 8P with her Killing Hands.

And then there's Combat Sense. On page 187. It's like a tiny god.

[Kyoto Kid]

[Glyph]

That's what you get for taking guns to a fist fight! :D

[Cyber Watcher]

Thanks Chummers

It sounds like theres a bit more flexability in the system, I just remember that once you purchased enough Initiative dice, to keep you in the same zip code as the Sammie, you didn't have an awful lot of points left to buy things like Killing Hands or Astral Perception. And in order to get more abilities you had to Initiate, which just left no spare karma for things like raising stats, improving skills or bonding weapon foci.

Now all i've got to do is either get somebody in the club to buy a copy and run it, or consider getting it and running it myself. Although I have just bought Thieves' World, wanted to run that first before running anything else!


Yours Cyber Watcher

[Ophis]

8P is that all?

I've converted an old NPC to SR4 and managed 13P as a human with out breaking a sweat.

Adepts are great now but do take a while to get going. It's really worth blowing a magic point into bioware at some point, mostly for stat boosts (mmm Muscle Toner...) Most adepts I've run for or created are using 1 essence worth of ware. At the high end adepts win as they just have more skill than a mundane.

Big trick with adepts is I think to specialise. Have you schtick and go for it, let the tech characters be the generalists keep your focus tight and you rule in that area.

[Shrike30]

I've had... 3 players (out of 6, and 8 characters involved) stick Synaptic Accelerators into their Awakened characters. 2 of those were adepts.

Now, I realize that you have this massive chunk taken out of your available Magic if you go the adept route of increasing your reflexes, rather than the Bio route... but the thought of being able to push it to rating 3 during your character's lifespan (rather than having to ditch another point of magic in the process and drop a ton of cash or, more likely, sticking at rating 2 with the bioware) is amusing to me.

[Kyoto Kid]