Anyone made a "brain" adept?, Like a face, only smarter Options

[Kyrn]

Does anyone have any experience with making/running an adept who focuses on his skull muscles? Analytics, Enhanced Perception, high Intuition/Logic, etc...

Any pointers, advantages, disadvantages, easy segues into or from other adept archetypes (like face)?

I'd imagine that someone, somewhere has tossed analytics into a face build to create a viable gumshoe.

A little preliminary crunching nets
Int5 + Perception 6 + Visual Spec. 2 + Improved Ability Perception 3 + Enhanced Perception 5 + Enhanced Vision spectacles +3 = 24 dice for visual perception to notice clues and then (whatever you roll to solve puzzles, Int + Logic?) + Analytics (plus any bonus(es) from ware like mnemonic enhancer or cerebral booster) to decipher said clues. Now to convince a GM that a deerhunter can totally count as a helmet and to find a troll sidekick to write down my adventures.

Or just go for broken villainous and play Moriarty :)

[fistandantilus4....]

I havea character that was a LS Detective (homicide) that had the latenet Awakening quality and just awakened, so I've been looking at this my self. Go w/ the vision mag and hearing mag adept powers. Also check out some sort of olfactory boost, eidetic memory sense, definetly Analytics.

[Butterblume]

I tried once. Adept with analytics, eidetic sense memory, multitasking, nimble fingers (for the second free action while not actualy engaged in combat), kinesics for any leftover points. Cerebral booster, mnemonic enhancer. High intuition and logic. Perception enhancements (hadn't actually decided whether cyberware or adept power). Addiction to psyche.
Like a human computer, aka mentat.

Stopped though because my GM would probably hate a char that can't do anything except knowing everthing better than anybody else. I decided to bring him as a focal point for a future campaign, a mere (meta)human who actually thwarts the plans of a great dragon. For this, the PCs will be collecting seemingly unrelated data, hitting unusual targets etc. I think that really has possibilities :cyber:.

Of course, with the right GM I think it would also make an awesome PC. With a GM who justs makes the (non-combat) tests more difficult for people with many dice, it's pointless (I have seen a few of those).

[Kyrn]

Well, I was thinking that using gear for the sense specific perception boosts would be more economical than buying the powers. But hey, now I can make a guy just like The Sentinel, only he can do other stuff too! Like not suck. (worst...show...ever!)

I guess I'm really trying to see how economically this can fit into a face build and still have enough bps left over for survival of those fun-filled situations private dicks always find themselves in.

[fistandantilus4....]

The char I have started w/ cyber because he didn't have any magic, so those were some of my first thoughts. The sense powers aren't very expensive, so I guess it depends on 1) If you care about not always having them available, and 2) how long the campaign is going to go on, if you can count on being able to upgrade your powers.

[Banaticus]

This is something from SR3 that doesn't appear to be in SR4 yet (previously it was in Man & Machine -- perhaps this time around it will be in the new Armory book). The Chemical Analyzer tongue cyberware, combined with either a high Chemistry skill or a good Chemistry skillsoft, would let you analyze things by tasting them. You could dip a finger in a liquid, bring a bit up to your tongue and analyze it yourself.

Combined with the following bioware, Digestive Expansion and a Nephritic Screen (Man & Machine in SR3, but in the main SR4 book now), they would allow you to go to bars or opium dens or wherever and drink or smoke with other people, while remaining unaffected yourself, something that Sherlock Holmes did every so often.

Perhaps you could take a Severe addiction to Nicotine and a Mild addiction to Cocaine. Sherlock Holmes took cocaine about once a week. He never had a problem with it during a case, but whenever he was just sitting around the house with nothing to do, he would inject himself with some to "stimulate his brain from this lethargy". He was also a prolific smoker. When he was thinking about a problem, he'd stay up all night and smoke while thinking about it -- Watson would some out and the air would be "blue with smoke". Sometimes the smoke about Holme's chair would be so thick that Watson had a difficult time seeing Holmes at first. Those two addictions would give you an extra 15 BP. So you smoke your pipe several times a day and in between runs, once a week, you inject a little of the liquid white stuff into your veins.

[Banaticus]

Some abilities are cheaper when purchased with adept powers, while others are cheaper when purchased with cyber/bioware (since each point of essence taken by cyber/bioware makes you lose one of your adept points). True, as time goes on you can use Karma to initiate and get more adept points, but as time goes by you can use nuyen to buy better grades of cyber/bioware, so you can pack more into what space you have.

[fistandantilus4....]

my detective has the classic rough edge cop neg wualities. :Addiction - Mod- Alcohol, cigarettes, mild - strip clubs.

[Kyrn]

Holmes' addiction actually grew rather debilitating eventually. He began spending so much time in opium dens that Watson gave up on the sidekick gig and went back to practicing medicine. For a while at least. In the Victorian mindset opium = BAD, while cocaine just = medicine for the fun impaired :) Those evil, evil Chinamen...how dare they tempt the English with such a profitable and legal method of degrading the workforce's ability to work for near slave wages!

Sorry for the aside, Holmes was my Junior Colloquy at undergrad.

[Kyrn]

It seems all the great detectives have addictions of some sort. At least all of Chandler's. I highly recommend his short stories for SR inspiration btw. There's a great one that starts off with a dude getting out of the shower to find an intruder in his hotel room, flicks his towel as a distraction, shoots said intruder, and then calmly destroys all evidence of the shooting (including stamping the bullet casing flat before flushing it) and checking out. One cold, murderous cat he is...a page later you learn he's a cop. :)

[fistandantilus4....]

[Kyrn]

Not yet, but I'll search for one. It would be a great resource...

[toturi]

[Kyrn]

Right, so far just a page of quotes.
http://home.comcast.net/~mossrobert/html/c...handlerisms.htm

"Dead men are heavier than broken hearts "---The Big Sleep (Chapter 8)
I put the duster away folded with the dust in it, leaned back and just sat, not smoking, not even thinking. I was a blank man. I had no face, no meaning, no personality, hardly a name. I didn't want to eat. I didn't even want a drink. I was the page from yesterday's calendar crumpled at the bottom of the waste basket "---The Little Sister (Chapter 25)

"Eddie Mars wanted to see me."
"I didn't know you knew him. Why?"
"I don't mind telling you. He thought I was looking for somebody he thought had run away with his wife."
"Were you?"
"No."
"Then what did you come for?"
"To find out why he thought I was looking for somebody he thought had run away with his wife."
"Did you find out?"
"No."
---The Big Sleep (Chapter 23)

"I never saw any of them again - except the cops. No way has yet been invented to say goodbye to them." ---The Long Goodbye (Chapter 52)

And one of my all time favorites:
"I'm an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard." --"The King in Yellow"

Until I can find a page hosting any of his short works go to your friendly local library and look for the black American Heritage Library collection of his work. Straight up awesome with a lemon twist.

[Kyrn]

And I can see this kind of character being rather hard to GM for, as said GM will have some new types of obstacles to toss the PCs way.

But wth an experienced GM I don't see it being too frustrating.

[Banaticus]

As a physical adept, he can buy the Astral Perceptoin power. I think it's only a -2 dice pool modifier if he walks around astral perceiving all the time. :)

[mfb]

if you really wanna be Holmes, you're gonna need some enhanced strength. dude was buff, according to The Adventure of the Speckled Band.

i forget, does SR4 have rules for using Small Unit Tactics? if so, you might consider picking that skill up, along with enhanced ability for it (if allowed) and Centering. play up the prediction-through-observation aspect.

[fistandantilus4....]

No SUT that I've seen yet. Love to see it. Closest thing off the top of my head is Leadership (s) tactics. Effect though, dunno.

speckled band, bends that fire poker right? Or maybe I could just loko at the link. Used to watch/read all the old Holmes stuff. Liked The Dancing Men the best. Weird title now that I think of it, but cool story.

[Glyph]

Here's one rough version of an adept P.I. Probably all kinds of ways you could make one, though.

[ Spoiler ]

Adept Detective
Race: Human

BREAKDOWN (400 Points)
Core Attributes: 200
Special Attributes: 80
Race: 0
Active Skills: 116
Qualities: +25
Contacts: 11
Resources: 18

=Attributes=
Body: 3
Agility: 3
Reaction: 3
Strength: 2
Charisma: 4
Intuition: 5
Logic: 4(6)
Willpower: 4
Magic: 5(4)
Edge: 6

Essence: 5.0

=Qualities=
Adept
Addiction - Stimulants, Mild
Allergy - Seawater(Common), Mild
First Impression
Sensitive Neural Structure
Sensitive System

=Active Skills=
Data Search: 4
Dodge: 4
Influence Skill Group: 3
Perception/Visual: 6/+2
Pistols/Semi-Automatics: 3/+2
Shadowing/Tailing: 3/+2

=Knowledge Skills=
27 points of appropriate knowledge skills.

=Bioware=
Cerebral Booster: 2
Tailored Pheromes: 3

=Adept Abilities=
Analytics: 4
Eidetic Sense Memory
Enhanced Perception: 4
Improved Senses -
>Audio Enhancement
>Olfactory Booster
>Select Sound Filter
>Vision Enhancement
Multi-tasking

=Contacts=
11 points of appropriate contacts.

=Lifestyle and Gear=
25,000 Nuyen left after buying bioware.

[Thane36425]

Sherlock Holmes was also quite fit and a very good boxer. It was probably mentioned, but a character built along these lines should also have a broad knowledge base regarding detective work, especially obscure knowledge. There was one story where Holmes said he had memorized the tread pattern of something like 27 different makes of bicycle tires, yet in another, he became enraged at Watson when Watson told him something about the latest astronomical observations of the other planets. Why? Because such facts meant nothing to him and would only clutter his mind and distract him from essentials, like the bike treads.

So, you might also want to consider some negative mental qualities to help round the character out.

[Glyph]

Sherlock Holmes may have been a complete mundane, but there's no way you could make him, even with 500 build points. It would be easier in SR3, where it is a lot easier to make a skill monkey with high Attributes all around, but you would still need high Build Points and lots of Karma afterwards to do the character justice.


He did have a bad drug problem at one time, though. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had a medical background, so he was able to present it pretty realistically. I like how it happened slowly, over the course of the stories, rather than having Holmes suddenly turn into a dope fiend.

[Banaticus]

Holmes said something about the sun going around the earth and Watson corrected him -- saying that was a Hellenistic idea and that the earth actually went around the sun. Holmes replied something about how he didn't care for such useless information as it didn't affect dective work. I've always thought that Holmes response was partly because he didn't want to admit that he'd finally been shown up by Watson, that Watson actually knew a bit of trivia that Holmes didn't know.

Many times Holmes told Watson something like, "You're really valuable to me, Watson. Your insights, your observations on cases." "Oh, they're that good?" "No, they're so bad that whatever you surmise, I assume the opposite and am lead instantly to the truth of the matter." Holmes, in my opinion, just couldn't let himself be shown up by Watson.

[ElFenrir]

My friend had made a pretty awesome Ork mechanic fellow, who was an adept along these roads. Could build better than just about anybody around. Was highly effective.

Adepts are a funny thing...hand to hand adepts, in the new SR, are i think about equal in ways to cyber. Each has things they can do and can't(well, out of the box anyway). Same for gun adepts(tho ive seen gun adepts get even crazier at times.)

However, when it comes to faces, detectives, and anyone doing mental/building/social aspects...Adepts trounce their mundane versions. A mundane or even lightly cybered detective just cant come close to a tweaked up adept version.

I suppose this is where people have complaints about the adept getting too powerful. Back in the day it seems that only the 'physical' adept was ever created, so you didnt see their power potential. After these were uncovered the adept had a whole new light.

[HappyDaze]

I'd suggest taking the Mystic Adept route. Try for Quickening as a way to get semi-permanent enhancements to your Mental Stats and possibly add in a few Detection Spells for fun.

[Kyrn]

List of desirable powers:
Analytics (the king)
Enhanced Perception (the queen)
Multitasking (free Observe in Detail!)
Improved Senses?
Improved Ability for perception/various combat skills
Kinesics for schmoozing and womanizing

List of desirable (probably minimally invasive) ware:
Cerebral Booster
Mnemonic Enhancer


List of desirable gadgets:
Sensory boosting contacts/earbuds

List of desirable active skills:
Perception
Pistols, Unarmed, (Exotic Weapon: Whip for that cold, efficient kill?)

List of desirable knowledge skills:
Forensics, Chemistry, Parazoology, Business (accounting), Security Procedure, Area Underworld, Street Drugs, Gam Appreciation

Help me flesh 'em out fellas! This field seems to have numerous goodies out there that cost little but add a lot. So I'd really like to focus on all those nickel and dime bits that are out there.

Right, back to studying instead of wishing I actually had analytics to help me in Contracts...Stupid mundane brain.