Do adepts suck right now?, Yes, they do. Options

[Kyrn]

Quoting Nim, editing messed up my block:
"As an alternative take on Mistwalker's reply to this...it's an element of the setting, a part of the way the world is presented, that magicians and adepts are reluctant to use cyber or bio. The rules should provide a model for the way the world works. If the setting says 'magically active people avoid augmentation', but the rules are written in such a way that it is advantageous for magically active people to be augmented, then there's a conflict between the two. We can't just assume that all of those NPCs are idiots, after all :) "

So, either the rules should support the premise that magically active folks who avoid augmentation are somehow better off than those who don't, or the fluff-text should reflect a change in attitudes in the direction of mildly-augmented magicians. [/QUOTE]
Now the motivation to prevent any loss of a resource as precious as magic is a motivation I neglected to mention. I know it's there, but I'm AFMB. What sections in SR4 discuss the aforementioned aversion to ware? I'm pretty sure someone mentioned the bit in Street Magic where they discuss the number of mages with datajacks (a presence in canon since the original Secrets of Power trilogy, circa 2049) earlier in this thread. I think there's something in the BBB's character creation section about magicians and ware (essence of any kind, really). But I still think that refusing the ware is a compulsion that has faded since previous editions. It's been 21 years (in game) since the debut of SR, and I'm trying to think of an analogy that will illustrate the way I see the world's view of alteration.

Okay, after five minutes the best I could come up with was something weird involving the internet, porn, and a sex addict. This means I should get back to work, but is there anyone out there telepathic enough to understand what I'm trying to say and phrase it better?

[cristomeyers]

Not quite, but I am remembering that the 2nd ed pre-gen Combat Mage actually came with cybereyes.

[Roni]

In my opinion, you need a reason for everything you have. Why would an adept get cyberware? If you could make a good background story*, I'd allow it. This is where everything comes down to...the GM. If you have a problem with the rules, house-rule it. The BBB isn't the fucking bible.

*Including what power(s) the adept lost when (s)he got the 'ware.

[Kyrn]

Oh my, a character background. I never would have thought of such a thing. Explaining why my character is who he is, why he does what he does, how he feels about different personal and societal issues, and why he's a shadowrunner. Amazing. I'm in awe of your simple wisdom.

[Roni]

It's the thing that seperates character sheets from characters. Come on...it's the essential part of everything. Why would a character do something to ruin his own powers to pick up powers from an external source. If that just happened to you, what would you do?

[Demerzel]

I think that this is largely a rules argument. So as someone who hasn't chimed in on this subject or voiced any opinion on the matter, I'll just add that RP concerns fall outside of the scope of the argument.

[toturi]

The only time where RP does fall into the scope of the argument is when the GM thinks that adding cyber/bio is not good roleplaying and decides that he'd give less Karma to that PC. But strictly speaking, Karma is given for roleplaying during the game and not for down time actions.

[JonathanC]

[Roni]

[Kyrn]

Sarcasm is so often wasted on the young... :smokin:

[cybertrucker]

Both have advantages and disadvantages.. thats my 2 cents after running a game for the last year.

A campaign which is about to come to a breaking point for awhile. Want to get a chance to play something instead of running all the time so one of my friends is going to run a Eberron Game (D20) for a few months while we break from SR4 for a bit.

[mfb]

[Kyrn]

[Crusher Bob]

Assuming you are speaking about the old Disney Jungle Book, I think it ends with him following the girl into the human village. But I could be wrong.

[Kyrn]

Wait, did I get the name wrong...ah!

Mogwai! Not Mowgli. Damn it.

The furry little beastie from Gremlins...

[Crusher Bob]

Wasn't the fuzzy-wuzzy from Gremlins named 'Gizmo'? I think it ended with them chasing the mohawk gremlin around in a movie theatre and ends with him melting in the sunlight, or something like that.

[Narse]

Um... sorry to be on topic here but I thought someone should mention that adept powers arent the only perks of being an adept. There is also meta-magic. It's true that most of it isn't very benificial to adepts but Adept Centering in particular is very useful. It allows adept to center like magicians in order to reduce negative modifiers to thier dice pool for any combat or physical skill by their initiate grade. That is all combat and physical skills (there are a lot!). Now think how many negative modifiers there are to dice pools for those skills (especcially combat). Also remember that you can always call a shot on an attack for a negative modifier of between -1 and -4 to incerease DV if for some reason you are facing no negative modifiers that you don't already have reduced.

[Serbitar]

[hyzmarca]

[Crusher Bob]

<pouty face> but, I'm always hitting things, in my mind.

Will making karma for nuyen an official rule help both sams plus adepts without adding to cyber-adepts too much?

My first impression is that is makes cherry picking by cyber-adepts much easier, since their advancement points can easily be spent in the area that gets them the most plusses.

Using my numbers for earlier

The straight adept gives his money to prost^F^F^Ffreezing match girls and gets 200 more karma. This lets him go from init grade 3, magic 9 to init grade 6, magic 12 (isn't that the cap?). - and crap I went to check the numbers in my previous post and noticed that a large part of the middle of what I had written got cut out somehow. The stats for the cyber-adept got completely eaten.

Sigh.

Since I have nothing better to do, I'll just do it all over again and repost, but assuming cash for karma. I think I'll run into problems here in that SR4 has sch low caps on advancement that 400 karma will be enough the get an adept to all the caps.

[Mistwalker]

There is no cap for magic and intiate grade.
You can't have an initiate grade higher than your magic attribute.
So, once you get your initiate grade to 6, you have to raise your magic attribute to at least 7 before you can initiate again.

[Ophis]

I find the caps take longer to hit (all of them) than you'd think. I've built a couple of high karma adepts (with minimal bio 1-2 points each) with 700+ karma and while they are fucking scarey they still want more things (more of this or that power). They compete with similar power level samurai quite nicely.

I think my main problem is that the only sensible way to build a starting adept is to be a specialist in a very tight field, which isn't what I want to do, and it seems a shame to make this the only competative option for adepts at start up.

[Kyrn]

I'm actually working on a "utility" adept at the moment with quite the opposite approach. With a 400 bp build, so far I've managed to hit 15 dice for his automatics pool (w/o taking a specialization and he's can rock out a full burst on an Alpha with no recoil), 12 dice for unarmed, 13 dice for infiltration, 11 dice for social tests (w/o situational modifiers), between 8 and 12 dice for perception (depending on the sense being used), 9 dice for athletics, 12 for gymnastics though, and he'll roll 10-12 dice for most hacking/computer rolls as well. So he does quite a decent job at most activities. Granted, he's not the master of any dice pool, but he's extremely dangerous in combat situations, and the rest of his abilities make him so flexible that he'll always be fun to play and useful for the team. Especially if there aren't that many players in the group. So neh.

[Crakkerjakk]

Care to post that build? Not that I don't believe you, but I just tried to replicate it and am having trouble myself. Trying to get a wide variety of sample builds so that I can get a better idea of whats possible, especially for the nonspecialist. The main problem I'm running into seems to be the 200 BP cap on attributes(Not including magic)

[Ravor]

Well, to backtrack a couple of pages, Street Magic does say that it isn't that uncommon for Mages at least to install some choice Cyberwear, so I don't see why it would be any different with Adepts...