Question concerning Adepts... Options

[Onyx]

I know that Critical Strike can be used with Killing hands making adepts all the more deadly, but what I am wondering if there are any rules that allow the use of Critical Strike with a weapon (specialized or bonded)?

[Whipstitch]

Afraid not. It'd take a smarter man than I to balance out such a thing, really. Imagine an attuned and bound monowhip combined with critical strike; you could end up with strength 1 PCes cleaving through citymasters that way. Such a thing might set Hellsing fanboy hearts a flutter, but it could also give a lot of GMs fits. Then again, it's not like we don't already have Quick Draw powered Trollbows to contend with...

[Fortune]

Technically, Critical Strike can be used with unarmed combat weapons, like Hardliner Gloves and Brass Knuckles (both of which I expect to see in Arsenal). I wouldn't allow its use in conjunction with technical unarmed weapons like Shock Gloves though.

[Stahlseele]

so an attuned weapon focus in the form of a glove(if you can do that) would be pretty much usable to just grip into a citymaster or the body of whoever and rip out whatever? O.o

[Fortune]

Just combine Critical Strike with Smashing Blow for all your barrier busting needs. ;)

[Fortune]

[Stahlseele]

must have overread that x.x
or i'm getting things mixed up with 3rd

[Fortune]

There was no such restriction in SR3, so that might be it.

[Stahlseele]

GAAAH! ò,Ó . . it's getting increasingly irritating with that smiley <.< . .
and increasingly harder to keep appart 3rd(playing) and 4th(not playing) rules in my Head x.x

[Fortune]

[Stahlseele]

Fortune-atly(<= yes, i know that it would have to be fortunately) i don't have THAT problem anymore *g* . . SR1 has been more or less 15 Years ago for me if i remember correctly and i completely jumped 2nd ed ^^
btw: curse you! both for that smiley and your ninja editing skills <.< . .

[Ryu]

[Stahlseele]

Nuh!
Nevarr!
i'll most likely buy most of the SR4 stuff anyway because i'm a sucker for new toys and fluff, but i seriously abhor the SR4 rules . . the only thing i really like about SR4 is the new cyber-limb rules as of yet *g*

[Whipstitch]

What's there to abhor about the current rules? Not much of it at all is really that messy and the magic rules are particularly good relative to previous editions. I mean, I guess I'm fairly firm about how I make rulings on Agents, grenades and long shot tests, but even those much maligned topics aren't nearly as big a problem as many make them out to be. The script kiddy thing for example is mostly a thematic issue, and honestly, even in SR3 hackers progressed through building uber decks more than skill gains.

[Stahlseele]

you don't really want me to go in a rant over why i(and my whole gaming group) think SR4 sucks do you? o.o

[Whipstitch]

I'm pretty sure I just asked. A lot of your other posts seem rather reactionary or based on knee jerk misinterpretations of the RAW, so I'm pretty curious, although it'd probably best to go with a PM or starting another thread to avoid further derailing.

[Stahlseele]

ok, have it your way then . .
if anybody else wants to know why i personally think SR4 sucks (aside from the finally usefull rules for cyber limbs) i will add it here in spoiler tags too . .
mind you, this is strictly my own opinion, everybody is entitled to one of those and nobody has to agree with me on this . . but don't bother trying to argue with me about this please *g*

[ Spoiler ]

here's what i can think of off the top of my non existing hat . .

the rules may not actually BE all that bad . . but i damn well think and feel they are . .
to me those rules look like they were not all that thought trough . .
it looks to me as if they thought:"well, characters in 3rd started of with waayy too much power and too big dicepools and got modifiers to their targetnumber to boot! let's make that different, lets make target number fixed and instead have modifiers affect actual dice-ppols . . but let's try to keep the dicepools lower in the beginning . . oh, and let's add the attributes into those dicepools to make them have some sort of meaning . . oh and yeah, let's get even more attributes in there so they don't start out with high attributes and high dicepools . . oh and let's make the matrix wireless, because today there is Wireless LAN and it would not be realistic/futuristic(pick your favourite) if that wasn't there in the future . . and that way deckers and riggers can be combined into one . . and the decker has to leave his comfy couch at home to go in despite there being a wireless network than can be routed through comlinks and drones as a gateway . . ooh ooh! and let's make magic stronger! because you know even though earthdawn is now a big no-no . . the magic goes and comes in cycles so it will still get stronger from 3rd to 4th . . and let's limit ini-passes to 4 maximum ever! because we don't like those ultra-fast characters going through the game like nobodys business . ." and then there's the WAY they decided to have the transition from 3rd to 4th and the wireless matrix . . "ooh i know, we'll just declare a second matrix crash has happened! it worked once and they just did it in battletech to start fresh with Mechwarrior:dark age . . and of course nobody was smart enough after the first crash to actually make backups on a regular schedule in offline storage . . even though in SR4 it is commonplace that storage place is infinite which has to have happened some time before the crash . . and you know how we're going to pull this off? TERRORISTS! of course we're not going to make them arabic, let's instead have them be european, because the germans pissed us off again . . and let them have WMD's because we did not find them with Al Quaeda . . and you know what will be the bomb ever? they get nukes! nukes that in the whole history of shadowrun usually had an history of noit going boom beause of magic or something . . and let us have them actually enchant those bombs with magic! . . because everybody knows magitech and magical weapons and bombs are cool . . even though in shadowrun that is impossible. . and to top it off, let's get rid of some of the matrix power-horses because we need to level the field a bit . . yes! we will have an all out war between 2 or more AI's with their own otaku tribes each! . . and then there will be technomagics . . but not those stupid little otaku kids but new and improved who are their own WLAN-Router . . and let's have the population go ballistic and on a witch-hunt because of them again, because they are so much worse than usual deckers . . let's call them hackers by the way, because hackers are the bad people on the net who steal from our profits . . and after the big AI's are not so big any more . . let's have a whole slew of new AI's on the web, but let us call them something else and have them basically be something like those things from the neuromancer networks . . ooh ooh! and let us thrown in a pure luck attribute too . . karma is not cool because it sounds like one of those asian religious thingies . . and people can start with an 8 in that instead of having to earn it from playing because most people don't like to play long enough to get something like that . .

[Fortune]

Uh huh.

[Jhaiisiin]

Strangely, I agree with Stahl about one thing in particular. It seems to be a step backward instead of forward to suddenly adopt wireless. Being cyberneticly linked to a computer through a datajack was amazingly advanced. Doing the same through wi-fi (a signal that is VERY easily interrupted) seems like a dumb move. Maybe it's just me.

Beyond that, it's "to each their own" when I look at his other points.

[Ryu]

The standard is and will be the AR. And you do not need DNI for that.

[Kyoto Kid]

[Continued Derail]

[ Spoiler ]

...applause. That is one of the most concise summations I have seen on this board (much better than the diatribe going on in the hijack of the original Game Level thread).

Yeah a lot of your points hit home for me as well. However, it goes deeper for me than the rules themselves.

About 2/3 the way into the first run of my Rhapsody in Shadow campaign 4th ed was released. I had high hopes of submitting RiS for publication when this occurred. I still finished the campaign but it seemed a hollow gesture. Everything I spent time writing after reading through the London Sourcebook, Germany Sourcebook, Shadows of Europe, & Shadows of Asia (Russia) suddenly seemed all for naught.

*Bang* it was now 2070. *Bang* Deckers and Riggers (a major facet of the campaign) were no longer unique. *Bang* the Matrix was now wireless and Cyberdecks now were dinosaurs just as mainframes are in RL today. Anyone, even a mage, could now get a top of the line commlink, programmes and agents. Beforehand, you had to be really good (and crafty) to own an Excalibur and be able to wield the dreaded Blackhammer. Prior to '64, runners were truly an "invisible" segment of the population. Credsticks were used as methods of payment & Fake IDs were only needed on a mission by mission basis. Following the crash, the Shadows (and I have said this before) no longer seemed like the shadows anymore.

The trouble was everyone I know seemed to flock to the new and abandon the old. Suddenly we were back to square one. None of the older supplements (save for a a couple of the total fluff ones maybe) were compatible because of the change to the mechanics. True the Core book was more comprehensive than earlier editions and I admire that, but there were a lot of things we had become so accustomed to which suddenly "disappeared". We've had to wait months, in some cases over a year, for the world to begin "fleshing out" again. Meanwhile that stack of SR3 books on my floor now looked more useful for propping up the coffee table that is missing a leg. (worth many times more than the coffee table they'd support). I shudder to think what is going on in the D&D community with WotC announcing their 4th ed as that game has more supplements/sourcebooks, most of which hardbound and therefore a more expensive (my copy of the Forgotten Realms core book listed for 49.95$)

It's not so much that the rules themselves are inherently bad (when kept in context of the new mechanic), it's more the total deviation that happened that made hundreds of dollars of material and hours upon hours of campaign development pretty much worthless that vexes me.

Yeah, I've been forced to succumb to pressure and pretty much realise If I want to keep playing SR I have to "cut the cord" so to say and join the "brave new post crash 2.0 world."

If there is any one facet I do not like in 4th, it is bringing in a "luck" factor that has such a sweeping effect. It's kind of like "Reset" on a videogame. In previous editions, you had one chance to keep a character alive when she faced certain death (and she had top burn all her Karma Pool and good karma to do so). Now she gets as many attempts to cheat death as she has Edge attribute, and she can buy that back with Karma. Even in D&D, you needed a lot to bring a character back from the dead whole and unscathed by the experience.

The one other thing that kind of irks me (and somewhat related to the OT) is how Adepts (my favourite next to Riggers) were crocked. For one, they were really not adjusted to fit the new scale (4 in the new = 6 in the old etc.). Few if any of the powers were adjusted accordingly in cost and a couple actually increased. Basically an Adept with an MA of 4 in 4th is pretty much the same as an adept with and MA of 4 in 3rd even though now she needs to spend a good chunk of BPs to even have an MA. Furthermore with the double whammy of having to both initiate and increase MA to gain new powers, this makes Adepts progress at worse than a snail's pace unless every mission is a Karma haul. Meanwhile Mages have a number of other ways to improve their primary abilities outside of initiation, from Spirit assistance to Foci, to tweaking spells, to overcasting. So in a sense, an Adept is much more of a "Karma whore" than a mage.

...OK, now I feel better. :grinbig:

End of rant...

[/derail]

[Fortune]

[Glyph]

overall, adepts actually do pretty well in SR4, although if you want to min-max them, you have to go about it differently than in SR3. Offensively, they have improved ability, weapon foci, and attunement for extra dice. Defensively, they have combat sense and mystic armor, and combat sense combined with counterstrike can give them even more offensive dice. Weapon foci and killing hands make them far more effective against spirits. Kinesics makes adepts hands-down the best faces, even if you don't stack it with cool resolve, improved ability, or tailored pheromes. They also have lots of powers oriented towards athletics and stealth, and lots of relatively cheap useful powers such as sustenance, nimble fingers, commanding voice, etc.

As always, they are better at specialist than generalist roles (which, given how SR4 rewards specialists in general, puts them in a good place).

The major changes are that initiative is more important, and that a point of Essense or two in bioware is a much more tempting prospect.

[knasser]

Spoilered because everyone else is doing it...

[ Spoiler ]

QUOTE (kk)

If there is any one facet I do not like in 4th, it is bringing in a "luck" factor that has such a sweeping effect. It's kind of like "Reset" on a videogame. In previous editions, you had one chance to keep a character alive when she faced certain death (and she had top burn all her Karma Pool and good karma to do so). Now she gets as many attempts to cheat death as she has Edge attribute, and she can buy that back with Karma. Even in D&D, you needed a lot to bring a character back from the dead whole and unscathed by the experience.

I'm with you on that (and my heart bleeds for you and the devastation 4th edition wreaks on so much accumulated material). You might want to check out my [very short] list of house rules. I didn't like the introduction of "luck" into the game either and the best change I made was to start everyone on the minimum Edge for their race and tie them to a fixed progression. It has a very positive effect on the feel of the game. My house rules are here.

[Stahlseele]

yeah, i forgot to mention magical guys now being able to be almost as good at hacking as only the hacker should be . . but hey, you guys managed to rerail the thread *g*