[X] My Assistant

[Kyoto Kid]

[Stahlseele]

ok, that's the second thing of SR4 i find good . . rules for late awakening . . even though you still can not explain cyber in there because cyber taken before awakening will weaken magical attribute and thus effectively stop you from awakening <.< . .
but into mages i would basically cram everything that helps save karma later on . . mnemonic enhancer in 3rd, the adept power of linguistics, and that one meta technic

[Glyph]

[ThreeGee]

[Fortune]

[Fortune]

[Glyph]

[ElFenrir]

[Stahlseele]

exactly my sentiments . . there is no such mthing as a munchkin character in a world where you die if you're not the best you can be . . and even then you still die if you're simply STILL not good enough . . One-Trick-Ponies have every right of existance concerning the WORLD of shadowrun . . even if they play boring like hell, if you're doing it wrong/right *g*

[Whipstitch]

If ThreeGee would stop for a second and take a good hard look at shadowrun characters and the world they live in, I think it'd be pretty hard for him not to admit that there is a pretty good amount of 'ware that makes perfect sense within the context of the setting for even a 3 or 4 magic wage mage to have installed.

For example, let's say you've got a talented young wage mage fresh out of college and he gets recruited by AresSpace. He's a hard working young kid, but he's got average attributes and is only professional level in his magical skills and is untrained in everything else; the only "amazing" thing about him is a magic of 4 and his family's long pedigree of being stable, reliable employees. Take that kid, slap in a Cerebral Booster 2, SkillWire 2, Trauma Dampers, tricked out rating 2 Cybereyes and suddenly you've got a star employee. Sure, it costs more than 72,000¥ once the costs of a pair of rating 2 ActiveSofts are factored in, but in exchange you get a mage who can cast well even in poor weather conditions, tosses 7 dice in both the Hardware and Aeronautics mechanics skills before high quality tools and AR schematics are factored in plus he routinely soaks the drain from Force 3 spirits completely, which is pretty damn good when you consider how useful the Guard and Movement powers are to a company whose entire business model hinges on the ability to speed things up to escape velocity and safely test new aerotechnologies. And that's just what you get with an almost painfully average career mage. The corporations efficiently do some amazingly difficult stuff on a routine basis in the Shadowrun universe, and if you think cybered mages aren't a part of that, then frankly I don't know what to tell you.

[Ravor]

Well, I'd have to strongly disagree with the idea of one-trick-ponies and huge dicepools.

[Glyph]

Why do people always bring up one-trick ponies and huge dice pools as if they were complementary? It is very easy to have a huge dice pool, and still have a well-rounded character. Even maxed-out builds like my pornomancer build or Cain's Mr. Lucky build are still functional characters outside of their specialties.

[Kyoto Kid]

...whether or not a player decides to optimise an adept through artificial means of augmentation is pretty much up to them and I would not stop a someone from doing so in any of my campaigns as long as they followed the rules in doing so. Heck, I have a Reporter Adept /"sort of Face" character who has a fair amount of sense and headware because it fits in with her occupation and some of it (such as vidcams, audio recording and signal transmission) cannot be duplicated by the Improved Senses power.

The point for someone such as myself who would like to play a "straight" Adept is that the resulting character, no matter how well designed, will be inferior to a mundane who invests the same number of BPs into resources for augmentation. 45 BPs (cost of the Adept quality and MA of 5) translates to 225,000 :nuyen:, which can go a long way for building a tough combatant. Yes an Adept can eventually eclipse the Sammy but it takes a long time and a lot of Karma to do so. This is why I'm beginning to feel that the "classic" physad in Shadowrun may have sadly become yesterday's news.

[Ravor]

Glyph

Because the majority of huge dicepool builds that tend to pop up aren't well rounded characters that could thrive without a team of specialists for support. I don't remember The Pornomancer off the top of my head, but Mr Lucky does seem to be one of the few that appears to be a viable character. (Not one that I would ever allow in my games, but viable none the less.)

Kyoto Kid

You see, I agree with your basic points with the exception that I personally see it as a good thing, any Awakened character going the "pure route" should be inferior to a mundane character cybering up, not for game balance reasons, but because I believe it fits with the Cyberpunk genre.

Now, if there was an actual cost to a character's soul that came from wielding mojo as opposed to simply winning life's lottery then I'd agree that the two options should be fairly equal.

[Glyph]

As far as the specialist vs. generalist debate, I think specialists will tend to do better and get better paying jobs. And a team of specialists is basically one of the core game concepts.

That said, you can take specialization too far. I feel that one of the litmus tests for a character is being able to say that this character could have survived, and made a living, prior to meeting the other characters. Also, since the game involves social interactions, legwork, sneaking or infiltrating, and combat, having a character who only has skills in one of those areas sharply limits your character.

It is not hard to get high dice pools for certain specialties, though. For combat, for example, you can have someone with Agility: 5, muscle toner: 2, skill: 6 with specialization, a reflex recorder, and a smartlink, for 18 dice without hard-maxing anything, being an elf, or being an adept. That leaves you with plenty of resources available to be good in other areas.

People newer to the game can make specialists who are too limited in other areas (although it is also even easier to overgeneralize to the point of uselessness), but in my experience, specialists can still be well-rounded outside of their specialty, and hyper-specialists can still be functional outside of their specialty.

[Jaid]

the cybered adept does lose out on a few things actually.

for example, a non-cybered adept will have a higher magic score. this may not sound all that great, but for some powers it is actually quite useful (for example, attribute boost) it also means they will have a higher cap for the rating of their powers... which is much more likely to come up if you use the infusion metamagic, of course ;)

so not the most amazing thing ever, but choosing not to dilute your magic does have some benefits.

[Riley37]

Another thing to consider in the balance between sammie, augmented adept, and unaugmented adept: astral perception can matter a lot. On my second session of SR4, my sammie got attacked by mosquito spirits (that had been stirred up in the first session), and immediately called the team's adept for help, because none of his electronics were useful against spirit ambushes.

Improved Attribute seems effective for taking the last point of a stat within normal range. Eg if you've already allocated the BP for STR 5 and MAG 4, you could pay 25 more BP for STR 6, or you could pay 10 more BP for MAG 5 and turn that fifth point of MAG into STR 5(6). If BOD is a priority, then it's one of the few ways to raise that stat; the only augmentation I can think of that raises BOD is the parathyroid. Trolls have BOD 10/15; is 10 MAG worth of Improved Attribute, or 8 MAG of IA and -1 MAG due to essence loss from the parathyroid, the only way to actually get that maxed-out 15 BOD? If so, then it must be darn rare.

[ElFenrir]

[Kyoto Kid]

...ElFenrir, thank you.

I've observed the same since 1st ed, and agree, that in 3rd they were probably at their best. The one things that did give them a bit of an edge, particularly a melee based adept as the original KK (#103) was the counterattack [not to be confused with the 4th ed counterstrike power]. She survived very well with only a 2d6 initiative because of this and a fairly high skill + combat pool (ahhh, for the old version of the Combat Sense power). In some ways she was more dangerous when on the defensive and actually could use an opponent's higher speed against them (as they had more IPs to spread their combat pool over. Because the Improved Reflexes in 3rd ed worked like Wired reflexes (adding also to Reaction) she was also a tad quicker.

I just feel that in the case of the "classic" Physad, magic shouldn't take a seat in the back of the Archetype bus just because SR is Cyberpunk as magic is so ingrained in the game to begin with. Actually magic in the form of Spirits, Awakened Critters, & Spells tend to frequently take the "driver's seat" (as has been discussed Ad nauseam in the "Magic vs. Mundane" threads that pop up from time to time).

...my two zloty's worth

[Whipstitch]

Again, I rather feel like asking so what? Nine times out of ten you can make a Samurai better in several specializations by figuring out a way to make him an Adept, so I think it's rather hard to argue that magic is taking a backseat in this one; one could easily argue that BOTH archetypes are being "denigrated", it just depends on your perspective. The fact of the matter is as a pure adept you're for all intents and purposes giving up the option of really progressing through nuyen, and don't know what to tell you if you don't expect that to slow you down.

[Ravor]

Not much I can add to Whipstitch's post, other then to say that I disagree with the idea that magic does take the "driver's seat" in the from of Spirits/Spells/Critters if all of the rules are being properly applied and the DM assumes that the corps don't pay retarded children to design their countermeasures, if anything runners are usually better off choosing the mundane over the mystical if both options are possible.

[pbangarth]

There is one, I guess fluff, aspect that I haven't seen people address yet.

As it is today, and as I see the Shadowrun future being depicted, there are vast areas of the world in which the cutting edge of technology is not available, for financial reasons if nothing else. Even the allegedly ubiquitous internet of today is inaccessible in many parts of the world. Much less high-tech medical facilities.

On the other hand, there are precious few places on Earth where the mana wouldn't flow. So, there should be large populations from which it would be less likely that technologically enhanced people would come, but yet magically enhanced people would be as likely to come as anywhere else. Therefore, there should be some places where the people who stand out (shadowrunners?) would more likely be magically enhanced than technologically enhanced. It is from just such a population that you might find runners who have opted for the purely magical route, despite the 'min-max' advantages of mixed techno-mages.

Once their talents do stand out, they would be drawn to centres of intrigue and commerce, there to interact with the full range of runners. It seems to me there is lots of reason for there to be people who have chosen or have chosen for them a path without technology.

Doesn't that make sense?

[Ravor]

Sure, it makes sense, provided that the "pure" Awakened realizes that by not embracing technology he is simply weighing himself down.

It then becomes a roleplaying issue whether or not his identity is tied up enough in his "purity" that he is willing to accept being "second tier" in his new stomping grounds or if he too is willing to evolve and embrace technology in order to keep SOTA.

[pbangarth]

Alright then, Ravor, but is there no room in the Shadowrun universe you espouse for the character (not player) who sees that technology is limiting in the long run, and chooses to bide his time and grow his magic into power?

I understand that having a big bang right away is good for business, but everyone, no matter how tough, has to pick the fights he can win. An astute character would do that whether he is cybered or pure magic. So, if you are correct and the pure-magic beginner is at a disadvantage in the beginning, then I guess he would have to take the smaller jobs for longer. This kind of decision is made thousands of times every day by businesses large and small.

This may or may not be attractive to the player of that character, but game-years down the road, when his character rocks, it may not be so hard to take.

[Whipstitch]

I doubt that either I or Ravor would argue with that. There's no law anywhere set in stone that Adepts can't try and shoot for purity in order to amp powers as much as possible, it just takes a long time to pay off.