Adept power costs, I know I'm not the only one who thinks they're insane. Options

[PlatonicPimp]

I eliminated the difference between combat and non-combat skills for improved ability. Because in my games focus has shifted from the adept as kickass kung-fu master to magically-enhanced specialist. Essentially It started with the social adept, as that has always been way overpowered, and ended with me saying "why treat combat skills as more important during one aspect of character creation and not any other?" Everything costs .5 pp per bonus die now.

[ElFenrir]

I dunno, something still sits wrong with me with some of the power costs. YMMV, I suppose. I mean, I'm cool with ware being tempting(again, with lower costs-it still is.)

Pulling up some math I did again, I'll take human A and human B; A is a pure adept, B is a sam. Both are, say, Blade specialists.

The sam starts the game with a natural 5 Agility(40 BP), and decides to get it to 9 via augmentations; he takes Restricted Gear(Muscle Toner) for 5 BP, and picks up rating 4, for 32,000 nuyen(7 BP.) He picks up Blades(Swords) 6+2(26 BP), and picks up a Reflex Recorder(10k, or 2 BP) for Blades. He rolls 18 dice before modifers with blades, and this whole thing cost him a grand total of 80 BP. Keep in mind his Agility 9 links to lots and lots of other skills, giving him big die pools in things like Infiltration, Firearms, and anything else linked to the stat. He's only spent .9 Essence as well, so has 5.1 essence and can still get a lot more nuyen to enhance his other abilities.

The adept picks up 5 Agility as well(40 BP), Adept(5 BP), and a Magic of 6(65 BP.) He also gets his Blades(Swords) 6+2 for 26 BP. But since he's pure, right now he's throwing 13 dice. Now, that's really nice for no augmentations yet. But he's already spent 136 BP. Now, he has 6 power points. The player wants to make an equal character to the sam. So he drops 1.5 Power Points on +3 to Blades(max he can get), and goes up to 16 DP. Almost there. To get two more, by RAW, he either needs to boost his natural agility to 6(25 BP) and spent 1 point more on +1 Agility, or spend 3 of his remaining power points on +2 Agility(after 6, it's TWO per level, remember.) Let's say he goes with the former. So he's spent 25 more BP(161), and his power points now sit at 2.5 spent, with 3.5 left. Well, he managed to equal the same in Blades, at least, for all of this.

But the Sam has a lot more wiggle-room now. For a combat character, we all know IPs are important-at LEAST 1. The adept is pure...and he needs an extra IP. So there goes 2 of his BP, leaving him with half a point left for other stuff. That's it. Now, if houserules are used, the Adept might be able to take an old-time Geas to lower this cost to 1.5, allowing him 1.5 power points left to boost himself in other ways.

Now, both characters are limited to their 9 agility max. The adept can get his through initation or whatnot-but...well, he still has to pay more for it. The same will no doubt have better stats all around, 3 IPs rather than two, and other stuff on top of it. His DPs will probably be bigger across the entire board than the physad.

You might say that the Adept can just take the 2 die ''penalty'' versus the sam, and save the 25 BP and an extra power point. This is indeed true...but, he will STILL be ending up shortchanged. The adept player realizes it's just better to play a hybrid if he wants...even with the 1-2 point Magic hit at the start, this can be made up for later and it's more than worth it.

Lower the Attribute boost cost to .5/level, with no increase past the normal racial max. Now, the Adept can not max his Agility(leaving it at 5), and get a nice Agility boost for 2 points(+4), so he can at least match the same in some ways. He has 4 BP left, 2 of which go to an extra IP, and 2 more to spend on other things(perhaps boosting his survivability, other skills, etc.) Now, it's STILL a bit more worth it to go the ''ware route''-as technically, he'll be saving even more Power Points. But at LEAST the latter version can hang much better with the sam and not always feel outclassed. I don't think lowering the cost of some powers will make pure adepts the only way to go, but I just want to see them be able to hang better than they do now. (Other costs I think need adjustment too, as I said-and there ARE some powers-namely social powers-that I think could stand to be increased, since the opposite happens-one almost needs to be an adept to be the ultimate face.)

Both can still upgrade-the adept with initiation, the sam by getting things like beta-grade, even delta-grade, ware to stuff more into himself.

It also makes adepts nicer for ''average length'' campaigns. Again YMMV here, but Adepts reaching these grand levels of power tend to happens in much longer campaigns, unless you have high Karma rewards. Still, the prices aren't *that* discounted that it will make the Adept explode ahead in two months of play.

I guess what I'm trying to do with this rules collection I've been compiling is to make either cyber or magic folks fully viable within their roles, to personal preference. Will some still be sort of optimal, like the ''hybrid'' physad? Sure, but at least the pures aren't left outside.

That being said, I think magic works fine as it is, and I too tend to add a couple of points of ware to my mages-though I've seen regular mages do juuuust fine without a drop of cyber. The classic physad, however, i've seen struggle too often to not feel that something is off with the costs as they are now.

[Clyde]

+1. Well said, ElFenrir.

[InfinityzeN]

If nothing else, try using a house rule from something that was standard in SR3. If an Adept spends 20 Karma, they gain 1 additional PP worth of powers. You could break it down so that they can buy .25PP (5 Karma) and .5PP (10 Karma) powers as well.

I would set a hard limit on it of no more than Magic x2 PP total, so that initiation still has some value to it. I would also work the math out so that a lose of Magic results in a comparable loss of the PP total. [(New Magic/Old Magic) * PP] Ex... Joe the Adept has 6 Magic, 6.0 Essence, and 9 PP. He gets a datajack (don't ask me why) and drops to 5 Magic and 5.8 Essence. (5/6)*9 = 7.5PP, so he would lose 1.5PP.

I do agree that the two different cost for skills, the cost for Improve Ability, and a couple of the other powers are a little wonky. You can always spot something wonky by checking to see if a power is taken by every build no matter what (ether way to powerful or to powerful for the cost) or never taken even if it matches the concept (not powerful enough to be useful or way to expensive for the effect).

[Muspellsheimr]

I suggest using the Tweaking the Rules option of allowing a Power Point Metamagic for Adepts to take, and allowing additional Metamagics to be purchased at 15 Karma each.

I will be posting suggested changes to the effects & costs of BBB powers later tonight. I have not yet really gone through Street Magic or Digital Grimoire, so while I have a few changes to those, I will not include them yet.