Insane 'cheese' with adepts and Infusion foci, ... can you say "skill monkey?" Options

[pbangarth]

EDIT 2: This post is full of errors. If you care to view my embarrassment, read further. Peter

Infusion foci are described on p.7 of Digital Grimoire. Every Force point of focus gives 0.5 adept power points for use with the Infusion advanced metamagic.

Out of chargen, a character can come with foci whose Forces add to 5 times her Magic attribute. (SR4, p. 85) For Infusion foci, every Force point costs 4 BP (1 to bind, 3 for the 15,000 nuyen). The availability of (10 X R) makes only Force 1 Infusion foci available at chargen, unless the Restricted Gear Quality is taken (RC, p. 101).

So, theoretically, a starting adept with Magic 5 could come into play with 100 BP of foci stuffed with puny little adept powers, most at 0.5 point worth, perhaps a couple at 1.0 point worth. And, of course, they can't be used to add together to make a whopping big power. Also, no good to her yet, because she isn't Initiated.

Then, after two Initiations, the first to get Adept Centering, the second to get Infusion, she has up to 12.5 EXTRA adept power points to choose from, and she doesn't have to pay the burnout for sucking powers out of an Infusion focus. And likely no Focus Addiction because only a few F1's would be on at once.

Cheesy, huh? She could take that 5 power point Increased reflexes for 4 IP, because she -knows- what will come soon.

EDIT 1: replaced 'drain' with 'burnout'

[masterofm]

Foci don't stack. Unless Digital Grimoire put something into the rules I haven't seen before. If you have the same types of foci to try to massively power up a certain adept power you can only use the highest foci power. Also the other drawback to your plan is logic is linked to how many foci you can have active at once. 5 logic = 5 foci, 2 logic = 2 and so on.

[Muspellsheimr]

Infusion Foci do not increase the number of Power Points available, they only expand the list of powers you can increase (or in this case, gain).

This is obscene cost for very little gain. If a player decides to try something like this, I would call them an idiot, then ignore it.

[Draxtier]

GM gets to approve or disapprove characters at creation, and this is something which would raise a big red flag at any of the tables I've played at. Even forgetting the cheesiness of this tactic for a moment, a character shouldn't try to get something at creation which is of absolutely no use to them until after they have spent 29 karma to initiate twice. I wouldn't allow a single infusion focus at creation.

"Why does your runner have this? It's juts a paperweight to him."
"Because after six months and a dozen jobs, it'll be really useful!"
"No."

[Ancient History]

Infusion foci are described on p.7 of Digital Grimoire. Every Force point of focus gives 0.5 adept power points for use with the Infusion advanced metamagic.

Not quite. The focus is charged with 0.25 Power Point's worth of adept powers for every Force point; accessing these abilities requires the Infusion metamagic. Since the Infusion metamagic normally only allows you to boost abilities you already have, infusion foci allow you to instead temporarily gain new abilities.

So, theoretically, a starting adept with Magic 5 could come into play with 100 BP of foci stuffed with puny little adept powers, most at 0.5 point worth, perhaps a couple at 1.0 point worth. And, of course, they can't be used to add together to make a whopping big power. Also, no good to her yet, because she isn't Initiated.

Well...not quite. You're limited to 50 BP on starting resources in normal character generation. If you had a Magic 5, you could bind a maximum of 25 Force worth of foci...theoretically. However, since a Force 1 infusion focus costs 3 BP (15,000 nuyen), you're really looking at no more than 50/3 ≈ 16 of them. Even then, if you read p.191, SR4, you'll see that no character can bind more foci than her Magic attribute, so while you can buy 16, you can only bond five of them at chargen, each of which would cost 1 BP to bind (which need not count against your resources).

Of course, each Force 1 infusion focus would only be charged with 0.25 power point's worth of powers, not that there aren't plenty of those.

Then, after two Initiations, the first to get Adept Centering, the second to get Infusion, she has up to 12.5 EXTRA adept power points to choose from, and she doesn't have to pay the burnout for sucking powers out of an Infusion focus. And likely no Focus Addiction because only a few F1's would be on at once.

Under the above ideal conditions, you would have five different 0.25 PP adept abilities to choose from - nothing to sneeze at, but also probably nothing to break the bank, either. You would need a 1.25 power point "boost" to use them all at the same time, and they would all be "level 1" unless you boosted them further (which works well for Great Leap, less so for Enhanced Sense (Thermographic Vision)).

[pbangarth]

Ah, I confused the amount of power the focus contains. My bad. And the amount of BP spendable on gear. My stupid. Then I miscalculated how many force points chargen allows. Holy cow! What drugs was I on? If this ain't cause to REREAD and EDIT before posting, I don't know what is.

Though my cheeks glow with embarrassment, I feel much better about the device itself.

Thanks for the kind reminders of the rules, folks.

[masterofm]

It's ok. Plus there is much more broken you can pull in this game. Trust me ; )

[Dragnar]

And this is just the right place to find it!
I'd wager someone on dumpshock could find a way to make even infusion foci overpowered. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)
I've seen builds with triple digit skill dice, triple digit armor values, double digits in every attribute and enough charisma to reliably convince people to shoot themselves on here. And all of those were really fun to read about, in a proof-of-concept kind of way. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Come on guys, you can do it! I trust in you!

[pbangarth]

And this is just the right place to find it!
I'd wager someone on dumpshock could find a way to make even infusion foci overpowered. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)
I've seen builds with triple digit skill dice, triple digit armor values, double digits in every attribute and enough charisma to reliably convince people to shoot themselves on here. And all of those were really fun to read about, in a proof-of-concept kind of way. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Come on guys, you can do it! I trust in you!

With the REAL costs and powers, it would seem to be pretty hard. The availability in particular makes them hard to abuse.

At chargen, with a Magic Attribute of 5, and 15 BP worth of Restricted Gear Qualities, the adept could have 5 Infusion foci, 2 of which have 0.25 power points, and 3 of which have 0.5 power points, for a total of 2.0 extra power points of powers that don't 'stack'.

So, would a character want to preclude other, immediately usable foci or other gear/skills/contacts/attributes for these? For example, the above 5 foci and attendant Qualities and binding would cost 28 BP; whereas a Force 4 Weapon focus would cost 4 BP binding + 8 BP materials + 5 BP Restricted Gear Quality = 17 BP. Or, simply, bumping the Magic Attribute up to 6 would cost 25 BP and give a point of adept powers that are readily available and don't cause Drain.

Damn. I was SO proud of the cheese!