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> Why is Mystic Adept cheaper than Magician?
rathmun
post May 13 2009, 09:27 AM
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You could just take mystic adept and put all your magic points towards spellcasting instead of powers. This would (RAW) save you 5 points.
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Knight Saber
post May 13 2009, 09:31 AM
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QUOTE (rathmun @ May 13 2009, 02:27 AM) *
You could just take mystic adept and put all your magic points towards spellcasting instead of powers. This would (RAW) save you 5 points.


Though you wouldn't have any astral perception (unless you diverted some points to the adept power) and never any astral projection. Those are important and useful powers.
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DuctShuiTengu
post May 13 2009, 09:36 AM
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Mystic Adepts (IIRC) don't have the ability to do the Astral stuff that Magicians can. To even be able to see Astral stuff requires an Adept Power for them.

Whether that loss is worth the 5 points is another question and likely varies from one game to another.
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ornot
post May 13 2009, 11:27 AM
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If you take the aspected mage qualities from Street Magic, you don't need to play around with mystic adepts. You can be a mage from as little as 5BPs if you just want to focus on one aspect of magic.

The full mage costs 15BP cos they have the most powers (astral, spellslinging and summoning).
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Mordinvan
post May 13 2009, 12:48 PM
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A mystic adept who spends the points on astral perception, and gets the invoking metamagic actually has no real issue replicating the feats of a magician. They just need a guidance spirit in their tradition I think, as its great from power is astral gateway.
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paws2sky
post May 13 2009, 02:06 PM
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QUOTE (Mordinvan @ May 13 2009, 08:48 AM) *
A mystic adept who spends the points on astral perception, and gets the invoking metamagic actually has no real issue replicating the feats of a magician. They just need a guidance spirit in their tradition I think, as its great from power is astral gateway.


That's a lot of hurdles to jump through, as well as the time and karma you'll spend, to replicate what another character can do at character creation.

And not every tradition has access to Guidance spirits, of course.

One solid advantage Mystic Adepts have over regular Magicians is the ability to take "adept only" metamagics.

-paws
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Zurai
post May 13 2009, 04:41 PM
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QUOTE (Mordinvan @ May 13 2009, 07:48 AM) *
A mystic adept who spends the points on astral perception, and gets the invoking metamagic actually has no real issue replicating the feats of a magician.


Yes, but they'll also have lower effective Magic than a true Magician with the same Magic score. A Mystic Adept MUST spend at least 1 Magic on power points in order to get the ability to astrally perceive. That means that, at a minimum, they cast spells at 1 die lower than a Magician with the same Magic score.
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Kev
post May 13 2009, 05:08 PM
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Let's not forget they are completely without the ability to astrally project and summon (which is the greater of the two missing abilities). Those abilities cannot be replicated later; only full magicians would ever have access to those.
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paws2sky
post May 13 2009, 05:11 PM
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QUOTE (Kev @ May 13 2009, 01:08 PM) *
Let's not forget they are completely without the ability to astrally project and summon (which is the greater of the two missing abilities). Those abilities cannot be replicated later; only full magicians would ever have access to those.


Emphasis mine. Where did you get that idea?

-paws
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Mordinvan
post May 13 2009, 05:32 PM
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I'm pretty sure they can summon, which is why possession tradition mystic adepts with channeling can be such a pain, cause they can boost all their physical stats by the force of the last spirit they summoned if they feel like it.
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Writer
post May 13 2009, 05:34 PM
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I imagine the mystic adept is the best route to becoming a Jedi!! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
I mean, you get the fun bonuses to fight in melee, but you can also use levitate, mind control, and other nifty Jedi tricks.
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Screaming Eagle
post May 13 2009, 06:35 PM
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I am SO writing up a Sith Lord for my group to tangle with later... Danke shune.
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Meatbag
post May 13 2009, 06:48 PM
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As noted above, the loss of the Astral aspects can be a hit Personally, though, if such a "Mystic Adept" crossed my table, I'd veto it.

QUOTE (BBB @ pg. 79, Mystic Adept)
Though this quality is inexpensive, gamemasters should be
careful not to allow it to be abused. It should only be taken for
characters that intend to explore their nature as mystic adepts.


A Mystic Adept is "a hybrid between Magicians and Adepts". If you allocate all your points to spells, you're not exploring your nature as a Mystic Adept, but an astrally gimped Magician. I'm explicitly within my rights to shut that down.

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paws2sky
post May 13 2009, 07:49 PM
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As I recall, don't the descriptions of Adept, Magician, and Technomancer have similar clauses?

-paws
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Mordinvan
post May 13 2009, 07:57 PM
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QUOTE (Meatbag @ May 13 2009, 11:48 AM) *
As noted above, the loss of the Astral aspects can be a hit Personally, though, if such a "Mystic Adept" crossed my table, I'd veto it.



A Mystic Adept is "a hybrid between Magicians and Adepts". If you allocate all your points to spells, you're not exploring your nature as a Mystic Adept, but an astrally gimped Magician. I'm explicitly within my rights to shut that down.


Question is, 'why would you bother to'?
If the player doesn't want to deal with the Astral, then I don't see a problem with that. They would be limited in their ability to do recon, or have any fun on the metaplains.
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Screaming Eagle
post May 13 2009, 08:24 PM
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If I could get just the astral portion of being a mage (making wards, projection and perception) for the 5 points the PC is "saving"... I'm not sure what I'd do... Take it on every character I ever build who even vaguely appropriate who isn't going to be cybered to the gills? I'm of the opinion Mystic Adept is slightly over priced, definitly so if you are disregarding the Physical Adept tricks you could be swinging.
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Caadium
post May 13 2009, 08:27 PM
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QUOTE (Meatbag @ May 13 2009, 10:48 AM) *
As noted above, the loss of the Astral aspects can be a hit Personally, though, if such a "Mystic Adept" crossed my table, I'd veto it.



A Mystic Adept is "a hybrid between Magicians and Adepts". If you allocate all your points to spells, you're not exploring your nature as a Mystic Adept, but an astrally gimped Magician. I'm explicitly within my rights to shut that down.


I fully understand and agree with where you are coming from here. This screams of extreme munchkinism, so a NO is something I'd be inclined to start with. However, as I think about it, I'm generally more cruel than just saying no. In fact, after thinking about it or a moment, this is what I would call Bad munchkinism because its something that is way to easy for a gm to exploit.

I'd probably take a moment to ask the player if they really thought that being astrally helpless was worth 5 bp. If they didn't understand what I was getting at I'd explain the risks. If they still wanted to go this route I figure I've got one of 2 situations. Either the player is new and doesn't really know what they are getting into (especially after a GM warning of how dangerous it could be). If this is the case I'd try to educate the player or guide them to something more suited to their experience level as a last resort. Or, the player has something in mind and is willing to risk things for 5 bp. In this case I'd ask for more information on the concept and see what we could come up with. This wouldn't make the character immune from astral torment though.

Edit: Of course, although this is not RAW (I think, I don't have my book with me so I could be wrong), a GM could rule that if a Mystic Adept ever had zero magic points allocated to Power Points or pure Magic then they loose the that ability and aspect forever. This isn't far from the mage whose Magic dips to 0 for one reason or another; even if they still had room to raise it via karma, its too late. This type of ruling would force the above example Mystic Adept to consider buying some Adept powers at the get go, thus reducing their magic, or lose that as an option later, meaning no buying astral perception or adept only metamagics later.
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TheOOB
post May 13 2009, 09:22 PM
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Astral projection is just so darn useful, it's worth the five points. Besides spell slingers almost need astral perception(to erase their sigs), which means at the very least you will be 1 magic down from a magician.
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Mordinvan
post May 14 2009, 02:51 AM
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QUOTE (Caadium @ May 13 2009, 02:27 PM) *
I fully understand and agree with where you are coming from here. This screams of extreme munchkinism, so a NO is something I'd be inclined to start with. However, as I think about it, I'm generally more cruel than just saying no. In fact, after thinking about it or a moment, this is what I would call Bad munchkinism because its something that is way to easy for a gm to exploit.

I'd probably take a moment to ask the player if they really thought that being astrally helpless was worth 5 bp. If they didn't understand what I was getting at I'd explain the risks. If they still wanted to go this route I figure I've got one of 2 situations. Either the player is new and doesn't really know what they are getting into (especially after a GM warning of how dangerous it could be). If this is the case I'd try to educate the player or guide them to something more suited to their experience level as a last resort. Or, the player has something in mind and is willing to risk things for 5 bp. In this case I'd ask for more information on the concept and see what we could come up with. This wouldn't make the character immune from astral torment though.

Edit: Of course, although this is not RAW (I think, I don't have my book with me so I could be wrong), a GM could rule that if a Mystic Adept ever had zero magic points allocated to Power Points or pure Magic then they loose the that ability and aspect forever. This isn't far from the mage whose Magic dips to 0 for one reason or another; even if they still had room to raise it via karma, its too late. This type of ruling would force the above example Mystic Adept to consider buying some Adept powers at the get go, thus reducing their magic, or lose that as an option later, meaning no buying astral perception or adept only metamagics later.

Like background count? which actually reduces a characters magic score?
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Tymeaus Jalynsfe...
post May 14 2009, 03:25 AM
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QUOTE (Mordinvan @ May 13 2009, 08:51 PM) *
Like background count? which actually reduces a characters magic score?



Temporarily at least...
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toturi
post May 14 2009, 03:27 AM
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QUOTE (Meatbag @ May 14 2009, 02:48 AM) *
As noted above, the loss of the Astral aspects can be a hit Personally, though, if such a "Mystic Adept" crossed my table, I'd veto it.



A Mystic Adept is "a hybrid between Magicians and Adepts". If you allocate all your points to spells, you're not exploring your nature as a Mystic Adept, but an astrally gimped Magician. I'm explicitly within my rights to shut that down.

Actually that's no exactly true. The player can state that he is intending to explore his nature as a Mystic Adept in game. Then you no longer have the right to shut it down based on that part of the Quality. Furthermore, all he needs to do to justify not having adept powers is simple, his teacher never did encourage him to explore that side of his nature. A Mystic Adept being tutored in the ways of magic by a Magician for example. The Magician master doesn't have adept capability so he can't teach his pupil how to do so.

I will not be so quick to shut down such a character concept based on his allocating all his points to his Magician side. After all, all Awakened Qualities start with just Magic 1 and you can't allocate half a point.
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darthmord
post May 14 2009, 12:06 PM
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Toturi, SM states you can save partial points for later use. That is in effect, allocation of less than a whole point.

Otherwise, I'm onboard with you.
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toturi
post May 14 2009, 01:25 PM
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QUOTE (darthmord @ May 14 2009, 08:06 PM) *
Toturi, SM states you can save partial points for later use. That is in effect, allocation of less than a whole point.

Otherwise, I'm onboard with you.

Got a page quote for that?

The only partial point rule I got is the one in SR4 - p187. "Characters can save partial points if they choose." But this applies to partial Power Points, not points of Magic.
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darthmord
post May 14 2009, 03:07 PM
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My bad, I referring to Power Points, not Magic per se. I took your original post as referring to Power Points, not Magic.
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Caadium
post May 14 2009, 03:54 PM
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QUOTE (toturi @ May 13 2009, 07:27 PM) *
Actually that's no exactly true. The player can state that he is intending to explore his nature as a Mystic Adept in game. Then you no longer have the right to shut it down based on that part of the Quality.


As a GM, a person can restrict any quality they want for whatever reason they want. Just because a player parrots a line in the book, doesn't give it a free pass. *IF* I was inclined to say no to a player for this (not likely as I've already said I'd use other methods to discourage the type of power gaming suggested by the OP), I'd insist on a more detailed explanation and background to demonstrate how they meant that? Furthermore, a GM is well within their right to insist that a person can't "explore his nature as a Mystic Adept" without having any "Adept" in the mix.

QUOTE (toturi @ May 13 2009, 07:27 PM) *
Furthermore, all he needs to do to justify not having adept powers is simple, his teacher never did encourage him to explore that side of his nature. A Mystic Adept being tutored in the ways of magic by a Magician for example. The Magician master doesn't have adept capability so he can't teach his pupil how to do so.


If this was the answer I got, I'd ding them 5 BP, make sure they had enough space left in their positive BP, and then make them a magician matching the order of their teacher. Shamans don't learn how to be mages from Hermetics, and Magician Way Mystic Adepts don't learn how to spell sling from the others. At least not in my game.

QUOTE (toturi @ May 13 2009, 07:27 PM) *
I will not be so quick to shut down such a character concept based on his allocating all his points to his Magician side. After all, all Awakened Qualities start with just Magic 1 and you can't allocate half a point.


As I said earlier, I woudn't simply say no. If it was a case where I thought the player was trying to pull a fast one just to skimp on some BP (for example an Eagle Shapeshifter Mystic Adept ... who by being dual natured only loses the speed of pure astral projection), then I'd say no. My earlier comment about not having allocated points to both aspects obviously is in relation to a full character and not a Magic 1 pupil type. If I had a player that said they wanted to explore the nature of being a recently awakened Mystic Adept, with a Magic of 1, I'd be all for that and would let them advance both aspects. That being said, any GM would be well within their rights to insist that a character like this use the 2nd magic point on the aspect not focused on with the first (for example Mystic Adpet with Magic 1 can sling spells then at Magic 2 they get a power point).

Earlier it was stated that an advantage of Mystic Adepts is getting the Adept only Metamagics. Even if a GM didn't care how the player split their magic, I feel they'd be well within their rights to deny a Mystic Adept with no Adept power access to Adept only metamagics. The simple argument is that you have no adept abilites and therefore do not qualify.

Just my thoughts though.
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