[X] My Assistant

[Fatum]

In teh long run, the adept (or mystic adept) simply overwhelms as they can get any advantage the sammy can get, and get all sorts of other bonusses on top.

Frankly, I doubt that, minding that sammies put both nuyens and Karma to good use, and adepts are mostly Karma--dependent. What are you going to spend money on with a non-mystic adept to enhance your combat abilities? Weapon and infusion foci?

[Whipstitch]

Obviously this is going to differ from GM to GM since it really depends on what kind of world they run, but here's my general take on background count incidence.

Despite my brutal murder comment, I tend to agree with Valashar when it comes to how quickly background counts develop. I suspect that in general you need a bit of prolonged activity or a certain amount of notoriety to develop the kind of bad/good vibes that would result in a domain. "Naturally" occurring Domains are in part a residual effect of emotional outpouring, after all, and perhaps it's even related a bit to Naming, since it sounds to me like the area and incidents need to sort of take on a life of their own before they come into their own as strong domains. For example, even if I were to be randomly murdered, my home would still be unlikely to have a background count on the level of say, the Sharon Tate house, since the latter came to be identified strongly with that particular incident and lord knows all manner of rubber neckers and tourists have driven by it at some point and said "Man, that Manson Family family shit was crazy." Basically, if an incident isn't influential enough to change the location's destiny, the background count is unlikely to have real staying power if it develops at all.

[CanadianWolverin...]

Obviously this is going to differ from GM to GM since it really depends on what kind of world they run, but here's my general take on background count incidence.

Despite my brutal murder comment, I tend to agree with Valashar when it comes to how quickly background counts develop. I suspect that in general you need a bit of prolonged activity or a certain amount of notoriety to develop the kind of bad/good vibes that would result in a domain. "Naturally" occurring Domains are in part a residual effect of emotional outpouring, after all, and perhaps it's even related a bit to Naming, since it sounds to me like the area and incidents need to sort of take on a life of their own before they come into their own as strong domains. For example, even if I were to be randomly murdered, my home would still be unlikely to have a background count on the level of say, the Sharon Tate house, since the latter came to be identified strongly with that particular incident and lord knows all manner of rubber neckers and tourists have driven by it at some point and said "Man, that Manson Family family shit was crazy." Basically, if an incident isn't influential enough to change the location's destiny, the background count is unlikely to have real staying power if it develops at all.

I like your take on background count. I was thinking pretty close to the same thing, for a place to get a vibe it needs feedback, it has to feed off of how other people feel/think/perceive it.

I like Adepts because when it comes down to it, I don't like spells or cyber - merely personal preference, not saying I don't mind it when others like it and play it. So if it can be gained through cyber or spells? I don't care, still love the "flavour". What can I say, I also like the monk class in that other "RP" game but I don't feel as punished as an Adept as I do when I play the Monk class, the BP system is far more flexible and enjoyable - I never seemed to be able to roll 3 sixes for my D&D characters while others did, not surprisingly I didn't see much of the spotlight ever. So it surprises me that anyone questions this or that being strong in various areas, I love how if the GM isn't being a dick, everyone can get a bit of the spotlight in the first IP and as long as you don't think of combat as the end all be all, especially amongst runner teams that mimic Ocean's Eleven, the spot light chances expand immensely.

*grumble grumble* I want a Neverwinter Nights 2 type PC game for Shadowrun already. Bah, just ignore me, I suffer from a dead zone for pen & paper RPG thanks to my low charisma stat and social skill set, I default a lot and its not pretty.

[LurkerOutThere]

Frankly, I doubt that, minding that sammies put both nuyens and Karma to good use, and adepts are mostly Karma--dependent. What are you going to spend money on with a non-mystic adept to enhance your combat abilities? Weapon and infusion foci?

Most of the same things the Sammy is going to spend it on, weapons, armor, gear. Sammy's can improve themselves but only to a certain threshold and after you reach that threshold each tiny improvement of performance alpha to beta, beta to delta, nets minimal gains for outrageous fees. Additionally you might not always get paid for a job, but you will always net karma.

[Saint Sithney]

For matters of BC, it might just be best to consult Street Magic page 121. There it lists a rating +1 Domain BC as a place which has either a prolonged but minor emotional imprint, like a church, or the scene of a short but violent episode, like the scene of a particularly nasty homicide. I suspect that two professional combat forces butting heads wouldn't particularly cause this reaction. While there may be a lot of adrenaline pumping, I don't think that there's a lot of emo corpsec out there getting worked up over a firefight. If you think that is the case, then I suppose dropping a BC of 1 would fit in an engagement zone.

One thing which did strike me when reading through on BC was the listing of the Taint metamagic for toxics from page 143.

Specifically this part,

Toxic magicians enjoy tainting areas that already have a predisposition
for environmental or emotional desolation, such as waste dumps,
violent crime scenes, dens of iniquity, slave and labor camps, sterile
corporate compounds, shantytowns, ghettos, and z-zones.

which seems to lump "sterile corporate compounds" in with things which typically have BC of around +1-2.
If every blacksite had a BC of +2 that would drop the Awakened runner's power considerably closer to their mundane counterparts.

[Whipstitch]

Yeah, I extrapolated most of my stance from that page, really.

It's tough to say how many compounds should really have background counts like that though. A lot of shady business is hidden away in plain site, after all. A biological weapons lab filled with glum personnel and chemical seal suits is likely going to be a different proposition than the chip manufacturers who also happen to be dabbling in illegal AI research even if both have clean rooms. Still, it's really not all that much stranger than shantytowns giving magicians trouble.

[Saint Sithney]

If anything, I'd expect a place so devoid of life or emotion to be a Mana Ebb, but, other than crater lake, the book doesn't provide any examples of a Mana Ebb outside the not quite space areas of the upper atmosphere.

[Fatum]

Most of the same things the Sammy is going to spend it on, weapons, armor, gear. Sammy's can improve themselves but only to a certain threshold and after you reach that threshold each tiny improvement of performance alpha to beta, beta to delta, nets minimal gains for outrageous fees. Additionally you might not always get paid for a job, but you will always net karma.

Most sammies I know begin campaigns with their armor and weapons modded to the max, and most of the gear their stats allow to use.
Sure, you can always upgrade, there's no arguing with that - but playing your cards right with Essence gap, you can, say, install some nasty bioware during the campaign once you scrape the resources.

[The Jopp]

Now how many times have you seen this happen?
That's basically like suddenly without warning and reason taking a samurais weapons and/or cyber away . .

...Or having the street samurai changeling with Astral Hazing standing within Essence meters close to the adept. Gonna suck to go into close combat with Astral Hazing opponents.

[Draco18s]

...Or having the street samurai changeling with Astral Hazing standing within Essence meters close to the adept. Gonna suck to go into close combat with Astral Hazing opponents.

That's what guns are for.

[McCummhail]

Could you provide an example? The only edge I see an Adept having in combat over a samurai is being able to punch ghosts and stack up bonus armor. Everything else is either infiltration or social skills. Even a fully tooled up Death Punch is less effective then a semiauto gun with AP rounds...

The Adept Combat Sense power is extremely effective, not replicable through bio/cyber and has resulted in some silly over the top character builds.

Adept Enhanced skill potential was a serious area of noise when SR4 first hit with it's skill caps.
Adept AR hackers rocked the boat early on and made mundane hackers look silly.

The oft quoted "Pornomancer" is a build where they are particularly adept at talking anyone into doing anything.

Troll adepts with anti-aircraft bows caused errata to be written.

I am sure there are other examples as well.

[Cheshyr]

Troll adepts with anti-aircraft bows caused errata to be written.

So full of win.

[LurkerOutThere]

For what it's worth I've always suspected that most coprorations would take steps to make sure the astral of their facilities was mostly clean as they benefit from magic as much if not more then shadowrunners do. It's only the true black sites that might have a perceptable background count. Aspected domains are more common for example my players are currently hitting the Japanese embassy, all those who don't fit a shintao/oriental padagram are suffering from a -2. The team's adept who is a japanese ninja is fine, the others are not so happy.

[The Dragon Girl]

Its about style man. Its not whether one is better than the other, its what you want to focus on, what kind of -character- you want to build, and adepts can be -fun-. You can make someone who can run up walls and across telephone cables silently without ever disturbing them, and look and sound like anyone they chose to. ninja-adept is fun. You can make someone with no physical advantages.. but a mind like Sherlock Holmes rolled up with touch clairvoyancy to boot, you can make a face who can can, as some of the teammates put it 'talk the knickers off a nun', you can make someone who never worries about not having a weapon, because they -are- a weapon, and no scanner will ever detect them, wet-working at its finest. Spend a single point of essence on some of your favorite enhancements, buy good armor and equipment, indulge in some chemical recreation, hell if you pick up masking people will never even know you weren't just some random drekker, no cyber, magic scan picks up nothing, you can rock some things with an adept pretty hard.

You can also rock some things as a Sam, but a Sam is eventually gonna hit an upper limit, and slowly go crazy from all the metal in their body..as long as your adept keeps initiating and upping the magic points, you can keep becoming more awesome indefinitely, or until someone gets in a lucky shot.

[Cheshyr]

I find the 'unlimited potential' angle a bit shallow given the lethality of the game. It's appealing, but a team full of 'potentially awesome' without the ability to back it up right now is just going to get killed.

Adepts and their variants seem to favor stealth / social / astral roles. Someone else had mentioned how Cyber and Bioware scream, "Look at me! I'm dangerous!". An adept doesn't need any ware, so they don't appear to be a threat. If they carry a sidearm, they might even appear less threatening to those in the mystical know. The point being, they strengths of their roles favor the subtle instead of the overpowering.

Back to the op's original question... I think the vision of of an adept he presented is perfectly valid, just not for a 400BP character. 500, 600 maybe, but not 400. Until the character has the Karma, an adept should play to their strengths, and favor the subtler utility roles.

[LurkerOutThere]

I find the 'unlimited potential' angle a bit shallow given the lethality of the game. It's appealing, but a team full of 'potentially awesome' without the ability to back it up right now is just going to get killed.

Adepts and their variants seem to favor stealth / social / astral roles. Someone else had mentioned how Cyber and Bioware scream, "Look at me! I'm dangerous!". An adept doesn't need any ware, so they don't appear to be a threat. If they carry a sidearm, they might even appear less threatening to those in the mystical know. The point being, they strengths of their roles favor the subtle instead of the overpowering.

None of this however is backed up by facts, anything a sam can do at character creation an adept can do sometimes even better. The only drawback, if you could call it that, is that the IP boosting (which is generally considered what makes or breaks a combat machine) power of adepts costs more of a theoretical amount of max power then a street sam's equivalent. There are numerous ways to get around this including the fact that if the adept does go that route their IP cap is higher then a starting street sam without access to high avialability restricted gear.

Basically the OP is complaining that someone bringing a set of fists to a gunfight isn't better off then those who brought a gun, that's just silly. Adepts and Sammy's start off equivalent in power raw killing power, while adepts can more or less pick a niche and master it and yes one of thiose niches can be unarmed or gunplay combat. At around the 50 karma mark an adept pulls ahead provided the Sammy doesn't have access (both monetarily and literal access) to delta grade gear. That is a gap that never closes as there is only so much ware a mundane can shove into their body.

Baiscally: Want to be a legendary shadowrunner? Buy a magic rating, as otherwise mechanically it's just not going to happen.

[Warlordtheft]

Wow, we really run the gamut here, people complaining that adepts are overpowered, which they arn't (mundanes are just nerfed) to people complaining that their too equal with the sammies. Wow!

You know the rules for a character type are balanced as best they can be when one group complains how munchkin they are, and another group how nerfed they are.

[cndblank]

I've been offering mudanes a boost in starting cred and in availability of starting gear.

Still have had no takers.

The sammy did get some of his won back when the group was ambushed. He was ready to rumble but the Adept didn't have a chance to do Attribute Boost.


I do think Street Samurai need a little higher starting availability otherwise they end up having to rebuy a lot of ware which is no fun when the Adept is spending cred left and right because he has nothing to upgrade.

In my game the Adept drives a tricked out Range Rover.

The street Sammy drives a used motorcycle.

And the Active Skill Softs to 10K per rating (the one thing to favor mundanes) was the final insult (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[MikeKozar]

Troll adepts with anti-aircraft bows caused errata to be written.

Somebody should make a movie like that.

[Lantzer]

Could you provide an example? The only edge I see an Adept having in combat over a samurai is being able to punch ghosts and stack up bonus armor. Everything else is either infiltration or social skills. Even a fully tooled up Death Punch is less effective then a semiauto gun with AP rounds...

Well, combat wise, the biggest advantage is Combat Sense. Extra dice up to your magic rating for all surprise and defense tests at a cost of half of that magic rating. Can make an adept annoyingly unhittable.

Economically, the biggest advantage of adepts is their ability to actually use high grade bio-reflexes. It's pricey on the build points, but a great investment long-term power-point wise. Few sammies can limit themselves to one piece of 'ware, so tend to load up on cyber at creation, which tends to not get upgraded due to cost. Adepts can pick up some initial ware, then grow with karma. In a similiar manner, adepts are far more likely to actually use adapsin for cyber after creation. Street sams don't have enough essence left to make it worthwhile.

And in some ways, the adept's ability to be very dangerous without _looking_ dangerous is a combat advantage. Surprise kills.

[Whipstitch]

It's also worth noting that Gymnastics is technically not a Combat Skill, so improved ability only costs a quarter of a power point per rating, which makes it a lot more viable alternative to Reflex Recorders than Improved Ability is for Dodge. And as Lantzer pointed out, Combat Sense stacks with pretty much everything, so Adepts don't even necessarily need extra initiative passes as badly as a Samurai does. Don't get me wrong-- extra IPs are always good-- but if you have 3 or 4 levels of Combat Sense and Rating 2 Reaction Enhancers, you'll have a double digit pool before taking Full Defense into account, which makes relying on things like Jazz for an extra pass considerably more viable vs. mooks. It's actually a relatively cost effective defense solution for a Face that wants to dabble in combat.

[toturi]

Troll adepts with anti-aircraft bows caused errata to be written.

I thought it was anti-tank bows. Wait, that was probably SR3.

[Whipstitch]

Really more like anti-truck injection bows. They weren't really quite so good at taking out armor as some people imply they had been, but if you ever needed an answer to the hypothetical question of "How do you narcoject a Great Dragon?" they were one of your best options.

[Draco18s]

"How do you narcoject a Great Dragon?"

*Bursts out laughing*

[Whipstitch]

Hey, I never said you'd kill it. But maybe you could at least give him his booster shots.