[X] My Assistant

[Doctor Rat]

Oi, I'm torn between the two. Adept seems nice... Say I were to make an adept, who's primary weapon would be some kind of sword (Or just swords, preferably not katanas) Can the adept wield a vibrosword or monosword just as skillfully as a street samurai? Are there adept powers to boost the use of it? As you can tell, I've never played shadowrun, this is gonna be my first character.

[TinkerGnome]

There's nothing that slows down adepts when it comes to high tech melee weapons. The only speed bump is their general lack of cash at charactergen. Depending on your generation system, though, that might not be a problem.

The adept is certainly nice (up to 9 additional dice on melee tests), but for most uses, the mundane works just fine. When the opponent is a melee adept, your best solution is generally to shoot him, not duke it out, after all.

[toturi]

I made a Quickness Night One Ghoul with SURGE Satyr Legs as a melee adept with a little stealth to spice things up once upon a time.

[Doctor Rat]

How did the character work out?

I'm so disoriented...

I like this templar idea, I was thinking about buying Threats 2 for more info on it, but now I'm pulled between a techo-knight with a sense of chivalry, an agent for this paladin group, or an internal magician with a sword. I really like the idea for a techy character, but I don't want to sacrifice prowess for a cheesy idea...

[Siege]

Create both characters and see which one you like better.

Throwing 20 dice into an attack can be nice, but being able to tear a door off it's hinges and shrug off weapons fire has its merits too.

Not to re-kindle the adept/samurai wars, but cybernetics offers its own set of advantages and disadvantages.

-Siege

Edit: As for buying the book, if your GM has it, just borrow it. If nobody has the book, make it up and let your GM approve it.

Nobody will know and you save yourself 20 nuyen...dollars.

[Misfit Toy]

Unless, of course, you actually want the book or want to support the company.

[toturi]

[FlakJacket]

[BitBasher]

Also IMHO tossing all those bonus dice at melee is skill point masturbation. At a skill of six you're going to beat the majority of everyone in melee anyway. At six plus six from adept skill bonus dice it's pretty pointless except against another uber melee adept, and if it comes to that, just shoot him. Melee is handy in some situations, but it's a lot less handy than a ranged weapon virtually all of the time.

[Glyph]

I would disagree with that. For a normal character a skill of 6 may be plenty, but for a melee specialist you need more. A skill of 6 is not that uncommon, and your opponents can add Combat Pool to it, maybe when you've already used yours up beating up the first goon. At that point, 6 points of improved ability only make it an even contest. Plus, those extra dice can be the difference between doing a light wound to someone versus taking them out. Yes, you can make a melee character who is effective most of the time without the improved ability power - but having it is hardly useless or overkill.



Doctor Rat:

The reason I am pimping adepts so much is that melee combat is an opposed dice contest between the attacker and the defender. You can get wounded when attacking someone, or wound them when they attack you. It's all about who gets more successes, which means that the person throwing 6 more dice tends to win most of the time.

The whole adepts vs. sammies debate has popped up numerous times, but most people agree that adepts make better specialists, and sammies make better generalists.

You may want to be careful how you execute your concept, though. Melee combat is a vital skill, but it is limited in its application, and often doesn't come up as much as you might want it to. You can make a tough melee guy, but give him some ranged and other skills, too. Shadowrunners are specialists, true, but don't focus too narrowly on one thing.

[Misfit Toy]

And remember, it only takes a moderately high skill level and maybe a Smartlink-2 to be a superb marksman (a 6 skill point, 0.5 Essence, and 3,500-nuyen investment) so anyone can be a fearsome one. Melee combat, on the other hand, is the sole domain of adepts. Quick-Draw, Improved Ability and Counterstrike are all abilities that can't be matched by implants or spells...