ambidexterity questions, What exactly are the limits? Options

[Moonstone Spider]

It takes hundreds of thousand of Nuyen to match the Adept. . . but the Adept has paid 25 Build points for the priviledge of being awakened, for which the Sammie gets to have 400,000 Nuyen. Self-Balancing.

Ultimately the Adept can get better in the end as there's no way for the Sammie to get more 'ware after 5.99 points of Delta, but most adept powers cost more than their exact equivalent in 'ware. (And by the time the Sammie has that much money, and the adept has initiated six times, they should be ready for retirement) For instance I can get a set of cybereyes with lowlight and visual mag for way less than .5 essence, and Wired Reflexes 3 costs less essence that the Adept magical reflexes do with 5 power points.

And lets not forget the absolutely insane number of guns a Sammie can fire at once if he gets a full-borg body and starts slapping fixed mounts on himself. . .

[Herald of Verjig...]

[Kagetenshi]

[ShadowGhost]

We decided to start off with fewer resources - 30 BP gets you 650,000¥ instead of 1,000,000, and only 42 BP could be spent to buy attributes (21 Attribute points). Essentiually, everyone's attributes started at three, and you had three extra left over to put where you please.

The ambidextrous adept/mage can outshoot my character 8 ways to Sunday, and is excellent in with edged weapons, and has some magic skills.

My mundane character however, has 12 different skills, 5 combat skills and 7 other useful team skills: Computer, Electronics B&R, Demolition, Car, Stealth, Biotech and Etiquette. The adept has 5 skills, period, one of which is Spell Design - leaving four skills to help the team.

Essentially, if the adept can't shoot it, slice it up, or cast a spell at it, he's next to useless.

On the other hand, the mundane is highly adaptable with all his skills, and can walk naked into a room of gangers.... and still walk out the other side. Shock hands give him double the damage + extra in unarmed combat (11 M stun unarmed combat, + 8S stun shock hand, + close quarters maneuvre to eliminate opponents reach). One hit, even if the opponent completely rolls/shrugs it off, and they're still at a plus two to do anything.

Comparing Adept/Magic to mundane/cyber is pointless as they come from completlely opposite directions. You can make a munchy adept, and I can make a mundane that can counter and defeat munchy adept. Then you make adept to clobber my mundane, and we start all over again.


Each has their strengths and weaknesses. Ideally, you want members in a party to complement each other, not turn it into a contest of "I can kill better/faster than you." It's that guy that has that one skill you *really* need when it counts that really matters. Guns and killing abilities don't get what you want most of the time.

But they sure come in handy

[Necrotic Monkey]

There's nothing unbalanced about adepts as written. If you modify the rules of the game too heavily, including character creation, and/or dish out rewards that are too heavy in the way of Karma or two heavy in the way of nuyen, you shouldn't be surprised if an adept becomes "more powerful" than a street samurai or vice versa.

There is such a thing as game balance.

[Cain]

Smartlinks have a few other advantages that weren't mentioned. Namely, you can eject clips as a free action, switch firing modes, and so on. If you have a pad in each hand, you can switch between guns (and ammo types) with a thought. (To get the most mileage out of this, imagine a troll with akimbo Thunderer shotguns. He can select between *four* different ammo types, depending on need.) Smartlinks also afford the option of the biometric safety, and/or the biometric booby trap.

Sammies and adepts are not inherently broken or unbalanced. If nothing else, the fact that there is so much abused cyber proves that sammies have a huge edge in some areas. In fact, if I wanted to get really nasty-- a sammie with Skillwires 6, CED 3, and tons of chips with DIMAP can easily match most starting adepts in max dice possible.

[Zazen]

[Necro Tech]

Don't forget, with Skillwires and CED you get to save all your combat pool for soak and dodge, an ability with its weight in orichalcum.

[BitBasher]

[Necro Tech]

Depends on the character. A rigger, decker or like in our party, the medic uses it chipped because his combat skills were non existent. If your combat skills are secondary, you might not have a pistols/SMG/shotgun of over three and then you lose only a few dice. Especially if your pool is like 7 or 8 to begin with. Skill wired characters make great for supporting characters but since they capped the CED you really can't mainline your fighters anymore unless you have it to use unpopular weapons like gun canes or mortars.

"Hi, I'd like to get 'Howitzers' on chip please. Rating 6 if you got it." :grinbig:

[Necrotic Monkey]

[Necro Tech]

That's what I said. Its not for main line fighters. It for people with very low (or no) combat skills. As for the earlier comment, I said you get to use the CED in place of combat pool for offense, thus saving your combat pool for soaking and dodging, not have to. I was responding to Cain's previous post. I just didn't think I needed the quote

[Kurukami]

[Modesitt]

[BitBasher]

[PiXeL01]

Sorry but I thought the Enhance Aim spell had the mage as a target and therefore couldnt be resisted ...

And through the years I have been playing SR Adepts focussed on Melee Combat skills and Stealth. everyone had that "Leave the guns to the Samurai"-attitude.
As for ambidexteri I allow the use of Laser Sights but only if aiming on the same target with both weapons

[Necrotic Monkey]

Nope. Enhance Aim is cast on a subject and affects targets, just like most other Detection Spells. It's even noted as being resisted on the table in the back of MitS if memory serves. I tend to ignore that rule simply because its a headache, but I do stick with the range limitation for the bonus.

[Kurukami]

That seems accurate... and as regards the TN penalty, the group I run with seems to always manage to center against most potential penalties along those lines.

Thankfully, that entire campaign should be retired in the very near future, to be replaced with a "start-from-scratch" campaign where I devoutly hope there will be less rules-lawyering and number-crunching.

Anyways... enough of my going off on a wild tangent. It's kind of a pity that canon says only weapons of SMG size or smaller can be used. It cuts down on those "The Rundown" moments of cinematographic excess where the husky gunslinger, be he cybered or adept, dual-wields the single-shot shotguns.

Aside from canon, for subjective house rules, would most of you have misgivings about single-shot (not burst-fire) shotguns being used in such a manner? After all, the damage code is similar to that being tossed out by a burst-firing SMG and the characters in question would almost certainly need to reload quickly.

[northern lights]

i've been up all night and am too tired to read through the whole post, so i don't know if it got mentioned, but didn't something somewhere say a troll could fire an assault rifle in each hand???

if not, i start to realize why they call me crackhead don

[Kagetenshi]

It's possible (that that rule exists, that is), but it'd almost certainly involve TN mods past what ambidex and recoil comp can account for.

~J

[Ol' Scratch]

[Arethusa]

It's worth pointing out that the reason trolls still get the same penalty is that they don't fire standard sized assault rifles. Their equipment has to be troll sized, or they get a +2 penalty, I believe.

[Apathy]

The stock and grips are customized to troll size, not the whole gun. (Which would look pretty silly to me, but whatever.) Otherwise, you'd have to increase the damage code and/or power of a weapon when troll-ifying (or reduce them for dwarf-sizing).

[Fygg Nuuton]

hmm, i pistol for trolls only that fires some huge cartidge, like a rifles. interesting

i never play trolls though

[Method]

I think its important to remember that SRs recoil/ambidexterity rules are ment to maintain game balance, not realism. If you've ever shot a 9mm you know that your pitiful RL strength of 3 or 4 can easily compensate for the limited recoil. But a troll in SR with a strength of 12 can't fire a SMG (LP) without insane recoil mods? I'm fairly certain that, if he existed, guy with the strength of 3-4 men could handle an H&K MP5 (9mm) without any problems in RL. Likewise a gunsmith could very easily build an AR or SG action into a troll sized SMG or HP, and if trolls existed in RL they could probably handle the RL recoil, no problem. It really comes down to game balance and a troll with a SG in each hand is just a little over the top.