Adept Advice, First time adept player - what works? Options

[Little Bill]

I'm no newcomer to Shadowrun, but I'm starting a new game playing my first physical adept, and there are a lot of powers to chose from that have never come up in prior games I've been involved in (where adepts have been scarce), not to mention the new ones from SOTA 64.

I'm looking at building someone who is sneaky but also a good fighter. Any one have some good advice?

Example: Is it better to build around unarmed combat ability or to use a katana or something?

[Kagetenshi]

Improved Ability: Stealth will be your friend. With regard to weapons, it all depends on what you want; unarmed is the stealthiest and most difficult to take away, while weapons are almost always more effective. Killing Hands can augment your unarmed, though.

~J

[Nikoli]

Before choosing abilities, decide what kind of Adept you are making.

This is where the "Paths" come in handy, as they help you stay on task. Sure, gliding sounds like a neat power, but if you're looking to make a melee juggernaut, it's not always worth the points.

Also, and this goes for any character creation, don't pick one thing to be good and and focus blindly on it. pick one thing, be good at it, but also choose skills and powers for a secondary or even tertiary role as more often than not if you over specialize, you have to sit out because you aren't good enough to attempt anything else.

[mfb]

one combo you might consider is getting 4 points of unarmed, 6 points of melee weapon (katana, whatever), and then ~2-3 points of the counterstrike power. this makes sure you're well able to defend yourself in situations where you don't have your melee weapon of choice, and makes you fairly badass when you do have your weapon.

3 points of pain resistance is also a very good investment. adepts tend to have a harder time soaking damage than, say, sams (adepts generally have lower Qui, which means less armor; and lower Bod, which means less soakage), so you want to be able to operate at full capacity after having taken some damage.

[Little Bill]

[mfb]

tough call. i guess if you have to choose between the two of them, i'd go for improved reaction first. but you're choosing between, say, IR3 and some PR, i'd get IR2 and spend the remaining points of PR.

[Mark McCrea]

I recently made my second adept that I have played more than one game with. The three powers that I think most combat adepts shouls have are:

Pain Resitance: about three level, this will remove most of your wound penalties withjout eating too many power points and the not increased TNs will do you alot of good in combat.

Increase Reflexes: Get this a levels one or two and you have a fairly good chance of being one of the first three peopel to act in a given round, and prevents the problem of the adept always acting last. Level three is nice, but if you do take this at 5 pp you become somewhat of a one trick pony, getting this, a alpha smartlink-2, and a geas can make for a pretty good gun adept with priority A resources since you keep your essence in echange for a B priority or 25 build points.

Killing Hands or Improved skill (weapon): Choose your weapon of choice max outthe skill points in it and then apply improved skill. If it is unarmed also take a level or three in killing hands so that you can do some decent damage when you strike.

As for unarmed vs weapon, doing strength deadly damage with killing hands work well, as does using a sword, bow (especially Ranger -X bow and strength increase makes a very powerful weapon espcially when using smartlink goggles or vision magnification), club (think stun baton for non-lethal takedowns, and steathly too), and the related improved skill and improved ability or strength boost.

This will be edited soon, but I have to run now and be back in about an hour.

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Just a Random Thought for the Day :cyber:

[mfb]

my adept has 6 points of PR, but that's because i tend to run him very, very hard.

[Kagetenshi]

Unless you're expecting to take both stun and physical, rolling off the pain resistance to the edge and saving the power points for something else can be a very good deal.

~J

[Smiley]

If you want sneaky, Traceless Walk is always a must. I usually get the max in Improved Reflexes, too, then add more powers after few runs. If you want to start out being a Melee Monster, maybe level 2 Reflexes, a few levels of Counterstrike and some improved melee skills. The problem with adepts is that the average starting adept is going to have some catching up to do with the average starting cybered street sam. There are, however, infinite improvement possibilities. That's why I'm always an adept.

[Kagetenshi]

If you want to be a melee monster, don't bother with Improved Reflexes. Jack up your Reaction for the Surprise Tests, but Initiative isn't as important.

~J

[ES_Riddle]

If you don't want to invest 3 points in pain resistance consider 1 box (.5 points), 4 boxes (2 points), or 5 boxes (2.5 points). With 1 you reduce a single wound's level by 1 for modifiers. With 4 you negate light and medium and treat a serious wound as medium. With 5 boxes you treat a serious wound as light. These are all for a single shot wound (or a number of wounds that add exactly to the new type) so other numbers may be valuable as well.

Something you might want to consider is getting 2 levels of pain resistance (1 point), and then later installing a trauma damper and a couple levels of damage compensation and losing that pain resistance as your lost magic. You'll still have some room to put in other things (alpha smartlink is an excellent investment).

When you say "good fighter" do you mean specifically melee or are you including ranged? I would recommend the latter. A smartlink, pistols (pred III or other heavy pistol) 4 (6), and a point in improved ability: pistols (2 levels of the power) will be plenty for most firefights, especially if you load the thing with EX or APDS rounds.

For melee you should have skill of 6 in a martial art form that includes the close combat maneuver. For your other maneuver, choose whatever feels appropriate, I like the trip attack one since they are going to be taking modifiers for fighting from the ground which equals extra ass-kickage for you. Killing hands is not really necessary except against spirits and other things you shouldn't fight in hand-to-hand combat. People go down really fast when you hit them with shock gloves. You'd be better off putting the points you'd spend on killing hands into improved physical attribute (strength). You should also take a point of improved ability: unarmed combat.

For melee your initiative doesn't matter much, and if you are successful in your stealth, then you won't need to have a high initiative in a gunfight, but getting a few points of reaction boost can be invaluable in a surprise test.

I guess this is how I would break down power selection overall.

Improved Ability (3 points)
•pistols 2
•martial art 2
•stealth 4
Improved Strength (.5 points)
Improved Reflexes 1 (2 points)
Pain Resistance 1 (.5 points)

I would recommend an orc for this particular setup since they can have a starting strength of 8, and with the exceptional attribute edge your point of improved strength will only cost .5. I'd eventually put some cyber and bioware in him, especially muscle enhancement (the bioware one that is cheaper than the improved strength power), trauma damper, damage compensators (2 levels) and platelet factory (for helping soak up damage), a smartlink, and wired reflexes. All of the cyberware should be alpha grade or better (otherwise the reflexes are just pointless).

[mfb]

oh. i didn't mean 3 power points' worth of pain resistance, i meant 3 levels of pain resistance (1.5pp).

[Smiley]

[toturi]

My take on a stealthy but good combat adept.

Improved Stealth: 4
Improved Reflexes: 2
Traceless Step
Deep Rooting
Multi-tasking
Nimble Fingers

Your main mode of attack is from ambush. Pump your basic skills to 6 (one ranged and one melee, preferably unarmed or Karate). Using stealth and Traceless to get into ambush position, Deep Root in preparation for recoil, pump the target full of bullets and reload. Deep Rooting is good for melee as you are harder to knock down.

[Little Bill]

Okay, this is proving pretty helpful so far.

For stylistic reasons his fighting skills are going to be melee (although I still haven't decided if that shoudl be armed or unarmed). We already have a couple mercs in the group who will be all about gun-fu, so it's good to be different.

Stealth is going to be a focus with the character, and I really like the Traceless Step ability. I also really dig the wall walker power in SOTA'64, so I'm leaning towards those two.

Also the campaign is using the low-power rules in Johnson's Little Black Book, except that the GM has graciously allowed me the full 6 points of powers to begin with. That might change your advice a bit - cyberware is probably going to be mostly too expensive at this power level.

Also for style reasons I'm probably going to stick to human for race.

[Kagetenshi]

[Panzergeist]

Adepts tend to be specialists. Be really good at one area. Don't try to be a jack of all trades. A monowhip implanted in a fingertip compartment would be good for a stealthy adept, if you could get one. Monowhips have a high availability though, so you would have to wait a while after character creation.

[SpasticTeapot]

[Clyde]

I tend to take a different tack on adepts. Getting to 7 or 8 dice in several skills is the way to go. You get to be better than the Street Sam qualitatively, but it's cheap enough that you can do it in a lot of areas.

Say like this:
Improved Ability: Stealth 2 .5
IA: Unarmed 1 .5
Pain Resistance 1 .5
Low Light Vision (counts as natural!!!) .25
Flare Compensation .25
Increased Reflexes 2 3
IA: Pistols 1 .5
Strength Boost 2 .5

This suite of powers gives you a character who is supernaturally stealthy, able to shrug off some of the pain from wounds, see in the dark, act as fast as many street sams, shoot handguns with more skill than a street sam and also be stronger and better in hand to hand than any non-adept.

That sounds a lot more like the adepts from the fiction to me than most of the posts supplied so far. Those characters may be superhumanly stealthy and fast, but then you turn around and they're a powder puff in a brawl. Overspecializing your adept gets you a lot of power in one area, but it just never matched my "sense" of how they worked from reading about them.

[toturi]

I'd disagree. The way Stealth is used is often an Open Test. Having more dice does not necessarily guarantee a high TN but it helps, but you need to be smart and use the surroundings to your advantage to increase the TN. What is useful is that Stealth is also Complementary Perception. For me, 8 dice is enough, 4 normal Stealth, 4 Improved Ability Stealth.

I would also recommend simply having a skill of 6 in a range and melee. Why? Because if your Stealth does its job, you won't need more than 6 skill dice (remember you should be able to use combat pool, he almost certainly can't). The melee skill is mostly there for you to defend yourself, except when you have the drop on them (again your combat pool yes, his no.).

[noneuklid]

If you want to be a melee adept, high Quickness is a must. Not only is it good for your Reaction, but it gives you a better ground speed; something you have to have. Pain Resistance is good, IR2 is vital, and Quick Draw is also good. Obviously, if you're going to be unarmed, Killing Hands is vital. I am also a big fan of Combat Sense 2; you should have high Int and Qui for Reaction, and high Will for magic resistance, so you should be rolling a rather large number of dice on Reaction Tests for Suprise- which will probably save your life (the two bonus Combat Pool dice don't hurt either).

Magic Sense and the various sensory improvement powers (especially hearing) are pretty useful.

Pain Resistance 3, IR2, Quick Draw, and then one of
>Improved Stealth 2, Traceless Walk
>Improved Hearing, Sound Filter 5, Sound Dampening, Low Frequency Hearing
>Blind Fighting, Magic Sense

are all pretty solid choices for your standard combat adept.
Don't forget geasa. They're a trade-off, and you should be careful about linking reaction-based powers to them, but most combat powers can be linked to simple geasa without a problem for a pretty good hike in power (geased IR2 is 2.25 instead of 3, geased Pain Resistance 3 is 1+1/8, etc). Some good geasa for Adepts include Talisman geas (linked to weapons, or to more normal jewelery), Condition (Wounded), or even potentially the ever-popular Time (6pm-6am).

I don't have SOTA64 yet (Amazon's telling me it'll get here early February, even though I ordered it last month...), so I can't advise you based on those powers.

Initiate soon and often. Get Centering.

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

[mfb]

no, no, that was a chocolate elemental. choco-tart spirits are a whole different beast.

(hilariously, that fight was way before i ever got any pain resistance. if i'd had that, i might've beaten it.)

[Kanada Ten]

Pain Resistance 6 is very nasty, even more if the adept is an underground fighter. A few levels of Counter Strike and Side Step or Mystic Armor can make the adpet very hard (aka impossible) to KO.

Killing Hands L is a dream come true against spirits, especially with Counter Strike mixed in. Counter Strike is more valuable than Improved (Melee Skill) for a fighter, while the other works best for a ninja-stalker.