Best Adept Powers EVAR!, Hail to street ninjas! Options

[Stev]

I'm curious. What is everyones favorite adept powers. Or perhaps even the most useful. Personally, I'm gonna say that I heart Killing Hands. There's not much cooler than exploding someones face with a well placed pimp slap!

[Whizbang]

I've found the combo of Killing Hands and Distance strike to be rather effective. Who needs a gun? :)

[The Grifter]

Improved Ability
Increased reflexes
pain Resistance

[Glyph]

Killing hands is one of the powers that really gives the adept a niche, letting him deal with things like spirits much more effectively than a sammie. An adept's real bread and butter, though, is the improved ability power, applied to a combat skill. Combat being based on dice contests, having up to six extra dice is a huge edge.

[The Grifter]

Agreed. Especially with unarmed combat, it gets pretty sick.

[Catsnightmare]

I found that Improved Ability Unarmed and Improved Attribute: Body and Mystic Armor make for a ass-whooping combination.

[Wounded Ronin]

Killing hands can be hilarious. Personally, I like to imagine Killing Hands as Hokuto no Ken style goodness. But, it's a bit expensive so I usually don't take it unless I have a very strong and specific need for it.

Improved Ability is my workhorse. While it can be fun to apply it to a combat skill I see it as a really cheesy way to max out Stealth and/or Athletics. I regard the .25 per extra dice rate to be a real steal. Stealth is a workhorse, so IA stealth +6 for only 1.5 points is a workhorse.

I think that Pain Resistance and Mystic Armor are both rip offs. If you want to be able to soak most impact damage just be a troll and conserve your magical power points. Pain Resistance used to be something I might conider but I generally think it's a better use of resources to get that through the Edges/Flaws system if I can. Furthermore, I find that if you aren't making a tank style character damage in Shadowrun tends to be either/or. Either you take no damage because no one was shooting at you or you take a lot because you landed in the line of fire, so Pain Resistance wouldn't really be helpful unless you took 10 levels. These days when I play Shadowrun my character usually takes no damage because I always hide, run away, and generally try to avoid confrontations.

While Improved Reflexes is undeniably powerful I find that it's also rather expensive. In the past I've gone totally without it and had a slow as dough character in exchange for a bigger investment in stealth, athletics, and potentially creative means of circumventing obstacles (eg. Great Leap).

Ultimately, I think it's usually a waste to buy something with physad powers (like pain resistance, or the ability to have a really high body score through Improved Attribute), if you can get it with Edges and Flaws or Race. Save your magic points for things that you can only get through magic, like starting with 12 dice in stealth.

[The Grifter]

I always think of "Fist of The North Star" when I think of Killing Hands. Spinning Mind Control Kick and all that.

[toturi]

Kinesics.

[SpasticTeapot]

I'm a big fan of Improved Reflexes, Improved Ability: Pistols, and Sensory Enhancements: thermal graphic vision and magnification. Nobody ever expects to be dropped at sniper rifle range by an elf with a pistol, and 10 dice for a pistol test is nothing to sneeze at, either. My current PC has, after his insane quickness, improved reflexes 4, and assorted edges had a total reaction of 14, and a total initiative of 4d6+14! Attunement, along with a laser sight, give bonuses equivalent to that of a smartlink; this bonus also has the nifty side effect of also working in conjuntion with the Adept's "sensory enhancement" ability to allow shots fired from a heavy pistol to rival a sniper rifle for effectiveness at sniping. (My GM is allowing this PC, interestingly enough. I did't expect him to; however, he seems to be happy just because I actually wrote out a history for my PC instead of making him an unnamed combat monster).
Of course, one cannot go wrong with the combination of "Silent/Delayed Strike" (or whatever it's called), Killing Hands: Deadly, and Improved Ability: unarmed combat if you're doing wetwork. The ability to do full unarmed combat damage against someone twelve hours later by merely brushing against them makes it very easy to neutralize a target, especially if he shakes a lot of hands. (Polititcians beware!)

[Wounded Ronin]

But the maximum range of pistols is 50 meters.

[fistandantilus4....]

I really like Delay damage silent, and eiditc memory (however it's spelled) and multi task. I have an infilatrator assasin with those, three dim memory, facial sculpt, and melanin control. Uses infusion for distance strike. That with delay damage silent is just mean, especially if you also have killing hands (he has light only for now). Just picked up commanding voice too. Now THAT one is fun.
One of my PC's in the game I run jsut picked that up. SHe's an elven face, with some light cyber. Charisma's something like 15.

[Wounded Ronin]

Oh, I want to mention that last week I had a character who was actually able to use Missile Parry.

Missile Parry is one of those useless sounding powers that I never take, but in this case I took it just to be in-character, since I was running a character based on Sho Kosugi in "Revenge of the Ninja".

Well, lo and behold, someone threw a hand grenade at my character. After years of playing Shadowrun, I finally got to see Missile Parry come in useful for flinging back grenades.

This got me thinking...even Suspended State might be useful. It would enable you to remove your metal objects and mail yourself into high security areas while being perfectly happy and quiet. Does the SR world still have parcel post?

[HMHVV Hunter]

[Trax]

[hyzmarca]

The problem with suspended state is that there is no canon method of deactivating it.
It is described as a "meditative" state. Howveer, it activates automaticly if unconscious from a deadly wound. Presumably, it can be turned off manualy when the Adept isn't suffering from a deadly wound. But nothing says that.

Really bad then about suspended state: Waking up on the autopsy table after a botched run.
Worst thing about suspended state: not waking up on the autopsy table before they strt wieghing your internal organs.

[Trax]

Even worse: Waking up inside a box as it's being cremated.

[hyzmarca]

[SpasticTeapot]

[Cain]

[Kaosaur]

Guns and other mechanical devices really need to get their own static initiative numbers

Realistically, some people just move too fast for the guns to keep up mechanically and the system should work accordingly.

[Critias]

[Fortune]

You're kidding, right? The rates of fire of automatic weapons in Shadowrun are incredibly low in comparison to real life.

[Kaosaur]

[Fortune]

I'll wait for one of the gun-gurus to post specifics about this, but IIRC firing six shots in (around) three seconds with a revolver (not even a semi-auto) isn't anything like a record.