 Adepts, a game-balance nightmare? |
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 Sep 2 2005, 04:29 PM
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#26
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Why oh why didn't I take the blue pill.  Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 6,545 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Gloomy Boise Idaho Member No.: 2,006  |
In the 16 years I have been playing Shadowrun I have never gotten a character access to Delta cyber... never. I don't see that as goal or a path for enhancement. It is a fairy tale not a reality. Sort of like PC's killing a GD, possible in the rules but not going to happen.
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Sep 2 2005, 04:35 PM
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#27
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Hoppelhäschen 5000 Group: Members Posts: 5,807 Joined: 3-January 04 Member No.: 5,951 |
Perhaps in SR2... in SR3, the number of delta clinics was skyrocking, about a third of them being open to anyone with... well, it boils down to enough money.
(Perhaps they realized back then, that products need someone to buy them.) An there was the problem - there was seldom a reason why, for those huge sums, one would implant ware when he/she could buy a small island and spend the rest of his/her leonized days in luxury. |
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Sep 2 2005, 04:45 PM
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#28
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Mr. Johnson Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,587 Joined: 25-January 05 From: Berkeley, CA Member No.: 7,014 |
On this side note, there is information about the Fuchi -> Novatech Delta Clinic in System Failure.
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Sep 2 2005, 04:58 PM
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#29
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 266 Joined: 16-April 02 From: DC Member No.: 2,605 |
That totally depends on the group's style and how the player designs the character at chargen. In my game, I make it difficult to ripe out a set of alpha wired reflexes and replace them with delta. I do this simply but enforcing the rules in Man and Machine. However it is ridiculously easy to upgrade a set of alpha wired reflexes from 2 to 3, and the reaction enhancer is even easier. Plus it depends on the amount of nuyen the GM gives per run. I usually start out reasonably low until the runners develope a reputation for competence. Then I start giving bigger and bigger amounts. If they continue to live up to their reputation, that is. If they have enough money they can increase cyber. But there is no reason SR3 adepts couldn't get cyber or bio also, and I doubt that will change in SR4. Adepts with damage compensators come to mind, or the enhanced articulation are both very effective. |
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Sep 2 2005, 05:22 PM
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#30
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 115 Joined: 25-May 05 Member No.: 7,415 |
Well, if you think delta is unrealistic, how about betaware?
There ARE places to go beyond alphaware. |
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Sep 2 2005, 05:23 PM
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#31
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Prime Runner Group: Banned Posts: 3,732 Joined: 1-September 05 From: Prague, Czech Republic Member No.: 7,665 |
Wired Reflexes is a bad comparison, because they are overpriced crap in SR4 that noone will buy except the street-level thugs you are supposed to be facing early in your life.
The new standard is linear costs, and about .3 essence per attribute point. Some cyberware didn't get the memo, especially the legacy stuff like Dermal Armor, Muscle Replacement, and Wired Reflexes. Noone is going to get Wired Reflexes at the current price, not when for 160,000 you can have Synaptic Booster II (which is the same as Wired Reflexes except that it only costs 1 Essence Point). If Wired Reflexes cost 11K and 1 Essence point per rating point, it would still be overpriced in the long run (since at best it's going to become Delta, and cost the same Essence as a Synaptic Booster but cost 30k more per rating point). At its current nearly 2 Essence per rating point and triangular nuyen cost, it's a kick in the hoop. --- On the original subject: are Adepts underpriced? Probably. The fact that they get a 10 BP Magic Point for 5 BPs is pretty intense. Rather than having that little disclaimer about how the Gamemaster should put thumb screws on PCs who try to abuse the adept rules, they should just make Adepts less abusable as starting characters. And that means making them pay a full 10 BPs for being Adepts in the first place. Also, the Karma costs are fragged. 3xnext rating for an attribute point? Who did the math on that? Scaling costs makes starting play as an Adept with few powers way too good. And being "the young guy who is barely awakening to his powers" isn't even a weird or cheese monkey character concept - it's just randomly overpowered by the karma cost rules. As things stand you could start play with a Magic on 1 and 1 point of cyberware for 15 character points, and then buy your magic up to 2 after just one session when you get 6 fraggin Karma. That's nuts. Karma costs shouldn't be different from BPs. They really really shouldn't. We no longer have Karma Pools, and we no longer spend Karma on hooper nelsons, there is no need to even have a Karma value. Just give people more BPs as they grow in power. -Frank |
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Sep 2 2005, 08:01 PM
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#32
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,070 Joined: 7-February 04 From: NYC Member No.: 6,058 |
Beta Wired Reflexes III cost 2,000,000. My current longest-running character, with 80 karma, has around 160,000 saved up, and the payoffs in our game are (if I remember the results of a recent poll correctly) higher than average for the characters of DS posters, and an order of magnitude more than what the SR canon reccommends. He'll probably either be dead or retired from play for being a small god with way too much karma before he can afford a significant upgrade involving Beta cyberware. |
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Sep 2 2005, 08:11 PM
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#33
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Why oh why didn't I take the blue pill. Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 6,545 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Gloomy Boise Idaho Member No.: 2,006 |
Agreed, the only time I ever changed cyber on a sammy was when we upgraded from 2ed to 3ed (very good!) I went from having flexes 3 to boosted 3 and synaptic acc. 2. For a grand total of 5 init dice. A regular Sam Shadowrunner should never save his pennies for the day he can pay a visit to the Delta clinic. Barring some allowances at character gen (milspec background etc) a character will probably never see anything higher than beta. Upgrading after you made is so ludicrously expensive (not just the 'ware, its the surgery) as to no be realistically feasible. So why save your pennies for that when you could save it for that permanent High lifestyle. Can you have Delta ware? Yes. Is it likely? No. Should you plan on getting access to a Delta clinic in the life span of your character? No. |
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Sep 2 2005, 08:16 PM
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#34
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Mr. Johnson Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,587 Joined: 25-January 05 From: Berkeley, CA Member No.: 7,014 |
Conversely, should everyone follow the same (in my opinion, arbitrary) limits as to what campaign they are running? No. But assuming you are talking about the default SR campaign (Seattle is where you live, the Ares Predator is the gun you carry, the Harley Scorpion is your main ride), then those limits apply. |
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Sep 2 2005, 08:20 PM
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#35
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 527 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 1,118 |
Incorrect. In SR4, Wired Reflexes costs 11,000/32,000/100,000 for levels 1/2/3. Betaware wired reflexes 3 costs 400,000 nuyen. Even deltaware versions cost 1,000,000, well below the betaware cost of the implant in SR3. Of course, synaptic booster behaves identically to wired reflexes, costs 80,000 per level, and consumes a flat 0.5/level essence cost. It's admittedly very pricey, but it's also a future investment. You might get, say, alphaware synaptic booster (or betaware if your GM allows) and upgrade it to maximum rating slowly over the course of gameplay. Betaware wired reflexes 3 costs 400,000 Nuyen and 3 Essence; betaware synaptic booster 3 costs 960,000 Nuyen and 0.9 Essence. You're paying more than twice as much, but you're also accruing under a third of the Essence cost. But, that aside, if I were a real monster, and had the time to roll up a character whose purpose was just to be heinously broken, I'd make a vatjob adept. Someone with bioware or cyberware conveying everything that is either possible with adepthood or augmentations, and leaving the few (3, probably, to start with) points of adept powers towards things like combat sense and improved ability. You would be the 24-dicepool man. Better, stronger, faster. |
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Sep 2 2005, 08:21 PM
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#36
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Why oh why didn't I take the blue pill. Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 6,545 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Gloomy Boise Idaho Member No.: 2,006 |
I suppose I should have added "if you are running a standard SR campaign" I though I had said that, or at least made it clear. If your playing in a Epic level game where your the Seraphim or something you don't worry about cash anyways, so why bother mentioning it in this context? If you have to worry about money as a character, you will never see a Delta clinic. If you don't then it doesn't matter. Edit: I did say it.
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Sep 2 2005, 08:25 PM
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#37
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Mr. Johnson Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,587 Joined: 25-January 05 From: Berkeley, CA Member No.: 7,014 |
Beta Wired 3 costs 3.5 Essence. Beta Synaptic Booster 3 costs 1.05 Essence. The multiplier is 70%. Also, Wired comes with a free "Reflex Trigger" attached. You can't turn Synaptic Booster off. |
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Sep 2 2005, 08:39 PM
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#38
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 527 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 1,118 |
I'm sorry, you're right. I didn't notice the essence multiplier had been adjusted. However, what's the benefit of turning off a synaptic booster? Does all reflex enhancement (adept, bioware, cyberware), rather than just cyberware, carry the potential for reflexive attacks on unintended targets and the like? It was only cyberware reflex boosters in SR3.
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Sep 2 2005, 08:53 PM
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#39
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Mr. Johnson Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,587 Joined: 25-January 05 From: Berkeley, CA Member No.: 7,014 |
Page 254, under Motion Sensors shows a penalty for being hyper fast (dice pool penalty equal to the extra Initiative passes). Not sure about anything else, other than the usual roleplaying considerations of being twitchy in a public place and punching someone out because your reflexes are faster than your brain.
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Sep 2 2005, 08:58 PM
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#40
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,070 Joined: 7-February 04 From: NYC Member No.: 6,058 |
No, it's correct - if you haven't noticed, the discussion took a detour into SR3. Still, even in SR4, that's a crapload of money - especially since the canon seems to encourage GMs to pay the characters less than ever. |
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Sep 2 2005, 08:58 PM
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#41
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 527 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 1,118 |
...
So, let me get this straight. Reflex enhancement does not, point of fact, actually increase the speed at which you move (i.e. the speed of your motion), but they do increase the likelihood that a motion sensor will detect you? That... that's just swell. |
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Sep 2 2005, 09:00 PM
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#42
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Dragon Group: Members Posts: 4,718 Joined: 14-September 02 Member No.: 3,263 |
Sweet! I hadn't got to there yet, nor do i remember seeing anyone suggest that before before. But now that i see i wonder how i could be so daft as to not think of it. |
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Sep 2 2005, 09:07 PM
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#43
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Dragon Group: Members Posts: 4,718 Joined: 14-September 02 Member No.: 3,263 |
Well the Buzzkill fiction sure had a low price, but that was sold as an easy run and the team seemed a bit on the street side. However the few paragraph intro to Life On The Edge has them getting paid something like 25k + 5K bonus for a smooth job for using a planned taxi pickup for a public extraction where the Johnson supplies the schedule, time, and location. Rush job, roughly 12 hours notice, but that still isn't too bad of money. I can't really compare the SR3 canon to SR4 canon because i'm not sure i've even read up on the canon SR3 pay scale. |
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Sep 2 2005, 09:21 PM
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#44
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Why oh why didn't I take the blue pill. Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 6,545 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Gloomy Boise Idaho Member No.: 2,006 |
They had a suggest pay scale in the SR comp. I always felt it was a little on the low side.
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Sep 2 2005, 09:35 PM
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#45
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Target Group: Members Posts: 24 Joined: 22-August 05 Member No.: 7,587 |
It doesn't overly surprise me that there's no mention of the 25% cost reduction for cultured bioware in the SR4 BBB. There's a lot of things stuck into the book that were previously the realm of rules supplements, but not everything is going to squeeze in.
However, I expect that SR4 will continue to do Bioware grades in the traditional manner, in that Bioware will be potentially available at the Cultured quality. However, since Synaptic Booster already counts as Cultured, needing to be tuned for the particular user's brain, there won't be an option for a more expensive, yet more essence-friendly version. Unlike Wired Reflexes, which you could eventually have access to at Delta grade. I think, as a GM, whether I allowed players access to Deltaware would be based on whether I felt there was a need to help my Sammies catch up to the Adepts. Some decisions I make are going to be based on what works well for making the game fun to play. And when a Sammy and an Adept are likely to be fighting for the same spotlight and skillset, I'd like to have them feel fairly treated. |
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Sep 2 2005, 10:02 PM
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#46
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 133 Joined: 10-August 05 Member No.: 7,548 |
I thought bioware now was graded like cyberware?
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Sep 2 2005, 10:04 PM
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#47
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,498 Joined: 4-August 05 From: ADL Member No.: 7,534 |
Bioware is availible in standard, alpha, beta and delta version. See BBB SR4.
There is NO difference between cyberware and bioware except that they share different essence indices. I would house rule though, that cyberware is upgradeable, but bioware is not. |
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Sep 2 2005, 10:05 PM
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#48
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 133 Joined: 10-August 05 Member No.: 7,548 |
Agreed. Bioware is yank-and-replace.
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Sep 2 2005, 11:11 PM
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#49
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Mr. Johnson Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,587 Joined: 25-January 05 From: Berkeley, CA Member No.: 7,014 |
Well, technically, they can. If you have more initiative passes, you can use more Simple Actions on Sprinting tests per Combat Turn and accumulate more maximum movement. |
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