[/B]We know fanpro will eventually get around to updating all this stuff in the books coming out, but many of us are impatient. I know I am. Several of my favorite character concepts rely on source material that hasn't yet been converted, and I don't wan tto wait. naturally, once the official rules come out, I'll use those. In the mean time, I give you: Adept powers! As usual, Any comments on playability and balance would be appreciated, and I hope both for lots of feedback and that this is useful

I give you, the list:


[B]Animal Empathy: An adept with this power has a natural gift with animals. They gain 1 die per level on all tests involving the non-threatening handling of animals, ans well as any attempt to frighten or intimidate an animal. It does not work of critters with the sentient power, but otherwise works fine on Paranimals.
Cost: .25 per level

Blind Fighting: The character has a 6th sense about where his opponents are, allowing him to fight more effectively even when he can’t see. Reduces the penalties for firing blind and for darkness by 2.
Cost: .5

Commanding Voice: An Adept with commanding voice controls the modulation and pitch of their words to subconsciously influence the actions of targeted listeners. The adept may take a complex action to give a simple command (Three words or less) to the target, making a Willpower + Charisma test. The adept takes –1 die for the test for each target after the first. Each target then makes a Willpower + Charisma test with a threshold equal to the Adept’s successes. If they fail their test, they uses their next initiative pass to either carry out the action, or stand confused (Gamemaster’s choice, but the greater the failure, the more likely things go the adept’s way). The command has no weight beyond tehi immediate impetus, however, and thereafter the effected characters will go about their business as usual. Commanding voice may only be used on metahumans who can directly hear and understand the adept. It does not work when the voice is amplified or transmitted via technological means. It is less effective on subsequent uses. Apply a cumulative –2 dice pool penalty for each use on the same character within 24 hours.
Cost: .5

Cool Reserve: The character is unflappable in social situations. The adept gains 1 die per level of the power when making opposed social skill rolls if he is the target of the test.
Cost: .25 per level

Counterstrike: The adept is capable of turning a strong defense into a good offense. If the adept gains more hits than his attacker on a parry defense, he may make a free melee attack against his foe. The Adept may only use counterstrike if they choose to Parry an incoming attack, and may not use counterstrike if they are on full defense.
Cost: 2

Delay Damage: This power allows the adept to inflict damage in melee combat that does not take immediate effect. The adept declares the use of delay damage and makes his attack as normal. If the attack is successful, any unresisted damage is converted into a “charge” of magical force that remains in the targets Aura for up to 24 hours. After a predetermined period (Chosen at the time of the attack), the damage from the attack takes effect against the target.
There are two forms of this power, Obvious and Silent. An attack made with the obvious form is an obvious attack, it just seems to do no damage at the time. The silent version, however, is more inconspicuous. The adept need only make contact with the target, such as brush up against him or shake his hand, in order to make an attack. The target of the silent form of this power may not make any dodge or reaction test to avoid the attack.
Anyone who perceives the target’s aura and gains at least 2 sucesses on the assensing test can see the charge from this power on the victim. The damage charge may be dispelled with counterspelling. For this purpose it is treated as a spell with a force equal to the damage and a drain code of (F/2+2).
Cost: 1 (obvious) or 2 (Silent)

Distance Strike: This power allows the Adept to turn their melee attacks into ranged attack with a range on (Magic) in meters. The attack is still made with the appropriate melee skill, but is otherwise treated as a ranged attack. The user of this power may not benefit from a smartlink, nor may they take aim.
Cost: 2

Eidedic Sense Memory: The adept with this power has perfect recollection of all sensory input ever received. In addition to photographic sight memory, the adept can perfectly recall sounds, textures, tastes and smells, as well as any other sensory input. The adept can Always remember these sensory impressions and who or what they are in future encounters. The adept can also photo-read, greatly increasing their reading Speed.
Cost: .5

Elemental Strike: An adept with this power improves their killing hands power with a secondary elemental effect, such as fire, cold or electricity. The specific elemental effect must be chosen with the power, though an adept may take this power more than once. When the power is active, the adept’s hands are wreathed in the element of choice. Activating Elemental strike is a simple action, after which the effect lasts for (Magic) in combat turns. Elemental strike may not be used with distance strike or delay damage.
Cost: .5

Empathic Healing: This power allows an adept to heal another person by transferring some or all of their wounds to himself. The adept rolls Magic + Charisma. The rules for healing characters with implants apply. Each hit heals 1 box of damage to the target and does on box of damage to the adept. The base time to do this twice the number of boxes healed in combat turns. The adept must maintain physical contact with the target for the whole process. Only physical wounds may be transferred in this manner.
Cost: 1

Empathic Sense: Each level adds +2 dice to judge intention tests. Cost: .25 per level

Enthralling Performance: An adept must have an artistic performance skill (such as Singing, dancing,, oration, mime, etc) in order to purchase this power. The power only applies to that performance skill, though the adept may purchase this power more than once, applying it to a different skill each time. This power channels magic into the performance of the3 adept, mesmerizing the audience and putting them at ease. Enthralling performance induces a mild hypnotic state. The adept makes a Magic + Performance skill test, the hits on that test become the threshold for Audience members on an Intuition + Willpower test. Anyone who fails this test is mesmerized and must give the adept their full, unwavering attention. The target suffers a –4 dice pool modifier to perception tests. Entranced audience members who are subject to an act of stress (Such as being knocked over) or obtrusive environmental distractions (Such as a gunshot) automatically break out of the trance. The maximum period an adept can keep others entranced is equal to Charisma x 10 minutes.
Cost: .5

Facial Sculpt: An adept with this power may change their facial features through slight shifts in muscle build, bone and cartilage. They may maintain this new face for their magic attribute in hours. Use of facial sculpt requires 10-willpower minutes of concentration. The adept makes a Magic+ disguise check, the hits on this test become the threshold on a person’s perception test to recognize the character. This power provides +2 dice to disguise tests to appear as another person.
Cost: 1

Flexibility (1-3): Each level of this power adds 1 die to escape artist checks and to gymnastics tests for tumbling. It also allows the person to fit into much smaller spaces, adding rating to agility tests to pass through such spaces.
Cost: .5 per level

Freefall: Each level reduces the effective distance a character falls by 2 meters for damage purposes. If an adept with free fall 3 falls 10 meters, he takes damage as if he had fallen 4, and if he only fell 5 meters, he would take no damage at all (As well as landing with style.)
Cost: .25 per level

Gliding: The adept with this power may run up to (Magic) in meters across a surface normally unable to hold their weight, such as a thin tree branch, fragile ice, or water. Any attempts to run longer distances require breaking points or landings and multiple uses of gliding. Any gymnastics test done while using this power have a –1 dice pool penalty. The secondary effects (Such as footprints, ripples n the water or russling leaves) still occur, unless the adept also has traceless walk.
Cost: 1

Inertia strike: An adept with this power is capable of hitting an opponent in melee with such force that it knocks them off their feet. The user must declare they are using this power before their attack roll. If they succeed in their attack, they may remove any amount from the DV of the attack the target resists to add the same amount to the DV of the attack for knockdown purposes only.
Cost: .5

Iron Gut: Popular with shark totem followers, the adept with this power can eat nearly anything and his body can digest it an pass it without harm. Each level adds 2 dice to test to resist ingested toxins.
Cost: .25 per level

Iron Lungs: Each level of this power allows an Adept to hold their breath for another 48 seconds (8 combat turns) before they have to make tests to hold their breath. Additionally, each level adds 2 dice to tests to determine how long a character can go before fatigue sets in.
Cost: .25 per level

Iron Will: Iron will protects an Adept’s mind from outside influence. Add this power’s level in bonus dice to any attempt to resist Magical attempts to control or alter his mind.
Cost: .25 per level.

Linguistics: An adept with this power can learn new languages with only a short exposure. Only (10-magic, min 1) hour of exposure to a new language is required for an adept to learn it at level 1, no test or Karma required. This knowledge is not permanent, if fades from the character’s memory in (Magic) days after he stops using the language. In order to retain the knowledge or advance beyond rating 1 with the language, the adept must spend Karma to buy the skill as normal. The adept with this power never requires instruction to learn a language, only exposure to it.
Cost: .25

Living Focus: This power allows the adept to sustain a spell on himself cast by another person. The magician who cast the spell need not sustain it, the Adept does so for him. The adept also takes the penalty for sustaining. The force of the spell may not exceed the adept’s magic attribute, and the adept main only sustain 1 spell at a time. The adept may not sustain a spell with a target other than himself.
Cost: .5

Magic Sense: This power allows an Adept to sense magical activity within (Magic x 5) meters of his person. Treat this power as the Detect Magic Spell, with a force equal to the Adept’s Magic Rating
Cost: .5

Melanin Control: An adept with Melanin control has the power to change their skin tone, anywhere from albino white to the deepest brown, within the range of normal skin tone for their metatype. They may also vary their hair color, to any color in the natural range for their metatype. It takes 1 complex action to shift the color of either hair or skin color.
Cost: .25

Missile Mastery: Any Item becomes a Deadly weapon in the hands of an Adept with Missile Mastery. The adept adds 2 to the damage value from impact of any weapon that he throws. Improvised thrown weapons (such as playing cards) have a Damage code of (Str/2)P in the adept’s hands. Thrown weapons that normally inflict stun may instead inflict physical.
Cost: 2

Motion Sense: An adept with this power, using subtle clues and magical senses, can unconsciously detect the presence of objects, people or animals within (Magic) in meters, even when the normal senses such as sight or sound detect nothing. The adept makes a magic + perception test with a threshold determined by the accompanying table or the target’s stealth test, whichever is greater. If the target is detected, reduce the modifiers for visibility or blind fire by 2. Astral barriers block this sense.
Cost: .5

Object Threshold
Smaller than cat 4
Smaller than average metahuman 3
Average metahuman 2
Larger than average metahuman 1

Multi-tasking: An adept with multi-tasking is able to focus their attention on multiple things at once. They are never considered distracted, and take no penalties to focusing on more than one thing. This includes AR penalties in spam zones. The adept listen to multiple people at once, read a book while watching the Trid, or simultaneously visit two websites, and retain all information as if he had given each his full attantion. He may make multiple perception = checks at once, including astral perception and matrix perception, and may even make matrix perception checks in multiple nodes at the same time. This power does not allow multiple actions to be taken, however. He does not receive any additional actions or initiative passes from this power.
Cost: .5

Nerve Strike: This power allows an Adept to physically pain and cripple an opponent without doing permanent damage to them. The adept makes an attack as normal, but instead of inflicting damage, they may reduce either their opponents Agility or Reaction by 1 for every net success they achieve on the attack. When used against Critters, whose nervous systems are unfamiliar, Instead reduce agility or reaction by 1 for every 2 net hits. This power may not be used on creatures without a functional nervous system (Such as spirits, machines or the undead.)
Cost: 1

Nimble Fingers: Nimble fingers allows the adept to perform simple reflex and timing tricks more efficiently and effectively. It adds 1 die to palming or other tasks involving manual dexterity. Additionally, Pick up/put down object, remove clip, insert clip and use simple object become free actions for the adept.
Cost: .5

Quick Draw: The adept may use the quick draw rules to draw any weapon, not just pistols. If attacking with the weapon uses a simple action, the adept may draw and attack using a simple action. If attacking with the weapon uses a complex action, the adept may draw and attack using a complex action.
Cost: .5

Pain Relief: Pain relief allows and adept to channel energy into his hands and apply it to chakra points on another person. This allows the adept to dissipate fatigue, stress, muscle tension and pain, healing stun damage. The adept makes a Magic + Intuition check, healing a number of stun damage boxes equal to the number of hits he achieves. The rules for healing targets with implants applies to this test. The time this takes is 10 minutes per point of stun healed. The adept must maintain skin contact the entire this entire time. The target may not benefit from a second use of this power until they heal any remaining stun damage naturally. This power may be used to heal stun damage caused by drain.
Cost: 1

Penetrating strike (1-3): This power gives the Adept’s unarmed strikes an AP of –(2xrating).This power can be combined with killing hands, but not with distance strike.
Cost: .25 per level

Rooting (1-2): The adept may take a free action to “Root” themselves. While rooted, the adept cannot leave that spot, but is impervious to knockdown effects and may not be moved from that spot against their will. The second level of rooting also provides the adept with a remarkably stable firing platform, halving all recoil penalties. In order to move again, the adept must make a simple action to disengage rooting.
Cost: .5 per level

Smashing Blow: When an adept with this power attacks a barrier or other inanimate object, do not double its armor rating in the damage resistance test.
Cost: 1

Spell Shroud: The adept gains bonus dice equal to their rating in this power on tests to resist detection spells.
Cost: .25 per level

Sustenance: An adept with this power does as well with three hours of sleep as a normal person does with 8. They only need 1 meal a day instead of 3. They also only need to use the restroom once a day.
Cost: .5

Temperature Tolerance: For every level of this power, the adept gains 1 bonus die to resistance tests against cold or hot environments. Additionally, these bonus dice apply when resisting the secondary effects of fire or cold attacks.
Cost: .25 per level

Three Dimensional Memory: An adept with this power may memorize an area viewed in exact, three-dimensional clarity with a complex action. Thereafter, the adept may mentally “Walk through” the area, looking around and making perception tests as if they were there. They may not move or otherwise disturb the site, only see things that were visible at the time they memorized the site.The area may be no larger than the adepts (magic rating) cubed in cubic meters, and the adept may memorize a number of areas simultaneously equal to their magic attribute. Any perception tests made have their threshold modified by the time passed since memorization, as shown on the chart below.
Cost: .5
Time passed Threshold modifier
Less than 24 hours +0
Less than a week +1
Less than a month +2
Less than a year +3
Over a year +4

Traceless Walk: The adept with this power may walk over soft or brittle surfaces such as snow, sand or thin paper without leaving any visible traces. The adept makes no noise through contact with the floor (Though still makes other sounds), and applies a –4 dice penalty to attempts to hearing based perception tests against him. The adept will not trip ground-based sensors such as pressure plates. The adept cannot walk across liquid surfaces but can walk across deep snow without sinking, and can still be tracked by non-visual cues (Such as scent).
Cost: .5

True Sight: The adept gains bonus dice equal to their rating in this power on tests to resist Illusion spells.
Cost: .25 per level
Wall Running: The adept may move up to (Magic) in meters up a sheer wall or other vertical surface. Any attempts to run longer distances require breaking points or landings and multiple uses of wall running. Any gymnastics test done while using this power have a –1 dice pool penalty. The secondary effects still occur, unless the adept also has traceless walk.
Cost: 1

::Edit:: Made some changes requested and hopefully made it easier to read.

You missed the cost on Sustenance.Although I would suspect it is .25

Also I thing the counterstrike is a little much. They receive a free attack! I would just give them extra dice to attack an opponent that just attacked them. Maybe at a cost of .5 per level.

Am I reading the elemental strike right. It just converts the damage to the elemental damage, meaning half impact armor. Is it still linked to killing hands?

You missed my old favorite: Side Step, although it looks like Combat Sense has completely taken over the Side Step power.

Other than that looks great!

Woot! Quick Draw Troll Bow adepts. Scary? Insanely.

1. Cool Resolve is useless. Kinesics is .5 per level with no caps and it does far more than CR does.

2. Empathic Sense should just be a mod for Judge Intentions.

3. Commanding Voice still sucks, but you described a Composure roll for the target which is appropriate, so you should just say that's what they roll. I fixed Commanding Voice in Third to be based off a skill test rather than a Charisma test. SR4 just makes it easier to make that, especially since Social Skills are more fleshed out than they used to be (I just finished rewriting all of the Social Skill rules for my games and made them cohesive with contacts and availability and rep instead of spreading them out across four chapters). Personally, I like Charisma+Leadership.

4. It's nice to see someone realized three-dimensional memory should be measured in cubic rather than square meters, but I think it's pretty impotent unless the power allows (Magic^3) m^3 instead of (Magic) m^3. Otherwise a starting Adept with 3-D memory can only remember 1.817m on each side, which isn't enough to memorize a troll, and is hardly worth having the power to walk through a spot of memory the size of a large bath/shower. I can do better than that already (Plus I can recall contents of drawers if I saw them and "open" and "close" them and move shit around).

wall running has a reference to gliding. i suspect that's caused by copying?

also, with rooting, does it just end when they move, or do they need to unroot themselves to be able to move? if they root on a wall or something like that, will they stick to it? and if so, would that allow (via wall climbing and rooting) to do spider-man type stunts? (well, you'd need great leap a bunch too, i guess. and it's really not spider man without the webs, but you gotta draw the line somewhere =P )

I like the Penetrating Strike, but its cost seams a little high. You might wonder how it can get any lower, but consider that Critical Strike costs the same. Critical Strike gives +1 DV per level and this only gives -1 AP. Critical Strike equals +1 DV per level while Penetrating Strike is roughly a 1/3 chance at an extra DV. Consider making it either -2 per 0.25 or -1 per 0.1. Just my 2 , Hope this helps.

Nae bad. Wonder if I should use this, and the metatype threat to convert my old Fomori Adept at some bored point. (After I get the book that is).

There's no cost for "Traceless Walk" though...

#1 - I have no problem with Counterstrike giving the Adept an extra attack, but I think the penalty to his opponent is way too much.

#2 - What is your reason for doubling the PP cost for Traceless Walk?

Cool, then ... er ... good job!

Thanks. Spread the word. Next week's edition, Cyberware!

it's just you. I wouldn't call that a distraction penalty, I'd call it a sustaining penalty. In my house rules, I've been classifying bonus and penalty types. I might get around to putting those into a postable format. But distration penalties are those that result from having more information assault you that you can handle. Sensory overload, and the confusion that results from trying to handle it all.

Hey, PlatonicPimp, these are EXCELLENT!

I'm working on converting my current D20 Iron Kingdoms fantasy campaign to the Shadowrun rules system, and so far the conversions are going quite well. Mind if I add these to the excel document I'm putting together? Credit will, of course, be thrown your way.

Just wondered if anyone was using these?

Very impressive PP. I admire your use of free time; I got nothing at all done today .

Some of these will definitely see use in my games.

Well, argue that logic with the writers of SOTA 64. But regardless, it is magic after all.