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emo samurai
How much does it cost after the first level? Does it cost 3 magic after your initial 2 magic to level up to level 2, or does it just cost 3 magic total? Same for level 3.
Ranneko
3 total
Orb
Yup, just 3 total.

If you have improved reflexs (1) and you increase you magic rating by spending karma, you can spend that point to improve rating of the power by one.

Same goes for all adept powers, you can always improve thier rating by paying the difference.
emo samurai
HOOOOOOOOLLLLY shit. That is AWESOME. And that balances them out against samurai; if it took 10 magic to level it up to 3, samurai would DESTROY adepts.
Akimbo
Most cybered people can destroy an adept pretty easily anyway.
emo samurai
Why do people play adepts, then?
emo samurai
And is that considering skillsofts? Because those aren't supposed to automatically confer skill at its maximum rating anyway.
RunnerPaul
QUOTE (emo samurai @ Strikes Again!/Ha-Ha-Ha)
Why do people play adepts, then?

Because the question of the effectiveness of cybered razorguy vs adept is a subject of widespread debate.
Taki
QUOTE (emo samurai)
Why do people play adepts, then?

No "beep" when entering in a lot of building ?
Because the character gives a really different feeling when its magic ?
Squinky
I play Street Sams for the coolness factor, I love cyber. but once my essence is gone, I can't initiate it up like magic, I've gotta continually upgrade, which requires tons of money, and will eventually hit a wall.

I play Adepts for the long term viability. No matter what I can have an uncapped growth potential in my magic, being able to become much more powerful than a samuari in the long run. Magic also has a different feel.

There you go.
Clyde
Adepts can get a couple things with powers no Street Samurai can yet copy. Voice control, Kinesics and bonus social skill dice, for example. Also, consider the effect of buying just 2 points of mystic armor (1 power point) - it makes you as well armored as a guy in Full Security Armor with only an Armor Jacket on - pretty nice. Spend 2 power points and you suddenly become a lot more bulletproof. Combat sense is also neat - spend a couple power points on that and you'll be damn near impossible to surprise or hit, not to mention your own ambushes becoming that much more effective. Even at mid levels, adepts can walk through fire and come out smiling like Buddha - or Freddy Krueger.
Gondor
OK, this might not be the right thread for this, but I don't think this question warrants its own thread.
Is there a reason to cast the spell Increase Reflexes over force 4. According to the rules as I read them, you need 4 hits to achieve maximum results, and I can find no other uses for force in the spell. Am I right?
Darkness
The only thing i see is, that a stronger spell is not so "easily" dispelled.
emo samurai
Yeah, if you quicken it at force 6, add 6 extra karma, and have a magic of 6, that makes an opposed roll of 18 dice. That is fucking IMPOSSIBLE for anyone who isn't initiated at least 3 times.
Fedifensor
Well, I'm still reading through the book, but it seems like Adepts can hold their own.

Picture an elf adept with Exceptional Attribute (Reaction) and a maxed-out attribute, giving him a base Reaction of 8. Buy a Magic attribute of 6, then take Improved Reflexes 2 (+2 to Reaction) and Combat Sense 6 (+6 dice to defend against melee and ranged attacks). That's *16* dice to roll as a defense any time you're attacked, without counting Dodge. Who cares about Full Defense? Your base dice pool is probably double what most attackers are going to roll to hit you, and you can default to just taking 4 hits instead of rolling (meaning attackers need 5+ hits to tag you).

Or you can use 2 to 3 points of your Magic Attribute on Mystic Armor, making you nearly bulletproof when wearing armor - far more so than cyberware enhancements can offer.

Adepts can be quite powerful - in their area of specialization. Street samurai can be more powerful in general once they get enough cash together, as the bioware/cyberware combo can be tweaked out more than adept powers. But an adept who specializes in an area will be at leat on par with the samurai, if not better. Plus, once an Adept gets to Initiate for the first time, they can take Masking and appear to be an unaugmented mundane to nearly everyone.
Squinky
That elf would have a base reaction of 7....not 8.

And you can easily out do the armor aspect by getting cyber-limbs and getting armor for those, considering each limb can have 2 points of armor that stacks at char gen. If you have a full body replacement you can have 5 limbs with 2 armor ==10 armor. After chargen it can easily be upgraded to up to 4 points of armor per limb. Where adepts beat sams out on armor is that mystic armor is for everywhere, you can't target the unarmored part of em, cause even their eyeballs are considered armored.

Street sams will usaully start with higher stats also, because it's so cheap and easy to get muscle toner and augmentation, and aspets have to pay out the ass for those. !.5 magic per point usaully....

The uber powers of adepts in my opinion are boosted attributes (crazy powerful if you have a decent magic score) Combat sense, and of course they can out do everyone with improved ability. They also can get that elusive 4 combat turn right out of the box...
emo samurai
Also, I don't think skillsofts should be so awesome; they shouldn't stack with the character's skills. With skills, you use your own brain; with skillsofts, you use a processor that does not have anything to do with your brain.
Squinky
QUOTE (emo samurai)
Also, I don't think skillsofts should be so awesome; they shouldn't stack with the character's skills. With skills, you use your own brain; with skillsofts, you use a processor that does not have anything to do with your brain.

They don't stack. They simply give a character a skill at a rating equal to the skillsofts rating, so a rating 4 skillsof program would give a character 4 with pistols, even if the character had a 2 in it beforehand.
RunnerPaul
And use of skillsofts prevents spending of Edge.
SpasticTeapot
Adepts are different from samurai in many ways. They both have their pros and cons.
Street samurai can get their stuff added in at almost any time. Wheras an Adept might have to go on six runs plus an ordeal to initiate and gain a point of magic, a street samurai can get a similar benifit from going on three runs and paying a visit to the shadow doctor. They've also got a great deal of nifty functionality; a smart razorguy can wire his cybereyes into numerous cheap remote cameras, allowing him to switch to a different view at any time. (I'm not sure of the rules on this, but seeing how I can make one of these myself for 30$ a camera and a RadioShack RF switch, I can't say it would be hard.) As an added bonus, they can swap out obscure skills at their leisure.
Adepts, on the other hand, are both much more versatile and more likely to be one-trick ponies, so to speak. They can, and often have to focus all of their abilities on one area (the troll hand-to-hand monster or the pistol-wielding adept capable of dealing absurd damage), making them a bit weak in other areas. On the other hand, an Adept can learn some rather useful abilities not duplicated by any bit of cyberware or bio; a troll with smashing blow can simply bash through many walls with ease, and wallrunning, well, wallrunning is just plain fun.) They can also operate with a much lower profile; even the most non-invasive reflex enhancements will leave the user a little twitchy, and most cyberware shows up like a becon on a metal detector. On the other hand, an initiate Adept can use masking to conceal his or her abilities, making them appear totally mundane (until they start smashing through walls.)
jago668
Other than you can make a troll phys ad do something like 28P or 30S in unarmed combat as a begining character. So yeah if you pick one thing to be good at as a phys ad you will be better than nearly anyone else. However it takes alot of time and karma to be good at alot of things.

Or if you prefer stack everything into mystic armor and have a no armor soak of 12/12. Drop an armored jacket into the mix for a 20/18. Now just imagine that stuck onto a troll with a body of 10, or 11 if you can scrape the points for it with exceptional attribute. Then stack the toughness quality on there as well.

Or how about starting an elf with enhanced attribute agility, topping the stat. Then pushing aptitude onto blades, topping it out, and specializing in swords. Then take a force 2 katana. Then blow 3 points onto improved ability blades, and 3 points into improved reflexes. So you are rolling 27 dice to attack as a starting character, and you are going to roll it 3 times a round.

Or as pointed out earlier. Top out magic, and buy 12 levels of Combat Sense. Then top out Reaction. So you are rolling 18 dice of defense against ranged attacks, and you get to add even more dice in close combat.

The fun thing is, they are all by rules, and all out of the main book. Of course if your GM allows you to do this he/she should go and get an MRI and a CT scan.
ThatSzechuan
QUOTE (jago668)
Other than you can make a troll phys ad do something like 28P or 30S in unarmed combat as a begining character. So yeah if you pick one thing to be good at as a phys ad you will be better than nearly anyone else. However it takes alot of time and karma to be good at alot of things.

Or if you prefer stack everything into mystic armor and have a no armor soak of 12/12. Drop an armored jacket into the mix for a 20/18. Now just imagine that stuck onto a troll with a body of 10, or 11 if you can scrape the points for it with exceptional attribute. Then stack the toughness quality on there as well.

Or how about starting an elf with enhanced attribute agility, topping the stat. Then pushing aptitude onto blades, topping it out, and specializing in swords. Then take a force 2 katana. Then blow 3 points onto improved ability blades, and 3 points into improved reflexes. So you are rolling 27 dice to attack as a starting character, and you are going to roll it 3 times a round.

Or as pointed out earlier. Top out magic, and buy 12 levels of Combat Sense. Then top out Reaction. So you are rolling 18 dice of defense against ranged attacks, and you get to add even more dice in close combat.

The fun thing is, they are all by rules, and all out of the main book. Of course if your GM allows you to do this he/she should go and get an MRI and a CT scan.

Those powers all max at 6 levels at chargen.
Squinky
QUOTE (jago668)
The fun thing is, they are all by rules, and all out of the main book.

No. No they definately are not.
Vaevictis
QUOTE (emo samurai)
Why do people play adepts, then?

Aside from the whole "widely debated" thing, adepts provide a magical equivalent to sammies. They're basically the same "class", they just have a different mechanism to achieve the same thing.

Aside from the "feel" of the character (magic versus machine), the main difference is that sammies achieve their abilities much easier than adepts due to their being money based instead of karma based. Also, sammies have a hard limit on how much they can get installed due to essence.

Adepts have a harder time of it because they are karma based, but due to repeated initiations and the resultant maximum magic increase, they have no hard cap on how far they can advance. They also have some abilities that sammies can never have -- they can use weapon foci, and there are adept powers cyber can't duplicate.

Further, there is theoretically nothing preventing an adept from chroming out; they just have to make sure they don't drop their essence so low that they extinguish their last magic point. As long as they don't lose that last magic point, they can always initiate and increase the magic later. In this fasion, a karma-whore of a character could theoretically have enough chrome to drop their essence to .0000000001 and still have a magic of 12 and all of the powers that go with it. (mind you, the karma cost would be enormous, but it's *possible*.)
Darkness
QUOTE (jago668)
Or if you prefer stack everything into mystic armor and have a no armor soak of 12/12.  Drop an armored jacket into the mix for a 20/18.  Now just imagine that stuck onto a troll with a body of 10, or 11 if you can scrape the points for it with exceptional attribute.  Then stack the toughness quality on there as well.

No. Powers have a max rating of Magic Rating (p.187, Adept Powers). So max rating is 6/6 if you have a MA of 6.
QUOTE (jago668)
Or how about starting an elf with enhanced attribute agility, topping the stat.  Then pushing aptitude onto blades, topping it out, and specializing in swords.  Then take a force 2 katana.  Then blow 3 points onto improved ability blades, and 3 points into improved reflexes.  So you are rolling 27 dice to attack as a starting character, and you are going to roll it 3 times a round.

You can't do both, simply because getting an maxed agility 7 elf to 10 requires 6 points of your adept power points (p.187 Improved Physical Attribute) as each point over the natural maximum costs 2 Points. You have no points left for the other mods. Actually you have already bought powers for 4.5 points, leaving at most 1 point for an improved attribute below natural max.
QUOTE (jago666)
Or as pointed out earlier.  Top out magic, and buy 12 levels of Combat Sense.  Then top out Reaction.  So you are rolling 18 dice of defense against ranged attacks, and you get to add even more dice in close combat.

Combat Sense goes only up to 6 (p.187, Adept Powers).
QUOTE (jago666)
The fun thing is, they are all by rules, and all out of the main book.

Disproved, at least by the RAW.
Drace
A player of mine just had an idea for a adept to get 2 extra and only cost them 1 pp, you just buy a lvl 2 synaptic booster. It costs 160,000 nuyen.gif at generation (32 bps) though, which is a little high, but this only costs your adept 1 essence, and therefore one magic point, and also only 1 pp, allowing you to have 2 more to spend than previously, and if you get another level installed later, (with some other bio to bring it to a full essence point used so as to not waste) it will only end up costing 2pps, rather than 5. That leaves you with alot more pps to apply to other areas.

The only problem he had with this was that he had to use the 32 bps on those two items, and couldn't fill up all his other skills.
The Jopp
Effective cost of that would be 57BP due to Magic rating 6=25BP plus the money cost for Bioware which becomes 32+25= 57BP instead of 45 (magic attribute 4(10)+5(10)+6(25))
SL James
Removed because I am not a total bastard.
Squinky
If you have an adept that is so keen on shaving points on his build, just use cram or jaz instead of burining you essence....
Angelstandings
I think the cost effectiveness of synaptic boosters for adepts will go away when/if Geas are reintroduced to SR4.
Azralon
It's the cursory effects that make me hesitate to get bioware for any adepts I make up. Fewer dice when healing (or getting healed) can be tolerated easily enough, but having lower caps for all adept powers can get rough quickly.
Hasaku
QUOTE (Angelstandings)
I think the cost effectiveness of synaptic boosters for adepts will go away when/if Geas are reintroduced to SR4.

Why? With geasa, I can get a Synaptic Booster and not lose any Magic/PP. Geasa encourage you to "give up" a little bit of magic.
Brahm
QUOTE (The Jopp)
Effective cost of that would be 57BP due to Magic rating 6=25BP plus the money cost for Bioware which becomes 32+25= 57BP instead of 45 (magic attribute 4(10)+5(10)+6(25))

If you assume that he Adept is going to purchase Magic 6. Which is usually a bad idea for building a strong, well rounded character. Synaptic Boosters are a good idea for Adepts. After character generation when you can buy level 3 you get your fourth IP for only 1 more Magic instead of 2.
Jonnysan
This is a problem I've encountered in my brief exposure to SR4 thus far (I haven't played any previous editions of SR before this, either). Playing either a Sammy or an Adept is an appealing notion to me. However, one of the problems I've had with the Adept is the high cost of Improved Reflexes making it much more feasible to get Synaptic Boosters instead.

Then, if you take the Restricted Gear positive quality from RC, you could theoretically get SB level 3 at chargen, along with the Muscle Toner level 2 to round out the 2 points of Magic you'd be spending. Naturally, that costs a lot of BP (and forces you to take the negative quality In Debt to afford it) but it is still doable. But if you don’t want to go crazy with it, it is especially doable if you just take SB at level 2 and Muscle Toner 2 at creation, which seems like what most people do, at least from what I’ve read about the issue on Dumpshock.

So, once you've reached that natural point of augmenting your Adept powers with Bioware (in essence becoming a Sammy—pun intended, ha!) to get an Adept multiple IPs without paying for them with at least half your magic (assuming a starting magic of 6, buying Improved Reflexes 2 costs you 3 points), I find myself wondering why not just play a Sammy and forget the Adept. I know that the Adept offers some interesting diversity on its own merits, which is why I keep getting drawn back to the idea of the character. But for me, the problem is that it seems like playing an Adept is playing a part Sammy/Adept hybrid. I want them to be distinct. It sort of ruins the feel for me if my Adept is wired up just like any other mundane. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I wish it didn’t seem like being an Adept was something that some Sammy’s do to be a little different than the other Sammy’s. Savvy? Once you add in all that ware you really lose the flavor of a magical character. At least, that’s how it is for me.

Naturally, I may be getting some of the above wrong as I've only just been learning the game, but I'm glad that other people are having the same difficulty I am in this regard. Oh, and I hope someone can show me that I'm wrong insofar as incorporating Bioware into an Adept for the IPs seems like the only rational thing to do. I’d really like to play an Adept. I just want to play an Adept that doesn’t need to spend a majority of his Magic on getting IPs so that I can have fun being an Adept.
Muspellsheimr
Learn to check thread dates before posting.


Edit: Adept Powers: House Errata
Glyph
If you play a combat-oriented adept, you should expect to pay half of your Magic to boost your initiative - it's that important. A hybrid adept will be more effective than a pure adept, at the expense of being more hyper-specialized. You can still make a decent pure adept, though. For three points, you have initiative covered; for 0.25 points, you can get Agility boost: 1 as a decent alternative to muscle toner, and that leaves 2.75 points left to spend if you start with Magic: 6.

If you want to have more "fun" powers, then play a less combat-oriented character, like a face/detective type. For Magic: 5, for example - kinesics: 4, enhanced perception: 4, multi-tasking, eidetic sense memory, commanding voice, linguistics, nimble fingers, and sustenance.
Jonnysan
QUOTE (Muspellsheimr @ Jan 29 2009, 02:04 AM) *
Learn to check thread dates before posting.


That's my mistake. I used the search function and then just opened up five or so threads that seemed pertinent and forgot that they weren't all current. It didn't help that it's past 2am.
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