see the "How Invisible is Invisible" thread.

This is being dealt with in another thread, but it makes me chuckle that it is easier to hit someone where an armored longcoat doesn't cover than where an armored jacket doesn't cover. (Called shot to bypass armor)

You're not aiming for where the cloth doesn't cover, but where the armored parts of it don't cover. How most characters would know the difference is up in the air, but is sacrificed on the alter of abstraction.

That's why you use it in conjunction with surprise and 3 aim actions.

Really? When I've tried it (admittedly, with 20 dice in handguns) I've never noticed the difference. And judging by some of the characters here, 20 dice isn't all that unusual.

Given an average reaction of 3, most people aren't going to score more than 1 success on defense, unless going full dodge. Even with a maxed-out Reaction of 9, they're only going to average 3 successes without going full defense. So, I don't see how things could have gone the way you describe, unless the baddies were going full-defense. Which is another matter entirely.

You can also make called shots in conjunction with wide spread too. A guy at my table made up for his relatively poor firearms dicepool by combining the Mossberg CMDT with a cyberarm gyromount and using it to make called/aimed shots while it was set to medium spread and narrow short bursts. 11-15DV and -2 to the defender's dicepool is pretty fraggin' mean, despite the large AP penalty. At the very least it's quite likely to score a knockdown and some serious stun.

That reminds me Whipstich: Knockdown is a rules problem. Not sure if it's been mentioned yet. I'm sure it's not a problem for everyone, but for us it doesn't give back enough to warrant the extra hassle.

Care to elaborate on that one? I'm fairly certain it hasn't been touched upon in this thread as of yet. I could easily be wrong though, considering it's gone a few pages now. I know knockdown occasionally makes handling movement a pain in the neck, but it hasn't really been an issue for my group. If it's something else, I guess it's just not obvious enough for me. I can be pretty dense.

There's not enough Cheesecake in SR4.

I'm working on it though.

Ah, I see. I guess it never occurred to me as being a problem since only stick and shock and gel ammo really change anything.

OK, sorry, laughingowl, I tend to exaggerate to make a point, especially while tired and apparently this past time(and some others, I really need to stop doing this) my exaggeration overshadowed my point.

What I was trying to say when I chose the arbitrary number 25 is that "acceptable civilian safety levels" don't mean the same thing in 65 years. When a society is willing to just write off it's non-viable potential citizens(actually something I agree with- but if you guys want to discuss socio-economic and philosophical theories you can PM me, no derailing this thread) then it is likely to kind of lower the standards on how safe something has to be for it to be publicly acceptable. It is incredibly unlikely that an average person will kill another average person in one hit. It is relatively likely to take them out for a limited time or at least help them get away. Which sounds like a perfectly reasonable weapon. The fact that it half-kills someone really isn't a problem in this society. Until someone starts smacking someone repeatedly with one it doesn't look too horrible, chances are when that happens it's either a shadowrunner, ganger, or SINless either hitting or taking the hits and I mean, what can you really do about that? No one cares if they die and it's really hard to keep them from doing anything, make this less lethal and they will use something else. Hell, making this lethal enough to takedown, but unlikely to kill unless you try makes runners at least less likely to kill someone.

Not to mention, make this much weaker and it really won't help you when the cyber'd troll tries to mug/rape you in an alley. I think it stands right about where it should be. With low levels of skill vs. average or average-ish people with a little augmentation it still works incredibly well. So, for civilian defense it is likely to incapacitate and unlikely to kill. Sounds good to me.

Again, this is just how I see it.


Chris

Our Technomancer and I were discussing this and came up with another possible solution:

Matrix test = Skill + Program, limit raw hits to Logic.

What this would mean in character is this:

How well you perform is based on the practice you have had at doing the action you're doing and the quality of your program. It is LIMITED by your capability to understand what is going on and how to think quickly on your feet (mentally, so we use Logic as the cap).

I'm not saying this is the only way, just another one that we thought of.

I think the deadliness of the system is more of a benefit than a drawback. Yeah, being able to kill people with guns really easily is uber powerful. Like... in real life? Real life is probably a lot dealier than SR. Damage boxes are much more forgiving than real life. If you take 9/10 boxes, you might have a penalty, but you're basically fine. If you're tough, 9/10 boxes could mean being shot three times with a pistol. While it's possible for people to live after being shot that much, it's the exception, not the rule. People say "wow, he was shot three times and lived, that's amazing." They don't say "he had one box of damage left, no duh he was able to limp away safely." The realities of physical trauma mean that damage is just less damaging in SR4's ruleset that don't take it into account.

If you're arguing that Shadowrun is too deadly, then are you arguing for a less realistic system? One where expert marksmen can't reliably blow your head off in good lighting conditions when you're standing out in the open? Admittedly expert marksmen in Shadowrun are twice as good as real life, but a called shot on someone who isn't in cover or moving is something that a good pistolier can already do. So in the future, people who are enhanced with cybernetics and frickin magic... can't anymore?

Initiavtive and Locked in Passes

There's one glaring change that was made to the game that I jsut don't quite understand. It seems broken or unbalanced. That is the "new" initiative.

Previously, no matter how much "initiative" a player had, there was always a chance that they would be slow... or at least slower. Several Wired 3 characters had guaranteed 2nd passes (barring injury) in my SR3 game, but they still might be slower sometimes than many Wired 1 characters due to the roll of the dice. On average they would be going "first" but not always. And they never knew for sure how many passes they were gonna get (often 2, sometimes 3) until those dice were rolled. It was possible to build a non wired character and actually get a second pass on a really good roll. Those players were always excited when this happened.

With 4th Edition, passes are automatic for the most part. No matter how lousy you roll Init, you are gonna have that many passes. It has made the value of Init passes jsut sky rocket, with the unwired (or unmagicked) characters sucking hind tit every single turn. I know it's a change in the game. Maybe the designers actually intended to make assorted improved reflex type stuff that much more potent, but to me it has lost some of the ... zing. It's too predictable.

I jsut preferred the ...more randomness of the old initiative. And the fact that while it was more "likely" that you would get more passes, it really wasn't written in stone how many you had. Or how many that little shrimp you were planning on beating up had. You still always knew 9 times out of ten who was the bad ass. But there was always that "occasion."

So, I created this solution to my perceived problem:

Roll your Initiative as normal: Roll X Init dice and add the successes to your Init score. Then compare the number of hits you had on the roll to the below chart:

* 2 hits , you get your 2nd pass (if you have the appropriate gear/spells for it)

* 3 hits you get your 3rd and 4th (if you have the appropriate gear/spells for them)

and then to jsut shake things up and make it fun:

* 4+ hits on your test, you gain a second pass (if you are unwired/unspelled.)


A non-wired guy is probably tossing around 6-7 dice on average for Init so 4+ hits won't come up that often, but when it does, it will give them that nice lucky shot. And he is still only picking up a second pass.

A wired guy is probably tossing around 8-11 dice so he is more than likely to always make his threshold for secondary and tertiary passes... but sometimes not.

Anyway, I started using this with my players as a test and all of them decided that they liked the feel of it better as well. And this was my problem! None of my players had ever actually complained about it. But they thought what I had was better.

Vlad

I'd kind of like to see some more discussion of the magic stuff and how it seems pretty broken. Things which would be useful would be a) pointing out that certain things which SEEM broken aren't, and why, and b) suggestions for appropriate adjustments to help "fix" things. Most of this stuff was already covered in earlier posts, but there wasn't much (if any) discussion of

First topic; adepts.


1. Social adepts (kinesics) - very broken. Capable of reaching such obscene dice levels it’s not funny. Add in control focused mystic adepts, and you’ve got phenomenally broken characters who are a lot more flexible than common broken “one trick pony� characters.
2. At the same time, pure *physical* adepts are broken with reguard to power level and character progression; lots of subtopics come under this
a. Power level – Adept power costs did not get adjusted along with the 6->4 rule; in point of fact, several powers went UP in cost.
b. In SR3, adepts could purchase power points separate from raising magic attribute or initiating. This option disappeared in SR4.
c. Background count- used to be *very* rare- almost exclusively found when dealing with very high power enemies. Now it’s supposedly almost everywhere.
d. Background count- used to have no impact on adepts. Now it strips adepts of their powers. 1 lost PP per background count, and the GM chooses which powers are lost.
e. Useful ways to spend karma - compared to Mages, adepts have crap for karma progression. Mages can: learn new spells, bind useful foci, bind spirits, learn to abuse possession, and initiate/raise magic to boost their power level. Adepts can…. Initiate/raise magic. The rules also changed so that initiation does NOT automatically grant you additional power, you must buy up magic attribute separately. So it’s more expensive. Due to the exponential scale of karma spending, adepts stop progressing VASTLY earlier than mages.

Next topic; mages
1. Mages are NOTABLY more powerful than in SR3- With the adjusted power levels in SR4, anyone who’s NOT a mage has nearly 0 chance to resist a mage. Mage dicepools are slightly smaller, resist dicepools are notably smaller, but with the removal of the “pool� mechanic that existed in SR3, mages get to use all their dice on every test. In SR3, if a mage had more IPs, he had to be more careful with using his pool, because the pool only refreshed once per combat round, and he had to split his dice between casting and defending.
2. Spells are now variable force-level- Mages can now adjust on the fly how “mean� they need/want a spell to be.
3. Spirits + sustaining task - Need to sustain something, don’t have a focus? No problem- summon a spirit and give it the “sustain� task.
4. Possession + Channeling = "IWIN" button. (okay, maybe slight exaggeration, but broken in power level)
5. Ally costs - the costs + the powers scale linearly. Most other character advancements scale with exponential costs.
6. Drain - in SR3, “overcasting� changed the target numbers for drain, making it much more deadly. In SR4, with the flexible force level for casting and fixed target numbers, overcasting seems to be much more useful, and adds yet more to mages power level.

A couple other items I'm was thinking about, and these are my own personel contemplations-

I thought in SR3 there was a rule for exchanging nuyen <-> karma. That seems gone in SR4 too, and I'm thinking that's got to be ugly for pure sammies. With their upgrades costing so much more money than usually comes in, don't they tend to end up progressing *really* slowly after build?

Also, metahumans- with the "compression" of the skills/attributes, metahuman stat differences are suddenly more significant than they were, and they didnt get changed much from SR3 to SR4. It seems like building a straight human combat character is nearly no longer feasible. Do others think this is a problem?

So... thoughts?

--Ikarius

Very few of the things you listed about adepts are actual problems. The "problems" with being an adept can be mitigated by another design choice people are quick to call a flaw: cyber adepts who court burnout via parallel karma and nuyen progression. You seem to be implying that Adepts got shafted-- and maybe the pure ones did. Meanwhile at my table I'm sitting here beating cybered adepts off with a stick because if anything they're a li'l too good if you know what you're doing. Which, btw, is why I laugh at anyone naive enough to think Sensitive System is a "cheap" flaw in any game with decent payouts-- essence costs can be a very real limitation for adepts. While they do have an alternate advancement path in the form of karma, nuyen is often a helluva lot quicker path to power, even for adepts.

Watchers suck now, even at the thing they're supposed to be good at (Watchers "watch" things with 2 Perception dice).

Actually, I'm arguing that the called shot system is unrealistic, and hideously broken to boot. At +4/-4, you gain too much benefit for too little penalty, especially at higher dice pools. And do we need to get into the horror that is the combination of called shots and Longshot tests? That enables you to not only one-shot a Citymaster with a flechette pistol, you can theoretically *knife* one as well.

Whipstich,
I'd agree that some of the adept issues are dealt with by adding cyber to the mix, though I did call out "pure" physad. At this point I wonder if a human pure physad is a reasonably viable build anymore; that does seem a bit like a problem. I'm thinking the changes in background count were put in there to limit mages a bit more, but when they didn't scale physads up at all and added the bit about background count killing powers... that seems broken to me. Overall, most of the issues would seem moderately innocuous, but I think the combination of all those issues seems like adepts really got the shaft.

The potency of magicians also seems like a real issue. SR3 they were quite capable of dominating, and it seems like it's become more skewed in SR4, unless you're constantly chipping at them with background count... but then you're utterly wrecking the adepts. It seems particularly bad that magicians loose some dice when they face background count, while adepts simply loose powers outright.

See, I'm not buying that your run-of-the-mill "common" 1-3 background count utterly wrecks adepts more than magicians-- mostly because adepts still spend the majority of their points on meat skills that are linked to meat attributes rather than magical ones. Contrary to what you previously posted, the player rather than the GM gets to choose which powers are lost first (although with MystAds the GM gets to decide if the points come from the Mystic side OR the Adept side). So in the worst case scenario in which the Adept loses powers that are directly related to tasks he's actually performing, the worst consequence is that he's likely to lose a couple dice on some tests. After all, unlike Magicians, Adepts still spend most of their points on abilities that can be performed with or without magical assistance (Assensing, Astral Combat and Enchanting not withstanding). Plus, if they're a pure Adept, they likely have a bit of a buffer that can prevent them from losing all their powers entirely while if they're cyber adepts or otherwise have a relatively low MA then clearly their BPs and karma progression went to having tricks up their sleeve that are entirely unaffected by background counts in the first place. Meanwhile background count is virtually guaranteed to nerf the Magician's conjuring/sorcery pools, limits overcasting and plain makes drain harder to cope with in general. I'd rather be an Adept reduced to a midly shitty version of a Street Samurai or Face temporarily than a Magic 5 dedicated Mage standing around in a rating 3 background count, since at that point you're basically just being kept around for your Counterspelling and Astral abilities.

As for whether or not background counts were intended to nerf adepts worse than magicians, that's just speculation.

1. I believe this will be addressed in the next round of SR4 errata.
2.
a. Powers were adjusted for balance reasons. The introduction of adept metamagics like Infusion allow for more versatily and diversification in powers without actually picking up an extra PP. That said adepts remain specialists and their choice of powers defines them.
b. The rule was optional in SR3 and intended as a place holder until Initiation rules were introduced.
c. I'm not entirely sure where you got that impression - unless you're referring to the fact that Background Count 0 is common everywhere. Instances of background count continue to conform with the criteria in previous editions and are no more common than before.
d. Think of it as a trade-off for not having to deal with MAD and cyberware detectors.
e. On the other hand adepts have the option of investing in diversify their skill base which mages only do if they give up a number of potentially useful options. Given that adepts are almost by definition specialists, branching out and building up their initial weak points.



1. This is not entirely true. I've said this before, but it bears repeating. Far too many gamemasters forget to factor in all the relevant modifiers in spellcasting. This is important because the modifiers directly diminish that dice pool you are complaining about - something that didn't happen in SR3. In combat, unless the magician is casting on himself or his target is standing in the middle of a street in broad daylight, you can expect modifiers ranging from -4 to -8 pretty easily (just 50% cover automatically drops the caster's dice pool by 4 dice, throw in dim street lighting and he's losing 6 dice). Most spellcasters out of the box have spellcasting dice pools in the 10-15 range and those modifiers will make a dent (and make resistance more likely). And if the other side has magical backup, Counterspelling is just one of your worries. If the other side casts a mana barrier between you and your targets, your spellcasting pools are going to suck even further. I am not saying gamemasters can always count on visibility and cover modifiers to balance things out, but that when they do factor in they change the balance significantly.
2. And this is a problem why?
3. Cool. As long as you're not looking at any wards or mana barriers getting in the way and you're okay with expending a service.
4. People keep forgeting that this combo has a built-in limitation. Every use of a power (and not a service) burns up a service. If you're using a powerful enough possession spirit to make the buff level broken, the number of services are going to run pretty fast. So yeah, you can walk around with a force 10 buff to your Atts and Immunity to Normal Weapons. But use a couple of the spirit's powers and you might find yourself abandonned in the worst possible situation.
5. To me this just means there's an incentive for magicians to pour karma into an Ally rather than spend it on themselves. Allies still eat up significant amounts of karma (not to mention time, an initiation, and a metamagic).
6. Yeah overcasting is much more common in my experience, but it leads to Physical Drain damage that cannot be magically healed. This, combined with my point above on ensuring the proper cover and visibility modifiers are applied, means that overcasting in combat can be a very dangerous propostion (potentially increasing negative modifiers if the spell fails to accomplish it's intended task and you take Drain).


Finding the right balance between nuyen and karma is always going to be an issue and the "right" amounts vary significantly from group to group. My players tend to make 15-30k a run these days but typically only earn between 4-6 karma, and the magician having been played for 2 years straight hasn't outstripped the samurais (in fact he got a little cybered up). The rule in SR3 was entirely optional and was in the SR Companion.


I've seen way too many human characters to think most people are having a problem with this. In fact the results of a poll on DSF a while back suggested that the metatype breakdown among DSF players is pretty close to the metatype expression percentiles in the setting.

I'm with the crowd that thinks Shadowrun's realistic deadliness is a feature of the game, not a problem. The eggshells armed with hammers approach of Shadowrun lends strongly to establishing the reliance on strategy, reconnaisance and betrayal that are the hallmarks of the game.

For really broken rules, try the weight-lifting rules. I've actually got my own fix for that and a couple of other minor tweaks on my site here

-K.

Synner & Whipstich,
Thanks for the responses. Helps me understand things a bit better.

Synner-
My comment on the background count stems from my previous experiences playing SR3; none of the GMs I played with utilized background count except in really nasty areas, like bug city, or aztechnology controlled areas where blood magic was being performed. Reading the SR4 rules in detail, I was a bit shocked to see that the site of a rock concert could be a background count of 2, and someplace a murder had occurred would be a 1- I mean, TODAY murders have occurred all over the place, it seems like that would indicate we should expect background count of 1 virtually everywhere in shadowrun.

Also, on that 15-30k/run; is that per character, or across all characters, and if it's across all characters, how many are in the campaign?

--Ikarius

I simply understood the revised background count description as a tool for GMs, enabling them to put in a little background now and then to challenge awakened characters if need be without having to add ridiculous barriers and wards everywhere.

I also wouldn't think that all those background counts (from a murder or a rock concert) should last that long. For a concert, by the time it no longer smells like weed and spilled beer the count should be back to normal, and the murder scene would fade over a few weeks (or maybe once the victim is buried?).

Maybe called shots are unrealistic, or too much bonus for too little penalty. The only problem with that assertion is how much is enough penalty, how much bonus is too much? It's so hard to define the "right" way to do called shots that I can't really see a basis for agreeing or disagreeing with you. They're good, you think they should be worse, and I think it comes down to personal preference. Either you like called shots to be super good, or you don't. There's no objective standard where we can prove whether they're well balanced or not.

Now... knifing a citymaster? Are you referring to a called shot to bypass its armor? Because a GM could very easily tell you "there is no chink in the citymaster's armor that you can hit with your knife." That's written directly into the called shot rules. The GM always decides whether a vulnerable area is accessible. So, you're correct that it's possible in theory, but theory doesn't much matter when you're being chased by a citymaster and all you have is a knife, and your GM isn't drunk

Now, I am a bit late on the adept power discussion, but RAW costs really must be addressed.

First off, some of the adept powers were reduced in cost. This is good, however, some were increased in cost (not even taking into acount the 6 to 4 switch). Now those that were not increased or decreased have been effectively increased in cost do the the fact that 6 is the new 4. Maintaining the .25, .5, 1, 2 cost stepping makes things even more expensive. 1pp in SR4 should be worth 1.5 SR3pp, yet we find that this is not the case.

Another issue: the cost to increase a power point. Im sure Ive said this way too many times, but for adepts, it just costs too damn much! The cost to increase magic in SR4 is to limit the advancement of mages, which at the same time bones adepts. This may be what the devs intend, as it forces an adept to focus towards one area, otherwise all his points will run out and he'll have to spend a hell of a lot of karma to get more. There are many ways to houserule this, but it still stands that by RAW, adepts are just too weak. Synner says that they spend most of their time training and increasing spells, but this is mainly due to the fact that it is the only thing they really can do. They have to save karma far too long otherwise.

It's easy to see that the +4/-4 gives too much bonus for too little penalty. Just do the math. In order to defend against it properly, you need 12 more dice! You lose 4, but gain the equivalent of 12. That's easily much more benefit than penalty, and it's not even close to balanced.

As far as the Citymaster goes: It's the most cheap kind of rules cheese to say: "This is up to the GM". A good system of this type shouldn't rely entirely on GM discretion. What kind of laziness is it to say: "We can't be bothered to give you rules, just make it up"?

Losing 4, gaining 12 is a priori wrong? Why? Gaining more dice to damage than you lose to hit is always bad? If those 4 dice are the difference between hitting and missing, then no, it isn't. I can see why you're saying it's broken, I just can't agree that lose < gain = always broken. If it works for the system, then it's fine, as I see it. SR4 is a deadly combat system that heavily favors not getting shot over absorbing bullets. It makes sense that it would be easier to shoot a vital area than it would be to survive getting shot in a vital area... The former is generally possible, and the latter is generally not. Numbers wise it's uneven, but if you're trying to make a nice and bloody combat system, it's right on the money. I for one am glad that SR4 gives us a firearm system where we can shoot people in the face and they die, as opposed to a D&D style system where no matter where they get it, they only lose a limited fraction of their life points.



A good system of this type shouldn't rely on GM discretion, huh? Why not? What makes a good system? A system is good when you have fun using it. You don't have fun when the GM has to decide stuff arbitrarily, but others do. For people like you, the system is bad, but for other people, it's good. You tell me about all kinds of "good" systems where this doesn't happen, and then we can argue about whether said systems are good, and how good they are, whether they're popular, etc., except we already did that in the Cain Challenge thread. The fact is, just because one good system works in a particular way doesn't mean that all systems must do the same to be good. "Good" and "bad," ultimately, are just code words for "like" and "dislike," which is not worthwhile to argue about.

Er, did you know that both of those situations were supposed to give rise to background count in SR3 as well? The problem here isn't that background count is being overused now, it's that your GM was underusing it in SR3!

Tru dat! I dont even want to remember how often we forgot Background Count in SR3. The new rules for BC make it much easier to keep track of and use. It's not the systems fault that things have changed for you, but the GM's.

As Eyeless Blond has noted these were values were virtually the same in SR3, though admittedly background count now has a significantly different impact on play.


A typical run when they started off earned them between about 10k a head. They've been around now for a couple of years game time, they're well connected and are pulling in about 12-15k each per job (though twice now that's barely covered expenses though they usually loot gear and equipment if they can). I offer more than that when the run pushes them out of their comfort zone or the run will place them in onvious danger—such as the time I sent them to Honk Kong to track a missing person with Triad connections, or when they were sent to track a missing shipment from the Cascade Orks (they hate wilderness with all their might for some reason).

I'm currently playtesting the Ghost Cartels campaign book with my regulars. There's five characters on the team and the campaign itself is street level - they've crossed swords with street gangs and Yakuza so far. Characters are a tricked-out ork street sam, an ork combat mage, a human close quarters specialist/face adept, a hacker/techie elf with High Edge, and a drone rigger (currently an NPC due to prolonged illness of one of my players). The street sam and the combat mage are the only two surviving original characters and have been played about for 2 years. I've killed about 4 PCs so far. We play about 30 times a year and my adventures take on average 3-4 sessions to play out. IIRC the Combat mage has earned and spent approx. 85 karma.

all you need from the spirit is the buffs and the defense, everything else (like shooting, casting, using skills) you can do yourself thanks to channeling while being close to immortal all the time. If you have a special bow for that occassion you make every troll bowman look like an utter beginner. If you say that this isnt a problem then why cant a sammie reach 16 in his physical attributes because thats pretty much the same.

I have two types of problems the first I will call thematic it mostly involves the skill caps. With a TN of 5 the difference in skill between the best and the average is minuscule in effect.(I actually am referring to the skill dice not all the dice a person can tack on) I think the babe ruths of baseball should be disturbingly better than the AAA baseball player. 4 dice in skill don't come close to showing that in a TN 5 system. Is it broken no, but ti certianly doesn't represent what I think these things should represent. I also don't like the skill caps because of how strong an attribute is because they add together. Even ignoring that an attribute can apply to a bunch of skills, I can get at the get go a 10 agility elf and at best a 7 agility based skill. So almost a full 50% more dice is provided by agility. I prefer thematically that at the extremes skill provides more than raw attributes.

My other issue is more pure game balance.

Called shots already mentioned, I don't think you need an exact ratio in expected penalty to bonus dice, but +4/-4 is so far from it that called shots are just flat out broken.

Phys Adds need there power costs rebalanced. As an example I'll use something similar to the called shot problem. Critical strike .25 cost gives +1 DV, roughly equivalent to +3 dice. Improved ability unarmed combat .5, gives +1 die, penetrating strike cost .25 removes 1 point of armor so one die and caps at 3 dice. I don't care which it is but 2 out of 3 of these are unbalanced.

Almost pure fluff abilities like wall running cost a full 1 PP and it gets them very little. It is totally cool but not worth a PP.

Phys adds are fairly weak sauce they really did not need to be crippled by back ground count as well.

Make Adept powers any better and cheaper and I will happily use them to render SR4's game balance FUBAR. Adepts are already really, really, really good under the current paradigm with a bit of tweaking and smart cyber choices. There's a fair amount of tweaking that can be done for some of the lesser used powers, but their core abilities are pretty damn good and extremely hard to balance because Adept powers have a funny tendency to stack with damn near anything. Some variety never hurt anyone, but implying that Adepts are a weak progression choice as a whole is being rather disingenuous.

I have felt this in the past, and part of me still feels that +1/-2 is a better ratio.

However, this really depends on the dice pool of the character that is using it. A professional (4 Agility + 4 Weapon Skill +2 Smartlink) will have a substantially lower chance to hit with 6 dice than with 10. Now of course the min-maxed 20 dice "to shoot someone in the fucking face" runner will have just about the same chance to hit that same person dodging with 20 dice or with 16. At these absurd DP levels it becomes and issue, as you are basically getting 1 net hit per die traded in.

I think limiting dice pools and drowning the players in modifiers are much better ways of resolving this than changing the Called Shot rules or just throwing the stupid book out the window.

Also, I like head shots to really mess shit up.

I'd say certain adept builds are already fubar. But large #s of adept powers are over-priced while some are under-priced. And actually most adepts are a weak progression choice by themselves. Sure adept, cyber/bio monkeys are bad assed, but just adepts not so much. There are a couple powers which are too cheap and tend towards broken, but overall the costs are so high for improvement adepts really aren't that good. Can peopel make awesome adpets with the right combination of abilities, sure if you work it hard enough you can make anything awesome. But you shouldn't have to resort to cheese to be effective and for most adept styles you do.

True, and at the levels of our games -4 dice is a big thing. With my character focusing on not getting hit using one of the too cheap phys ad abilities(combat sense), I hope the GM tries to make called shots since it almost would guarantee a miss as long as he isn't using his orange dice. Still I overall think the +1/-2 ratio is better.

Pure adepts work fine as long as you focus in on a couple of areas and take the "cheap" abilities everyone bitches about and take advantage of the one thing these "pure" adepts are good at: Taking one or two Powers and jacking them up to the kind of ratings that make everyone cry munchkin-- I mean, c'mon, taking abilities past the point where mundanes can match them is kinda what Adepts do for a living, and even Increase Reflexes has its uses when you consider you can that it doesn't negatively affect your Power ratings cap and therefore works well with things like the much maligned Power Throw and Kinesics (ironically, the upcoming errata on kinesics etc. will harm pure adepts worst of all if their ratings are capped or increased in cost rather than rendered unable to stack with Pheromones). If you want to go other routes, well, you have the option and I'm not really sure how saying "Well, gee, if you put in the effort you can make Adepts work..." is some kind of rebuttal or evidence that the system is fundamentally broken. After all, in the case of Shadowrun chargen you don't really do more "work" to make something viable so much as you just make different decisions to arrive at different results.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, nice Whipstich!

That really is the most effective way of playing them now, and I'm kind of in the middle as to whether they should be that way or not. They are the only "class" that can start the game with 4IPs, not to mention Critical Strike, Kinesics, Improved Ability can make them the absolute best in any area. However, it also means giving up abilities in the other areas, and having a hard time advancing their abilities.

I personally don't like to play adepts this way, and that is why we have houseruled a lot of the costs of abilities and made Initiating grant 1pp or a metamagic. So far it is working ok, but I really wish that such measures weren't needed.

You mean you wish the SR4 developers had decided to make the power costs and the speed of adept advancement just exactly to your liking, with no need for tweaking? Good luck with that one

A man can have dreams can't he? ;_;