I know that Critical Strike can be used with Killing hands making adepts all the more deadly, but what I am wondering if there are any rules that allow the use of Critical Strike with a weapon (specialized or bonded)?

Afraid not. It'd take a smarter man than I to balance out such a thing, really. Imagine an attuned and bound monowhip combined with critical strike; you could end up with strength 1 PCes cleaving through citymasters that way. Such a thing might set Hellsing fanboy hearts a flutter, but it could also give a lot of GMs fits. Then again, it's not like we don't already have Quick Draw powered Trollbows to contend with...

Technically, Critical Strike can be used with unarmed combat weapons, like Hardliner Gloves and Brass Knuckles (both of which I expect to see in Arsenal). I wouldn't allow its use in conjunction with technical unarmed weapons like Shock Gloves though.

so an attuned weapon focus in the form of a glove(if you can do that) would be pretty much usable to just grip into a citymaster or the body of whoever and rip out whatever? O.o

Just combine Critical Strike with Smashing Blow for all your barrier busting needs.

must have overread that x.x
or i'm getting things mixed up with 3rd

There was no such restriction in SR3, so that might be it.

GAAAH! ò,Ó . . it's getting increasingly irritating with that smiley <.< . .
and increasingly harder to keep appart 3rd(playing) and 4th(not playing) rules in my Head x.x

Fortune-atly(<= yes, i know that it would have to be fortunately) i don't have THAT problem anymore *g* . . SR1 has been more or less 15 Years ago for me if i remember correctly and i completely jumped 2nd ed ^^
btw: curse you! both for that smiley and your ninja editing skills <.< . .

Nuh!
Nevarr!
i'll most likely buy most of the SR4 stuff anyway because i'm a sucker for new toys and fluff, but i seriously abhor the SR4 rules . . the only thing i really like about SR4 is the new cyber-limb rules as of yet *g*

What's there to abhor about the current rules? Not much of it at all is really that messy and the magic rules are particularly good relative to previous editions. I mean, I guess I'm fairly firm about how I make rulings on Agents, grenades and long shot tests, but even those much maligned topics aren't nearly as big a problem as many make them out to be. The script kiddy thing for example is mostly a thematic issue, and honestly, even in SR3 hackers progressed through building uber decks more than skill gains.

you don't really want me to go in a rant over why i(and my whole gaming group) think SR4 sucks do you? o.o

I'm pretty sure I just asked. A lot of your other posts seem rather reactionary or based on knee jerk misinterpretations of the RAW, so I'm pretty curious, although it'd probably best to go with a PM or starting another thread to avoid further derailing.

ok, have it your way then . .
if anybody else wants to know why i personally think SR4 sucks (aside from the finally usefull rules for cyber limbs) i will add it here in spoiler tags too . .
mind you, this is strictly my own opinion, everybody is entitled to one of those and nobody has to agree with me on this . . but don't bother trying to argue with me about this please *g*

Uh huh.

Strangely, I agree with Stahl about one thing in particular. It seems to be a step backward instead of forward to suddenly adopt wireless. Being cyberneticly linked to a computer through a datajack was amazingly advanced. Doing the same through wi-fi (a signal that is VERY easily interrupted) seems like a dumb move. Maybe it's just me.

Beyond that, it's "to each their own" when I look at his other points.

The standard is and will be the AR. And you do not need DNI for that.

[Continued Derail]


[/derail]

overall, adepts actually do pretty well in SR4, although if you want to min-max them, you have to go about it differently than in SR3. Offensively, they have improved ability, weapon foci, and attunement for extra dice. Defensively, they have combat sense and mystic armor, and combat sense combined with counterstrike can give them even more offensive dice. Weapon foci and killing hands make them far more effective against spirits. Kinesics makes adepts hands-down the best faces, even if you don't stack it with cool resolve, improved ability, or tailored pheromes. They also have lots of powers oriented towards athletics and stealth, and lots of relatively cheap useful powers such as sustenance, nimble fingers, commanding voice, etc.

As always, they are better at specialist than generalist roles (which, given how SR4 rewards specialists in general, puts them in a good place).

The major changes are that initiative is more important, and that a point of Essense or two in bioware is a much more tempting prospect.

Spoilered because everyone else is doing it...

QUOTE (kk)

If there is any one facet I do not like in 4th, it is bringing in a "luck" factor that has such a sweeping effect. It's kind of like "Reset" on a videogame. In previous editions, you had one chance to keep a character alive when she faced certain death (and she had top burn all her Karma Pool and good karma to do so). Now she gets as many attempts to cheat death as she has Edge attribute, and she can buy that back with Karma. Even in D&D, you needed a lot to bring a character back from the dead whole and unscathed by the experience.

yeah, i forgot to mention magical guys now being able to be almost as good at hacking as only the hacker should be . . but hey, you guys managed to rerail the thread *g*

you can? O.o
only if you allow improved ability for technical skills like decking or am i wrong there?

well, as far as i know in SR4(havn't played a hacker yet...played around with making one up), Adept Improved Ability works like a bloody charm with the non combat skills. Combat skills cost .5 points per level. Not terrible; but it'll cost you to toss on those three dice.

Improved Ability: Something Other Than Combat only cost .25 per die. Allowing a tech/face/whatnot adept to have stupidly high dice pools. Adepts these days work out even better as a non combatant. Sure, physads are still really good; but wow, those faces or techies.

and yeah, im sort of on the(ok, i AM on), the SR3 wagon as well. I like 4 and play it, but there are many things(touched on by a couple folks already) that im not too fond of.

Honestly, I think that Improved Ability is kind of a waste of power points. Attribute Boost, though, while short lived and causing a drain resist, is over-all better. If you have a magic of 4, and 2 ranks of Agility Boost, you will, on average, get 4 round(not initiative passes..rounds) of the boost, so, if say you need to switch from hand to hand to melee for some reason, or need to pull out your back up pistol, you have 2 extra dice to ALL of those.

However, I do agree, it would have been nice if they had lowered the Increased Reflexes so that it was 1 PP or even 1.5 PP per level. It is rediculously easy for Sammie to have higher initiative then it is for an Adept. Heck, I often wonder if that ability would stack with Synaptic Booster(in fact..one would almost rather go Synaptic Booster for 1 Essence and magic and 32 BP then use the Increase Reflexes ability)

as far as i remember the point of adept reflexes and bio reflexes stacking has been errataed as no once . . of course, i could be wrong . .

See, I disagree with that thematically and mechanically. I actually think that Adepts are sitting pretty this edition and would be bordering upon broken if their powers were lowered in costs because if you did that they'd be less reliant on 'ware when as it now stands essence is one of the few limiters on their power. The second you lower the costs the second I make an even better cybered adept.

Plus, I really like the lessened emphasis on Magic Doe Not Mix With Technology doctrine currently in Fourth and that Adepts need to choose carefully. From a thetmatic perspective, I rather like how every darned Awakened character no longer has to ascribe to the hippy purity of body drek to develop their talents. There's going to be a lot of competitive sorts like the guys in Gladio who likely look for any edge they can get their hands on and take it; for some people it's being the best at what you do that matters most. There's bound to be some characters who see their magical talent as a means to an end rather than the whole journey, but as long as they put in the work to keep improving it shouldn't matter what their mindset is.

Frankly, I cyber up everyone, even my Mages, and believe people who think "Sensitive System isn't a real drawback, munchkin!" are rather naive and misguided since it basically means the characters in question are for all intents and purposes swearing off Attention Coprocessors, Radar Sensors, Cybereyes, Encephalons, SkillWires and Expert systems for the rest of their lives.

...adepts should not be reliant on 'ware. What I'm saying is if you want to load up on augmentations, save yourself the BPs and build a mundane Sammy.

And if you want character classes who operate by clearly delineated philosophies and paths to power, go play that other game. In a very real sense the ability choose AND benefit from a wide set of abilities is closer to the core game designs than the magic/technology dichotomy.

Every character concept should stand on it's own. It shouldn't be required to pull from other aspects just to function appropriately. A Sammie shouldn't NEED magic to do his job. A Mage or Adept shouldn't NEED ware to do their jobs either. If the only way to make an Adept viable is the inclusion of 'ware, then the concept of the Adept is underpowered and unbalanced.

Adepts don't -need- 'ware to do their jobs unless they're taking on the pure combat monster role, so I consider that to be a bit of a straw man. You guys are treating character concepts as sancrosanct when that's just not so.

...all I'm basically saying is that Adepts did not keep pace with the other "archetypes" in the "downscaling" of the power levels from 3rd ed to 4th and this is one of the issues I have with 4th ed. So we go back to 1st ed costs for improved reflexes which was 1 -2 -3 and take away the increase to Reaction. It wasn't unbalancing then and it certainly wouldn't be unbalancing now especially since most Characters will not be coming in with a 6 MA to save that last 25 BPs.

Yeah, I may be a little vehement on this as Adepts (like I mentioned) are one of my favourite archetypes.

Although I agree that whoever wrote up the Adept Rules didn't get the memo that "Four is the new Six" I strongly disagree that anyone should be able to stand on their own without implants, Shadowrun is a Cyberpunk game, hells, everyone Awakened or Sleeper should be required to trade little pieces of their souls in order to keep pace with technology.

And of course, they all need a pink mohawk in order to be in theme with the second half of the genre.

*Edit*

Of course as a disclaimer, although I personally love Mages, Adepts have always rubbed me the wrong way for some reason.

...so, then why even bother having an Increased Reflexes power at all if it is supposedly more "cost effective" to do the same via augmentation?

'cause there are purists who think an adept should not have bio/cyber

...I know. But the way it sounds we are more of a minority here than Humans in Salem TT before the second crash.

whoa whoa there buddy!
don't count me in with that lot *g*
i ain't no adept/magic purity guy.
one reason i would see to make the adept reflexes more expansive compared to cyber? 'cause they are farking hard to notice! . . so somebody sees he's magic . . so what? there is no way ever to find out what kind of powers he has . . maybe all that is just improved abilities or mystical armor or something . .

...sorry, didn't mean to include any one in particular, 'we' was used in the more generic sense of the term.

Also one wouldn't know necessarily if a person was augmented with bio either unless they assensed them or had a dedicated bio scanner as wetware doesn't show up on a MAD scan either.

I believe also that enough hits on an assensing test would reveal the nature of the powers unless the Adept was an initiate and was masking.

I guess I'm just fine with the idea that meat does some things better than magic and vice versa.

especially since the advent of augmentation . . i still gleefully point out that the mundane version of traceless step and gliding is better than the adept version *g*

Slightly long musing going on, and im forgetting the spoiler tags for now.

Adepts(especially classic Physads; but techies and socialites, after they came around in the previous editions count to this too), did change a bit over the time, as we've been saying. Now, i always really liked adepts(and mages, and shamans, and even mystic adepts...and meat people, too...im not picky), but the creation process seems a little skewed toward adding bits of cyber more nowadays than it did.

Looking at it from a purely numerical standpoint; the old school Physad i usually saw placing resources rather far down on the Priority list(or in the Companion BP system, usually being happy with the 5 BP/20,000, occationaly splurging higher but not often); relying much more heavily on raw Attributes and Skills, taking them much higher up. It wasn't uncommon to see a Physad with Priority A Attributes; the 5's flat down the line(of course, tweaked to 6's in Quickness and Intelligence; the 4's went to Charisma and Willpower, with a nice 5 each in Body and Strength...unless they opted for the Massive Combat Pool and jacked Willpower up too, but you know), and priority C Skills(24/34 depending on SR2 or 3). They had 6 points; but especially in SR2 those points got eaten to hell fast with the overinflated costs(they were at least somewhat fixed..ok, a LOT fixed...in SR3. Thank the gods they changed that utter ridiculousness of purchasing Reaction and Initative seperately.)

Anyhoo, whatever kind of unarmed/armed/throwing/whatnot Physad you made; it was rare, in my experience anyway(yours may be different), to see one take any sort of ware; even though one point of essence wasn't THAT bad. It did take away one or two whole powers, though...and since the stuff COST more essence...and cost alot more nuyen...it just wasn't worth it. Even with Geasa(which was probably the best way to nail the Reflexes...my old gaming buddy compared it to simply getting Alphaware Reflexes and i tended to agree), it was rare for an adept to muddy up his body. (Now, mages, on the other hand...especially Hermetics, ive seen get some implants quite often, then and now. The wonders of high Resources and a Power Focus to hold you over til that Initation. But that's a story for another thread.)

Anyhow, fast forward to SR4. Now, Attributes have a harsher cap. But the bar is lower, though...what used to be 5/6/5/4/6/4 in attributes, is now more like 4/4/4/3/3/4/3/3. (You can't get ''30'' attributes anymore. If you do a technical breakdown, it comes out to a maximum of about priority B, or 27 in the old system.) In addition, the Adept doesn't get a Geas bonus...AND must buy his Magic. (He also has the Edge score to worry about, depending. Though someone used to playing the old way and earning it over time, might well just leave it at the minimum and add to it later, like they did before.) On the bright side, powers are generally cheaper(except for those blasted Reflexes. Sure, Wired Reflexes are still Essence hogs but BOY are they much cheaper now. Adepts don't have that, though...so ive seen many just forgo them.

Then adepts realized(yeah, you all know this buy know, i know ) hey, bioware is pretty light on the Essence. Instead of paying 65 BP for Magic 6 and using up 2 points for Reflex 1, I can use those 25 points, get Synaptic Booster 1 with the nuyen(125,000 is 25 BP), have a magic 5...which gets dampened down to 4(if i recall, magic would return to 5 if they got the bioware removed..since bio wasn't permanently damaging to the system. Under the old system, anyway. I STILL dont know all the little nuances of SR4 yet.) Plus, he's got a little more of that Essence point to burn, with some nuyen, for some muscle augmentation and toner(so he doesn't need to buy those expensive attribute increases. Hell, even in the old system those added up.)

Hell, he'd still have enough essence to pick up that Reflex Recorder(skill), for a combat skill of choice. And then he can use his 4 points for whatever, with his attributes taken care of a bit more, and one skill with a bonus already, and his initative boosted.

Hell, some adepts might even buy up the magic of 6, and then forgo 20 points of their Attributes/other stuff to load some Resources to buy up other attributes for a full 2 points of essence. Remember, it costs 40 BPs to get Agility 5. It costs 40 BPs to get Agility 4(6) if you pick up a couple of levels of Muscle Toner with that last 10 BPs(and have another 20,000+ left to spend on Muscle Augmentation).

Erm, im not sure exactly what this turned into. I guess the entire thing was ''hmm...rather interesting how the physad changed over time''. Others might disagree numerically, but this is some stuff ive gathered over time.

I won't get too far into the Face adept; except to say that yes, there IS a benefit to picking up a couple of Tailored Pheremone levels.