I was wondering if the cost of this isnt a bit much. The way I see it either having Increase Reflexes or Move by wire becomes essential in combat, no matter how strong ur char is, how can u beat someone that may have 3 or even 4 IP and u only 1 ?

A Magician can cast Increase Reflexes and easily have 4 IP (4 Hits), an Implanted characater have ways to significantlly reduce the essence cost of this implant, but an Adept must spend a a great amount of his power points if he intends to have 3 IP, and of course lets not talk about the last stage.

Maybe Im missing something here.
Some opinions about it?

Kill him in the first pass.

ya well, that could be easily achivied on SR3, (Combat Pool FTW!) but in SR4 is a bt more complicate, never impossible.

I don't think SR4 is that much less deadly than SR3, if at all. In my game, most fights are over after the first pass, maybe two. Longer fights are extremely rare. Long fights are dangerous, and should be avoided.
SR4, just like SR3, is a game of eggshells wielding hammers. Characters' ability to deal damage almost always outshines their ability to take it. A combat adept really should be able to drop a comparably-powered enemy, or at the very least damage them severely enough (and move to find cover) that they can survive until their next action.

I never really thought that the power costs too much. More IPs has always been the most important thing in SR combat. It enables you to deal up to 4x the damage in a combat round. That said, our group has lowered the price back to SR1 costs: 1pp/level. This is partly because improving an adept is so absurdly expensive in new rules, but also because there is an unwritten agreement not to abuse it. In our group we usually choose to start with only 2IP, and rarely go to 3. Though we could have 4, it would make combat too easy and the game just wouldnt be as fun.

I question rellys on a situation from the campaign Im currently playing the other day happen. I alone took down 2 skilled Adepts (my char is Mystic Adept), I was really well prepared with Armor and Increase reflexes spells sustained on me, boost agility, reaction and strenght. I had a 19 DP on Katana, my opponents had a bit less on attack but more defensive Pool. So to sum up, if it would be a 1vs1 combat, would it be fair, anyone could won, but I was in disadvantage and the very thing that save my ass was I act 4 times per combat turn and them just 2.

spend a point of edge, gain an IP.

alternately, if you've got a bit of time to prepare, you can use combat drugs. either way works. 2 IPs would be fine, 3 IPs is lots. you probably won't need your third one unless you choose to spend the first two on full defense.

In my games, I lower the Essence cost of Wired Reflexes to 1, 2, and 3 (11,000, 22,000, and 33,000 respectively) and lower the Power Point cost of Increase Reflexes to mirror the Cyberware (1, 2, and 3 PP).

This is pretty much stolen directly from FrankTrollman's house rules (IIRC).

And outside of house rules, there's nothing stopping an adept from getting 'ware, either. Synaptic Booster: 2 will only cost you one point of lost Magic. The power point costs aren't that bad, either. Three points for improved reflexes: 2 leaves you 2 or 3 power points to spend on other things. The bioware is still nice, but you only need it for really tweaked combat builds.

SR1 cost was 1, 2, 4 and finally 8 power points.

Lars

thing to think about- the Adpet is the only character who can start with 4 physical IPs all the time. implants are limited to 3IP at chargen. mages have to worry about casting and maintaining a spell. some people have to wait for the drugs to kick in.

the trick is that for 1 or 2 magic points (depending on grade), your adept can have the advantage of 5 points of magic with synaptic boosters. spending 32BPs of gear on synaptic booster 2, losing a point of magic in this way is like saving 2 points. it gets worse when we talk about raising an Adepts stats to the augmented caps. 2 magic for a +1, or get some muscle toner/augmentation implants? +5 for 1 magic, at standard grade bioware.

Adept powers are the magical equivilent of cyberware. bioware>cyber. so bioware is better than adpet powers. its just better over a very small and expensive area.

Well I never played SR1, was it SR2 that was 1, 2, 3? And why 8pp? Anyways, we decided for it to be 1pp/level.

i like reflexboosters and the kipower to be highly draining, you can also put a geas on the later which saves you 25% of the cost and thus comes cheaper then the alpha cyberware. For later improvement adepts can initiate and thus raise their magic; a possibility mundanes don't have, they need to get higher grade ware to improve. this balances it pretty good depending on your karma/nuyen ratio ofc, the only thing thats really broken is the synaptic booster. the spell version raises initiative btw while all other raise reaction so its basically a bit worse and a mage needs to spend karma and cash on a power 4 sustaining focus if he doesnt want to have the -2 dicepool modifier.

when ki adepts were first introduced they were a minmaxers dream, thus i wouldnt want the old ones back btw.

...that's one way, however, our group also handles Edge like the old Karma pool. Everybody only gets one (Humans two) at chargen and it can only be increased through earning Karma on a progressive scale (10 for the first. 30 for the second etc...). This way characters tend to use Edge a lot more judiciously and it doesn't break the game.

Another way (yeah it took me some time to come around to this) is drop a PP into bioware. 3 IPs for 1 PP instead of 5 is a pretty good deal (though admittedly a bit rough on the credstick).

[edit]

Glyph, didn't see your post.

No, IIRC SR2 (and all later editions) it was 2, 3, 5. AFAIK it was never 1, 2, 3.

It was that way in SR3. In SR2 it was still split into two different abilities. One for the extra dice, and one for the reaction increase. I don't have the book handy to say what the actual cost was, but I remember it being seperated.

Oh, you're right. I forgot about that. I think it was 2,3,5 just for the +d6, and the reaction was its own power. It's coming vaguely back to me now.

*Opens up SR2*



Yeah, there's an Increased Reaction power as well

Actually this is why I think its too expensive. If synaptic boosters are a mere .5 per level in essence cost neither wired or an adepts ability should be that much more expensive. It makes synaptic boosters too good of a choice. In the case of adepts pulls people away from the magical character they were probably shooting for. Also at least past flavor text implied magic types avoided cyber/bio like the plague, with the bio equivalent being that much more magic point friendly you are IMO too heavily penalized for trying to keep to the SR fluff text.

Except at chargen, there is the deterrent of cost.... Synaptic Boosters (esp. at level 2) are still rather expensive.... having that much money laying around other than at chargen seems less likely until you've probably gotten enough karma to initiate a few times anyway... also, at chargen you throw a lot of those 50 BP of nuyen at just one piece of 'ware, as well as tighten the belt on everything else.... so i dunno, while I think synap 2 is rather appealing still, you have to make sacrafices to get it....

on the other side of the coin, you could argue, spending the 37.5 BP on synaptic boosters effectively let's you have 2 extra magic points and effectively 7 PP worth of adept abilities and all..., so maybe it isn't that bad, but it still is expensive....

In a one shot I might go with that. But outside of the one shot the cost of synaptic boosters 2 is not enough more expensive than raising the magic by 2 more points for the same speed to justify the cost.

Lets say I raise my magic to 3 and have synaptic 2, to have the same level of speed and other adept toys pure magic its magic 5. So char gen costs as I recall, 3 magic 20 points+37.5(ill take your word for it, my book is in my car) points in money for the bio or 57.5 points, pure magic 40 points in magic so 17.5 points savings. Past gen of character I want more magic I buy magic 4, then 5. 45 points total, Mr. pure magic increases his to magic 6, the initiates and increases magic to 7. Total cost 78 I think. The synaptic booster guy could raise his magic to 6 in the same time. And I am being a bit generous in starting at 3 magic dropped to 2 by bio. If I had started at 4 magic, the other phys add would be spending even another 15 at char gen and is only saving 2.5 points get the same thing, and again will be worse off when improving his magic.

I'm not saying 17.5 build points isn't worth something, I just think you will more than make up for it very quickly once the karma starts rolling in, and in my experience its usually more like saving 2.5 points.

An adept with Magic: 5 costs 40 points. An adept with Magic: 2 and synaptic booster: 2 costs 42 points. Both have +2 Reaction, 2 extra IP, and 2 more power points to spend. The second adept will be able to improve his Magic more rapidly with Karma, but that isn't usually the reason people take synaptic booster: 2.

Usually they take it because they have a concept that costs a lot of power points, so they use synaptic booster: 2 to get a reflex boost that only costs them 1 power point, but also buy Magic up high. If you get Magic: 5 and take synaptic booster: 2, you will have 4 power points left to spend on other things, which is good for concepts that require lots of "must-have" powers to be good (unarmed combat builds, throwing builds, and stealth builds come to mind).

I took it for both of those reasons. I am just pointing out math wise synaptic booster is almost a no brainer and I don't like that.

The cost comparisons for synaptic-2 vs increased reflexes-2 look like this:

Synaptic-2 costs 160,000 Y (32 build points worth of resources)

Magic 4 adept vs magic 2 adept w/ synaptic 2 (both have one power point left over for other adept powers):
Magic adept pays 35 points for magic (adept + 30)
Synaptic adept pays 15 points for magic (adept + 10) and 32 points for the ware.
So the synaptic adept pays 12 bp more for the same speed. On the other hand, once in play, the synaptic adept has a much simpler time raise his magic, since he starts at magic 1 and can increase 4 times before needing to initiate.

Magic 6 adept vs magic 4 adept w/ synaptic 2 (both have three power points left over)
Magic adept pays 70 points for magic (adept + 65)
Synaptic adept pays 35 points for magic and 32 points for synaptic.
In this case, the synaptic adept pays 7 more points for the same speed.

So, the synaptic adept gives up basically 2-3 skill points, but gains much cheaper advancement (due to lower starting magic, or the ability to get even more adept abilities.

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If I were going to house rule on the various reflex increasers, I'd try this:

Wired reflexes (rating 1-3)
Essence 1.5/level
Cost 15,000/level
Availability (5R x level) (or possibly even as low as 4R or 3R per level)

Synaptic Boosters (rating 1-3)
Essence: 1/level
Cost 60,000/level
Availability (6R x level)

Adept Power: Increased Reflexes
Cost 1.5/level (or maybe 1/level or 1, 2, 4; adepts are still getting the shaft when it comes the the BP cost of going faster at 1.5/level)

This means that you don't feel like an idiot getting delta wired reflexs (.75 essence and 150K/level) vs alpha synaptic (.8 essence and 120K/level) or beta synaptic (.7 essence and 240K/level)

I like it. Raising the cost in essence of synaptic is another good way to solve the problem.

What my GM did was that she lowered the PP Cost of Improved so that it was 1,2,4. Still not as effective as synaptic, but better then Wired and MBW. She felt that the cost of synaptic helped balance out the low essense cost. She also thinks: Improved Reflexes Spell+sustaining Focus is prbably the best way to go, asit just costs 3 BP+ a sustaining focus.

...however, in either case, to increase MA beyond 4, wouldn't the adept need to now initiate as her unaugmented MA would be 6 by that point? That would also be a controlling factor.

If you are refering to the synaptic adept with magic 4 and synaptic 2, he loses one point of magic and essence, going down to 3 magic and 5 essence, with a new non-initiated max magic of five. So he can raise his magic from 3 to 5 without initiation.

No, 2,3,5 was 1d6+1 per level and they also introduced other boosters for .5 per level (the 1st was .5 forgot if they increased differently) which just gave 1d6 so those were again pretty much a no brainer. In this context the 1d6+1 for synaptics were justified by the high cost because they only were a lil bit better then the cyberware with a greatly incresed cost. no one used wired reflexes though.

Additionally synaptic 2 cost 160k with an essence cost of 1 which is in bp 32 points for the boosters and 10 for the magic compared to 30 for magic that the adept reflexes cost. those points pay off very well though as you can spend your power points onto much more useful powers and thus end up with a better build. If you only go for reflexes one its even better as the bio alternative only costs 6 bp more but you also can install other useful biomods such as synthacardium and muscle toners.

...I know, I just started running the new version of the Short One who has 1 PP devoted to bioware:

Synaptic Booster 1
Synthcardium 2
Muscle Augmentation 1
Bio sculpting - Moderate: ethnic type (dictated by her background)

For the most part she is pretty much the same as the all magic build was with the exception she now has Combat Sense, Enhanced Perception, Low light Vision, and a DP of 5 with all of her Athletic Skills.