Ok, folks since I'm feeling lazy and wish to shamelessly exploit your character optmization skills , here's the challenge:

Build a uber-badass SR4 mystic adept initiate, with powers balanced between magic and adept and focusing on combat magic and unarmed combat adept powers, esp. "hard" (strike/kick) martial arts. Powers balanced between the two aspects. As much secondary focus on inflitration/stealth to make the character a competent shadowrunner is possible, but not to sacrifice the main focus. No cyberware whatsoever, some bioware if truly necessary, better if none. Initiation grades as high as you feel appropriate, in the teens if need be. A minimum of 600 BP, substantially much, much more if appropriate, at least 50 BP of Qualities, more if appropriate. No Improved Skill or Improved Attribute Adept powers (Attribute Boost and Berserk are fine). Attribute-enhancing spells freely allowed. Skills and spells balanced with adept powers and initiate grade. Norse tradition preferred, Aztec, Hindu, Black Magic, Hermetic, Chaos Magic, Zoroastrism acceptable. No classic Native American shaman type please. A Materialization tradition in any case. Better if pantheistic (worships all Mentors equally). Being a Twisted is acceptable, being a toxic is not. No Availability limit, geas to reduce adept powers cost, martial arts, spirit pacts, allowed and encouraged. Being Immune to Age a premium. A human, dwarf, or elf. Masking is rather frowned upon, use it only if necessary to fool wards and the like. Astral Perception is encouraged, but not to sacrifice the main focus.

Use whatever BP/karma conversion rule for initiation you feel is appropriate, but please state your rule.

Can't you just thorshot the target and save us all this fuss?

Christ, I'll dig up one of my Midgard(Norse Tradition) Mystic Adept Initates. I think i have them on my memory stick somewhere. I already did this.

What optimisation skills? You might as well just arbitrarily define dice pools if you're not going to have any top-end parameters for the range.

Why no Imp Skill/Imp Attrib?

My first thoughts exactly.

Point taken, Then let's say 600 BP, 50 BP in Qualities, 6 for non-specialization skills, initiation grade up to 12.



Flavor. I do not want to see precious Magic points "wasted", as things look to me, on improving Skills or Attributes, when they could be used to buy much more flavorful powers like say Elemental Hands.

But you want Badass... Mind you, it doesn't really matter much whether they get those Adept powers with 18 Magic Points available to spend. Are they allowed Negative Qualities?

With 12 levels of Initation and the like, they might well be able to afford a couple of Essence points of Bioware to easily take care of those attributes, I figure.

BAH...if you're going to take the time to initiate 12 times are you really going to want to sully yourself with what the mundane's use to equal your awesome eldritch power? I know if I post something it'll be straight magic, because with that much might, I rock galaxies yo!!!

Argh, I let my ravenous appetite for metamagical techniques blind me to obvious realities, didn't I ? Sorry. Let's make it a maximum Magic of 12.

A tad more in line with real numbers. A 12 in magic I think I can squeak by with. I'll probably have soemthing up next week cause this weekend takes me out of town for hot date weekend. I'll be interested in what pops up from this in the mean time.

Bioware is still the most magic/essence efficient way to get IP's outside of using combat drugs...

Doesn't conform with all your requirements (Blades combat w/ Improved Ability), but I will later post one of my characters, advanced a bit to higher levels. Happens to be a vampire focusing on fire magic, Hermetic with strong influence from Norse & Black traditions.

I'll post him with the cap's of the current game I am in: Grade 5 Initiate, 7 Magic, Foci =/< 7 Force, Metamagic Foci =/< 5 Force, with the optional rules of buying metamagics & gaining additional powers.

How do you want us to initiate with w/o karma?

I suppose part of the 600-BP budget should be converted into karma and used to buy initiations.

Mmmmm...
Initiate grade 12 you say?
Once you have a magic attribute of 18 why would you deign to use your fists?

If you were set for certain, I would make a Toxic Norse Tradition worshiper of Fenris (Toxic beast mutation spirit) with the possession option.

Be a human. Have a lot of edge. Summon a force 36 spirit. Bust edge to not die from the drain, kill a couple people too as you would certainly have Sacrifice metamagic (I am presuming you had your drain attributes maxed prior to casting the summon). Have this force 36 toxic mutation beast spirit possess you, giving you +36 to all of your physical attributes. For a special boost you can use his power of 'mutation' to grant you an additional 36 to divide as you see fit among the rest of your physical attributes. Beings that your fists are doing a base 18S damage, you might as well enhance your reaction to a nice 72ish so you can just 'take' 18 successes on dodging anything coming your way. This, coupled with a willpower of around 40 (Drop intuition and logic by 13 each, don't touch the willpower) you will be an unstoppable Nordic monster of fisty death.

Don't get all whiny about toxic spirits being ubiquitously evil, read the mutation qualities. You just religiously loathe weakness. Its playable...

Wanderer changed the limit to a maximum Magic of 12 (and max Grade of 6?).

Ah. Well do the same thing then, just with a force 24 spirit.

That build good for you, Wanderer? Lame? Not the kind of fisty you were thinking about?

And as far as IPs go, the most efficient way to get 4 IPs is the 'Enhanced Initiative' spell with either lots of Phyche or a sustaining focus.


Yeah. Centering more then once a no-no, huh? My bad.

You cannot take Centering more than once. The only metamagics you can take more than once apply to different things when you do so (attunement)

Hm...to be honest, for real badass, i'd take pretty much any of the options you have discarded.
Enhanced skills, especially as far as stealth is concerned, posession-based, and with a fair deal of bioware (especially stuff that helps drain resistance) and some cyber (mostly eyeware).
A logic-based tradition would be best, as no other drain attribute can be pushed as much as logic.

Plus, Pentjak Silat with the bonus to astral combat and the focus will maneuver, which might not quite fit in with the suggested traditions.

Normally, i'd go Ork for a martial arts build, too, but in this case, dwarf might be a better option.

These would be the obvious optimization choices.

But then you probably disallowed them for a reason and are looking for something less overdone.
I'll see what i can come up with, or better yet, wait till someone else does most of the work and then stick to finetuning.

The one I have here is an elf, with an actual higher adept side then spellcaster side. He might not toss around force 24 spirits, but he's absolutely deadly in his own right. And yeah, he has Fenris as his mentor spirit. Had had designed him with that long ago. He's a rather dark, violent character but he fits in well with the Midgard magical group he's one of the 'main circle' of-he sort of balances them out(since they have aspects from more pleasant folks, to neutral folks, and the like.)

It's taking me awhile, though to actually remake him with 600 BPs and all of the initations and the like. What is the Resource limits again, just whatever we feel like we need, BP-wise? He didn't have cyber, but he did have bioware in his original version, so I believe i'm keeping him with some of that. And he did indeed have hard fighting styles on top of it.

What, has the thread apparently died out without anyone posting anything like an actual character template ? What a pity

Without actually going through the stats, here's what I'd imagine you could get, with an Elf.

4 Body
8 Agility
6 Reaction
4 Strength
6 Intuition
12 Magic

Unarmed 7 [Karate] +2 [Improved Skill] +3
Dodge 6 [Ranged] +2 [Improved Skill] +3

Elemental Strike [.5]
Penetrating Strike 3 [.75]
Killing Hands [.5]
Agility Boost 1 [.25]
Strength Boost 1 [.25]
Body Boost 1 [.25]
Critical Strike 10 [2.5]

This leaves 4 magic to be used for spells, you could take it higher by dropping the Critical Strikes down, removing Penetrating Strike, or lowering the Skill Improvements. One Spell would have to be Improved Reflexes. Not sure how high you can pump stuff, cause I didn't do any math, but this seems like a pretty nasty melee character, and that's without any styles added in. Base damage would be 12P, -3 AP, probably use electrical elemental hands, which would drop it to -half Impact armor, and can cripple an opponent if they fail a roll. Even if they succeed they'd be at -2 to all actions for [2 + net hits] Combat Turns. Add to this mundane armor, the fact that styles could easily add another 4-5 DV, plus added defenses, and the fact that average rolls on the attribute boosts are going to max Agility, and bring Str and Bod to 8 or so...and yeah. Attack roll with boost on would be 24 dice just on what I have here. Thing is, even a character like this, is going to get some hurt put on him if he doesn't immediately get the drop on the 'runners. Autofire can hose defense rolls, or force him to full defend, and eventually he's going to get hit. Being crippled by the fact that Shadowrun forces split dice pools for more than one attack per pass, and he's not likely to be able to do much unless you ambush your players.

Critical Strike, as with all Adept Powers, is limited in rating to the Adept's Magic Attribute (or percentage of Magic Attribute assigned to Adeptness).

It is limited to the Magic attribute, but not limited to the percentage assigned to the adept side. The rules are very specific on this, emphasis mine:


And the example following it describes a mystic adept allocating one power point to get four levels of Rapid Healing.

Fair enough. I was going from this ...

From the SR4 FAQ ...

So, for ranks of abilities, you get full magic. For casting, you only get the allocated portion, and for using adept powers that require a roll, you get only the allocated portion. Kind of convoluted, but whatever. I'm going to try and actually stat out the character without just eyeballing it, 400BP, and then covert the other 200BP into 400 karma.