Okay, another question. I've been looking over the books (mostly the electronic forms as I'm at work now), and I think I have it down.
I'm playing an Adept. I get Power equal to my Magic (which is maxed at 6 unless I take the Exceptional attribute?), and I get to select Powers that equal up to my power rating (so If I had Magic 1 I would have Power 1, and could take Astral Projection and that'd be it), and the max level in any particular power I have is equal to my magic (so I couldn't take Hulk Jump level 4 until my Magic got to 4). Is all this right? So I can only have a number of powers that equal up to 6? Because 6 is the highest my Magic can go, right? And Powers don't cost any BPs.
It seems almost pointless to play an Adept (I'm not going with the unarmed monk route), as any Street Samurai (which there will be in the group. By the way, what is the term for a group of Shadowrunners?) will vastly overpower me as I cannot take implants in addition to maxing out on Powers.

I believe exceptional attribute only applies to mental and physical attributes, not the special attributes of edge, magic or resonance.

It would be fair to say that a straight adept is typically less rounded than a street sam - since they must spend BPs on their Magic trait - although they can be disgustingly good at their focus area, typically vastly overpowering your typical street sam in that focus, whatever that may be. A lot of powers don't have levels (for example astral perception, killing hands) and for those that do, you are not obliged to buy them to your magic rating to be effective.

One can acquire some interesting and useful adept powers which do stuff 'ware can't too. There have been complaints on DS from some fans of adepts that the powers are poorly costed, improved attribute being the poster child for this problem.

First of all, you can indeed take cyber and max out your powers, your ceiling will just be reduced. You can take Geasa (from Street Magic) to partially offset this.

Second, a well-built adept will always be better than a samurai can, in one or two areas. You'll never be as well-rounded as a sammie, but you can certainly hit some extremes if you combine magic plus select augmentations. Just look at the monster that is the Pornomancer for an example. In the Glass Ceiling thread, I think the current max dice pool is something like 45 dice. No samurai can even approach that.

I'm looking to make a Bruiser, not the Face. I know I can get Augmentations, but I'd really rather not (doesn't fit the character). So really I was just looking fore something I missed that would let me keep up with the Samurai.

Like I said, you just need to narrow your focus a bit. I believe the cap for a pistols packing adept is 32 dice. If you could be more specific on what you want out of your character, we could help more. What do you mean by "Bruiser"? Do you want a troll who specialized in unarmed combat?

While your maximum magic is 6 or less if you lose essence, you can increase you maximum by initiating, reaching levels of power mundanes can only dream of...
For example, you could get 2 essence worth of cyber and 2 essence worth of bio, for a total of 3 essence loss, reducing your maximum magic to 3...
Then you initiate once and your maximum magic becomes 4, initiate again and it becomes 5, and so on...
So, while you will start slightly weaker than a streetsam, you can still start very close to them, only losing a few BPs to get the adept quality...
And then you can become much stronger after earning a lot of karma and initiating...

That was 3rd ed. Now it's just a 10bp neg.

Also wondering how you are getting 32 pistol dice. I'm roughly thinking 12 agility (exceptional elf aug max)+ 11 skill (exceptional aug max)+ 2 spec + 2 smartlink + 3 aiming= 30. Are you making up the rest with attuned pistols and redlining?

4e Geasa are an optional rule in Street Magic that allows you to reduce PP costs by 25% by taking a Geasa against that power. There are no negative qualities that allow you to exceed 6 PP at chargen.

And as for the pistol dice, an adept Elf with Improved Ability (Pistols) and some choice ware can have:

Agility 13 (Genetic Opt, Exceptional Attribute, Muscle Toner) + Pistols 12 (Aptitude, Improved Ability, Specialization) + Smartlink 2 + Take Aim 5 = 32 dice.

Of course this requires spending at least 2 Magic on Essence loss, but as it only requires 1.5 PP on Improved Ability (Pistols) 3, it is almost achievable at chargen (only the Muscle Toner is capped at 2 rather than 4 due to availability restrictions, limiting DP to 30).

Ah, thanks for the ketch aiming and gen op.
Question though. Wouldn't a gen opted exceptional agility elf have an Augmax of 14? 1.5(7+1+1) = 13.5 --rounded up--> 14



On a different note
>4e Geasa are an optional rule in Street Magic that allows you to reduce PP costs by 25% by taking a Geasa against that power. There are no negative qualities that allow you to exceed 6 PP at chargen.

Where are you getting this? SM pg. 27 is the only place I've seen geas mentioned and it's just a 10bp negative quality.

No, you round down...
And the earlier skill max is 10, 6 normal max, +1 for aptitude and a +3 enhanced max = 10.

Sorry, thought you were implying that the Geasa negative quality somehow allowed you to get more PP. My bad. You are right, the RAW Geasa is a 10 BP negative quality that if broken removes Magic Points (and therefore Adept Powers).

However on p.31 of SM, under Tweaking the Rules, there is an optional 'adept friendly' version of Geasa that reduces PP costs by 25%, giving you more effective PP (up to 7.5 if you have maximum Magic of 6).

Check page 31, under "tweaking the rules". It's an optional rule, but one that would make adepts much more powerful.

ah thanks.

But not even in the optional rules can you offset magic lose from ware. I could easily how you could extend it there is if you were nostalgic for that mechanic. Or am a missing something else ...again

You're not missing anything, it is a thing of the past...

2070 must have been a year of massive suck for all those heavy geased a cybered magicians out there

Somehow, adepts also forgot how to do those time delayed strikes (for those cool Hokuto no Ken moment where you say "you're already dead" and then their head explodes)...