I understood it

How the hell is aiming with AK slower the m16 and i agree it was very bab analogy.

I think he meant the increased recoil from the heavier round would cause follow up shots to be slower - your sight picture doesn't settle right away. The difference would be more pronounced if you added a drop in hydraulic recoil buffer to your M-16 - I'm not sure they even make those for the AK. Even the Soviets went to a light and fast bullet for the AK-74 (5.45x39mm).

There are two problems with adepts:

1) The adepts displayed in the fiction are at least on par with street samurai while the adepts you can build in the RAW are definitely not.
2) An adept character can be made far more powerful with the addition of selected bioware. This despite the fact that artificial augmentation is supposed to reduce their abilities. Muscle Toner, Muscle Augmentation and Synaptic Boosters are the principal culprits here.

Fixing problem two would probably also fix problem one.

How about a different solution? Why not make adept powers more effective, rather than less costly?
Improved Reflexes could function like Move by Wire - +2 to Reaction and +1 IP and Dodge skill per level. That would make a beginning adept the fastest gun in the west.
Improved Physical Attribute could give +2 per level.
Same with Improved Ability. You're still limited to half your skill in levels, but each level gives two dice. So an adept with Pistols 5 and Improved Ability (pistols) 2 would roll 9 dice plus agility. Even without a heavily augmented Agility stat, the adept is competitive.

Clyde, I'm going to be blunt here: the two assumptions you just listed suck. The second one contradicts the first one to a large degree since it's tacitly admitting that it is possible to make an augmented Adept comparable to Samurai, and whether you like the flavor involved with that or not, such a character is still an adept. Furthermore, taking augmentations DOES hurt your purely magical abilities. You may gain enough augs to offset that loss handily in any given set of dicepools, but you're still harming your overal magical potential by reducing your Essence score. Hurting your magic score hurts your ability to make use of abilities that leverage your Magic attribute or rely on boosting one particular power to an incredibly high rating (such as Combat Sense). There's really no way around that.

What you guys are complaining about is an issue of flavor and philosophy more than a mechanical failure. If you really want to be the best you can be in the Sixth World, you're going to have to accept that it might mean lopping off your own hand in favor of a metallic monstrosity complete with extendable claws, recoil dampers and a loss of your spiritual wholeness. Keep in mind that back in earlier editions there was even an example archetype called the Burnout Mage; combining magic and tech has been around in various degrees since the dawn of Shadowrun, even if the overall effectiveness has fluctuated from edition to edition. Considering how much work the corps put into things, it is perhaps somewhat inevitable that as the setting advances combining magic with tech becomes ever more plausible. If you want to houserule things to fit your own vision, that's fine, but recognize that such a vision eventually diverges with the rest of the setting to an extent. So do what you want, but I'd suggest backing off a bit from words like "fix" and "problem."


But hey, I might be biased. I am after all the guy who never makes a mage without at least 1 or 2 points of augmentation.

Not true. He said it's impossible to make one that's comparable. He didn't say it's impossible to make one that's simply too good to compare.

A tweaked Adept isn't necessarily always going to be better than a tweaked Samurai. He can likely beat the samurai at raw combat or or the face at social abilities, since you know, that's kind of what Adepts do. But the mundo's likely to beat the Adept in several other areas. Honestly, tweaking a Samurai's attributes and tossing in a set of Skillwires alone is usually enough to make a Samurai a pre-eminent multi-tasker. For example, I can make a troll wrestler samurai that likely won't beat a dedicated bio adept martial artist, but I can guarantee you my troll has the potential to do around 3/4s of the damage while still being a deadly gunman. Honestly, comparing a bio adept to a street samurai is often like comparing a howitzer to a utility knife. The former is better at killing someone than the latter, but it won't do you much good if you're just trying to open some packages.

I would not use the fiction as any kind of guage of actual character effectiveness.

Adepts have always been better at being specialists - ninjas, martial artists, acrobats, marksmen, mesmerizing faces, etc. Street samurai are the workhorses of shadowrun, the generalists who combine speed, durability, effectiveness at all ranges of combat, senseware, and tech savvy. Bioware-enhanced adepts don't buck this trend - indeed, they are usually even more hyperspecialized than a typical adept.

Not arguing that part; just stating he didn't necessarily contradict himself.

One thing no-one seems to have mentioned when going on about the adept powers being underpowered in regard to some of the tech alternatives is that the magic options are generally a whole lot harder to actually detect. They also only require a single fake mage license (if you bother with one at all) to get around a whole bunch of potential problems.

Sure there are downsides in regard to wards and suchlike, but they're a whole lot less common than things like cyberware scanners and MAD scanners. But in general i'd personally say the advantages in terms of discretion are usually in favor of the pure adept in a game like Shadowrun. (Edited to make the sentence make more sense)

I do concede that improved attribute is too expensive however. I'm yet to make a single adept character which wasn't better served by just spending the BP on skills and skill boosting powers or just things which can act as a better attribute score in specific situations (like Power throwing or critical strike as stand ins for strength).

Wards don't really mess up adepts, unless they carry their weapon foci around activated all of the time (which would be a bad idea). They have more to worry from being assensed. They still have an edge, though, since the sammie has to worry about assensing and cyberware scanners. And they have even more of an edge if they pick up masking.

But a huge disadvantage of adepts in SR4 is background count, which takes away power points now. The sammie doesn't have to worry about his wired reflexes dropping from level: 2 to level: 1 because the employees in the complex you are invading are badly mistreated.

Don't see the contradiction or the controversy

In SR 2 and 3, street sams had higher attributes and faster reflexes while adepts had higher skills (plus unique stuff like killing hands). In SR 4 sammies still have higher attributes, but those attributes lead to being directly better at their skills as well. Street samurai aren't just generalists, they're better overall as well.

Very true. I mostly mentioned wards because they're the most common magical defence a runner will encounter.

And of course the adepts don't have to worry about any viruses, malware, hacker nanites or anything like that ruining thier day.

Since nobody else seems to be willing to do so, it seems that it falls to me to come to the defense of Improved Physical Attribute, being, probably, the only person who thinks the cost is perfectly reasonable. While the power may seem weak in comparison to cyber or bio augmentation, what it really does is allow you to spend points in excess of the 200 normally allotted to attributes at the same rate as you would normally buy them, by purchasing a point of magic for ten points. Alternately, it can be used to increase an attribute to the maximum for the regular price, rather than for twenty-five points.

Here's another thing a lot of people are missing.

Magic ratings are essentially uncapped... w/ high intitiate grade... you could have a magic rating of 8 or 10 or more.

Essence wise... the best you can manage is either 5.99 points of bioware (costly!), or 3.99 points of cyber and 4 points of bioware. After that you're in cyberzombie territory.

Yes, if (and only if) you do not care about any other Adept powers - in which case, it is still far more effective to go with bioware. You can pay 5 (Adept) + 20 (2 levels of IPA) to get your +2 Agility, or you could pay 4 (Nuyen) to get the same +2 Agility, and you don't pay inflated advancement costs later. This power has no viable defense - it is crap, pure and simple.

I might also add that your stance also only applies during character generation - the smallest part of the game.


In theory only. How many games have you actually played in which someone exceeded (or even reached) 7 Magic? By far the vast majority of games end long before this "unlimited" advancement potential can even begin to be noticed. Also, while Adepts can gain more Power Points, the samurais can decrease the cost of their advancements (higher-grade 'ware)

The only person I know locally whose tried to run SR a handfull of times goes for high power games, where a 7+ magic rating would not be out of order. But I agree with you, just pointing out the potential. It's also a possibility for NPC's keep in mind (some of those great dragons had magic ratings in the 20's IIRC)

As far as the cybersam... yeah higher grade for less essence... now look at the butcher's bill (any surgeon asking THAT much has to be a butcher). Alpha grade synaptic3.... 480k IIRC (no book handy).

That much said, you're still looking at a cap, just the cap tends to go around nuyen rather than karma. Coming back to the problem that magic chars tend to be karma limited, while mundanes tend to be nuyen limited. (which effectively means that the cyber adept, gets best of both worlds w/ a good way to spend nuyen and karma).

You still have to pay the points to pick up the magic rating for bioware.

I.e. you start with magic 5 (40 BP). Picking up IPA 1 is 1 power point, or 10 BP. Picking up muscle toner 2 and muscle augmentation 2 lowers your magic rating so you're still out the 10 BP. You're also out the nuyen cost of the augmentation - 6 BP IIRC. That's a total cost of 16 BP.

The cost of 16 BP still works out better because you get 2 points of agility and 2 points of strength - 4 points that would have cost at least 40 BP and 80% of your available power points. So while the discrepancy in BP costs isn't as high as some claim, it's still a serious difference in effectiveness . . . .

The shorter the campaign, the larger the part of the game is character generation. So it is either smallest part of the game and unlimited potential or not-the-smallest part of the game and not-so-unlimited potential.

No, it is not either. It is both. With the exception of one or two-shot games (which I do not consider a campaign game at all), character generation is by far the smallest part of the game, & at an average of 1 session each week, 5 Karma payout - your awakened characters might be capable of reaching Magic 8 after 3 months, if they advance nothing else.

Sure adepts rule hand to hand combat, hand to hand combat is what sucks though. They rule the suck.

So if those 400BP are worth lets say 600 karma... (lowballing)
Congratulations... it'll take you 120 weeks at 5 karma per week to 600 karma.

So at 3 months... chargen still dominates character progression by far.

Some adept powers are way over priced, however some are quite under priced. Power throw is a good example of this, coupled with improvised throwing weapons you can spend 2 adept points to chuck spare change at enemies at str/2 + 4P, which is more powerful than most pistols, and is more subversive. A way to get around the stifling cost of Adept powers is to craft a Mystic Adept, and acquire spells that do the desired effect, and purchase a high level sustaining foci. Dig that

tiny commlinks? i never noticed you could do that with power throw, i just skimmed over it thinking it was a grappling power

To pull off that trick, you actually need the Missile Mastery power, too. Power Throw was capped at Rating: 3 in the errata, but that still lets you do (Str +3)P damage (Missile Mastery gives a base damage of (Str)P for throwing things like credsticks, pens, etc.).

During play, it changes, I suppose, to allow you to increase an attribute which is at a level higher than your magic. This is particularly useful for metahumans. A troll adept with four magic and nine body could, instead of paying the karma to increase his body attribute, increase his magic attribute and use the power point to improve his body. A not insignificant savings.

While there may be other powers, too, which give a greater benefit for your point investment, not every adept is necessarily able to take them. Each adept's powers develop within their particular Way, after all.

I eliminated the difference between combat and non-combat skills for improved ability. Because in my games focus has shifted from the adept as kickass kung-fu master to magically-enhanced specialist. Essentially It started with the social adept, as that has always been way overpowered, and ended with me saying "why treat combat skills as more important during one aspect of character creation and not any other?" Everything costs .5 pp per bonus die now.

I dunno, something still sits wrong with me with some of the power costs. YMMV, I suppose. I mean, I'm cool with ware being tempting(again, with lower costs-it still is.)

Pulling up some math I did again, I'll take human A and human B; A is a pure adept, B is a sam. Both are, say, Blade specialists.

The sam starts the game with a natural 5 Agility(40 BP), and decides to get it to 9 via augmentations; he takes Restricted Gear(Muscle Toner) for 5 BP, and picks up rating 4, for 32,000 nuyen(7 BP.) He picks up Blades(Swords) 6+2(26 BP), and picks up a Reflex Recorder(10k, or 2 BP) for Blades. He rolls 18 dice before modifers with blades, and this whole thing cost him a grand total of 80 BP. Keep in mind his Agility 9 links to lots and lots of other skills, giving him big die pools in things like Infiltration, Firearms, and anything else linked to the stat. He's only spent .9 Essence as well, so has 5.1 essence and can still get a lot more nuyen to enhance his other abilities.

The adept picks up 5 Agility as well(40 BP), Adept(5 BP), and a Magic of 6(65 BP.) He also gets his Blades(Swords) 6+2 for 26 BP. But since he's pure, right now he's throwing 13 dice. Now, that's really nice for no augmentations yet. But he's already spent 136 BP. Now, he has 6 power points. The player wants to make an equal character to the sam. So he drops 1.5 Power Points on +3 to Blades(max he can get), and goes up to 16 DP. Almost there. To get two more, by RAW, he either needs to boost his natural agility to 6(25 BP) and spent 1 point more on +1 Agility, or spend 3 of his remaining power points on +2 Agility(after 6, it's TWO per level, remember.) Let's say he goes with the former. So he's spent 25 more BP(161), and his power points now sit at 2.5 spent, with 3.5 left. Well, he managed to equal the same in Blades, at least, for all of this.

But the Sam has a lot more wiggle-room now. For a combat character, we all know IPs are important-at LEAST 1. The adept is pure...and he needs an extra IP. So there goes 2 of his BP, leaving him with half a point left for other stuff. That's it. Now, if houserules are used, the Adept might be able to take an old-time Geas to lower this cost to 1.5, allowing him 1.5 power points left to boost himself in other ways.

Now, both characters are limited to their 9 agility max. The adept can get his through initation or whatnot-but...well, he still has to pay more for it. The same will no doubt have better stats all around, 3 IPs rather than two, and other stuff on top of it. His DPs will probably be bigger across the entire board than the physad.

You might say that the Adept can just take the 2 die ''penalty'' versus the sam, and save the 25 BP and an extra power point. This is indeed true...but, he will STILL be ending up shortchanged. The adept player realizes it's just better to play a hybrid if he wants...even with the 1-2 point Magic hit at the start, this can be made up for later and it's more than worth it.

Lower the Attribute boost cost to .5/level, with no increase past the normal racial max. Now, the Adept can not max his Agility(leaving it at 5), and get a nice Agility boost for 2 points(+4), so he can at least match the same in some ways. He has 4 BP left, 2 of which go to an extra IP, and 2 more to spend on other things(perhaps boosting his survivability, other skills, etc.) Now, it's STILL a bit more worth it to go the ''ware route''-as technically, he'll be saving even more Power Points. But at LEAST the latter version can hang much better with the sam and not always feel outclassed. I don't think lowering the cost of some powers will make pure adepts the only way to go, but I just want to see them be able to hang better than they do now. (Other costs I think need adjustment too, as I said-and there ARE some powers-namely social powers-that I think could stand to be increased, since the opposite happens-one almost needs to be an adept to be the ultimate face.)

Both can still upgrade-the adept with initiation, the sam by getting things like beta-grade, even delta-grade, ware to stuff more into himself.

It also makes adepts nicer for ''average length'' campaigns. Again YMMV here, but Adepts reaching these grand levels of power tend to happens in much longer campaigns, unless you have high Karma rewards. Still, the prices aren't *that* discounted that it will make the Adept explode ahead in two months of play.

I guess what I'm trying to do with this rules collection I've been compiling is to make either cyber or magic folks fully viable within their roles, to personal preference. Will some still be sort of optimal, like the ''hybrid'' physad? Sure, but at least the pures aren't left outside.

That being said, I think magic works fine as it is, and I too tend to add a couple of points of ware to my mages-though I've seen regular mages do juuuust fine without a drop of cyber. The classic physad, however, i've seen struggle too often to not feel that something is off with the costs as they are now.

+1. Well said, ElFenrir.

If nothing else, try using a house rule from something that was standard in SR3. If an Adept spends 20 Karma, they gain 1 additional PP worth of powers. You could break it down so that they can buy .25PP (5 Karma) and .5PP (10 Karma) powers as well.

I would set a hard limit on it of no more than Magic x2 PP total, so that initiation still has some value to it. I would also work the math out so that a lose of Magic results in a comparable loss of the PP total. [(New Magic/Old Magic) * PP] Ex... Joe the Adept has 6 Magic, 6.0 Essence, and 9 PP. He gets a datajack (don't ask me why) and drops to 5 Magic and 5.8 Essence. (5/6)*9 = 7.5PP, so he would lose 1.5PP.

I do agree that the two different cost for skills, the cost for Improve Ability, and a couple of the other powers are a little wonky. You can always spot something wonky by checking to see if a power is taken by every build no matter what (ether way to powerful or to powerful for the cost) or never taken even if it matches the concept (not powerful enough to be useful or way to expensive for the effect).

I suggest using the Tweaking the Rules option of allowing a Power Point Metamagic for Adepts to take, and allowing additional Metamagics to be purchased at 15 Karma each.

I will be posting suggested changes to the effects & costs of BBB powers later tonight. I have not yet really gone through Street Magic or Digital Grimoire, so while I have a few changes to those, I will not include them yet.