As opposed to regular mages who use foci? Besides, Mr. Charm does not have a single focus. I purposely made him to not be reliant on the same tricks as Commando Dan, who will only ever need to sustain his Improved Reflexes if he chooses to get greedy and go for that 4th pass.



The only two social tests that are opposed with Will + Skill are Intimidation and Leadership. Even then, Kinesics gives him a +3 bonus to those tests. Negotiation is Charisma linked for the target. P. 130, SR4A.

Influence, by its nature, tends not lead the target to realize they've been hit by a spell. Alter Memory, by its nature, is designed to get away with mind rape.



We've discussed the suboptimal trade off Adept Improved Reflexes is; you use up a large portion of a limited resource. As for bioware, for 32 BP worth of resources and 25 BP worth of a lost Magic point, I can get +2 reaction in addition to my +2 passes. Clearly, a much better trade off is the 3 bp for the spell, 16 bp for the skill (which has more uses than just getting more passes), 6 bp of resources and 3 bp for binding that I used to get a sustaining focus. Hell, I don't even really need the sustaining focus, it's just nice to have.

Another day, another M.A.

Spider-man Sam:



Sam is a super Spider, who can wield not only drones but spirits at his enemies. One of his favorite party tricks is to give his Spirit of Man Reinforce, Fix, or Vehicle Mask (depending on the situation) to use upon his drones. With Multi-Tasking he keeps track of his meat body via cameras in his van, and serves as a very effective spy when using his drones. He utilizes the Command program to use his toys, and goes in Hot-Sim for the extra IP's and very handy +2 bonus.

When shooting things via his vehicles, he has a DP of (Command 6 + Gunnery 4 (6) (8 for Soon to be Speciality) + 2 Hot Sim) of 16. He Summons Spirits of Man with 12 dice (soon to be 14). If he gets caught in the Meat, he can use Shapechange to transform into a wolf or tiger or horse or some such and either fight or flee. He has a good Perception dp, and can use Observe in Detail 2x a pass (handy to analyze the area via his drones).

Yea...
... ... ...
And if you showed up to any table that I run (or play at if I am not GMing) I (or the running GM) would laugh at you... Agility, reaction and strength at 1. There is a word for that... What is it again...
I cry myself to sleep reading some of the characters people post here... (Well, not really... just lose more faith in humanity...)

Also, you need to overcast Fix and Reinforce just to hit the OR of the vehicle/drone.
Also, is there not a limit on shapechange for what you can turn into?Good luck turning into that great cat or horse. Wolf is ok but only really usefull for running away.

Clear character design direction. Not particularly min-maxed. Certain clear vulnerabilities, several undefined negative qualities needed to better assess character.

All in all, while I would not disallow this character in my games, I will require a more definite Negative Qualities list and I would not hold out much hope that the PC would survive pass the first few games.

"I would laugh at you." I've noticed a tendency on these boards for people to belittle any character that does not fit in their pre-conceived notions of what a character "should" be - SR is big enough to fit quite a few types. "You mean a person who spends all day in the chair surfing the matrix is physically unfit? Well, he can't possibly be a runner then!" - yeah, right. It's terribly important for a security rigger to be in top physical shape, for, you know, all that running around he has to do. Or something. Besides, if it really wounds your world view so much, he has plenty of BP left over. Or make him a Dwarf for 5 bp more - problem solved! He now fits your stereotypes! Despite the fact that a Dwarf with a Body of 2 is the same as a Human with a Body of 1, but whatever, it's the numbers that are important, right?

As to your terribly keen observations:
1. Have the Spirit cast them - 5 is not out of reach for a Force 6 Spirit (and definitely not for a Force 8 ).
2. Yes, there is a limit, has to be within 2 points either way of your body. I think Sam can change into anything other than a Tiger off the top of my head. I would probably have him change into a bird, or mosquito, or some such to run away. As you so piercingly pointed out, he's not very good in physical confrontations. Someday, we will get a Critters book, and Shapechanging mages the world over can stop arguing with their GMs about what the body score is for animal X.



I'm almost tempted to run this guy now. Unless you're the type of GM who regularly pulls out tanks and missiles, he should be fine hanging out in a Bulldog (Hardened Armor: 16). If someone comes near the van, I'm sure it will be modified to have weapons, and he can bring his spirit back to his presence within moments. And then change into a bug and fly away - I'd like to see you shoot a fly!

He would work great as an NPC, though. Super Spider!

Assensing is a super powerful trick which mages bring to the table.

If you cannot assesse stuff, and you're occupying the 'mage' slot, you're just not a contributor.

Missles, tanks, or... a bunch of meddling kids and their dog, er... ork... that drop a few kilograms of demo charge under it while everyone is trying to enjoy a car show. Or maybe that's just my game...

Just playing, and don't forget your pants!

I'm the kind of GM that allows you to kill yourself. Spend money for the van and the weapons, sure. Spirit? Sure. Change into bug? If the stats are in the book, sure.

Mr Lucky walks by and pops a cap on you? Sure.

No... The numbers are not important... I am not stupid either. I look at stats BEFORE race modifiers and after them. People want to make characters with 1's in attributes that is fine. I see it ONLY as someone who wants to min/max the system to near munchkin levels of ridiculous. I rarely see anyone write a back-story that explains the levels of handicap that a 1 in an attribute really is. ( I often wonder what the Dev's think when they see characters like this. Maybe one will let me know.)
As for my observations... So you over summon to get that force 6... My point was that you have to over (whatever) to make those spells do what you want. And over summoning is potentially more dangerous than overcasting.


Tanks and missiles... can't remember when I ever used these against any of my players... Usually when they are sporting the same equipment.
You wait in your van while the rest of the team gets gunned down while they are in the Wi-Fi inhibiting paint building.

But I will end this before I get a PM from a Mod.

A bizarre claim. Mystic Adepts are not mages. They are Adepts who have access to mage abilities. I will say again: do you expect your super ninja adept type to assense? No? Then why expect the M.A. to do so? Each of the characters I have posted are by any sense of the word "contributors". Your assertion that leaving out one part of the magic chapter that Adepts almost never have access to anyway makes a character worthless is certainly an interesting claim. I was also unaware that once you have one awakened person on your team, that precludes any other awakened characters, such that making a M.A. automatically fills your mage "slot".



Phah, Hamburger does not care for pants. He is a shorts man. A very short shorts man!



Well, if you're the kind of GM that lets NPCs burn edge for critical successes, no one is really safe no matter what their build, so it's a bit of a moot point.

Besides, I am curious to see how you would rule that an NPC a: saw the mosquito in the middle of a firefight, and b: realized that the mosquito was really the mage he was gunning for in the first place. It would be quite the paranoid security guard that took a break from the dodging the van's suppressive fire to shoot at a fly leaving the van. There is a long, fine tradition of Riggers and Hackers physically hanging out in vans while their teammates do their thing and providing matrix support. I am not sure what is causing the incredulity of this concept.



Yes, because in real life, hackers are never, ever fat slobs who don't get exercise. Therefore, to have a fat slob hacker without a long, emo backstory involving something like car accidents and dear aunt sally not being able to afford medical bills would clearly defy all common sense and logic. Rating 1 is considered "weak": p.67, SR4A. Weak does not imply crippled. It implies exactly the definition of weak.

Overcasting is generally worth it, no matter the mage. You are free to houserule anything you want re: overcasting. As for over-summoning; yes it's dangerous, but if you summon (then bind) during downtime you're generally in the clear. Also, First Aid is pretty useful in dealing with pesky problems such as damage - it's a good thing Sam has First Aid, no?



Unwired has mini(?) drones that serve as routers for wireless signals to get around the problem of Wi-Fi inhabiting paint. They're used in one of the fictions at the end of Runner's Companion (the one with Clockwork and the lightning strike).

Regardless, Sam is just an example, as are Mr. Charm and Commando Dan, that Mystic Adepts are not gimped. For Sam, astral perception/projection would be used almost never; he can't be in the matrix and be astrally perceiving at the same time after all. He has micro/mini drones to serve as scouting devices, and importantly, they can see things that he wouldn't be able to see from the astral.



I don't see why a Mod would have an issue with this conversation, as it is relatively polite and there have been no personal attacks. I'm enjoying it, and I think a healthy argument will people to reconsider the received wisdom that M.A.'s are "gimped". I maintain that M.A.'s are perfectly balanced: sure, they haven no access to astral realms, but they can summon spirits and cast spells and counterspell, and accesses the unique powers that only adepts can get! How is that gimped? Honestly? Once you get past the idea that "They're just mages who can't use astral" you'll see the utility that an M.A. can bring to the team. It's all in the name, after all: Mystic Adepts.

EDIT: For philosophy.

Now my head is filled with bad images of Lt. Dangle from Reno 911 in SR.

I am the kind of GM that allows the NPCs to do exactly what the rules allow them to do. Grunts are able to do certain things, Prime Runners can possibly do a lot more, as per the rules.

Assuming that there is a mosquito critter for you to shapeshift into in SR4A, the NPC makes a Perception check against an appropriately high Threshold. Once he manages to perceive the target, he may make an attack against it. He may or may not choose to do so. Also the NPCs may be using area effect weapons.

I am not incredulous about this concept. I am saying that it may not be as survivable as other PCs.

Fair enough, and it is a different argument than the one we are currently having so I'll let that be.

"Assuming there is a mosquito critter"? Are there no Mosquitoes in the future? The BBB only lists 4 non-paranormal critters. So a Cat Shaman could not shapechange into, say, a cat because there are no stats for it listed? Sometimes, we need to be able to fill in the blanks - it's bizarre to state that a spell whose text lets you change into any non-paranormal critter really only allows you to change into one of 4 non-paranormal critters because those are the only ones listed in the book. The text even specifically states "Eagle Form" even though there are no stats listed for Eagles in the book - so should we disallow that? If a mosquito is too small, there is always everyone's favorite flying rat, the Pigeon.

"I am not incredulous about this concept. I am saying that it may not be as survivable as other PCs"

Eh, I'll put Sam up against a Technomancer in the survivability department any day.

The point is that I run a RAW game. You can show me the RAW stats of a cat? Sure, then go ahead.

Oh my. So what do you have to say about Eagle Form then? It's specifically mentioned in the spell write up, yet there is no Eagle listed in the book - since there's no RAW definition, you would rule that a Mage cannot shift into an Eagle Form because there are no stats for it? That is taking RAW to the extreme.

There is no extreme RAW, it either is RAW or it is not. If, as you say, per spell description, there is explicitly an eagle form, then that is RAW. You may shapeshift into an eagle. But without any RAW eagle stats, the stats of the eagle itself is not RAW.

But this is besides the point. The point is that with very low Reaction and low Bod, the long term survivability of the character is doubtful, even if the character stays in the vehicle during runs and uses shapeshifting.

Err, they cast spells and summon spirits, the other things I expect the mage on the team to do. Think of a shadowrun team. You have a variety of roles to fill, and a mystic adept is either wasting points on summoning very low force spirits or low force spells, and would have been better off as an adept, or he's just a mage that is behind the 8-ball on doing the mage things in return for doing things that other team members already do.

That's a mightly limited viewpoint. There are no hard requirements on or limits to roles in SR. Just because someone can cast spells and summon spirits doesn't mean they should be expected to be able to go astral anymore than every hacker should also be expected to be a competent rigger or that every Steet Sam should be able to cover both melee and ranged combat equally well.

Sure sure, but if you cannot do it, someone else on the team has to. So if the rigger cannot manage spying with flying bugs, you better have a pretty good sniper who can fill in the gap. Likewise, if you have an invul-ro troll throwing down maximum firepower in mortal combat, the drone rigger doesn't need drones with semi automatic grenade launchers, because someone else has that covered.

It is very awkward for other people to do assensing, but you can get the capability via alternative routes. However, that awkwardness typically makes it desirable that the guy who summons spirits and casts spells is also the guy that assenses stuff. I had a list of things a shadowrun team should have someone on the team who can do, but I cannot find it. (Incidently, the sammie melee/ranged thing is silly - it's not specific capabilities, it is delivering on specific outcomes. Survillence of Astral, Electronic and Physical targets is something shadowrun teams need to do, so someone on your team needs to be able to do it. However, melee combat isn't always required. If the Sammie can bust out silenced SMGs and just blow them away, that is just as good as stabbing them)

Warning: Playing RAW games vastly increases your change of aquiring acceptance of game-borne idiocy. RAWdogging the game will force numerous breaks in any attempt at immersion. Please use a COoKER to keep your games sane.

For example, two common sedans (use Mercury Comet for stats - as it's the only sedan allowed by RAW) are travelling on the street at a calm pace of 60 km/h (50 m/turn). One is following closely behind the other but is having a bad day so he decides to speed up a bit and 'bump' the other vehicle. He accelerates to 65 m/turn and bumps the vehicle. The result is that the bumped vehicle takes 20P damage and the bumping vehicle takes 10P. Both resist with 16 dice, and since the book encourages us to 'buy the hits', this 'bump' will inflict 16 damage on the bumped vehicle and 6 damage to the bumping vehicle. Since both of these vehicles have 13 boxes on their condition monitor, this means the bumped vehicle is totally destroyed while the bumping vehicle is moderately damaged. All of this from a crash that should - using real world physics - been no different than a car travelling at 18 km/h striking a stationary vehicle. That's RAW for you.

No they don't. Not every ability has to appear in every team. If you can summon a spirit, have it assense the target and use your spirit-summoner link to know what it finds.

Please, its not every ability, it is every capability.

Would you have a shadowrun team that was incapable of covert entry? What about incapable of fighting corporate security? What about incapable of walking into a secure area in plain daylight?

Someone really does need these capabilities for the conventional 'shadowruns' to work. Just like you need someone with assensing - but anyway, I don't think a low force spirit is going to roll enough hits, but obviously YMMV. So lets look at the tangible examples and see if they can assense via summoning spirits.

A) the rigger is total crap. He doesn't have a control rig, and his reaction is so low as to make jumping in pointless, so he's a mage that is trading off two functional points of magic.. for what? two useless abilities? I Ugess he can command things via the drones.. but meh. And he doesn;t have counterspelling, and if he did he could never use it, so his team is going to be in trouble verses a mage. Unless of course they have another mage and this guy is supposed to be the rigger.. I dunno. Wouldn't be too bad in a team of 4 with a dedicated mage, face and totally invisible street sammie, as the spirits add over a rigger.

B) The troll commando isn't going to cover the assensing base, as he's going to have a tough time summoning high force spirits, and low force spirits don't roll enough dice to get decent numbers of hits. Nor can the troll deal with its own signature if it casts a spell.

Edit: C) The face.. isn't to bad actually I guess. Missing summoning is bad, especially as you need points for willpower and buying skills up with karma is just pain.

Its not inspiring stuff.

I don't necessarily agree. Not every team is a well-rounded jack-of-all-trades type. Some are very specialized and only take jobs that fit with that specialty.


Each of those could be done with certain specialist teams. I've seen a SR3 game where everyone played otaku kids that would have had trouble with all three of those areas - yet the game was still fun for the players.


Assensing is just one skill. This disagrees with your first point since Assensing is an ability rather than a capability. It ahould be perfectly viable to have an entire group without Assensing just as you can have an entire group without Automatics or Gymnastics.

Yes. The resulting team will be more specialized than one that covers all their bases. They're not going to take the jobs that rely on capabilities they don't have (and after a while, Johnsons will stop trying to hire them for those jobs). Now, there willl likely still be occasions where the need for those capabilities will successfully sneak up on them, but I'd expect these to result in interesting efforts by the team to work around this weakness.

The capability is the ability to spot astral/magical/cybernetic threats, conduct astral surveillance, and otherwise interact with the astral.

You also ideally want someone who can act as an astral carrier for watcher ganks, track the cyber zombie, identify spell signatures and warn you the toxic mage is coming. Again, I'm wishing for the list, because it has a better articulated list of required capabilities and you can see the interactions/requirements.



Yup, it is definitely possible. But look, we could also play a game of shadowrun where the players timeslip into the past and assist lenardo da vinci in overthrowing the facist imperium in 1246 AD. For a general concept of what shadowrun is, we need a common reference, which is published adventures and the SR missions series. Having a game of shadowrun where there is no magic at all that features in gameplay because the players are all Okatu and have nothing that can stop Renraku following them around with watcher spirits who endlessly radio in their location for a succession of fire spirits if they get traced even once is no less absurd.

All of which can be done with spirits by a Mystic Adept. The Astral Perception and Astral Projection of a Magician are not needed for these tasks.

BTW, Cthulhudreams you are really going directly against your signature on all of this.

I'm not here to comment on how anyone plays the game. That is always between you and your players, and I am not concerned or interested in GM 'problem management'

I am only here to comment on the consistency, integrity and durability of the rules themselves, with no reference to how a particular group of players may choose to implement the rule set.

Sure! Just saying that a number of the mystic adepts in this thread cannot, indeed, do that job as they cannot reliably get a spirit that can throw enough dice at the problem, and the one that can could be made better by being replaced with an Astrally projecting mage with a DNI. Because then they could add counter spelling to the mix.

Unless someone else has that covered of course. Now of course someone else can do the missing job, but yeah, this leads to madness.

Basically the problem is that Mystic adept characters demonstrated so far are displacing responsibilities that are all normally in the one body into other bodies. By accepting a rather awkward configuration for theselves, they thrust it upon everyone else. Counterspelling, Summoning Spirits, Assensing are key responsibilities that are normally done by the same guy. Now, say we have Sam the Rigger - I still need someone else that can counterspell, otherwise my team is going to die to control thoughts or whatever if they meet a combat mage.

So who does that? Well, I either take another mystic adept who has counterspelling and a spellcasting focus - and then I still have no-one that can cover the astral tracks - or I can take a full fat mage, in which cause I have duplication of the summoning role.

Edit: Fair point. That said, this isn't really a discussion about the rules, it is about character roles within a team - which is entirely about player dynamics, spotlight times and plot functions - so I kinda have too

If you can summon Guardian, Guidance, or Plant spirits you don't need someone with counterspelling.

Oh my, where to begin?

A: My poor Rigger . No one loves him like I love him.
1. Why does he need a control rig? Command program ftw! I suppose he could jump in if he wants, but it won't bring any appreciable advantage over using Command. Plus, you never ever use Reaction when jumped in, so that's besides the point. You use the Response of your commlink.
2. I find Multi-Tasking very useful. No penalties for tracking someone through a crowded street? Check. 6 Observe in Detail actions every 3 seconds? Check. There is very little that will escape his view with a myriad of spy drones flying about - and just imagine the possibilities when you throw in a TacNet. Oh and there's always the handy Spirit-Summoner link for astral/magic threats. As for the other powers - there's never anything wrong with DP bonuses, and they give him a pretty nice DP for his Rigging activities. Perhaps I could have made him Magic 5/Adept 1, but that's a minor change that doesn't really effect the build too much.
3. Counterspelling: He is the (magic) Rigger, not the Mage. If the team wants a Mage, they should bloody well hire one. M.A.'s are not synonymous with Mages. Imagine your team has a Rigger. Are you going to demand that the Rigger also cover Astral surveillence? No? There may be some duplication of Spiritual use, but Sam uses his spirits in a different manner than a traditional mage.
4. He may have 2 IP's less than a dedicated Rigger, but he adds mucho survivability to his drones. Reinforce at Force 5 brings your Steel Lynx to a hardened armor of 14!!! And if something gets through that, have the friendly Spirit play Mechanic on it.
5. Full mage with DNI? How is he going to use Counterspelling when he can't see his team?

B: Trollman!
1. His job is to destroy things, not play Mr. Analyze.
2. Re: Signature. He doesn't have a single spell that will leave a signature anywhere but on his own body. No need to worry about signatures.

C. Da Face
1. Thanks! He's more of a Face than a Mage-y type mage, but picking up Summoning can happen as soon as the first session is completed. You could also probably juggle some points around to pick them up as well. I'm ok with his low Willpower due to his Counterspelling ability.

Edit: I added some stuff.

I'd submit to you that you're jamming a lot of capability through your spirits then. The main advantage of materialization traditions is that you can be in several places at one, which is being lost here. What happens if you need a power that is on another spirit, or your spirit is disrupted in combat?

And you still don't have anyone that can cast tri-d phantasm or heal. Now you can of course get those off spirits too, but you're getting a lot of mileage out of what is a dangerous game, and essentially you're playing pokeball, summoning the correct spirit every time something goes wrong and you need capability - but that costs time and effort.

Edit: a) Thats the problem - if he doesn't have counterspelling, who is going to do it? If its a full mage, you're doubling up on summoning.

B) Which means you need a mage to have actual spells (yes, you could get by without, because Heal is on that list), and you have no real way to deal with a mage following you around in the astral. Yes you could summon low force spirits to spam him, but he can run an astral gank pack to pounce your guys as they go in and spam you right back.

C) Yeah, but he's never going to be a really credible summoner - force 3 is about optimal for spirits, as they present tangible threats and get an optional power, which is actually going to cause him troubles when summoning.

Well I have to agree with Act, at least with the prespective he put in the last post, Hell I played a adept Rigger my self for mission games, no one expect hium to run up walls or disarm any one He had drones with sniper rifles and he carryed a fricken big dirty harry style pistol, hehe (( I love multi task too oct isn't it great? ))

as for the abbility to go astrel or see the astrel, its not really relivent all in all. I mean the GM will tailor the missions to meet the strengths and weakness's of the team after all. I mean if you have a team of sam and tech types your not going to toss a lot of magic at them right?

As well don't forget not every one here has a 6 man team at there table, mine is around 3 and some times 2,

To one poster about the shape change spells. um you don't have to be an animel only if there are stats thats only if you are engaging in combat really, I mean I watched one missions game where a guy turned a team mate into a pigion so he could sneak into the building, hehe.


And again about the abbilitys of the team, Shadowrunners are like a car, Your not going to take your pickup to the drag race, same as your not going to ask the three leg breakers in the corner to steal a painting from a musium. Its just not there style or type of work.

Astral travel is insanely quick. One spirit can cover a lot of ground in a turn, and the spy drones give Sam a fairly comprehensive view of the action. Also, with a Charisma of 3, I can have 3 bound spirits operating at once if I so choose. As for needing a Power - have you checked out the Spirit of Man power list recently? I'm not sure what they don't start with that I would possibly need: Accident, Concealment, Confusion, Guard, Influence, Search, Enhanced Senses... Even if I use both my optional powers on Innate Spells, I'm really only missing out on Movement, which is definitely a good option - just imagine a Steel Lynx flying about at 6x speed!

Edit:

A. I fail to see the downside of doubling up on summoning. It's like saying doubling up on Sammys is a bad thing. Besides, the Rigger is not really going to be putting his spirits into combat - they're mainly for support. Mage 2 can use his spirits for combat all he wants.
B. Commando Dan is basically an Unarmed Adept who didn't have to trade in half his power points for IP's. You wouldn't feel like a team had an overcapacity of magicians if it featured an Adept and a Mage, would you?
C. He could Summon Force 3 - 5 dice (Summoning 1, Specialization +2 = 6 Karma, very doable quickly) versus Force 3. He has a decent drain pool, so Over-summoning is not a worry, especially since a Force 3 spirit is not likely to get more than 1 success. Besides, he's a Face - any summoning ability is icing.

Except you have to remateralise at the end and actually find the place - you can overshoot!



Look, in shadowrun, mages and spirits attack you and try and kill you. Things follow you in the Astral. If that doesn't happen in your games, I really don't have a basis to talk to you on, because we're not really playing the same game.

Team size definitely matters. I tend to play with 3 or 4 which means you need to be flexible, but also with a degree of specialization. If its less, you need more flexibility.

a) Sure it is - if its a three man team, you've got a rigger, a mage, and a face - but then you don't have someone that can just walk through a high security checkpoint and be unbelievably lethal on the other side. Conversely, if you've taken the bio sammie, you don't have someone that can throw down in a high stakes game of poker or convince the guys at cross biomedical that he really is a doctor and he is supposed to be here. If you get the bio sammie and the face, you don't have a mage.

Now if its a 4 man team, you could get the bio sammie, the face and the mage, but we don't have someone that can slice into the renraku datacentre and disable the security system, because he's a pretty ho-hum hacker. Now of course maybe you are good enough at extreme mortal combat, detection and high speeds that you can just blast through, or otherwise compensate, but yeah.

B) I think unarmed adepts suck, which is colouring my thinking. To be fair, I'm probably incapable of a truely impartial analysis of the character. Basically to the me the advantage of an 'unarmed adept' is they can just trot on through security and go super badass on the other side at a say the high society gathering. But an adept or magic users cannot actually do that, because security will have them tagged as the high force magic user. A bio sammie can, however, walk through the checkpoint just fine and bust out his concealed monowhip on the other side, because he is less detectable.

Conversely, if you are in 'full guns mode' punching things is just a waste of time. Take a sniper rifle.

C) Yeah, probably starting in the third session - but he will still fail regularly, because the he has a decent enough chance of rolling only 1 success, and remember he needs net hits. And thats only for 1 spirit type, which is pretty limiting all in all.

A: To be honest, a Rigger is generally not that useful on a small-sized team. I'd say 4 people min for a Rigger to really find his place - that gives you a Rigger, a Mage, a Face, and a Sammy. Yes, my guy is a mediocre Hacker - well, actually he Rolls (Exploit 5 + Hacking 3 + Hot Sim 2) 10 dice? That's not completely terrible. He won't be hacking into Renraku anytime soon, but the Face can always talk his way into getting an access code....

B: Make him into a Throwing Adept then. Power Throw 3, Missile Mastery, and he has .25 PP extra. He throws things with an effective strength of 13, and can turn pens into 7p instruments of doom - throwing knives? 9p! The nice thing about the Unarmed adept is Killing Hands (ignores ItNW) and Elemental Strike (Modified Damage Value > Willpower? Hello nausea, aka spend 3 combat turns frozen in place and turned into sushi.)

C. Three sessions to pick up 6 Karma? You have a stingy GM. One spirit type might be limiting, but hey, he's the face. It's all lagniappe to him.

Let's look at this another way: You're a newbie SR in City X. You're looking to get a team put together and try to get some jobs and earn a little money. City X already has Team Y, which does a fairly decent job of pretty much everything, but isn't really exceptional anywhere.

If you gather a team that also does a little bit of everything, you've got absolutely nothing to distinguish you from Team Y except that you have less experience and less reputation than they do. Which means the jobs you get are the ones where Mr. Johnson doesn't want to pay their rates, or the ones that they've turned down - either busy with something bigger and better, or they don't like the job (possibly because they noticed something that gave away that it was a tailchaser). And as long as both your team and Team Y focus on the jack-of-all-trades approach, this will continue to be the case.

But let's say you instead put together a team that focuses on just a few of those things. So, you lose out on the serious occult investigative stuff; your hacker can crash security systems in seconds - before the analyze program can sound an alarm - but isn't going to be slinking through corporate networks to find paydata; your face doesn't have the right kind of contacts and abilities to mingle in high-society. But what you instead have is a team that can get in, destroy, kill, or erase whatever was needed, and be gone before a serious response can be mounted - and leaves little enough evidence that trying to track them - or even confirm who it was - will cost more than it's worth. You get a little bit of street cred, and your team very quickly starts being first pick for assasination, destruction, distractions, enforcement, and anything else that plays to your strengths. This puts you in a position to expect better pay for the jobs you do, and gives you a better position to refuse the obvious screw-jobs.

Now, most cities are going to have more than just one other team that you're competing with for jobs, but the point still stands that in many cases, you're going to be better off carving out a niche for yourself rather than being the umpteenth team that kinda does everything (note: when you start cutting out capabilities that you need for your chosen niche, it's a problem, but having a bit of focus is hardly a bad thing). And while you're losing out on the jobs that require large amounts of matrix legwork, mingling in high society, or occult investigation, from an OOC perspective, this is probably a good thing for the GM as he doesn't need to scramble to find something to keep the rest of the group entertained while he handles one-on-one stuff with the member of the team who can actually do those things.



You're still looking at these characters as mages who aren't doing part of their job. While the blurb attached to the Magician/MA/Adept/Technomancer qualities encourages this, try looking at them from the other direction. Rather than seeing a trio of mages who've screwed themselves out of part of their abilities to try to be a second rigger/face/combat machine, look at them as a rigger, a face, and an adept who've picked up a few magical abilities to let them fill that role better.

Warning: Playing non-RAW games vastly increases your change of aquiring dependance of real-world idiocy. House Ruling the game will force the numerous breaks in any attempt at enjoyment. Please use RAW to keep your games sane.

Yes, it is RAW. It is the way physics operate within the SR world. It is different than physics as we know it in real life. It is SR RAW, not real life.

2 sessions to get it, spend in down time, active in 3rd. Thats not unreasable, even if you get 4 a session works out similarly.

B) And that is still not as good as a sniper rifle with APDS which also ignores ItNW for all practical purposes, plus costs 1 BP to buy And you STILL cannot get through the checkpoint for all your badassery on the other side. And a monowhip isn't half bad.

A) Yeah, thats why he typically does the hacker thing as well.


Anyway, at this point I'm just tirelessly rebutting. The other concern is character spotlight time, and this is also the problem with the 'specialist team' thing. It's damn hard to divide up the spotlight equally if you have 4 players with highly similar or redundant characters.



So wait, you don't see that any targets for assassination, destruction, enforcement or anything else would be defended by mages? Something that you practically auto lose to, but the fluff is filled with security mages? While the team may be nova hot on the offense in the real world, but a projecting mage can run at a 1000 kms/h - and lone star enforcement teams in published adventures come with combat mages with multiple bound spirits. Again, its just tirelessly rebutting, but seriously, targets come with magical protection, against which you can do nothing. Heck, if a site has a watcher on site with orders to follow you back, you get screwed.

So you hire an NPC magician (take one as a high-Loyalty Contact) and have him lend you the services of one or more of his bound spirits in exchange for a cut. This isn't really any different from a team using the services of an NPC hacker - something that's been popular for 20 years of SR.

toturi, you realize that you're basically saying that between a reasonable non-RAW solution and and idiotic RAW solution you willing take the idiotic path. That's really sad.

A New Day, a New Page, and another new M.A. .

Ranger Randolph


Randolph is something like what I imagine a Sioux Wildcat sniper would be. Shapechange allows him to get a good vantage point by changing into some sort of flying animal; while up in the sky, he can use Clairvoyance to get a good look at thing. The nice thing about these spells is that they only require 1 success to be used.

Once he has his target, distance is a paltry factor with Enhance Aim, and his decent stealth pool (12dp) allows him to get within extreme range fairly easily. Having (Agility 7 + Longarms 9 + Reflex Recorder 1 + Smartlink 2) 19 dice to snipe with certainly doesn't hurt. In close up combat, he can use a sawed off shotgun or sporting rifle.

He can Summon spirits to assist him in combat if he should be discovered, or to hit him with concealment to add even more difficulty in finding him as he gets within range of his target. Also, the spirits can utilize the Search power to help him find his targets; he doubles as an effective assassin .

Edit: Changed a few things. He now has a better perception pool, more ways to see things with, Multi-Tasking and a slightly worse dodge pool.
Edit 2: Realized he probably can't shapechange into a bird with a Body of 6. Dropped it to 4; gave him two ranks of Wildcat, First Aid 2, and extra BP for resources.

Concealment also helps hide from astral detection, so that's good news for your sniper. Movement is great for getting out if things go to hell. Plant spirits have Silence to increase your chances of sniping undetected and they also provide counterspelling to cover another weak spot.

If you choose to describe a Ramming maneuver of two vehicles moving at speeds as a bump, and use absolute speeds instead of relative speeds for your base damage too, then don't be surprised at the results you get. You can always selectively use the rules in ways that achieve somewhat strange results.

There are several ways to achieve the effect of a highly damaging Ramming maneuver between two vehicles moving at the close to the same relative speeds. The simplest is the damage arriving as a consequence of the immediately following Crash Test from the low damage Ram maneuver. Another would be one vehicle doing a sudden deceleration maneuver, which would crate a high relative speed and higher base damage.

If you look for ways to limit the rules to meet your objective of finding a horrible example, that's too easy. It can be done for all for all of the rules. The rules can't cover every possible option you can imagine. Our imaginations can create a lot of stuff that would make a rule book rather large and unwieldy if we had to explicitly cover all the mis applications of things you can come up with.

I'd much rather use my imagination to figure out how to make the scene fun, and the rules as written give me plenty of options to do that, and I have the challenge of figuring out how to use the rules with the imaginative creative things the players toss at me. Because they will come up with things all the time that there is no way a rule book can cover.

The parts bolded by me are where we agree that a 'pure RAW' game is going to have problems. With toturi's 'pure RAW' stance, every horrible example has to still be played out by RAW even though more reasonable people like you or me would see a need to improvise in such a situation. Congratualtions! You have chosen not to walk the path of idiocy!

Where does it say Mystic Adepts have access to all metamagic? Aren't they adepts, and thus limited like any other adept (no shielding etc.)?

I was toying with the idea of a mystic adept, but from what i gathered they don't have access to all metamagics, which made me realize they suck.

I didn't say M.A.'s where/are gimped. My current character is an M.A. and kicked ass even before my GM "forced" me to rewrite the character into a shapeshifter. (long story but the basics are he was written when SR4 first came out, way before RC) His original build was a M.A. Well, he still is an M.A. I would post him but he uses a different karma gen system than what is raw and I would rather not have to explain where all the numbers come from...
I think M.A.'s are well balanced.
**'Forced being that he wanted the character to follow the rules for shapeshifters not a mage "pretending" to be one. AKA: taking alergy:severe, critterform: wolf, quick healer...


Mystic Adepts are adepts so they can get adept metamagics AND they are mages so they can get mage metamagics.

Well, I need to cut it short... boss is getting annoyed...

Edit- I know you where not responding to me about the gimped thing... I was going to do some further quotes but... at work...

Personally i am inclined to agree, but RAW...i'm not so sure. I am at work too though, so no quotes available

Synner or AH said as much on the forums a while back also look in street magic, I beleve it is written in there somewhere. I would look it up but my books are at home.

I don't have a cite but I know it has been said that since Mystic Adepts have spellcasting capabilities, they can get the typical Mage metamagics in addition to the Adept only ones.

The BBB expressly states that somebody choosing the quality should be "interested in exploring their nature as a mystic adept" or something close to that. That's basically a way of acknowledging that the thing can be abused and tasking GMs to keep an eye on it.

I personally prefer the type, because I am a fan of playing hybrids no matter the game system. Kerenshara is a mystic adept. But if you really do split your points, your magic is very weak. With the new OR thresholds, you're in trouble. I wind up overcasting a LOT, and my adept powers aren't the shiniest either. I had to fall back on 'ware to make up the diference, and I am going to be very dependant on Initiation and foci to get my magical skills up to par. Like any hybrid, you pay for your versatility with limitations a full archetype doesn't have to contend with. And anybody who thinks the loss of astral projections and (free) perception is trivial, you haven't played a mage right. They are huge abilities, but I am content to just play somebody who is neither fish nor fowl. I am not a "light mage". I am not a "physical adept". I am my own character, and I create my own niche. Last night, that niche was in overwatch from an adjacent rooftop with a sniper rifle while under self-sustained Improved Invisibility at force 4 with max successes and (thankfully) resisted physical drain.

But if somebody brought a "mystic adept" to the table with all points in sorcery, I wouldn't even look at the rest of the sheet before it was torn in half and in the trash. If they built the character with a fundamental "munchkin" aspect like that, I am not going to waste my time looking for "redeeming" features. Rebuild it and come back to see me when you're done. Then we'll talk.