So I'm looking to start a SR campaign set in 2070 sometime around next year.

Anyways, currently my players are coming down from a Exalted Demi-god high, and I'm running a high magic game (3 players jumped on the awakened bandwagon as soon as I described it. I managed to get 1 Technomancer to round out the party so far). The spellcasters are fine, and I did a slight tweak to the Technomancer chargen rules so he's doing okay as a hybrid Rigger/Hacker (more Rigger than hacker to start, but he'll do ok after a little karma).

The PC I'm worried about is the Somatic Adept. She's doing a take on Equilibrium's grammaton cleric & crossing it with a SR2 style Rocker. I'm a little worried at how she compares to a Street Sam at Chargen level since she's doing a good chunk of the party's heavy lifting in the combat realm. BP-wise a combat adept just doesn't come out as efficently as a Street Sam in BP-style Chargen. And the time until it catches up on Karma is a bit long as well.

So I turn to dumpshock, and ask "What Adept Combat Powers are weaksauce? What is not worth it's cost in Power Points?" I'm not worried about the Social/Hacker powers to much, as she won't be taking them for a long time if ever, and from most threads the general opinion seems to be that they are pretty strong.

I'd prefer to keep the changes mostly to the cost of the powers, as the Adept player has never tried SR before and I'd like to keep my changes as simple as possible. So far I'm considering:
Dropping Astral Perception to .5 from 1 (I think it's silly that Astral Sight the quality is more efficient, and I want to give the Adept a chance to particpate in Astral stuff that the other 2 mages are doing)
Making Improved (attribute) work more like Muscle Toner, and drop the double cost limitation. (the bonus would be a 'augmentation' same as a implant)
Possibly bundling several senses together for Improved Sense (again, silly compared to Cybereyes, in efficiency)

From looking over previous threads, I know others have tried similar stuff, so what we're the problems & pitfalls you ran into? any unforeseen cheesemonkeyness? Any suggestions to other powers that need boosting?

Help a chummer out

I'm not too sure about changing point costs, so I can't comment on that.

On the other hand, in the Street Magic Errata it mentions a 'rule tweak' that allows adepts to give up a metamagic when group initiating in favor of a power point. At chargen under the BP system you can't initiate, but under the karma system (Runner's Companion) it's possible to initiate (again under 'tweaking the rules') and gain greater than 6 magic.

This might not be along the lines of suggestions you were looking for, but both are suggested rule tweaks so you might give them a look.

Also, in SR4.$ cost for improved adept reflexes have been lowered from 2/4/6 to 1/3/5 if i remember correctly.
Have a look at the 4.5 Stuff, there should be most changes that you want in there allready.

I have SR4A already.

Imp. Reflexes is 1.5/2.5/4.5 now, and Imp. Attribute went from 1 to .75 (but still double cost for over Race Max, and still counts as a 'real' point for attribute, ugh )

Overall I liked the SR4A changes, but do not think they went far enough to make a Combat Adept comparable to a Street Sam fresh out of BP Chargen.

I'm looking to close the gap a little, so that the 'wire-fu' of my game is a little stronger, since that's what attracted the player to Adepts (if you play Exalted, you'll understand why the Wire-Fu bit is important). But I also don't want the Adept to be crunching Red Samurai & Tir Ghosts by herself without effort at Chargen either, thus my post looking for past experience & advice.

I appreciate the desire to help tho! that's what I wanted

The upside to Adepts is mostly that there's no cap on Magic, so you can get some useful stuff (Combat Sense, Improved Skill) up to pretty hideous levels over time. That said, most games aren't going to run quite that long.

Street Sam with standard bioware:

Strength 3, Agility 3 for 1.2 Essence, easily doable at chargen.

Adept with Increased Attribute:

Strength 3, Agility 3 for 4.5 Magic, assuming you DON'T go over your natural maximum.

It's true that Improved Reflexes now cost less than Wired Reflexes, and that the Bioware costs . but Adepts need to raise Magic and Initiate, neither of which are cheap.

I don't think anything would break if you made the cost of Improved Attribute a flat .75, because the doubled costs are hideous.

I'm pretty sure the very best heavily cybered/biowared street sammy could take care of a red samurai/Tir ghost or two without difficulty straight out of chargen. Similarly you don't do too bad out of chargen with an adept either.

For instance if you took 6 magic. You could get maxed out Improved Reflexes (4 pp not 4.5 pp as suggested), improved relevant gun skill 3 (1.5 pp), and quick draw (0.5 pp - Street Magic). This way you can quick draw machine pistols/SMGs out of random pockets on your person and shoot 8 times in a combat turn or 16 times if you are willing to split your dicepool and take off hand penalties (unless you are ambidextrous). This might not have the same awesome stats as a street samurai right away, but the gun skill is already phenomenal (assuming you took a 6 in the relevant gun skill so you can get the 1.5 augmented bonus you'd have 9 augmented skill versus 7 max for a street sammy) and you have 4 initiative passes straight out of chargen, which would require restricted gear and take up a ton of essence or money (depending on whether you go wired reflexes or synaptic boosters).

This build for instance is pretty close to a decent street samurai and is only a few magic points away from being as good as the best street samurai. You could give your physical adepts one free initiation so they can increase their magic score to 7 at chargen as well.

1. "Improved Ability" costs 0.25 points/level, even for combat skills. No other skill booster in the game cares about skill type, so "Improved Ability" shouldn't as well (it's still worse than reflex recorders).
2. "Improved Physical Attribute" costs a flat 0.5 points/level, regardless of under/over natural attribute maximum. No other attribute booster in the game cares about that, so "Improved Physical Attribute" shouldn't as well (it's still the worse than muscle toner).

That makes gun bunny adepts playable, without overshadowing Street Sams.


And I'd advise to ignore the core book stats for Red Samurai. They're quite bad, nowhere near where "elite forces" should be.

*sigh* I guess my thread has little flame-bait potential and so goes teh way of the burnout

@mmkay:
I'm not talking a Red Sam/Ghost vs Adept 1 on 1 duel. I -would- like the PC to win that sort of fight. I'm refering to more 'Binky the troll takes on an entire squad of Red Sams without getting hurt' kind of cheesery.

As for your example, Imp Reflexes level 3 is 4.5 Power points in my copy of SR4A, is it not in yours? I missed it if they changed it again (it was 5 in SR4).

Aside from that, yes an Adept can get 1 more IP than a Sam at Chargen, but the Sam has higher stats (Reflex Recorder, and CHEAP access to Stat boosts like Muscle toner, n etc.) as you said. The Street Sam also has a MUCH easier time getting high levels of armor compared to the adept, plus the possibilty of those implants that lower damage further (platelets?). So higher stats, tougher to kill, and only slightly slower.

The difference is 50-100 karma and a bunch of Nuyen down the line, the Street Sam probbally has that 4th IP like the Adept, but I doubt the Adept has stats like the Street Sam. As long as the Street Sam mixes Cyber & Bioware smartly, it looks like he stays ahead almost entirely across the board. THAT is what I'm wanting to change a bit.

@Dragnar:

Thank you for your suggestions. I might not cut the costs quite that steeply as I'm strongly considering the "Adepts can take 1 extra power point at initiation" optional rule, and I think that combined with cost cuts that big might head into the "Binky" area a bit more than I want.

I still completely agree about Imp. Attribute, it's had the same lame drawback about going over your max since SR1

@ All:

I mostly think I've got the balance on Imp. Attribute & Skill covered. I'm more looking for advice about teh rest of the powers. Some like "Iron guts" seem of little use, while others like "Elemental Strike" are awesome. I would especially like the advice of those with play experience with Adepts in their games, even more so those who've tinkered with the rules for Adept powers. I'd rather fall a little short of my goal, then overshoot it make the Adept overpowered, and the player mad when I nerf her

So you want your physical adept to be able to crunch ghosts? I LOVE crunching ghosts. Here's the powers I've found useful:

Improved Reflexes: Bread and butter. Second level of it is great; third is probably even better, as it allows more opportunities for dodging.

Killing Hands: Also very important as it allows you to hit ghosts without having to channel willpower.

Critical Strike: Quite important if you wish to boost the character's unarmed DV- this can also be accomplished through use of the martial artist quality.

Attribute Boost: I recommend buying two levels of this for Agility. It's cheap, effective, and unpredictable. Lots of fun that way.

Penetrating Strike: What's more fun than taking dice away from your enemies? Not much, really.

Elemental Strike: Didn't actually get this yet, but there have been many cases in which I was informed that an elemental effect would have turned a missed blow into a hit.

Combat Sense: Another useful power that I have not yet purchased- certainly recommended, but not from personal experience.

Metabolic Control: It's odd how much use I have gotten from this power. It's good for those times when something horrible and unexpected happens. Useful, but not a necessity.


Hope that helps. Can't stress Attribute Boost and Penetrating Strike enough- The use of those two powers together on top of the other stuff I'd had already resulted in some wild things happening in the last run when a Great Form decided to attack my physical adept. The martial arts quality is quite expensive, but very useful- especially when paired with the manoeuvres. There's one in there that adds +1 reach to attacks, for as much as you'll allow players to use it. "Iaijutsu" (quick draw) is also useful for thrown weapons adepts.

Speaking of which... Thrown weapons adepts are great, and horrifyingly powerful as well.

Missile Mastery: As my GM states: "There are some powers that are useful, and others that are just cool. This is both."

Power Throw: This increases both the DV and the range of thrown weapons.

A word of warning on this. A thrown weapons adept is like a living rocket-propelled grenade launcher when using airfoil grenades. They are capable of knocking people unconscious with the grenade before it goes off. An adept throwing two knives in a single combat turn from a hidden location (at unwary opponents) can kill people VERY quickly. It will scare the hell out of you. It still scares the hell out of me.

@Lugburz:

Please read OP more closely

I'm the GM. My player is the Adept, and want's to be a Grammaton Gun-Cleric/Singer Rockstar. She wants to shoot up people, not ghosts I was refering to the Spec Ops Forces from Tir Tairngire, also called "Ghosts"

I was looking for advice on how to change the rules for Adepts to make them stronger and more like Street Sams, without making them TOO strong and able to steal the spotlight from the rest of the party.

I appricate the advice, it does confirm for me what the list of 'good adept powers' is a little more.

Well dagnabbit.

You think I would have stopped failing that "read the whole test first before starting" trick after they got me with it back in elementary school.

Although I understood you were the GM, all that talk of Ghosts had me giddy with excitement. My apologies. Oddly, all the powers mentioned are multi-role. They make adepts as capable of dealing with both kind of ghosts almost equally. (Although to my discredit, we never faced THE Ghosts on a run, because they didn't manage to catch up with us before we crossed the border. No personal experience for you there.)

That said, Attribute Boost: Agility will work just as well with guns, when it works. Probably very well. Since most of the adept powers are angled toward melee, the martial arts options are probably a better investment depending on what she wants to do.

Now I slink off. IN SHAME!

So here's the issue you run in to. Sure, a cybersam can come out of chargen exceedingly capable, and can wipe the floor with a lot of opponents. The balancing factor is that there is a finite limit on how much improvement that character can make. 'Ware can only take them so far before they hit the limit.

Adepts, with their powers based on their magic attribute, have an unlimited cap. They can just keep getting better and better over the long haul. Yes, it means you have to have the game last that long, but regardless, that's the balancing factor. In the long run, the Adept will *always* outshine the Cybersam. Cybersams are the quick and dirty solution, Adepts the patient destruction.

@Jhaiisiin:

I am aware of that difference. Thus my comment to Dragnar that I worried his discounts might be to big after a few initiations on the PC in question.

As for "hitting a limit" the only limit Adepts & Sams are different on is Magic (adepts power limit) vs Essence (Sams power limit). Yes Magic can go above 6, even above 10. However how many Magic 10 Adepts do you see running around games? So there is in effect a 'soft limit' where Magic because to expensive to buy any higher. Adepts also start at Magic 1, while Sams start with Ess 6 for free.

Don't even get me started on the fact that the Sam can get many of the same powers as the Adept for a fraction of the cost the Adept pays. This is partly Compensated by the implants costing nuyen, but that 40-65 BP the adept spent on her magic 5-6 can easily go into Resources for the Sam, pretty much defraying the costs quite a bit. In addition the Samurai can get implants for which the Adept has no equivilent power at all (and the Adept can do the same, but the ratio is less)

This is not to say that the Adept doesn't catch up as you suggest. It's more to say that I worry it takes too long in game play time & karma for me & my players, and the initial starting difference might be to great for the type of game I desire to run.

Can you tell me where that breaking point is? Cause that's the kind of info I'd love to see

I'm not sure there is a hard and fast breaking point. It boils down to the type of adept being created and how they choose to spend their karma over time.

That said, there is one scary option that surprisingly hasn't been mentioned yet. It's the general consensus on Dumpshock that an adept with a point or two of essence gone towards cyber is *far* superior. Best of both worlds, basically, and can make for some scary builds.

As an exercise, I decided to take the sample characters Street Samurai and Gunslinger Adept, and improve them until both characters have the same attributes and skills (except Blades). I used the Street Magic rule tweak to allow initiation to be used to get an additional power point.

The following changes were made to the sample characters:

Replaced gunslinger adept's attribute boost 2 (agility) with killing hands
Replaced street samurai's High Pain Tolerance & Incompetent (Hacking) with Ambidextrous.

The gunslinger adept needed 274 karma, and the street samurai used 211.



So, after 275 karma,

Street Samurai Advantages:


Gunslinger Adept advantages:


Conclusion:
After 275 karma, the adept, without cyberware, is worse than the samurai. With 64 karma remaining, the samurai can improve reaction to 6( (35 karma) and Intuition to 4 (20 karma), this is better than the adept's combat sense because it gives the samurai higher initiative. The samurai also still has + 4 armor, thermographic vision, and flare compensation. The only real advantage the adept has is in fighting spirits with killing hands.

After another 60 karma (335 total), the adept can initiate + increase magic for 2 power points and get improved reflexes 3 + flare compensation + thermographic vision. While this will give the adept another initiative pass, the samurai will still have higher initiative (+1), 4 armor, and 60 karma to improve other attributes and skills. Thus, even after 335 karma, the samurai is arguably better.

Note:
When I first ran the numbers, I forgot about the double cost of improved attribute above the natural level. This reduced the adept's karma expenditure to 222 karma because she only needed to initiate once, and allowed her to get either flare compensation or thermographic vision. Without that rule, the main difference would be 4 armor and 11 karma v. Combat Sense. That would bring the adept much closer to the samurai, but it would still probably take at least 300 karma before the adept is better.

Mystic Armor. Cannot Stress this enough. Being able to soak bullets naked is fun. We have an adept in our party that sunk 6 levels in that. and I expect him to be nigh invincible. Mystic armor also stacks with whatever you are wearing, so keep that in mind too.

Improved ability is darn handy, having more dice to roll is always a good thing. And don't be afraid of loosing a point of magic for some cyber, you won;t regret it later on. look into getting that smart link, and some good eyes, for somethings cyberware is just flat cheaper. Also don't forget quickened spells. Find a mage with the spell you want and have them tatoo it on you. Downside, if you ever have to cross a ward, the spell will have to be taken offline and re-enchanted.

If you allow the power point at initiation, then there is nothing you can do to keep adepts even remotely balanced, so I'd heavily advise against it. Keep in mind, that way you heavily lower the cost of "magic" (as the power point is basically everything an adepts cares about). As in "starting at 8 (!!) points, basically never rising meaningfully above 20". That's absurdly cheap. And essentially flat magic costs make the partly cybered adept even stronger than he is already. You'd basically have to raise the costs of all adept powers to keep adepts in check, which would make freshly starting ones even more of a joke. Nothing good can come from this.
If your adept runs out of metamagics to take, suggest raising other stuff or invent new metamagics.
But you really shouldn't allow that optional rule. At all. Ever. Seriously.

For "break-point-computations" keep in mind that every intelligent Cyber-Sam has actually 8(!) points of essence, thanks to halving the lower of cyber- and biowareloss, but going above that costs quite a lot of money.
Magic 8 is quite expensive, but you get quite some stuff that's unavailable for Sammies (and should stay unavailable if you don't want to break the whole thing), which is the actual advantage of adepts. They'll never have as high attribute values or as good a general selection of high dicepools.
Trying to compare Adepts and Cyber-Sammies directly by giving them the same stuff is a fool's game, as the adept is intentionally designed to lose that comparison.


TL;DR: Don't allow "power points at initiation"; don't think of adepts as weaker than they are, simply because they can't emulate fully cybered guys

is allowing a power point instead of initiating really that broken?

you still have the adept power limit of magic rating, so even if you had "twice" as many pps you can't make any adept power "twice" as good.

also you can't raise your initiation grade above your magic rating, so you can't just gain initiations in place of magic.

I agree nonetheless that adepts and street sammys are different enough that they are incomparable, because adepts are only good when specialized whereas street sammys have more options and can have more breadth.

Ah, I see why the power point initiation is unbalanced. An adept would never actually have to increase the magic rating, because simply initiating to a the next grade would be cheaper than purchasing Magic 7. There is an easy work around, though. Instead of learning a metamagic, the next point of magic can give 2 power points.

I'm curious what powers you suggest an adept power is supposed to take? In my experiment, the adept in question was a "gunslinger adept." Thus, one would expect the adept to be combat focused. The karma spent on the character was predominately to improve agility, strength, magic, and unarmed combat skill. When combined with adept powers to learn elemental strike, and to improve agility and strength, the adept turned into a combat specialist excelling at both ranged and melee combat. Infiltration doesn't seem like an unreasonable ability for such a character, which leaves only 22 karma that was poorly spent, while the samurai had more than 50 karma that was poorly spent (willpower to 4, longarms, and pistols raised separately to 4).

Is being good at both ranged and melee combat too much variety for an adept? Is an adept required to be good only at either ranged or melee? It's pretty clear that cyberware and bioware are more efficient than magic for anything they can do.

If adepts aren't supposed to be combat specialist, why have abilities like improved reflexes and combat sense? And if adepts aren't supposed to be comparable to Street Sams, why are so many of their abilities comparable?

Of all the abilities in SR4A, cyberware, bioware, or qualities can duplicate all of them except:

Astral Perception
Attribute Boost
Combat Sense
Critical Strike
Kinesics
Missile Parry
Voice Control

So, if adepts aren't supposed to compete with samurai, it appears they have 2 options:

1. Close combat specialist that can fight spirits, avoid surprises, and catch missiles but are worse than samurai at everything else.
2. Kinesics social adepts that can defeat voice recognition systems but are worse than samurai at every other type of infiltration.

Doesn't help when so many abilities for the Adept is focused on SUPERMAGIC KUNG FU (which annoys the crap out of me >.>), leaving Gunslinger Adepts, or guys who want to play an Adept with a katana stupidly disadvantaged against how easy it is to get a guy who's fists can break through walls and make throwing cards into shotgun strength projectiles...

Edit: Speaking of which, it reminds me - my current character is going to be a half cyber, half gunslinger Adept (reduced to about Essence 3 by the end, from how I gather); solo long-running game, so I have the time to hopefully initiate a good few times. One of my questions was going to be, I was going to pick up Killing Hands/Weapon Foci katana to fight spirits... but I also planned on Bone Density Augmentation. If I took Killing Hands with it, would I do either Str/2 against spirits, or Str/2 + 3 against spirits?

There is no specific prohibition, and since Killing Hands works with Critical Strike, I don't see why they wouldn't work with Bone Density or Bone Lacing. Especially since the essence loss of Bone Density x4 could get you 4 levels of Critical Strike, which would be Str/2 + 4 damage.

To be honest, this character sounds kind of impractical. You want to be good at guns, two types of close combat, spend BP raising magic just to lose at least 2 points of it to essence loss, and have enough nuyen to purchase said bioware and a decent weapon focus. Of course, it's been a while since I built a character, so I could be completely wrong.

Eh, I'm awkward and unoptimal; I like to mix it up. =P I find just being good at punching things, or just being good at cutting things mind-numbingly boring... I really went for Bone Density for the improved damage resistance. -Is also equally annoyed/bored by the super-dodging glass ninja Adept archetype- I want my guy to be able to take a hit - yay, Mystic Armour and Bone Density. =D -Knows it's a lot, but it's a solo game, so-

Orthoskin x3 would be a cheaper option then bone density (nuyen and essence loss), and you could combine that with any combination of Mystic Armor, Rapid Healing, Pain Relief, Pain Resistence, and the High Pain Tolerance and Toughness Qualities.

Also, if you don't like to punch hard, why not drop the unarmed combat skills and focus on Blades? You could pick up the Quick Draw adept power to make sure you are never caught unarmed. Just carry smaller knives for the times when a Katana is too bulky.

Another option would be to become a mystic adept pick up a sustaining focus for an Armor or Deflection spell. This would give you some variety with spells to prevent becoming bored, but it might not be practical if you plan on getting implants.

Orthoskin was planned, but for some reason, I assumed them to not stack. ;D It's not that I don't want to hit hard. It's a nice bonus... just dislike it when systems make it so easy for punching to be FAR more damage than shotgun blasts or sledgehammer swings. =P Not to mention, I do like the thought of Bone Density Augmentation...

Personally with the exception of Attribute Boost counting as the "Real Stat" as opposed to a bonus I don't think I'd change a thing with Adepts, there are some things that tech does better than magic and visa-versa.