Hi, everybody, I'm the newest target on Dumpshock forums.

I'm building my first runner (a stealth specialist), but I'd like to get some IPs on her so she can hold her own in a fight. What are some good ways to get some?

Welcome!

Adept Power: Improved Reflexes
Cyberware and Bioware has several, Synaptic Boosters cost more but use less Essence.
Magic: Improved Reflexes spell, sustained through a focus. Or if you're an initiate, you can Quicken the spell to make it permanent.

There's no "natural" way really.

Thanks!

I was hoping on going cyber-free so I could pull those extra BP from sensitive system (and not trip cyberware detectors - stealth specialist, remember!), but 80k per rating for those synaptic boosters is ridiculous! ShouldI just use cyberware, or scratch it all and be an adept?

Being an Adept is the only immediate alternative. You can spend 25 points (5 for adept, 20 to raise Magic to 3) and you can get Improved Reflexes II which gives you 2 extra IP and +2 Reaction. You still have half a power point left for other useful things.

Spend a few more points though, like 10 more to get Traceless Walk. EXTREMELY great for a Stealth Specialist (making hardly any noise, leaving no marks on snow or sand). Combat Sense would also give you some extra defense. Plenty of things open up.

Well actually there are combat drugs if you want to avoid cyberware or magic.

Ah, but you've forgotten the cheapest way of all: DRUGS!!!

Better living through chemistry...

In the Shadowrun corebook alone there are two options: First is Cram which has a nice long duration, and then Jazz which was originally developed by Star but a much shorter duration.

Check out the toxins section of your book for more details!

Sign--

Wacky

Ahh my bad, I avoid the drugs part. Don't want to feed a habit when fighting, seems like a bad idea most of the time.

But it is useful!

Drugs aren't a real substitute for cyber, bio, or magic anyways. If I were you, I'd just go full-bore cyber. Cyberware detectors are really just short-range things used by security guards to check for cyber at facility entrances and other security checkpoints. If you're looking to sneak in and not just sleaze your way past security, it shouldn't be a problem.

Hey! Yeah, Boosters are expensive as all get out, but let's face it: it doesn't break, it doesn't need tweaking, it repairs itself, and it can't be detected on scanners.

Wired reflexes would be my personal recommendation for a covert ops guy, who needs a cheap IP boost, but has lots of other 'ware and gear to buy, and skills to get. I generally use move-by-wire for seriously combat-oriented types, and synaptic boosters for awakened characters who need to be stingy with their Essense.

Ooo, ooo, don't forget about becoming a vampire. That totally gives you an extra IP.

But really, there are only a handful of ways to raise IP, which have all basically been explained. I am honestly surprised that there isn't a quality that lets you get a single extra IP so that you can make an effective mundane non-chromed fighter.

Move by wire is another option as well, though somewhat more expensive than wired reflexes.

It already exists, and you don't even have to pay BP for it : Edge. Everybody can have 2 IP when they need them, 3 with a pop of Jazz.

Magician with a conjuring focus (Spirits of Man.) Summon a spirit of man in the morning and have it cast improved reflexes on you. You can also bind one so that it's always up for the rest of your character's life. If it's a force 6, you can add another more or less permanent boost at ~ 4 hits (Camouflage from Street Magic is nice for the -4ish to hit from ranged, if you want to cast spells it's nice to have drain stat boosted, Combat Refelexes is a nice 4ish to avoid death, many other spells are probably good too.)

To cut build points you can go Mystic Adept. That can get you some nice adept powers (or not if you want to ignore them.) You only need a casting level of 2 to get the max hits for reflexes if you overcast.

Personally i would not take synaptic boosters for most any starting character. Yes, its less drain, but it is just too expensive (for my taste at least).

As already mentioned i wouldn't worry too much about cyberware scanners either.

So get wired reflexes (cheapest 'permanent' way) or alternatively the adept power if you can find other useful powers and have the BP to spare.

Getting extra passes is definately a good idea and you won't regret it.

Good luck the character.

Can you use Masking on spells you did not cast? If not, this is as subtle as going to the stuffershack in millspec armor.

Except you would burn through Edge so fast it would make your head spin.

Honestly, if you want reflexes go with 'Ware. Drugs *WILL* screw your character over eventually. Magic can be dispelled. Spirits can be banished.

If you get 'Ware and remove the wireless you should be good to go. Better yet, go with Bioware... can't be hacked.

Cybered way to reflexes and extra IP:s is Wired Reflexes in addition of Reaction Enchanters..
40 bp to pay Reaction to 5, add lvl 2 Wired Reflexes + lvl 2 Reaction Enchanters, you get
maximum Reaction for Human charc. (9) and 3 IP:s

I like that idea of a summoned Spirit of Man casting and sustaining improved reflexes everyday.
But if you bound it to do spell sustaining on the improved reflexes that you cast wouldn't it use one service every day?
Or would the fact that the Bound Spirit of Man is sustaining the improved reflexes that the spirit cast avoid the use of a service?

Does move-by-wire still give you an extra action at the end of the 1st and 2nd initiative pass (in the case of MBW 3) like it did in SR3? Because that's potentially incredibly useful, having extra actions AND extra initiative passes.

A bound spirit can only sustain a spell for a number of turns. Unless you want to burn up the spirits Force, only then can it sustain a spell for days.
But that will generate quite some resentment from the spirit. Expect the spirit to follow your requests to the letter, extracting as much services as it can.

I would say that casting the spell and then continuing to sustain it would count as a single service.

By RAW, no. It gives you the extra initiative passes based on rating.

Now what it DOES do is give you a better reaction boost as compared to Wired and Booster. It also gives a boost to your dodge rating. Finally, it has a skillwire set built in! No need to spend even MORE money and Essence to get a skillwire set. Get MBW 2 and get a FREE (wrt Essence) rating 4 Skillwire. What's NOT to love about that... other than if you're a mage and then you just go into the corner and cry like a little Emo about how the world is so unfair.

Well, for the price of that Move By Wire you can buy the formula for Increased Reflexes, the focus to sustain it and a decent power focus, so it's not that unfair. Until our sammy removed his Wired Reflex II to install a rating III synaptic accelerator he often had one less IP than the mage !

One thing I haven't heard yet is possession magic. Be a voudoun mage or hedgewitch with Channeling and you'll basically have a couple extra init passes, the benefit of spirit concealment power and immunity to most mundane gunfire. Some GMs disallow those, though, so you may have to have a little chitchat. Also, I'm still unclear as to whether spirit concealment stealths you and the spirit from astral detection as well, so that may be a concern for a stealth build.

Unfortunately, you can't start off with a Sustaining Focus big enough to sustain an Increased Reflexes spell to give you 3 extra IP :/ You need 4 hits on the Spellcasting test, so you need at least a rating 4 focus, and the highest you can get at Chargen is a rating 3. Kinda bummed me out when I was making my COmbat Mage, as I was hoping to be able to do that and a decent Armor spell, both sustained in focuses for Combat Situations.

Bull

That's the beauty of the restricted gear quality.

You can't get Wired Reflexes III, Move-by-Wire III, or Synaptic Boosters III at chargen either....

You can get Wired III, Synaptic Boosters III or M-b-W II at character creation if you don't mind burning 5 bp on restricted gear.

Actually 15, it's 5BP per piece of gear.

hence the or put in to differentiate them.

I only played 4e but have heard from more experience players things were different in past editions. Would someone care to explain how the IP thing works now compared to then?

Before, IPs were determined by how high you rolled for initiative, so the number of IPs wasn't so set. Street samurai were king back then (at least for initiative). A street samurai could stack boosted reflexes, a synaptic accelerator, and reaction enhancers to get an insane initiative.

Mages, on the other hand, didn't do as well. An increase initiative spell giving them +3 dice wasn't as good as wired 3, because in SR3, they didn't get the accompanying reaction increase. For all of the complaining about a Force: 1 sustaining focus and an increase reflexes +3 spell being "cheap", it was really only about as good as wired reflexes: 2, which was nowhere near what a tricked out sammie could do.

Adepts were also generally slower than sammies, but melee was an opposed test, where the defender could damage the attacker, and improved ability went up to 6 dice, so close combat adepts didn't really need extra IPs like they do in SR4. The street samurai trying to go hand to hand with them, attacking four times, would only get beaten up four times faster (although the extra initiative passes still made a big difference in ranged combat).

Were there still the passes like they have it now? Where everyone would go in the first IP then anyone with a second would go, etc etc. or is the only difference being that the IPs weren't set?

I kind of like the idea of melee with the defender being able to hurt the attacker. I think that's a bit more realistic in a good way. Anyways of converting this to 4e?

That's nothing; I once gamed with a were-tiger in SR2 whom was a physical adept and threw everything he had into increased reflexes. Man rolled 7d6 plus a lot and that's back when the dice penetrated (continued to add in the roll if you rolled six).

I once went two weeks before I got to act in combat--and then it was just to cast a healing spell...

Sign--

Wacky

That's pretty easy: if you use Melee parry or block and score more successes than your opponent on your defense roll, then you get to hit him with your extra successes.

I would not be surprised to learn it was part of a beta version of SR4. It would explain why there are different names for melee block, parry and dodge instead of a plain "melee defense".

Thanks Traul, I know a few people who would like to use this and now I plan on making a strictly defensive sword master just for kicks.

I like the change in SR4, actually. It makes initiative passes matter for close combat adepts - like they should. An adept with three initiative passes should, everything else being equal, be able to beat up an adept who only has a single initiative pass. And a street samurai who is fast but less skilled should still be more, not less, of a threat to an adept than someone slower.

Yeah, well, I didn't mean to get all three pieces. First you couldn't afford it, second it would take too much essence, and third they wouldn't stack.

Honestly, I was already blowing enough points. PLaying a Mage that doesn't completely suck is so freaking point intensive it's not even funny I was scraping my points and ended up buying only one really cheap Contact (Plus ate all 35 points worth of flaws, all of them "GM can anally violate me as he pleases" type, at that). There no way I could have added in the Restricted Gear Quality and the extra BP for the money an additional rated focus would have cost, plus the extra BP to bond it.

I'll cope for now, and I'm gonna either save up, or since I'm kind of a ruthless combat mage, geek the first enemy mage I find that has one and take his

That's actually a plausible, and effective build in SR4. The adept power of combat sense makes your defense impenetrable, as does the two-weapon fighting martial arts maneuver (say, using a parrying dagger with a rapier) - and the two stack. Add in the counterstrike power, along with the riposte martial arts maneuver, and you have a character who can turn his extra successes from defending into a dice pool bonus for an absolutely devastating counterattack. It's also the closest you can get to the defender damaging the attacker with canon rules - the riposte maneuver lets you counterattack outside of the normal initiative sequence, although it still costs you an action.

Don't forget Arnis De Mano's damaging Disarm advantage (and the Disarm maneuver). With Disarm you can take a -4 to your full parry and be able to remove their weapon. Then if you have Riposte you can still attack. So you did damage on the Disarm, then Riposte for another attack. With the Counterstrike Adept Power any net hits are added to the Riposte.

Very, very cool.

Ya, I am seriously going to make this. I am very unsure when it comes to adepts though. Probably going to post the build tomorrow for help.

Is there a limit to how many times you can buy combat sense? I dont remember seeing one in the book though my copy may just be old.

It doesn't have any limits other than the usual one of rating equal to or less than Magic rating.

Ah, thanks, that's all I needed to know.

Yes, you can, however I was responding to Bull about getting 3 IPs via magic, not about Restricted gear. However I would prefer using restricted gear on a Suprathyroid Gland. I think Restricted Gear is a good quality, but I think it's wasted on anything outside of bioware/cyberware.

So besides IP boosters that are in the rules what about the now removed boosted reflexes? Why didn't they re-release it Augmentation. I mean honestly I got a ton of pc's and npc's that had boosted reflexes and honestly I think they should at least release 4.0 rules for it on the website under content.

They have simplified initiative enhancements a bit. Boosted reflexes and the synaptic accelerator got combined into the synaptic booster (to be honest, they generally got combined in SR3, too, since they stacked, and weren't that good separately).

You wouldn't be having the spirit maintain a spell you cast. You would be having the Spirit of Man cast and sustain the spell. Those are two completely separate scenarios. A Spirit of Man with Innate Spell: Increased Reflexes can cast and sustain that power for just one service as a continuous task. I see nothing that indicates this wouldn't last for the rest of your character's life if the spirit were bound.

They're right -- that's how it works. Though while the book is vague on durations, I personally wouldn't allow the single service to work for your entire life. Probably 1 service per Lunar Month, or if I'm feeling generous and the group is high-init, somewhat longer. Still more than worth it. Some negatives though if you hit mana barriers.

Hehe, you're way more generous than I am. I'd have it burning up a service per day if not per sunrise/sunset. It seems a rather weak distinction that the spirit is sustaining a spell that it cast as opposed to one that someone else cast, as it has the same game affect but one (by RAW) lasts until the summoner dies, and the other burns up favors/force like crazy.

Well, the issue is that's really the main benefit of Spirits of Man. They get to cast spells innately. Other spirits have major benefits too (take Task Spirits for instance).

From another POV, it's not that much better than a spell focus, and has some innate problems spell focuses don't have, so I think it's a wash.

Yeah, innate spells are indeed one of the benefits of a spirit of man, but it isn't their only benefit. And I'd apply the limit on power sustaining on any power, not just innate spell. I think the reason no specific time limit was mentioned is because it was being talked about under the unbound spirits section, so they figured that it would go away at sunrise/sunset, forgetting about the possibility of using this with a bound spirit. That's why I said a day or each sunrise/sunset is what I would likely use.

As for the Spell focus... yeah, sure there is a similarity in that both are infinite duration, but binding a force 3 spirit of man costs what? 1500 nuyen? And nothing else? The force 4 sustaining focus to maintain the improved initiative costs 40,000 nuyen, has an availability of 16R, and of course costs 8 karma to bond to. Somehow I think the comparison breaks down in there somewhere when you have to expend massive resources for the focus and next to nothing for the spirit. It would be so easy to have half a dozen spirits of men following a mage around sustaining a half dozen spells on him -forever- for less than the price of a single sustaining focus. Sure, he might light up a bit on the astral plane, but so does someone who is running around with high force sustaining foci. And of course all those spirits of man being around means that the mage also has an army on call all the time.