I've been playing SR4 for a little over six months now, and almost all of the rules are starting to make sense to me. One archtype I just can't figure out is the Physical (or Mystic) Adept.

Don't get me wrong - I like the idea of the Adept just fine. A guy who is superhuman, who can drop into a room full of guards and KO them all in seconds, with the style and grace of a dancer. Badass. "What upgrades does /he/ have?" "That's all him." "Whoah." Being that guy is a happy thought. It seems like Adepts should also be able to build a Legendary Master Swordsman...the kind of guy who can move so fast he seems to disappear, maybe even dodge or deflect bullets.

Looking through the rules, though, Adepts don't actually get many real advantages. Almost all of their combat powers could be duplicated with cyberware, better and cheaper. I don't see any way to make an Adept a more dangerous combatant then somebody with a normal amount of starting cash and a willingness to lose Essence.

I gotta assume I'm missing something. Does anyone have an effective combat Adept powerset they could explain to me?

Adepts can get powers that Street Sammies can not replicate with 'Ware. Things like Multi-tasking, Missile Mastery and Power Throw. Imagine this, The Adept (w/ Str 4) walks into a bar without a single weapon, but must defend himself. Take Missile Mastery and Powerthrow 3 (total Power point cost of 1.75) and he can now take a beer can and turn it into a 5P weapon... equal to a heavy pistol shot. How about this: Piercing Strike 3, Critical Strike 6 and Killing Hands gives you a Weapon that can hurt creatures with Immune to Normal Weapons, has an AP of -3 and Does 5P damage.

Finally, in the very beginning, yes Sammies and Adepts are nearly equal, but the more Karma you add on, the more the Adept pulls away. The Sammy can only go so far, but the Adept can keep going forever.

Additionally, lots of high security places will scan for cyber and bioware. You try explaining to the TSA why you should be allowed on a plane with wired reflexes and a cybershotgun in your arm. Maybe if you're lucky you can fly bound and sedated in a special cargo container.

When you look at an adept, you can't tell what abilities they have at all. There is no physical evidence of them aside from their healthy physiques, which are ubiquitous these days due to modern bioware. Yes, you can astrally tell an adept from a mundane, but more than that and you're guessing.

Factor in the fact that less than 1% of the global population is magically active and you really do suddenly have a superhero. Peter Parker doesn't seem like anything more than a scrawny kid to look at him, you could pat him down for weapons and trickery and find nothing, you'd deem him completely safe and let him into your security sector and then BAM! he's suddenly leaping everywhere, punching with a strength that looks impossible for his physique, sensing attacks before they are made, dodging bullets, and suddenly you're wrecked.

~Umidori

You've got the rules just fine. Your understanding of the direct combat effectiveness/cost of a physad versus a street sam is correct.

But the game world, the shadowruniverse abhors street sams. Since they are cheap and easy to create security threats, the security systems are slanted towards preventing that street sam from entering areas they shouldn't. Those same security measures that prevent a street sam from getting to their target are utterly useless for stopping a physad.

Security measures that prevent a physad from getting to the target also prevent mages from getting to it, so there's no effective difference there either.

Physads can just get it done where others don't even get to act because they are not even there. Nothing to do with the rules and dice pools.

Not to mention that mystic adepts also get counterspelling, which is often very useful indeed.

Unlike most street samurai, an adept can start out with 4 IPs (Improved reflexes 3) and have room left over for other goodies. On top of this, an adept can always go bioadept, which allows for a lot of crazy shenanigans on top of being able to use karma AND money to improve their game.

Interesting that you mention both IP improvement and Bioadepts, because the Adept IP power costs a ridiculous amount of power.

For those willing to spend the extra nuyen and to burn a point of magic (which effectively happens when you buy a power anyway), it's much more efficient to burn 1 magic on a rating 2 Synaptic Booster than it is to spend 3 power points on the equivalent power. Sure, all your powers which have effects derived from your magic value will drop by one from the burned point of magic, but you have two extra points worth of powers, which is a fabulous trade depending on what you want to accomplish.

~Umidori

Wow, we really run the gamut here, people complaining that adepts are overpowered, which they arn't (mundanes are just nerfed) to people complaining that their too equal with the sammies. Wow!

If you wait for one month and this thread has dropped from the front page, it will start again.
And again. And again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again.

Seriously, as soon as you introduce background count into the game, adepts are going to cry.

No kidding. Been there. Cried the tears.

Now how many times have you seen this happen?
That's basically like suddenly without warning and reason taking a samurais weapons and/or cyber away . .

First place my newly minted mystic adept ran was in Lagos. (Dawn of the Artifacts)

I'm sorry, i bought it but i never read it. What is this supposed to tell me? O.o
Technically, Seattle itself would have a rating 1 at least, maybe even rating 2 or 3 background count EVERYWHERE.

Unlike the Seattle setting, which does not apply a background count universally, Lagos does, with a minimum of 1 background count, up to 3 in places. Moving around the city, my poor bugger doesn't know from one minute to the next what powers happen to be working at the moment. (I know, but he doesn't.)

Quite some times – and that didn't include Haven Lilies.

Could you provide an example? The only edge I see an Adept having in combat over a samurai is being able to punch ghosts and stack up bonus armor. Everything else is either infiltration or social skills. Even a fully tooled up Death Punch is less effective then a semiauto gun with AP rounds...

It's the comparisons where things break down.

Instead of
Archetype A versus Archetype B versus Archetype C (Where people compare dice pools and numbers and mechanics for a single action)
It should be
Archetype A versus Situation A (Where A is best in this situation)
Archetype B versus Situation A
Archetype C versus Situation A
Archetype A versus Situation B
Archetype B versus Situation B (Where B is best in this situation)
Archetype C versus Situation B
Archetype A versus Situation C
Archetype B versus Situation C
Archetype C versus Situation C (Where C is best in this situation)

Which is a much more complicated analysis since Situations A B and C are very subjective, as well as the definition of "best".

Except that there is warning and reasons.

If you're investigating the scene of a recent brutal murder, there very well could be a background count. Notorious prison or insane asylum? Background count. Famous battlefield, monument or cathedral? Background count. A stadium right after the World Cup finals? Background count. A Yak bigwig's house or a corporate magical research lab? Aspected domains. They're honestly pretty damn predictable if you pay attention to the rules and my players have learned to live with them just fine.

As to whether Adepts are weak or not, that depends on how you build them and what you're trying to do. Adepts make incredible faces, technicians, detectives, infiltrators and athletes. A carefully cybered adept can typically outclass even a samurai in a specific form of combat, but they pay a premium to do so and can lose that advantage in areas with background counts while still bearing the trials and tribulations that come with having what is commonly perceived as combat 'ware. As Direradiant said, it's tough to make direct comparisons.

Combat is actually the place where adepts shine the least but they can certainly be competitve, there is nothing that forbids an adept from picking up the same semiauto. Any given weapon generally beats out fists if you have one, that's not an adept problem that's the way the universe works. Additionally adepts have signifigant pluses in that their power ceiling is effectively uncapped.

How about that!? My [Elf Drake] Mystic Adept isn't a combat monkey (even if I'd had the points). My goal was to shine in other areas (I spent most all of our last combat on the other side of the room behind cover--that's where I was when combat started! I didn't have a chance to take cover: I was already behind it (but that didn't stop me from trowing up a buff and attempting to get into fighting range).

Well, silly Question here:
How fast does Background-Count happen?
If it's so fast that it builds up through combat, then there's something interesting to talk about.
Combat is glorious violence in all it's forms, most often also horrible and messy death all around.
That should, usually, be enough to spring for one or two points of background count. It's basically murder.

Wow if BC builts up that fast it would be a real bonus to mundains in soem place but such a huge nerff to the awakened.
Really I can see teriditons of combat magic existing and actally getting a bonus off the BC form combat (op as fuck) the more the kill the better they get and the weaker their oppersition gets.

I tend to look a combat oriented adepts as an opportunity to take advantage of syber/bioware and magic. (Some folks argue this is wrong by role-playing, but it depends in my view on the character.)
So I tend to use ware to get improved stats and IPs.
And then use adepts powers for things that can not be duplicated. Power Throw and Combat Sense are examples. Also, the ability to actually raise skills past 6 (okay, past the 7 available with cultured bioware.)
And that is before we get into the hand-to-hand bonuses, as I tend to be less interested in that.

And then there are the adept metamagic abilities. Infusion, and the ability to offset a penalty can both be very powerful. Although for most games those are not starting character advantages.

In teh long run, the adept (or mystic adept) simply overwhelms as they can get any advantage the sammy can get, and get all sorts of other bonusses on top.

Yours,
Joel

Just about the only way to get a rapid (if temporary) background count through death is for it to be sudden, shocking, and bloody. Things such as a terrorist bombing could cause such a thing, but I don't see normal combat causing the kind of focus emotional shock needed to produce background count. In our Shadow Kingdom campaign, we also treat a force-based radius around certain malevolent spirits to be a force/3 background count aspected to the bad in question.

Frankly, I doubt that, minding that sammies put both nuyens and Karma to good use, and adepts are mostly Karma--dependent. What are you going to spend money on with a non-mystic adept to enhance your combat abilities? Weapon and infusion foci?

Obviously this is going to differ from GM to GM since it really depends on what kind of world they run, but here's my general take on background count incidence.

Despite my brutal murder comment, I tend to agree with Valashar when it comes to how quickly background counts develop. I suspect that in general you need a bit of prolonged activity or a certain amount of notoriety to develop the kind of bad/good vibes that would result in a domain. "Naturally" occurring Domains are in part a residual effect of emotional outpouring, after all, and perhaps it's even related a bit to Naming, since it sounds to me like the area and incidents need to sort of take on a life of their own before they come into their own as strong domains. For example, even if I were to be randomly murdered, my home would still be unlikely to have a background count on the level of say, the Sharon Tate house, since the latter came to be identified strongly with that particular incident and lord knows all manner of rubber neckers and tourists have driven by it at some point and said "Man, that Manson Family family shit was crazy." Basically, if an incident isn't influential enough to change the location's destiny, the background count is unlikely to have real staying power if it develops at all.

I like your take on background count. I was thinking pretty close to the same thing, for a place to get a vibe it needs feedback, it has to feed off of how other people feel/think/perceive it.

I like Adepts because when it comes down to it, I don't like spells or cyber - merely personal preference, not saying I don't mind it when others like it and play it. So if it can be gained through cyber or spells? I don't care, still love the "flavour". What can I say, I also like the monk class in that other "RP" game but I don't feel as punished as an Adept as I do when I play the Monk class, the BP system is far more flexible and enjoyable - I never seemed to be able to roll 3 sixes for my D&D characters while others did, not surprisingly I didn't see much of the spotlight ever. So it surprises me that anyone questions this or that being strong in various areas, I love how if the GM isn't being a dick, everyone can get a bit of the spotlight in the first IP and as long as you don't think of combat as the end all be all, especially amongst runner teams that mimic Ocean's Eleven, the spot light chances expand immensely.

*grumble grumble* I want a Neverwinter Nights 2 type PC game for Shadowrun already. Bah, just ignore me, I suffer from a dead zone for pen & paper RPG thanks to my low charisma stat and social skill set, I default a lot and its not pretty.

Most of the same things the Sammy is going to spend it on, weapons, armor, gear. Sammy's can improve themselves but only to a certain threshold and after you reach that threshold each tiny improvement of performance alpha to beta, beta to delta, nets minimal gains for outrageous fees. Additionally you might not always get paid for a job, but you will always net karma.

For matters of BC, it might just be best to consult Street Magic page 121. There it lists a rating +1 Domain BC as a place which has either a prolonged but minor emotional imprint, like a church, or the scene of a short but violent episode, like the scene of a particularly nasty homicide. I suspect that two professional combat forces butting heads wouldn't particularly cause this reaction. While there may be a lot of adrenaline pumping, I don't think that there's a lot of emo corpsec out there getting worked up over a firefight. If you think that is the case, then I suppose dropping a BC of 1 would fit in an engagement zone.

One thing which did strike me when reading through on BC was the listing of the Taint metamagic for toxics from page 143.

Specifically this part,

which seems to lump "sterile corporate compounds" in with things which typically have BC of around +1-2.
If every blacksite had a BC of +2 that would drop the Awakened runner's power considerably closer to their mundane counterparts.

Yeah, I extrapolated most of my stance from that page, really.

It's tough to say how many compounds should really have background counts like that though. A lot of shady business is hidden away in plain site, after all. A biological weapons lab filled with glum personnel and chemical seal suits is likely going to be a different proposition than the chip manufacturers who also happen to be dabbling in illegal AI research even if both have clean rooms. Still, it's really not all that much stranger than shantytowns giving magicians trouble.

If anything, I'd expect a place so devoid of life or emotion to be a Mana Ebb, but, other than crater lake, the book doesn't provide any examples of a Mana Ebb outside the not quite space areas of the upper atmosphere.

Most sammies I know begin campaigns with their armor and weapons modded to the max, and most of the gear their stats allow to use.
Sure, you can always upgrade, there's no arguing with that - but playing your cards right with Essence gap, you can, say, install some nasty bioware during the campaign once you scrape the resources.

...Or having the street samurai changeling with Astral Hazing standing within Essence meters close to the adept. Gonna suck to go into close combat with Astral Hazing opponents.

That's what guns are for.

The Adept Combat Sense power is extremely effective, not replicable through bio/cyber and has resulted in some silly over the top character builds.

Adept Enhanced skill potential was a serious area of noise when SR4 first hit with it's skill caps.
Adept AR hackers rocked the boat early on and made mundane hackers look silly.

The oft quoted "Pornomancer" is a build where they are particularly adept at talking anyone into doing anything.

Troll adepts with anti-aircraft bows caused errata to be written.

I am sure there are other examples as well.

So full of win.

For what it's worth I've always suspected that most coprorations would take steps to make sure the astral of their facilities was mostly clean as they benefit from magic as much if not more then shadowrunners do. It's only the true black sites that might have a perceptable background count. Aspected domains are more common for example my players are currently hitting the Japanese embassy, all those who don't fit a shintao/oriental padagram are suffering from a -2. The team's adept who is a japanese ninja is fine, the others are not so happy.

Its about style man. Its not whether one is better than the other, its what you want to focus on, what kind of -character- you want to build, and adepts can be -fun-. You can make someone who can run up walls and across telephone cables silently without ever disturbing them, and look and sound like anyone they chose to. ninja-adept is fun. You can make someone with no physical advantages.. but a mind like Sherlock Holmes rolled up with touch clairvoyancy to boot, you can make a face who can can, as some of the teammates put it 'talk the knickers off a nun', you can make someone who never worries about not having a weapon, because they -are- a weapon, and no scanner will ever detect them, wet-working at its finest. Spend a single point of essence on some of your favorite enhancements, buy good armor and equipment, indulge in some chemical recreation, hell if you pick up masking people will never even know you weren't just some random drekker, no cyber, magic scan picks up nothing, you can rock some things with an adept pretty hard.

You can also rock some things as a Sam, but a Sam is eventually gonna hit an upper limit, and slowly go crazy from all the metal in their body..as long as your adept keeps initiating and upping the magic points, you can keep becoming more awesome indefinitely, or until someone gets in a lucky shot.

I find the 'unlimited potential' angle a bit shallow given the lethality of the game. It's appealing, but a team full of 'potentially awesome' without the ability to back it up right now is just going to get killed.

Adepts and their variants seem to favor stealth / social / astral roles. Someone else had mentioned how Cyber and Bioware scream, "Look at me! I'm dangerous!". An adept doesn't need any ware, so they don't appear to be a threat. If they carry a sidearm, they might even appear less threatening to those in the mystical know. The point being, they strengths of their roles favor the subtle instead of the overpowering.

Back to the op's original question... I think the vision of of an adept he presented is perfectly valid, just not for a 400BP character. 500, 600 maybe, but not 400. Until the character has the Karma, an adept should play to their strengths, and favor the subtler utility roles.

None of this however is backed up by facts, anything a sam can do at character creation an adept can do sometimes even better. The only drawback, if you could call it that, is that the IP boosting (which is generally considered what makes or breaks a combat machine) power of adepts costs more of a theoretical amount of max power then a street sam's equivalent. There are numerous ways to get around this including the fact that if the adept does go that route their IP cap is higher then a starting street sam without access to high avialability restricted gear.

Basically the OP is complaining that someone bringing a set of fists to a gunfight isn't better off then those who brought a gun, that's just silly. Adepts and Sammy's start off equivalent in power raw killing power, while adepts can more or less pick a niche and master it and yes one of thiose niches can be unarmed or gunplay combat. At around the 50 karma mark an adept pulls ahead provided the Sammy doesn't have access (both monetarily and literal access) to delta grade gear. That is a gap that never closes as there is only so much ware a mundane can shove into their body.

Baiscally: Want to be a legendary shadowrunner? Buy a magic rating, as otherwise mechanically it's just not going to happen.

You know the rules for a character type are balanced as best they can be when one group complains how munchkin they are, and another group how nerfed they are.

I've been offering mudanes a boost in starting cred and in availability of starting gear.

Still have had no takers.

The sammy did get some of his won back when the group was ambushed. He was ready to rumble but the Adept didn't have a chance to do Attribute Boost.


I do think Street Samurai need a little higher starting availability otherwise they end up having to rebuy a lot of ware which is no fun when the Adept is spending cred left and right because he has nothing to upgrade.

In my game the Adept drives a tricked out Range Rover.

The street Sammy drives a used motorcycle.

And the Active Skill Softs to 10K per rating (the one thing to favor mundanes) was the final insult

Somebody should make a movie like that.

Well, combat wise, the biggest advantage is Combat Sense. Extra dice up to your magic rating for all surprise and defense tests at a cost of half of that magic rating. Can make an adept annoyingly unhittable.

Economically, the biggest advantage of adepts is their ability to actually use high grade bio-reflexes. It's pricey on the build points, but a great investment long-term power-point wise. Few sammies can limit themselves to one piece of 'ware, so tend to load up on cyber at creation, which tends to not get upgraded due to cost. Adepts can pick up some initial ware, then grow with karma. In a similiar manner, adepts are far more likely to actually use adapsin for cyber after creation. Street sams don't have enough essence left to make it worthwhile.

And in some ways, the adept's ability to be very dangerous without _looking_ dangerous is a combat advantage. Surprise kills.

It's also worth noting that Gymnastics is technically not a Combat Skill, so improved ability only costs a quarter of a power point per rating, which makes it a lot more viable alternative to Reflex Recorders than Improved Ability is for Dodge. And as Lantzer pointed out, Combat Sense stacks with pretty much everything, so Adepts don't even necessarily need extra initiative passes as badly as a Samurai does. Don't get me wrong-- extra IPs are always good-- but if you have 3 or 4 levels of Combat Sense and Rating 2 Reaction Enhancers, you'll have a double digit pool before taking Full Defense into account, which makes relying on things like Jazz for an extra pass considerably more viable vs. mooks. It's actually a relatively cost effective defense solution for a Face that wants to dabble in combat.

I thought it was anti-tank bows. Wait, that was probably SR3.

Really more like anti-truck injection bows. They weren't really quite so good at taking out armor as some people imply they had been, but if you ever needed an answer to the hypothetical question of "How do you narcoject a Great Dragon?" they were one of your best options.

*Bursts out laughing*

Hey, I never said you'd kill it. But maybe you could at least give him his booster shots.