First off, hello there. My first post to this forum so be gentle if you can...

It's been a while, but I've come back to the Shadowrun universe and find myself questioning why I actually left it in the cupboard. New start for a new edition which, broadly, I'm quite impressed with. However, that's not the question. One thing that has always bothered me is the approach taken to the physical adepts. Compared to the abilities exhibited by other adepts they just seem rather... lame is the word that springs to mind.

So the question: Has anyone altered the starting 'points' that a physical adept can spend on their Adept Power? If so, how have you altered them?

While initiation obviously allows access to more 'powers' again compared to other Adept forms the gains are fairly 'minimal'...

Basically I'm floundering in the dark but am severely tempted to arbitrarily increase the number of points (x1.5 or even x2) and was wondering whether anyone agrees with the concept, strenuously disagrees and thanks that I'm a loon for reasons that you will expand on, or whatever.

In other words, please put me on the right track... <grin>

Kage

I'd be really careful in increasing the number of points that Adepts get. Physical adepts are VERY powerful in their own right, and their advantage over the Sam is that the more karma they get the more their powers increase.

Physical Adepts also have the option of being Physical Mages which allows them to use all sorts of enhancement and self-targeting spells like invisibility and increased reflexes.

In the games that I have run the Physical Adepts have been some of the most powerful characters. Just my experience though...

Adepts are ungodly powerful for 2 main reasons.

1) Improved skill, I mean, a starting skill of 12 is nothing to laugh at... most people don't get that many dice WITH combat pool.

2) Geasa (book: Magic in the Shadows) let's you Geasa lost Magic Points to Cyberware. So, you could do something crazy like take Wired Reflexes with Reflex Trigger (2.4 Essence, Alpha) CyberEyes with Mag vision, LowLight, Image Link (0.16 Essence, Alpha), a SmartLink-2 (0.32 Essence, Alpha) and a Range Finder (0.08 Essence, Alpha) for 2.96 Essence, then spend all 3 Lost Magic Points on a Geasa like Exclusive to keep 6 Power Points worth of Powers. The Geasa only applies to those specific Power Points, so you could "talisman" all 3 Magic Points for: a weapon skill (+6 to skill costing 3.0) so you're only good when you hold what you view as your 'magickal weapon'.

Anyhows, I'm running on, so I'll shush now. The important thing to remember is that Adepts are as good as a Sammie plus some via effective use of Geasa. And they exceed ANY other type in Physical skills, something you can't mirror with Cyber/Magic.

Sphynx

I did two major to Mods Adepts

1) Adept Powers can be gradually. Multiply the Power Point cost of the power by 10 and that is how much karma it cost to purchase the power. Ie Freefrall costs .25 power points, so to buy a level of freefall the adept needs only spend 3 karama. The big powers are still really expensive, but it allows the adept to pick up little powers quick and easy.

2) All Adept powers that add bonus dice (except improved ability and improved attribute) also provide a subquesent -1 TN modifier. ie. John's Adept has Great Leap at 6. For all leaping tests, he gets to add 6 AND subtract -6 from the TN. His Body Control lvl 3 not only adds 3 dice to poison resistence but also lowers their power by 3. This allows a lot of adept powers to have a more magical feel. Sure in the old system an adept could leap 12 meters with Great Leap 6 and a Quick of 6...but that was a TN 12 on the test, even with the 12 dice that is pretty hard. Now they can do that same jump at only a TN 6 on 12 die. Sure that is pretty insane but remember that Adept Powers are supposed to be MAGICAL.

Even with these mods most people don't play adepts. They would rather spend those points on more money or real magical ability

Adepts are quite powerful enough without any increase in Power Points. In my opinion, such an increase would be severely unbalancing.

Why wouldn't you play something that can have 3 skills at 12 at char creation? (2 of stealth, diving or the "Stamina" skill and 1 of a weapon skill)...
Well, with Geas(or however it's spelled) they WILL kick serious behinds from a twinky view....
something that can sneak like The Holy Solid Snake (guess where my username comes from?), get gold in 8 different sports AND use dual full-auto SMGs at max speed like a demon... why NOT?

It does take a certain cleverness to make a really good starting adept, though. It's easy to be inefficient. The adept is, in my opinion, best left to the connoisseur.

The other archetypes are easier to handle.

I thought the option of "physical mage" had to be purchased at creation, not as an option down the road?

You either start out as an adept or a physical mage, not one becoming the other.

As in all things, I might be wrong.

-Siege

Physmages are priority-A magic characters, just like full-mages. They're the most versatile of all the archetypes, but very rarely are they among the more powerful ones. They make great backup characters, though-- a physmage with a few technical skills can be a backup sammie, mage, and decker/tech whiz all at the same time. They may never top a "pure" archetype, but being able to cover all three bases at once is a huge edge.

I've discovered adepts are plenty powerful in their own right. Without resorting to major twinkage, you can easily make an adept who can match a light sammie. (Heavy-duty sammies with an essence of .01 and 2.98 in bioware are a different matter.)

About the only house rule I have is that adepts are allowed to choose their own geasa, if any, due to Magic loss.

I can see how the mistake might have occurred though ... what with the "Magical Power" ability listed among the adept ways as an (implied) adept power.

Me, I've always been rather more a fan of the more versatile physad: less singular focus upon one or two abilities, more diversification among several abilities. Weaker compared to true min-max, I'll agree, but (like the phys-shaman ) far more versatile.

Oh, and place me down for another person who sees no reason to adjust the starting points for a physad, for reasons mostly already covered by everyone else.

Welcome to Dumpshock, Kage2020.

The biggest reason I can see adepts not being popular in a group is that they just aren't aware of the possible ways in which to make an adept rock. One of the more popular adepts in the circle I normally play in is the "way of the gun" adept. It's a very simple character to make and pretty easy to use. Simply put, the adept focuses on extra gun dice and improved reflexes. Possibly add in some extra stealth dice (depending on what you buy to what levels, an exclusive geasa on the stealth boost works decently). Throw on some minimal cyberware (smart-link, vision enhancers, etc) add a good gun of the adepts favorite type, and you're good to go.

I've seen other adepts used as well, but, for some reason, this one seems to pop up quite often in our group.

and remember, if a player in your group that wants more starting power points for their adept they can always buy more. IIRC it's 25,000 per power point. maybe 50, don't have the book near me

I'm pretty sure that spell points can be bought in character creation, but not power points, as even at 50,000 per, that could get rather crazy.

It's 25,000 per spell point, effectively karma for magical purposes. To get an extra power point, you would have to use the 20 karma power point rule, or initiate (up to 18 karma for the first one). GM's choice as to which options are available.

Thus, an extra power points is either 500,000 or 450,000 by the books (depending on which books you look at).

There is an option in the SR Comp for Initiation at CharGen, but I don't have it handy...

The SR Companion has rules for Initiation at char-gen, but it requires spell points, so regular adepts are out of luck (they can't bond weapon foci at char-gen, either).

Adepts are very powerful. Starting out with 12 dice in a combat skill (improved ability: 6) only costs half of their starting points. Adepts make poor generalists, but excellent specialists. Remember that they are NOT street samurai, who tend to have an overall boost to both speed and toughness due to their cyberware. Adepts are the zen marksmen, ninjas, weapon masters, and ultra-skilled martial artists of Shadowrun, and their abilities reflect this. You can create an adept who can kill someone with snap shot from a streetline special, a nearly undetectable assassin, someone who can beat an entire gang to death with his bare hands if they are foolish enough to take him on in close, or any other number of possibilities. For 6 Power Points, you can create extremely powerful characters. Letting them start out with 12... *wince*

First off, thanks for the input... As I said it has been a long while since I've been playing around with the Shadowrun universe so I appreciate it even if my questions seem a bit, erm, naive...

Indeed, reading through the replies I've become somewhat bewildered... in a good way, though. The kind of 'bewildered' which once again reminds me what I like about the setting...

I was wary of making an arbitrary increase especially given my lack of familiarity with the system, so I thought that I would ask the experts. I'm rather scarily more familiar with the GURPS system which I've been using for a few years now. Sorry.

On Physical Mages... I remember these now. Thanks for the reminder. I shall actually change the 'combat mage' to one of these mage types since I was never overtly happy with his presence. (For various reasons, including plain 'ole nostalgia, the party is entirely composed of magic-users of various types...)

As mentioned above, however, I always had the impression that the physical mage ("Way of the Magician" now that I've found it... ) was more the generalist. (Kind of the Hapkido of the mage scale, lying somewhere in between Taekwondo and Aikido...)

With that said, however, the character concept is trying to avoid the archetypal approach to physical adepts ala close combat martial artists. I believe there is the whole Christian Bale/Equilibrium imagery going on...

Question on Initiation... If a physad is a purist, i.e. they will not use cyberware to enhance their abilities, at what point would Initiation begin to have a significant impact upon their abilities? While I understand the concepts above with regards to enhanced skills, the player in question has a horrific memory of a time when the 'cyberpunk' maxim of "He who acts last dies first" was in force. (Mage character who was surprised, no foci engaged and was hosed down by low-wired samurai with SMGs... It was his first game and the image has now stuck.)

Geasa... Fair enough point with regards to counter-acting the loss of magic. In the above 'purist' case it becomes a moot point. (Of course, if I'd given information on the character concept in the first place... <grin>)

From the old forums, an interesting discussion on just how powerful Quick Strike is.

What do you guys think of the meditation house rule for adepts, I read it somewhere. If i find it, i'll post a link.

But basically it was overnight you could switch your powers, one power point per hour of sleep. (Or something like that.)

I like it because all of the adept powers are so situational. On the other hand, this could be bad and over power adepts.

Meditation Rules for Physical Adepts

Personally, I disagree with this option. Everything is to some extent situational. I have difficulty seeing why enhanced abilities in athletics, or stealth, or heightened reflexes or senses, or [fill in the blank] is any more or less particularly situational than the enhancements from a chosen piece of 'ware.