I think it's important to point out -- and really, I should do so on both this thread and the "We Need More Adept Powers" type of thread a few posts over -- that there are optional rules in place that let you up the power a bit in Adepts. The old method of geasa is still there (multiply the power cost by .75 for any given Adept power? Always been one of the best deals in the game) if your GM allows it, for instance, and it can make a LOT of builds much more reasonable.

Rather than retooling Adepts whole-cloth, I think small "fixes" like that are quite a bit more reasonable, and less likely to outright break the game than whole new abilities (like possession).

Yeah, I use geasa quite often for the cost reduction.
They don't fit for every character though.

I'm not as much a fan, because I don't like people doing things like Talisman ("I can only Traceless Walk while wearing my ninja suit!" ) or doing it at night, then using those on powers that you'd likely only use on the infiltration aspect a run.

There was one that I saw that was a really interesting idea, but was still really cheesy.
Adept Centering : Looking Cool in Shades, or Improved Ability - Pistols - Talisman: Sunglasses , etc
Basically your John Woo styled dual pistols gunslinger in sunglasses. The idea in its self was just so novel that I couldn't help but smile though. I just hate seeing a character keystoned off one item that makes or breaks them (and it being sunglasses).

So you've got a character -- or, really, a player -- that won't take a geasa, that won't take bioware, that won't take cyberware, that won't branch out as a Mystic Adept...and still wants to complain that their character is underpowered?

Options are out there to make a character do what you want a character to be capable of. It's not the game's fault if players won't take advantage of them. If you want to make sacrifices to stay true to a character concept, that's fantastic...but, well, sometimes that means sacrificing instead of just posing.

Thanks Crit

Good thing I can read, that means you won't be condescending to me. Or does it mean I am illiterate if you are condescending to me?

Being condescending is not nice regardless of whom you are victimizing.

I think you may have lumped me in with someone else.
I have no complaints about the relative power level of adepts.

Yeah, it's inevitable that a rule set you can't please everyone all of the time. I really don't envy the devs the job of deciding which thematic elements to stress and how to go about it. Obsolescence applying to human beings is a very cyberpunk notion, after all. In Shadowrun, a 25 year old Samurai could nail a big score and get a full suite of top-of-the-line Alpha 'ware and still find himself falling behind the curve by the time he's 30. That's a freaky concept and it's a fun thing to have as part of the setting in theory, but in practice it's tough to reconcile with the mechanics lest you screw over players. Ideally, it'd also be nice if such things could apply to the Awakened as well, but yet that can easily conflict with a bit of the tech vs. magic feel set in previous books. These things are a rather tough balancing act.

Pfft, geas-limited powers are awesome. Like always, people will try to abuse it. That's where the GM needs to step in and say "no, try something more reasonable." You know, kinda like a mundane character taking Incompetent: Ritual Spellcasting.

I still lament that unless using optional rules, I can't make some of my favorite adepts of old in 4th Edition with the same flair they used to have. My drunken boxing guy was so much fun.

I think it should be or at least much more than it currently is. I think it is a core concept of the SR setting.

Sorry, but , you've really got to go with a color other than pepto bismol.

Scrathy *shrug* - Yes, The Geased powers can be cool. Just very easy to get used and abused. I loved the "Looking Cool in Shades" guy that I saw. It was just hard not to shake your head at it.

Like you said, a lot like Incompetent. I think the only time I ever took that was with a Shapeshifter concept I worked on. Lion Shapeshifter with Incompetent: First Aid.

Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.


What's so weird about it? Stealing his glasses, or him just losing them in the middle of a fight, is easy as pie to work in and if all of his powers rely on them, he's pretty screwed. It's no different than having any other kind of talisman-type geas.

Thank you for a link that required me wait forever for it to load, followed by a long ass commercial*Sarcasm*

As I said, my issue is with one keyed item that makes or breaks everything. Although the concept is great, in practice, it breaks. One of my main problems was with how easy it is to break. Are you really going to tell me that you're going to want to start factoring in knock down and the chance of having your glasses fall off every time you shoot, dodge, fall down , or get nailed by a spell? To properly enforce, it's a huge pain in the ass.

Geas were much, much more abuse-prone in 3rd Edition. With a carefull pickup (and a lax GM) you could cyber-up a mage or adept close to million-nuyen streetsam while retaining the full use of their magic...

You could make him wear a stylish glasses strap.

iI'm so stealing this for my gunslinger adept character, thats just so cool idea.

Like I said: Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball! Happy Fun Ball's wrath is swift and merciless and cruel in unconventional ways.


Just like with any other talisman, you can limit it to things like regular glitches, knockdowns (without overemphasizing them anymore than you normally would), and things like that. Even if they just slip off mid-combat, that's a big hindrance as the adept will have to reactivate all of his powers one by one after putting his shades back on. Smart players will also throw their geasa around so that they're not completely crippled by any one act, but as long as they're following a theme and "keeping it real," its just a nice way to add flavor to a character without giving them anymore of an advantage than a street sammy gets for taking alphaware.

And Darhken (sorry, was looking at the wrong post), there's a difference between that use of geasa and the one to reduce Magic loss. That's the one that was a bit broken.

glasses strap =/= stylish. Clearly this should not be allowed.


With great style comes great responsibility. Don't abuse it.
Try adding in something else with your Stylish Sunglasses, such as Flair Long Coat for Improved Reflexes, Must be dramatically blasting away with both pistols at once in order to get your Improved Pistols.

Added in "Cheesy One Liners" to your Counter Strike and I would allow it.

Social skill boost only give when putting on or removing your glasses.

Pre-CSI Miami true, Post CSI-Miami false.

Dude, now I have to make an adept whose improved unarmed only works when he does this.

If phys ads suck so much, why are 80% of the players at my table using them? They are pretty prevalent on DS as well. and I saw no argument for a better face. which I find unbalanced in the phys ads favor.

Adepts don't dominate socially as much as they did pre-SR4A. With kinesics capped at 3, the dice pools capped out at 20 or natural Attribute + natural skill in modifiers, and so many other ways to boost social skills (glamour, empathy software, tailored pheromones, cosmetic biomods, etc.), you can make a mundane face who is capable of competing with most social adepts.

I'm still not a fan of abritary caps.

Still, the adept face doesn't *lose*; as in almost every field, an adept can compete at chargen and dominate with later karma.

Sorry to side-track here... but is this in an errata somewhere? Or is it just a part of the new SR4A rulebook?
As a GM and as a player... I have to say, I like the idea of caps.... as things can get pretty rediculous, ESPECIALLY with plain RAW. Heck, just looking at some of the posts about people legally achieving over 100+ armor out of chargen makes me cringe....


On a related note... to the OP, I understand your frustration. You want to make a pure adept and be able to compare it to a street sammie and it be well balanced. So did I.... at first....
Then you realize that there are advantages and disadvantages to both sides, and each excel at their own thing.

And yes... combining Adept powers with various augmentations is sick.... as it should be! But it comes with a great great cost, especially in chargen.


For example, I had this idea in my head for a kick-ass Fomori Troll MMA Fighter. He was originally part of the UFC, which in Shadowrun is actually owned and operated by an organized group of Adepts. There's not much more info than that to go on... but I assume that they severely limit and restrict 'ware in competition.
Well this Troll Adept was a major ass-kicker, but wanted to up his game even more. He started with some discrete bioware implants on the sly. He got away with it at first, but eventually realized the potential for combining magic and tech and eventually became addicted to augmentations. So he added more, and even delved into some Cyber and was eventually caught and exposed.
Ousted from the UFC in disgrace and kicked out of his elite adept magical group, he eventually fell into the shadows...

Well in my head, I had thought of a great and ideal mix which would result in ULTIMATE POWER!!!
Essentially it was about 3 Magic, combined with various 'ware filling the gaps. I had an unarmed DV of 16 (with -3 AP for good measure) staring me in the face, along with great reflexes, str, and insane damage resistance/armor.

But when I started to finally add up all the costs...... the BP alone was crazy.
My plan depended on a Magic 6 starting character (75 BP) which then lost 3 Magic/Essence from all the extra bioware/cyber.
All the cyber and bioware then ended up costing over 300k.


So yeah, totally not doable with a 400 BP starting character, or even a 500 BP one.
Theoretically I had created the most bad-ass cyber adept MOFO ever seen.... but it totally wasn't realistic for a PC.

Hehehehehe.... so I made him anyway, and plan to eventually use him as a prime runner NPC in a future game.

What I'm saying is.... yeah, the potential is there, especially for twinkage.... but when you do the math, particularly for a well cybered and bioed adept... it's actually well outside of the reach of any normal PC.


Of course, there is nothing to stop a player from eventually building up to that in a long running campaign. Just takes some good nuyen and karma.... but IMHO, that's the kind of bad-ass progression you should see in a long running Shadowrun campaign. *shrug*

I am pretty sure the dice cap is an optional rule and not part of RAW.

It is optional for every other skill, but social skills have cumulative positive social modifiers capped at natural skill + Attribute. I don't have SR4A, so I am going by the SR4A changes .pdf.

There are further caps to social skill dice if one isn't using a Native language.

Lame.

Just more blatant "oooh, magical brave" stereotype nonsense. In-universe they kick-started the rise of magic, have the best shamen, took back almost the whole continent in an insurgent coup reeking of fiat, and now everyone not speaking NAN lingo takes a hit on their social dice pools?

When will it stop?!

You know what I meant.

Actually its

But that really only seems to cap modifiers from the table in the next page.
Or thats how i read it, becouse tailored pheremoes and kinetics dont give social modifiers.

Remember what Adepts are supposed to be, especially when refering with the E... game they come from (no adepts in SR1 as far as I recall).

Adepts are supposed to be specialist, practitionners of an art or way of thinking and earning powers by following their way. It seems fairly logical that adept can only compete when they are specialising, because that is what they are. A generic adept is not an adept.

Currently I agree that Social-Adepts are very strong and some martial Adept are not subpar with other character. Especially if you take into account all that is part of the game and is not directly combat related.

A SSam will have trouble passing his gear through custom or security and will be flagged, tracked or have it desactivated. A physical adept will just pass through as not cybernetised. All that added stealth the Adept have other the cybered is not to be discounted. Sure it doesnt impact in direct combat power, but it make a large difference in gaming power.

Some of you have pointed out that qualities which can replace adept powers aren't typically that great, or that they're expensive. This is true enough. But you can usually take a negative quality to balance the cost. of course, you have a negative quality then. My point wasn't that you could make a "quality-adept" or somesuch nonsense. It's just that some of the fairly unique adept powers are no longer that unique. It's not that big of a deal. But it does steal an adepts thunder, a little bit.

The idea of an adept being a sort of stealth street samurai who can pass through metal detectors, just isn't relevant to my situation. I don't know about you guys, but my players would literally never put themselves in a position to have to go through a metal detector. They're a bunch of paranoid nut jobs.

All this talk about taking geasa for a 25% cost reduction in powers makes me wonder why you all got so up in arms about what essentially boils down to an Essence Virginity Geasa granting a 50% cost reduction in powers. It's certainly more crippling than a sunglasses geasa, and less annoying to check.

Concerning making a potent chrome-boy adept in chargen - it can be done - pretty easily.

edit: spelling

Because 50% is twice as much as 25%.

This is how I have always read it as well - there is a cap on the positive social modifiers but not a cap on your pool. Plus, any well built social adept is going to have 10+ dice in their attribute + skill pool anyway so the cap is only really meaningful to those lacking social skills.

I love cyber characters. I just saw the trailer for the Dues Ex game... awesome cyberarms!

But phys ads own the junk outta cyber characters. Badly.

Physical adepts can purchase power points up to their magic rating for 15 karma apeice. In addition, they can gain new power points each time they initiate. With a group, that is cheap! On top of that, they can use the most uber powerful unbalanced metamagic ever... Adept Centering. Basically they can ignore all modifiers once they are initiated a few times.

Building with the karma system (so they can start with the extra power points) they could have 5 magic rating, +5 power points, and if they are using Geas on their powers, thats like over 12 points worth of powers.

+3 reaction, +3 IP, all physical attributes taken to unmodified max, then have the attribute boost power ready. Combat sense +5... we are talking 14 dodge dice with a starting character. Add killing hands with elemental blast effect and critical strike... holy moly, they punch like a tank! A human could be doing 10 damage with a punch with -1/2 armor peircing. Thats CRAZY!

Oh, but cyber characters can... do nothing special. Yeah, and if you follow the modules advice for payouts, cyber characters will hardly be able to afford awesome wares. Phys ads start out rediculously powerful, and their power grows unceasingly.

Phys ads are by far the most powerful class in SR4, without using crazy made up house rules.

No they can't. And they can gain power points instead of metamagic. It's up to gm whether he uses or not this particular optional rule.

Yeah...I've literally never heard of anyone allowing this kind of thing at Chargen. That would certainly sway the balance quite heavily in the adepts favor.

Yeah...I've literally never heard of anyone allowing this kind of thing at Chargen. That would certainly sway the balance quite heavily in the adepts favor. 10 power points at Chargen + geas, geez. Are you letting your mages also intiate 5 times at chargen? cripes.

errr...this post posted twice instead of editing the first one. weird stuff.

Why am I wrong to be not playing your game your way with your opinion?

Why is the game wrong for everyone if it's wrong for you?

Why should I be playing your game instead of the one I am playing and having fun with?

why should i answer any of these questions? If you don't think anything is wrong with adepts, and you dont care about the subject, feel free to not reply.

Exceptional Attribute costs 20BP and then adds another 10BP to the cost of actually raising the Attribute. It is 1.5 Points for an adept to raise a naturally maxed physical stat. Which for a maxed out magic starting adept is 5BP (adept quality) + 65 BP (raise magic to 6) = 70BP/6 = 11 2/3 BP per powerpoint = 11 2/3 * 1.5 = 17.5 BPs for an adept to raise a stat above natural maximum. This is the worst case for the adept and it is nearly twice as good as the mundane's cost. Not to mention, if the adept really wanted to he could also take the quality.

Astral Sight can only be taken by a mundane and that mundane can never become awakened and never implant a single piece of ware. So a maxed magic adept is paying 6 2/3 BP more than the mundane (who only pays 5) but that 6 2/3 BP allows the adept to implant ware and gain adept powers... sounds like it is the mundane who is getting screwed on that deal.



They have less powers than a mage has spells... so? What powers do you think are severely lacking for the adept. Mages, if they get to act, are the most powerful characters at chargen. I don't think that anyone is arguing that (besides some astral hazed/arcane arrested street sam).



And there are many things that are more easily purchased with adept powers than there are with ware. Hell, Heightened Concentration is one of the most powerful powers in the game and only adepts can get it. A starting adept can ignore extreme range modifiers, can ignore called shot modifiers, can even ignore encumbrance due to armor (wear 12 armor above their normal limit) and recoil.

That last one is subject to a few caveats, but yes, some neat Adept Powers are available.

Only when you voluntarily misread and misunderstand it. It's a poor man's Adept Centering. Nothing more, nothing less.

Anyway, people put too much emphasis on the value of Attributes. They're nice, but only because they can affect a wide array of tasks. But at 1.5 PPs per point, why in God's name bother with that when you can spend the same number of points augmenting the skills you actually do use. +1 Agility to boost your melee abilities? Just get Melee Skill +2 and Gymnastics +2 instead. Same cost, double the perk, minimal loss everywhere else since you're focused on melee combat anyway. Sure, the point in Agility will rear its head from time to time in other tasks every once in a blue moon, but not as often as those +2s will courtesy of your specialization.

Even in previous editions I never bothered to boost Attributes through adept powers. It's a total waste in my opinion. Gimme more interesting abilities instead; ones that actually make you unique rather than just boosting a dice pool by a tiny amount.

Heightened Concentration
Cost: 1
The adept is capable of tuning out a single distraction to her
task at hand. When using this power, the adept can ignore a single
situational negative dice pool modifier of a value up to her Magic
attribute. This power requires a Complex Action to activate and
maybe be combined with the Adept Centering metamagic.

Seems pretty clear to me. RAW is no different than what I said. In fact, IIRC the writers of the power said that it was supposed to be used in conjunction with Living Focus so that the adept can use the power without the -2 penalty to all actions.

Not saying you're wrong - it could be interpreted that way or one or two other ways - but if you're right, then it was a pretty pointless "fix".


Back on the subject of "fixing" areas where adepts are weak - they already have areas where they exceed augmented characters. About the only areas where they are not as good are initiative enhancements and Attribute boosts (and even those are only more costly). If you make initiative boosts and Attribute improvements cheaper, then what will be the point of playing an augmented character? Also, I prefer the flavor of adepts and street samurai being good at different niches, rather than being interchangeable.

Not really, I think it was to prevent the using of Charisma and Social skills as a dump stats but then abusing the social modifiers. For instance, suppose a cybered troll has a Charisma and Intimidation of 1 and is interrogating someone. If this cap wasn't in place this bumbling, mumbling troll could easily get:

+3 for being physically intimidating
+2 for holding a baseball bat
+2 for having a pal along
+2 for punching the subject in a prior round

A dice pool of 11 yet the troll is socially inept.

See, I don't consider that out of line at all. If you're being questioned by at eight-foot thing with horns and tusks, a buddy to back him up, and a baseball bat, who's already hitting you, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say you'd be pretty damn intimidated regardless of whether or not said troll was particularly versed in the finer points of the art.