I'm interested in making a mystic adept in a game I'm participating in, and I was looking at the mystic adept. Are they really as weak as I think they sound, or is there a way to make a decent one? We're using 450 pts, btw.

It all really depends on how you want to build it.

Mystic Adepts tend to be "weak" as they tend to have more spread out abilities. The key to building a good one is making the abilities work well with one another. My boyfriend made a Mystic Adept sniper, works very well and has lots of growth potential.

I was thinking a kind of combat mage, probably. using magician spells for offense.

I'm curious exactly how the magic stat works exactly. if i had a magic attribute of 5, and I put 2 into Adept and 3 into Magician, I assume I could have 2 points worth of adept powers. But what about the mage spells? if I cast flamethrower, would I roll 3 magic + spellcasting?

Yep, that's it. You'd use the 3 for the overcasting threshold and maximum force too (doubled usual).

That's how I understand it. Mystic Adepts work best if you have a role already in mind. You are certainly not going to be a good generalist spell caster. I've found detection spells work well. Or any spell that does not need too many hits for it to work. I just don't see a combat spell caster being all that good if limited to force 3 spells. That being said a mystic adept can be a valuable back up spell caster.

I think the magic split for mystic adepts is pretty table-dependent.

If you use SR4, force is limited by Spellcasting magic.

If you use the FAQ, force is limited by Spellcasting magic.

If you use SR4A, force is limited by total magic.

This discussion was pertinent to the magic-split question.

With 450 BPs, you can actually get away with alot. Personally, the best use is a combat counterspeller. You're gonna have to use drugs probably to get extra IPs, but you might be able to get away with some synapse boosters or improved reflexes. I'd recommend maybe magic 5, 1 point into mage and 4 points into adept powers. Alternatively, you could go with counterspeller face as well, using combat drugs to get IPs. Again, you'll be a generalist, but you can find some niches that synergize nicely. Otherwise, you need to create a short list of spells that force 1-3 are the only important ones. Then you can go with magic 3 and adept 2. Then you can take all sorts of social, manipulation, and other such spells and abilities.

I actually made a MysAd the other day just for Ss and Gs. He was a nartaki with ambidexterity 3 times, power throw rating 6, missile parry rating 4, quick draw, and missile mastery.

With his strength of three and the aforementioned adept powers, he can throw a pen, playing card, marble, or other such detritus for a total of 8p damage. With a harpoon, he can straight kill someone with a 1-2 body, even without any net hits.

Of course the character is almost completely useless for anything other than throwing pens through skulls...but it was still a fun concept and I really enjoyed making him.



~R~

You could make this work... However, your spells would be "weak" when compared to a Full Magician. That being said, there are many more "mundane" rolls you could do while enhancing yourself with your spells.

A gunslinger with the spells: Enhanced Aim, Deflection, and let's say Hot Potato could be a lot of fun and be effective in combat (Depending on how you stat yourself out and pick adept powers, of course). A stealthy character would benefit from many of the different illusion spells.

However you go about it, just make sure your skills and magic are complementary. You're not going to be an effective "jack-of-all-trades" by going Mystic Adept. But, you could end up being a extremely effective character.

Clarification: The FAQ is for SR4, and the old ruling was never updated/removed when the SR4A edition hit. Just go by the newest book.

To answer the OPs questions:
Decide what you want to do, which role on the team you're filling. Then pick a tradition from streetmagic with similiar drain stats. (If you're a facey mysadept, be an elf with a charisma tradition, etc, that kind of thing.)
Commit to spending all positive/negative qualities.(bad luck/sensitive system if you're feeling lazy)
Restricted gear: power focus, then buy and bind one for about 29 BP total cost.
Grab a mentor spirit.
Grab the spells to help with your chosen role. Whether they're manipulate emotions for the bonus social dice, or analyze device for a tech-adept.
Season with adept power. A 3/3 split with a decent(and specialized) spellcasting and a power power focus is all around solid.

Stop thinking as Mysadepts as gimped mages, or adeptPlus. They're kind of in their own seperate class. Like any other archetype, they're very, very good if you specialize. Making them solid out the door means paying a little more attention to the verious synergies available when creating a character.



If you're going Combat Mage, bioware is ace. It has all the goodies: Trauma Damper, Platelet Factories, and Pain Editors. In the cyberware department, you've got cybereyes(which is the big one, but Attention Co-Processors deserve an honorable mention), and a nice half-off essence discount on it if you've got mostly bioware.

Trauma+Platelet makes you significantly more spell-spam capable, and provides some measure of protection if you have to indulge in overcasting.
Pain editors are another solid choice, though you're going to need Restricted Gear to start with one. As long as you're not overcasting, you can keep casting until you drop unconscious - and the +1 will for -1 intuition may very well mean another dice on your drain.(if you're not an int tradition).

You've a couple options for getting your passes.
Drugs work, but will lead to burnout, which is bad.
The Increase Reflexes spell and a sustaining foci(or the heightened concentration adept power, but people here like to complain about it every time its brought up, so i'm not going to open that can of worms -again-). The downside is, it doesn't increase your Reaction stat.
The increase reflexes adept power. Usually a bad choice, due to the cost. If you go this route, it may be a good idea to take level 2, and save half a power point for the next time you get another power point. This lets you jump immediately to the max level without having to bother to raise your magic twice.(which is an expensive chore)
Then there's the Synaptic Booster. It has one very important advantage: Your passes -never- go away in a background count. They can't be counterspelled away, or set off astral wards. They don't cost drain, or take up sustaining foci. A cyberware scanner won't pick them up. While its expensive essence wise, booster passes are hard to nullify.

wow that's a lot of options I've been given, lol.

I may end up just going full mage and using the bioware if I can get away with it, since it doesn't sound like I can do what I want with the Mystic Adept quality.

The most important things to remember are where you can get the same benefit for the cheapest price:

Improved Reflexes (spell) is a lot cheaper to have than Improved Reflexes (adept power) due to the adept power costing HUGE points of magic, where as the other just means you need 3 BP (to know the spell) and a sustaining focus. You're not likely to be capable of casting it higher than F2 (enough for a second pass), due to dice pool size (why cast at F4 if you're only getting 2 hits?), and drain cost.

Drain: don't get high drain spells you'll want to be casting all the time. Your drain stats likely won't be good enough to handle it.*

Skip counterspelling if you can (such as there being another mage in the group). Banishing is useless (even for a full mage). This takes 2 of the Magic skills out of the skill group, making it cheaper to just buy the skills themselves.

Mentor spirits are ok. Fetishes, spellcasting foci, and the like are mucho beuno, as they focus on the spells you do have for cheap (if you can keep all of your spells in one or two classes--eg. combat and health--then you don't need as many foci).

Mystic Adepts are generalists, so tend to spread themselves thin, so you need to do what you can to counter-act that effect, although with 50 extra BP you do have a bit more maneuvering room to pick up a few flavor items, be a special race, or to max out that all important drain stat, or pick up a better foci.

*Depending. I build a 400 BP elf drake mystic adept. So I was REALLY tight on BP. With 450, you'd probably be fine. I had three spells, one of which I never got an opportunity to use, but would have been awesome if it had (Borrow Sense).

Yeah, just ask yourself if you really need the adept powers. If so, the mystic adept makes sense. If you can get everything you need from just spells, then there's no reason to go mystic adept. Straight mages get astral sight and the ability to go astral for 5 BPs (15 compared to 10). If you wanted astral sight, you'd have to pay 1 power point for it. I've always like mystic adepts, but with 450, you'd probably be better of with a full mage. You could get some nice focuses to start.

Edit - One thing I'd be concerned of is that at 450 BPs, your GM is probably looking to throw some serious stuff at you. I would query your fellow PCs, to see what they've started coming up with. If they're making some hardcore badasses, then I'd probably shy away from from the mystic adept unless you can find some particular niches that a mystic adept would fill. But obviously, it would be smart to fill in a gap that your group is missing. If all the "roles" are covered, then the mystic adept might fill in nicely.

You just gave me a great idea for my upcoming Barrens campaign. In my game the Barrens have a reliable BC - 1 at the edge, 2 for most of the rest, 3+ in the core areas. I let adepts take a power which, for .5/level, lets them ignore BC equal to the level of the power. A MystAd would be the only reasonable way to play a mage in this game - it's too low power for a pure mage to just power through the BC (max stats 4 including magic, 600 Karma). Adepts are much better off - initiation at chargen encouraged, +1 PP instead of metamagic allowed - so if someone wants to play a caster, mystad is by far their best choice.

[Edit:] Shapechange and Levitate are good spells for a low Magic character. Hits for Levitate affect how much you can lift and how fast it goes; you can lift yourself reliably with 2 hits iirc, though it wouldn't be fast. Shapechange (or [Critter] Form if you're scared of drain and have the karma to burn for multiple spell copies) gets better with more hits, but is perfectly usable with 1 net.

[Edit 2:] A sniper with an optical scope can cast spells through it ^_^