Magic can be sort-of improved by foci.
Granted, adepts don't benefit much from this.

Yet another reason I love mystic adepts all out of proportion to their actual in-game effectiveness.

Mystic Adepts are indeed fun...

How?

By making sure damage is significantly increased, armor decreased, people can jump significantly farther, run significantly faster, sneak better, see more, drive better, hacks faster, making the chance for glitches even more infinitesimally small.
Need I go on?

You are talking about 4 more dices.
Thats about one additional net hit.
(Compare those to all the other elephants in the room and it does not look that bad)

I mean if the damn emo toy give you about 6 dices.

That'd hit me as a pithier response if it wasn't for the fact that a pretty hefty contingent of dumpshockers were less than pleased by the introduction of the non-sensical li'l bastards. Beyond that, emotitoys and skill cap raises do not constitute an apples to apples comparison in any case given that the former is effectively a damn near global dice pool increase whereas without some serious tinkering the latter is just an incentive for people to sink even more into skills to keep up with the opposed test arms race. In effect, all emotitoys did was create a world in which the more charismatic man still wins, but even the stammering wallflowers rarely ever glitch even in the midst of a high stakes negotiation thanks to the fact that just about everyone now has a cheap way to score 6 dice. That's unfortunate, in my opinion-- in fact it's unfortunate enough that I decided to just ban them on first sight and keep playing the same way I had been playing for roughly two years-- but someone who doesn't actually like the notion of glitches may like them enough to disagree. Either stance is fairly reasonable. It also doesn't hurt that so much is left up to the GM when it comes to judging the results of an opposed social test either. Even the results of a critical success may not necessarily amount to much more than a nice bonus to your next social test versus that target anyway-- people can still only accomplish things that are within their power, after all.

Raising the skill cap across the board, on the other hand, manifestly gives the specialists more room to trounce the generalists and the defaulters in their niche while also making people demonstrably better, faster and stronger in any given unopposed test. So go ahead and argue that it's a good change if you want. Just please don't sugarcoat and minimize the breadth it. And remember: raising the skill cap also increases the modified skill cap. So a magic 4 bio adept could end up having a skill of 15 right out of chargen with a combination of Reflex Recorders and magical talent. I'm not very comfortable with that given that these jokers also can pick up Adept Centering after a few runs as well.

Well Said...... Bravo...

@Whipstitch,

It would not. Giving them more Karma would.
As a matter of fact mundane could (if their Karma reaches about 150) not have stacked

What would happen if you would really enforce the skill descriptions in the book and tell your players:
No, you can't be a Shaquille O’Neal, Ghost-Who-Walks-Inside, The Wright Brothers etc. all rolled in one person. (Ok, the street knowledge skill goes up only at 7 but they are strange anyway)

If you look at most of the chars posted here, the Sams close to every time get their 6 in with one Firearm. So the skill they want to use is allready maxed out.
And as a matter of fact, there is no reason to not max out skills or even skill groups.
Maxing out athletics costs only 6*5+5*5= 65 Karma. (Not a bad deal for 8 additional dices, 8 Karma per dice)
(You could only get a other skill group up to 4, so it would not realy be a better option since you would not use this skill group as often)

It is not that mundanes would not have a lot of Karma to fling around compared to adepts.
This means you end up with only adepts beeing able to specialize further.

If you raise the skill maximum players would tend to stick to a more "realistic" char while still having the feeling to improve.

There would be less player trying to hit the 10 (which would be between Shaquille O’Neal and Michael Jordan) because the Karma cost would be to high to borther.
10*2= 20 for a single point in a single skill.
As a matter of fact I think you would just see a sam in general with 7 or 8 in their main skill and around 5 to 6 in their support skills.
Same naturally is true for a skill group:
Would you max out Firearms for (9+10)*5=95 Karma while this would get you one skillgroup from 1 to five and an other from 1 to 3 ?
Even if it is your most used skill group and you use it 3 times more often than the other two the other it would still be a good deal.

How is it now:
A SAM might go through every book picking up martial arts and other stuff or he ends up with putting every skill up to max. While mages and adepts have a close to infinite potential.
So after a while the SAM and the hacker start competing in the other ones area, beacause it ain't that much of a Problem to get 6 dices in two skill groups (Karma 110 Karma, thats what a mage pays for magic 5 to 8.

It is even worse with characters beeing not so far apart: A Sam and a Face for example.
The Face will end up with at least one fire arm skill up to 6 making him as good as the Sam in most runs.

The problem with the Skill Chart you're using to base your 'generic you're-so-good-at-blank' comparisons is that the chart itself is rubbish.

It literally doesn't account for situational bonuses or raw talent(attribute). In fact, when the # shifts by -one value- you're suddenly up a grade on the world-class-talent-o-meter.

in a game all about stacking the deck in your favor, it quickly falls apart, because most bonuses come in the flavor of +2. Like Hot Sim. Or Analytical Mind.


No, I've found the best way to incorporate the feeling of 'you know your shit more than joe average' is to use the following houserule: Having the right Knowledge Skill lets you teamwork test your own tests. Its what our group uses, and its worked out fairly well so far. I would, however, suggest putting a cap on the bonus dice equal to the knowledge skill.(or possibly half it).
Instead of people maxing out their skill and being done with it, branching into other specialties, or tracking down the last few pieces of gear they need for extra dice - they now start improving their Knoweldge skills for things they use a lot.

Nah, that's just ever-more DP creep.

Indeed...