Mystic Adepts OR Shifters that is. I think I made one Shifter way back in SR3 that I played once(a Wolf if i recall), and I hadn't actually made a Mystic Adept in SR4 at all(again, like once in the SR3 days, when we called them Magical Adepts.)

First a couple notes about our houserules so ya know what rules we're working with:

-We don't use Availability limit at chargen.(I don't think I broke it anyway with this guy.)

-Karmagen character creation.

-We use x3 Karma cost for Attributes still. Reason being-we use more 'old time' Karma awards. Which means much lesser than what the SR4A book suggests in the back-we sorta award Karma a bit more sprinkled about, so progression isn't *quite* as fast. Since the karma awards have worked fine in our games, using the x5 cost would either make us up the karma awards or slow our normally slowish progression to a ''you'll never see this.''

-Race is charged BP cost in Karma.

Some things I want to follow for the concept:

-I want him strong and tough-more than the minimum. Yeah, I know the strong part is automatic non-optimization with Strength being the God of Dumpstats, but I'd like to try to work around that rather than leave him at the minimum. He's a mighty bear. He's supposed to be able to bench press a troll.

-I'd really like to work around a Mystic Adept concept. The 'mage' part is more dedicating to healing, fortification, or protecting spells, as fitting of his druidic Oak mentor. Another thing I understand isn't 'optimal' but being a Bear shifter he's quite powerful as it is, so I don't need some insanely minmaxed beast. But I would like to see if I'm on a good path with him-given the limits I know MAs have, I figured to pick a nice 'focus' for his spell-types was beneficial(and fits his personality besides.)

All that said, I'm submitting this guy for a look-over to see how the Mystic Adept part works out.

The Basic Stats and some Character Description:




The Sheet:




General Tactics:



And there we have it. He has *one* Karma remaining. I actually considered giving him the bow treatment for ranged due to his high Strength, but I wanted a ranged weapon that was a bit more concealable. Option is still open, though.

There are some other neat qualities I could play with as well, but I tried to avoid *really* obvious cheese like ''Sensitive System'' (even though our table of longtime friends who know each other well are very forgiving with each other as long as we admit it. ) He was generally 'raised' in society, hence the fact he does have some social skills and the like, learned from his 'mentor'(he received his SIN through some means as an actual citizen when he was young.)

So thoughts or comments? Mystic Adept advice? Critiques? General Chat?

Excellent. We use this at our game table, too, due to starting playing in 4th, and carrying over some of the anniversary edition updates piecemeal. It works out pretty well. Do you still use the 750 points creation?




Couple things I see.
You may want to consider taking the Bear mentor spirit - yes, i know, bear shifter+bear mentor = more bear than your body has room for. Here's why:
The berserk downside fits with your combat monster quality. The +2 physical damage resist bonus helps make you tougher, which you want, and ALSO helps you resist overcasting drain if you ever need to break out the big spells. +2 health spells helps you be a protecty team buffer dude, as most boosts and buffs spells are Health. Possibly talk to your GM about swapping a bonus or penalty to make a hybrid mentor.

At my table, at least, we tend to use flexible mentor spirits/paragons, if people have good ideas. It started with an aztec(theme) mage who wanted to actually follow one of the good guys of the aztech pantheon, instead of the typical aztech(the corp) party line of blood spirits - the problem was, Dragon didn't really fit the concept or tradition, so some messing around was in order, but without slapping two together, getting all the bonuses, and not raising the price.
What we've come up with is a fairly nifty houserule, and I figure its relevant to share: If you need to make a hybrid mentor/paragon, You take one to start with, and add one bonus and the drawback of another to get a hybrid mentor. Alternatively, just swap one bonus/penalty for another appropriately heft one. Any such alterations must be gm approved, who will look for attempts at powergaming, like stacking +4 manipulation spells.
In YOUR case, I would suggest combining bear and oak - in particular, i LIKE oak's downside.... but arcana and plant spirits don't really seem worth it.

Not Always Human: Elf. This is a trap choice. See the FAQ, but you don't actually get any of the stat boosts/changes/minimums/maximums from your other form, just special qualities.
This means it is literally cheaper to go human and buy SURGE'd Low Light Vision and Metahuman Traits: Elf to get the same effect.
However. You know what's a great metatype to go with a bear shifter? Wakyambi. In elf form you get Celerity, one MORE reach, and low light vision, for only 5 points more. Its really the Reach you want, as +2 natural, unarmed reach is -fantastic- and you should really consider picking up Kick attack to supplement. Short burst defense penalties on all your melee attacks? Yes please. And you get to be an angry african bear, too. You may want to read the FAQ about Not Always Human, as I noticed your list of critter powers tagged (bear form only) don't actually work that way, and basically apply all the time.

You have 25/35 points on qualities. Get an Adept Way already. With 6 magic its really, really good for a mystic adept, as you can afford to split your magic 2/4 without really losing anything... All of the adept powers you have selected fit under The Way of the Warrior. The Magician's Way borrowing the Warrior's Way discount power list is also very strong.
Adept powers! Mystic Armor is a trap! get combat sense. One hit on the defense is worth 3 on the soak, and isn't affected by Armor Penetration. Its the same price.
Improved Combat Ability is kind of a trap. Its main use is improving skills in a group without breaking a group.

Ask your GM if they are using the two seperate optional rules that 1) Let adepts trade Metamagics for 1 Power point when they initiate, and 2) if metamagics can be bought for 15 karma. These are seperate rules, sadly, but IF your table is using them, chances are your GM is willing to combine them with a sort of unifying houserule. If you're allowed to Initiate during karmagen, then an interesting possibility opens up.
The reason you do this is because you can make yourself pretty much not care about background count: By taking a majority, prefferably ALL the adept powers you are going to on metamagic-swapped Power Points, you can devote your full Magic rating to spellcasting.

When you enter a background count, instead of randomly losing adept powers, or worse, keeping track of which powers you bought with each point, and losing them in order as the background count increases, you only suffer a bit of dice pool penalties on your Spellcasting(by losing magic). The only real danger is getting your magic reduced low enough that the ceiling limit on adept powers is reached(magic caps level of adept powers, and mystic adepts use their full magic for this). You then take the metamagics you actaully want at the flat cost of 15, which you're going to surpass anyway after two initiations. If, on the other hand, your Gm will let you buy a power point for 15 karma, then you should just do that.
Its actaully a bit more expensive to do this, but, for example, a 6 spellcasting/0 adept magic Mystic Adept on the Way of the Warrior, with two 'initiations'(35, 21 if you can find a way to get both discounts. Saving the 5 allowed karma from karmagen, thats actaully really easy to get to after a few runs). The adept snags Improved Reflexes as a Warrior Way discounted power, and takes two levels of it with his power points. Now, he's kinda like a samurai, in that its really hard to take his extra passes away from him.
Probably more trouble than its worth, but neat to think about.

Anyway. More general thoughts.
For being a tough tank, your reaction is REALLY LOW, and the improved reflexes spell does not help your defense pool or reaction stat.
Drop your Strength to 9. For melee damage, Odd Values are what you want to shoot for, and you could really use that 30 karma elsewhere. Like raising your Reaction to 5.
Raise that agility! You want to land your hits. In rating x 3, you can afford to pump that rather high.
Check out the FAQ about Enhanced Senses: It already gives a +2 dice pool bonus on perception tests using the relevant sense. Do you really need +4 on smell tests? Visual, hearing, or Opposed +2 may be equally valid.
Decide on a Full Defense option. Do you want to Dodge or Gymdodge? Are you going to Dodge, Block, or Parry in melee? What about against ranged? Then specialize appropriately. (for you, you probably want Block + Gymdodge).
That being said, I rather do like your spell lists. So bear-ish, makes sense.
You may want to consider SURGE. Strongly. For a shifter, its a wonderful way to gain capabilities that apply in both your forms. A bear that can track you by scent AND heat? Oh wow! In particular, in karmagen, Metagenetic Improvement on an already naturally high stat can save you some points - though this is more a thing for Rating x 5 karma cost karmagen. Surge 2 costs 10bp, so 20 karma. Your body starts at 7, raising it to 8 costs 24. Save a few points there. In Rx5, it costs 40 points, so its basically half-off. Elongated Limbs in particular is worth considering because you want to stack up your Reach as much as possible.
Speaking of Reach, Tae Kwon Do's "Improved Charge' bonus, with the same styles 'Unarmed Attack when Attacking Multiple targets', and a large reach make you really, really good at beating up lots of people at once. It even makes Multistrike worth taking, because it gives you a free secondary attack. For example, you Charge(+3), and split your Agi+Unarmed dice pool(4+7=11) into several different attacks (8/1/1/1). You have a reach of 3 with Kick attack and some source of elongated limbs, and your opponents are unarmed(+3), and since you're multismacking, Tae Kwon Do is another +1. Your spec is +2. Suddenly your four-strike charge becomes pools of (18/10/10/10), or if you split them into as many attacks as you could, 10 dice EACH. Its actually hella good. In such a setup, the beauty of Multistrike is that it gives you a cheap lunch secondary attack all the time. Since its added before the splitting of dice pools, you can always afford to just throw it on a secondary target.
Also, you're an adept with massive strength. Break Weapon maneuver + Shattering Blow adept power is well worth considering. It also makes you comedically unstoppable by any sort of wall, kind of like the koolaid man.
Why do you not have Adept Counterstrike? It and the Riposte maneuver together are -amazing-.
For your last 10 points of qualties, though, if you want to be a Tank, possibly the best thing you can do is Genetic Heritage: Sideways genetic infusion, and just re-fluff it as being Built Bear Tough. The key bonus is not suffering any damage track penalties(stun OR physical), and a +1 generic Combat Test bonus helps on EVERYTHING involving fighting, and the further +2 on defensive reaction tests offsets your lower natural Reaction. The lowered essence and thus max magic hurts, but it is really, truly, a small price to pay for what you get. Its actually cheaper than magic 6 in karmagen: raising magic to 6 from 1 is 60 points, and raising magic from 0 to 5 is 45. Its 5 points short of paying for itself. Combined with an adept way, you can probably squeeze 3 points of adept powers down into 2, for a net gain of nearly no change.

Also just wanted to add: I've done 'The Watchful Guard tank' before, and it worked -really well-. However, I was doing it with a Reakt/d up samurai with Move by Wire 2. Dropped 11 dice on defensive reaction tests before any sort of skill consideration.

That, and doing it with a car (because Reaction is used for Pilot) were basically his only gimmicks, and his attack pools were not that great, but being on the frontlines, insulting everyone to attack you while being really, really hard to touch works WELL. Keep in mind that its significantly easier to dodge attacks than it is to soak them with Damage Resistance tests. (each net hit on attack increases damage, each hit on defense reduced the extra damage by 1 until it misses. If you're hit, then you roll to not take damage, but only 5's and 6's reduce damage. So in order to tank well, you want to reduce the incoming net hits on attacks by as much as you can, AND have a big damage resistance dice pool.)

I realize that while Bear shifters have a great Reaction(1/5(7)), keepin mind that you DO have access to Combat Sense, and you can have six levels of it with a magic of 6. This is probably not an optimal choice, but having a low max reaction is not as much of a problem as you think it is.

Background-wise, a Wakyambi-bear shifter with a genetic infusion is going to require a lot of stretching, probably to the breaking point. Especially considering that there's no bears in southern Africa, where the Wakymabi hail from. And neither is genetic infusion common there, that's more a south-american thing - being a partly faield corprate development that got picked up by the south am drug cartels.

Well, to go down some points(and thanks for the read!)

Well, I picked Elf just for appearance. When it comes to optimizing, I don't typically optimize metatype as that is a thematic pick for me, so I'd like to keep him a 'regular' elf. I see him more with a druidic theme than I do a tribal theme. I do have Kick Attack for him maneuver wise, however. But for thematic purposes I see him as a more of a mix between a classic elf for his form, though, as said, a considerably bigger and more muscular one. There are certain things that I stick with for character-theme purposes, and I tend not to swap around metatype too much for advantages when it comes to that. The Wakymabi just does not fit him at all I feel.

We DO use 750 Karma, yes.

I might consider bringing up that Mentor Spirit houserule with my table-I like the sound of it. (We tend to share similar houserules, as I said, we've gamed together for ages.) I could see that for him, houserule wise actually. I indeed wanted to avoid the bear spirit to avoid the ''yo dawg'' that was just itching to come out of it. Oak I felt matched his Druidic nature and his strong, protective streak. But indeed-thank you for that houserule and I'd take things under consideration. (An Oak Bear sounds pretty nice.)

It's weird-I've played regular Adepts very often, and we've found use for things like Mystic Armor and Improved Ability; however, this is a *full* adept, who has six points to play with. But I am going to consider Warrior's Way and playing with that.

I can't bring his Agility higher without Metagenic Improvement or something. 4 is the max for a Bear shifter. I'm simply out of quality points for it; it's one reason that I always wondered why Tiger/Lion shifters weren't more expensive than Bear. Bear shifters get hella nice Body, and nice Strength. However, Tiger gets Body, Agility, AND Strength-all in lower amounts but their stat spread just, IMO, is overall more impressive, with Agility being the 'god stat of combat' and all.

Oh, I know about the martial arts stuff quite a bit at least. I specialize in playing martial artists and had for years, both Cyber and Adept wise. It was the Mystic Adept part that I haven't had as much experience with at all, trying one way back when and just not at all yet in SR4. Some of the combos are cool. I am considering maybe Elongated Limbs from Surge for him, but it depends. I kinda have his stats at a place where I like them, save the Reaction which I will consider popping four into after shifting some stuff around.

I also considered some Counterstrike/Riposte and that's still on the table. I'm still fiddling around with some of his points, and if I take Warrior's Way then they'll find that(or if I swap out Mystic Armor/Improved Ability for Combat Sense/Counterstrike.) Shattering Blow DOES sound awesome for this guy, since he is just a mighty SoB. He's also not a *full* tank. I should have specified that. He basically uses his strength and resillience to help his team in many different ways-be it actually helping take a hit or smashing the crap out of something.

The main points I'm going to tweak around with so far with him are his adept powers(working around a Way and grabbing some Combat Sense) and then perhaps consider the Surged limbs for him as well if I can spare the + Quality. I do see him as a long-limbed fellow.

Still thanks for the comments. I'll comb around here and see what I can tweak on him so I can start putting more of this Mystic Adept malarkey under my belt.

Couple things I wanted to respond to specifically. Did not realize they had such a low cap on agility. That does hurt, but you can make the difference up. I was almost going to suggest Mind over Matter from War!, but I don't think it would be that good, as swapping Logic for Agility isn't that much better.

The nice thing about Surged Elongated Limbs is that it applies to any form you are in, as opposed to wakyambi ones, which only apply in one form. Surge is also nice, because it lets you go a bit beyond the quality limit, because each level of it gives you a different set of genetic quality point limits to play with. For example, Surge 2 costs 10 points, and gives you 20 metagenetic quality points to play with, at the cost of 10 points of downsides. It would fit in your current build, but an adept way is probably better. Another good one might be to pick up one of the surge qualities that give you more armor, as it stacks with the natural point bears get.
Also worth noting is that anyone with a natural point of armor can basically ignore shotguns/flechette ammo, as it has an ap+5 value, and you always count as having armor. Dermal Deposits is probably the best.

You may want to strongly consider picking up the Fashion spell from street magic: Its able to change the shape of things, but explicitly isn't able to change its protective value. With a Combat Round or two of prep time, you can keep your armor and clothing and stuff between your two forms.

Oh, I have played SURGEd characters before; in fact one of my other 'mains' is a surged fellow(he's sorta for a veeery Pink-Mohawk style game where he's essentially a cyber-Illidan Stormrage. We just decided to get silly for a game. )

But aye-keeping him normal, non alternate metatype Elf, but with Elongated Limbs he'd have +1 in any case if I went that route. I can scratch out 9 more Karma(he had 1 left) for the 10 point Surge if I wanted, then take some fitting negative to balance it out. Elongated Limbs would be pretty awesome, and then I could pick a few other fitting things(both thematically and in usefulness-I tend to keep both very close, which does make for not 100% optimal characters but I'd rather have a character I want perfectly in theme first.)

I think there will be some other good stuff I can find for him, though. Would pass on the Dermal Deposits-I don't quite see him with the troll look-but I'm sure there are other things.

One problem with elongated limbs is that they're quite distinctive and very difficult to hide - pack on that being awakened AND a shifter and it raises the odds for sucessful identification to a level that requires a serious amount of effort or pink mohawk to keep out of trouble. Depending on teh style of game it might be worth the trouble or not.

On a personal level I tend to dislilke the sort of 'awakened-infected-surged-metavariant' character builds that pop up here as most of them seems to be collections of rules advantage with at best a cursory glance at being characters, with a recognizable history and personality.

Well, we do tend to run more 'mohawk' in our games. More or less ''everyone sitting around the table having a good time and not afraid to get a little wild and crazy.''

And i know what you mean-myself, I tend to try to keep character balance with a few mechanical touches. I mean, I know a 9 strength is more optimal than a 10, but I want him a *real* mighty SoB. I could get more advantages from a different metatype or just staying human, but I wanted a big elf dude for his normal form. Pure Adept or Pure Mage is more optimal than a Mystic Adept, but I wanted to play around with the neat mix you can get. A Bear mentor spirit is more optimal, but Oak fits his personality fairly well and lacks the ''yo dawg, I heard you like bears'' thing.

I always pictured that Elongated Limbs would look like a really tall Pro Basketball player in real life. I mean, those guys can need special clothes made-and I've known a few guys personally who were of the Big and/or Tall variety-long-limbed, and they too needed to special order some clothing(trying to find pants in a regular store to fit their physique was a real pain in the ass for them.) I could see this as an advantage that would actually fit him; I picture his elven form as being a very tall, long-limbed, broad-shouldered strong guy, with a big reach in melee combat. It wouldn't be any stretches to his character at all to take that. If I feel like something is too far of a stretch/not fitting, I won't do it.

In other words, I build my concept. Then I fiddle with mechanics to fit within that concept. I'm willing to bend a bit(shifting a point here and there in an attribute or skill if it doesn't change much, or some powers, a quality, etc), but not if it goes against the concept that I already have in my head. Things like Mystic Adept tweaking I'm quite open to(within that) simply because I'm not too experienced with this particular thing in the game-while I've played tons of character types in SR, this isn't one of them.

For a second, I thought you were making a Shadowrun/Eberron hybrid game. I actually got pretty excited for that. Artificers & cyberware. Street Samurai-Paladins. Warforged-drones & the 12 Houses.