Pure adepts do suck for a simple reason (compared to cyber adepts): One point of cyber comes for a fixed price, if you are an adept. It is 10BP in Generation or 10 to 30 Karma in play.
You pay it, you get the bonus. You wont get to increase any attribute by 4 for 30 Karma any way else. (As a pure adept)

For mages it is practically the same thing, but they can sustain spells. So in order to increase an attribute a mage needs a high force sustaining focus, lets say 8 and the spell for 5Karma. That will put him at 21 Karma. Yes, there are drawbacks to that but there are also some advantages (which you can only use, if you are a mage).

The major drawback of melee combat is, that you defend against it with attribute+skill. The prevailing perception on this subject is, that this is also true for a guy with a gun in melee range. In addition to that, the guy fighting with the sword only gets reaction to defend against the guy with the gun...

What does this mean? If the other guy has some dodge pool, it will look bad for you.

In addition a low strength score is deadly for a melee fighter (unless you use the monofilament wip or "shock"-weapons or toxins), for he won't inflict much damage that way.
And net hits won't be around, because you have to roll against reaction+skill(be it dodge or whatever).

And called shots are also not a real option for you will roll against around 6-10 dice AND need a net-hit AND reduce your dicepool by 4.

It's entirely context-dependent, but for straight up ease-of-lethality concerns yes and doesn't even warrant a RAW investigation because if guns were not a vastly superior means of killing than the fists we are born with they wouldn't be the staple of crime and war the world over.

Whether Magic should tip the balance more than it does is another matter, but a primarily-melee character is starting behind and rightly so IMO.

Hehe, total logic failure, as Umidori said on all points: pure adepts + no splats are not terribly great; you saw wrong; there is a reason if you're banning everything effective; a mage is not an adept, no comparison.

As people have said, you *could* do something with this if you didn't restrict *everything*. If you didn't require a sword, you could use more effective weapons, or unarmed adept powers. If you didn't require elf, you could use a 'melee' race. If it were a mystic adept or mage, that would just change everything.

But the main problem is if you didn't *require* that the damage be as good as guns, that would solve everything right there! Personally, this is my suggestion. I don't think you should have to change the concept ('oh, he's an ork now') just to make the numbers work. It's not like a player can't have fun with a ninja adept who only does 5P+net hits instead of 10P+net hits. You wouldn't have to sacrifice any of the concept just to inflate some numbers. There simply *isn't* "no reason he shouldn't be able to slice people up for as much damage as someone shooting at them does", unfortunately. There are several reasons.

Pretty much. Needing to go under the knife just to keep up with Joneses is a defining trope in cyberpunk and adepts are not immune to it. Beyond that, don't cry for adepts because after a point or two of 'ware combined with their own tricks they can win at the legwork, sneaking or tech skill mini-games pretty hard if they want. Frankly, it doesn't take much effort to build a lightly augmented face that's tossing double digit pools in Influence, Stealth, Athletics and Perception all at once and by many standards that's pretty mild cheese.

Really the most important thing he can do is emphasize Agilty, stealth, and IPs. And make sure he has some means of seeing in darkness/smoke/thermal smoke. This way he can maximize stealth and speed. For melee, starting combat already right next to your opponent with them surprised negates many of the benefits of ranged combat. And after combat starts, having extra IPs will both increase survivability and damage output. This sort of charcter has to be played smart, not hard.

It only negates one, maybe two of the benefits of ranged combat. After all, there is a penalty for having someone right up in your face when firing but there's also a bonus for firing at point blank that largely negates it, so all told shooters lose a single die when facing someone at melee range as opposed to short, which is frankly laughable in the face of all the other mechanical advantages guns have over melee at all ranges. And of course, that's even before you factor in that there's a martial arts style that lets you reduce the "in melee" penalty such that point blank ends up giving you a net bonus. Honestly, my favorite thing to do with melee is to have a taser offhand or use a bayonet combined with Disarm and damaging disarms (from Arnis) so that I can kick someone's ass in melee on their pass when they attack me. It's not better than just shooting them twice but it is kind of funny and overall a rather apt demonstration of why melee just plain chews as an offensive trick in SR4.

I didn't say it negated all the benefits, just many. They don't get to shoot you up as you run up to them. They don't get to defend with the higher defense pool inherent in melee combat (since they're surprised). The shooting in melee penalty was actually at the bottom of my list of benefits. And besides, how many guards are going to be running around with multiple levels of firefight/krav maga? And one thing that many people forget about with melee combat is interception attacks. So if you start out in their face and they are both taking penalties, and in your reach, a guard's first reaction may be to try to move away. Now you get an intercept attack.

And I rule that firing a gun in melee also allows them to use melee defense since your close enough to knock their weapon aside.

The only benefit it doesn't negate is the action advantage of firearms.

Also, if you can get a high enough dice pool, dual wielding is a good option (during surprise).

The problem some melee-specialists find is that the sammie and/or mage have taken down all the opposition with ranged weapons/spells before your character has closed to melee combat range. This can be mitigated somewhat if you play an advanced infiltrator/spotter role in a team (no guarantee on a convention table), where you can pull a surprise attack on the bad guys right from the start of combat. In this case, watch out for friendly fire though (esp from spells).

With this in mind, it might be worth thinking of ways to get your guy to join the melee party faster as well as the damage you deal. Anything to get your running speed up could also be very useful - if you are taking the Athletics group, Improved Skill (Running) might help you close down distance faster, for instance. Adept powers such as Wall Running and Great Leap might help you approach the opposition from a route they are not thinking of as well.

The advantage of the minimally wared-adept over the pure adept is that they get to pick and choose the most efficient way to get the boosts they are after. For a price of 1 or 2 points of Magic, you can get much more than 2PP worth of benefits from the 'ware. For the admittedly steep price of 160K, Synaptic Boosters 2 for 1 Essence (and point of Magic) gives you the same IP boost as a whopping 2.5PP of powers. Better still are Muscle Toner and possibly Muscle Augmentation, which are a much easier way to boost attributes than their equivalent adept powers (especially once you go over the unaugmented racial max). For 60K and 0.64 Essence you could get alpha MT2 and MA2 and still allow yourself up to 0.68 essence worth of cyber such as tricked out cybereyes, for instance. If you have 5 points of +ve Qualities spare for Restricted Gear, you could get MT4 and tricked out alpha-cybereyes 4 with all the bells and whistles for that 1 point of Essence (and Magic). Definitely worth looking into, unless your brother wants to play a "pure" adept for RP reasons ...

I think, it's stupid to even compare Adepts with chrome guys or mages. If you try to build an adept, that's as good as a heavy augmented mundane, you're doing it wrong. Just play a heavy augmented mundane.
Adepts do different things. Things 'ware can't copy. You need to focus on those special powers. Instead of filling a role in a group, you need to create a role, that the rest of the team and the GM didn't even know was possible to exist.

Also, I support getting 1 point of bioware for every adept. This is not pussyrun.


afaik the topic was about an adept slicing people up with swords. Yes. You can do that. But not on an open battle field with the opposition shooting at you. You need to focus on evening the battle field.
- use athletics and stealth to get into melee and surprise.
- use smoke and flashes to deprive them of vision. Use Blind Combat, Motion Sense, etc to get an advantage.
- get 30+ dice on gymnastic dodge and do cartwheels until they're out of ammo or bored.

I second that emotion! Only trouble is, the rest of the team will roll their eyes while you cartwheel all over the place while they get on with the job at hand ...

Under SR3, successes were more important than damage. Sadly, this does not apply anymore under SR4 it seems.

which is exactly, what your plan was all along. Obviously, you also have Enthralling Performance (Gymnastics). You're not only drawing all the fire, in addition, they won't notice the rest of the team, who can just go on.

Stahl, one of these days you really need to read the SR4 rules, because that's really not the issue at all. Net hits still help damage in SR4 and there's tools available for anyone to hit a pretty decent base damage value. One of the biggest problems melee enthusiasts face is wrapping their heads around the idea that their damage code is actually a relatively small piece of whether their "melee" character is successful or not. Nine times out of ten a "melee" character would be better off if they had taken guns because their success is usually built off of being a first rate infiltrator rather than because they have Bruce Lee pools. That's because melee gets less attacks and routinely faces higher opposition pools than shooters do and so rolling unopposed is sometimes essential as opposed to merely super convenient like it is with guns. In short, successes are still the most important thing but they play hard to get.


Apologies for all the edits, but I'm on a pretty hefty painkiller atm.

doesn't Surge give you an automatic 'distinctive look' disadvantage ? That can be a problem for a nassassin who's likely to built up more than enough notoriety siply from his work tha the won't need the extra problems.

an assassin doesn't care about looks. nobody has ever seen him before anyways. Nobody, who can still talk, that is.

It is important to note, that you do not actually loose one point of magic. If you later increase your magic, it is cheaper.
So if you compare a pure adept with an augmented adept, who spent 4 pints on ware (Lets say 5 down to 1), if the pure adept reaches magic 10 the augmented adept will be around 8 to 9.

True, thats mostly an issue if start with some Karma, but still...

But you DO lose the point. Your Maximum goes down. You MUST initiate to bring that maximum back up. For the guy who never got ware, that is only 4 Initiations/Magic purchases. For the guy who reduced his magic from 5 to 1, that is 8 Initiations and 9 Magic Buys to be equal Magic Rating. BIG Difference. Of course, the 'Ware may make up for that. But then again, it may not.

That's the extreme end, though. More likely is a point or two to pick up things that are very expensive in power points, but cheap in essence, such as muscle toners.

Granted... But the oportunity cost is still there. For some, that oportunity costs just does not matter...

Following the rules, initiations are cheap if done right.... True, adepts do not really get much from initiations... Thats an other ballpark however...

You mean that you should have a Group and Take an Ordeal?

So anyone not going that route is doing it Wrong? Not everyone can find a Group, nor wants to take an Ordeal.

I find that there are a great number of Metamagics (about half, actually) that are pretty beneficial to the Adept, dependant upon Concept. Some, more than others, of course.

I'm actually genuinely curious. What are some metamagics you find useful for adepts, TJ.

I haven't really seen much potential for many of them, but to be fair I haven't personally given them a lot of thought beyond cursory readings.

~Umi

Masking, Flux, Flexible Signature, Adept Centering, for just about every adept, off the top of my head ... rest depending on concept

Prettu Much what Bannock Burn mentioned for the core setup. Otjhers do depend upon the character concept.
I have had fair usage out of...

Atunement: Item
Channeling (believe it or not, Adpets can get benefit out of this, and not just for allied Magicians)
Cognition
Divining
Psychometry
Sensing
Somatic Control
Extended Masking
Infusion

I have used all of the above at least once, for specific characters over the years. Some, Like Attunement [Item], I have had multiple times for the same character. In combination with the Adept Powers, you can create some pretty interesting characters and situations.

Thanks, I'll take a look at those, try to come up with clever ways of using them that I've missed.

~Umi

Did we get to monofilament whip weapon focus yet?

Who here has ever actually had a character that used a monofilament whip? Logically I realize the odds of slicing yourself in half with it aren't that bad with a big enough dice pool, but I tend to shy away from things that can fail spectacularly at a critical moment purely based on bad luck, so I've never had the balls to try one of them.

That and paying for Exotic Weapon Skills sucks.

~Umi

With the event of Edge, i would even use more than one monowhip at the same time . .
critical glitch?
burn one point of edge for a critical success, glitch averted and something sliced up good . .

Why... would you... burn a point... when you can merely spend... one to negate the glitch?

*head scratch*

Unless you had spent every last point already? I admit, that'd make critically glitching at a critical moment even worse than I was already thinking.

~Umi

because i don't know much about the abuses of edge.
and negating a (critical) glitch while scoring a critical success sounds awesome to me.

We don't use them because they're too *good*, honestly.

Think I have 1 character that used one. As a Backup Weapon in a Fingertip Compartment (Johnny Mnemonic Style). *shrug*

if i thought i could get the pool high enough to make it not too dangerous, i'd use one in every finger . .

It's an OK weapon; it competes with electric clubs for a good melee weapon with low STR. Exotic Weapon kind of blows; you're effectively losing 2 dice (no specialization), but the Monowhip is very concealable, better reach, better damage, and Physical. It mostly suffers if Arsenal's MA rules are used; they can't be TWS'd, and they don't play nice with a lot of the martial arts styles, whereas taser clubs work with both.

On the other Hand: If you can use the Monowhip, you can use an ordinary whip as well. Instant Bondage and Indiana Jones Impersonations!

Could you use both kinds with one skill? I mainly ask because I can easily foresee some saying that you'd need one skill for a normal whip and a separate one for the Monowhip (I disagree with this, but I can see it happening).

Exotic Melee Weapon(Whips) < = not allowed?

The Idea is that Each Exotic Weapon requires a Different Skill.
Exotic Weapon - Whips
Exotic Weapon - MonoWhip.

I would likely allow one skill to cover both, personally, since Exotic Weapon - Laser covers all Lasers except the emplaced Vehicle Laser (which is likely covered by Gunnery, though not sure about that one).

The exotic weapon skill is a dumb idea in my eyes anyway . .
Just because the Laser-Pistol does not fire bullets but a stream of light i need to completeley relearn how to aim a barrel and pull a trigger while assisted by smartlink technology?
Yeah, sure . . whatever you say . .

Indeed...

Well if we don't use the current arbitrary standards, we have to use other equally arbitrary standards!

~Umi

I had a technomancer use one. A stealthsamurai build using biowires/acceleration.
The exotic weapon skill was used via Biowires, as a complex form, with a sprite using Stability on it. (the whole node, actaully, but also that program in specific)
I think my other plan was to smartlink it(it does nothing, but it does make it an electronic device) and use Stability directly on the whip.

People always freaked out when he used the whip, because the weapons have a certain reputation... but it never ended badly. For our side.


Also, I'm of the mind that Exotic Weapons should instead be made into Exotic Weapon GROUPS - lasers cover all lasers, monowire covers both garrotes and whips, Polearms net you all those funky things like halberds from Arsenal. Flamethrowers work on all flamethrowers. Laser Designators on all Laser Designators
And then further allows specialization by specific weapon in the group. IE Lasers(redline +2). To some extent, it already does work like this, but falls apart in some edge cases like.... which skill you use for Monowhips vs Garrotes vs Mono-garrotes vs Regular Whips. It seems like there should be some crossover here, you know? On a side note, there needs to be an exotic group for Ranged Cyber-Implant weapons, and Melee Cyber-implant weapons. because if a samurai wants to use implanted weapons, it would be nice if they had one skill that covered all that funky built-into-your-body stuff.

I can understand making exotic skills rarer..... but they should be just as good as the "main" skills with the right training.
As is, the only way to get a specialization on an exotic skill is through the Martial Arts clause that allows MA as a spec on weapon skills. Which I find kinda stupid.

Do you use the same skill for garroting as whipping? :/ Otherwise, sure.

No, the point is that you use a different skill for each garrote and each whip. Between those items, those take 4 different weapon skills to use them all.
IE: the "Oh GOD WHY can't i use the whips skill I ALREADY have to use this DIFFERENT whip!" factor.

Technically the Whips one does include the usage of Chains...

~Umi

I only asked on the Exotic skill for the whip weapons because that is something I wasn't entirely clear on, but I think I'll continue ruling that there is one skill for all whips.

Udoshi, I asked because you said, "monowire covers both garrotes and whips". That seemed like you said the same skill (not a Group, just a category like Automatics) for a garrote and a whip.

Monowhips and regular whips could be very different in weight, in a fashion akin to lightsabers and regular swords. That would make handling them significantly different.
The issue here is that Shadowrun doesn't have a system of defaulting skills to other skills.

You missed this critical detail.
how are you confusing whips and garrotes? A whips skill that covers all whips, a garrotes skill that covers all garrotes, and a monowire skill that covers all monowire based weapons seems...... (i'm going to be really blunt here)
.... really easy to grasp. Where's the confusion?

It also seems that All4BigGuns agrees with me.

See, you did it again: "a monowire skill that covers all monowire based weapons". *This*, as I said, makes no sense. That's why I asked you twice what the heck you meant. A garrote and a whip (of any kind) are very different. You might as well have a skill that covers all steel-based weapons.

I can see *maybe* having one skill for whips and monowhips (though they're probably very different, honestly), and I could certainly see one skill for garrotes and mono-garrotes. I don't see one skill covering monowhips and monogarrotes *together*, so I did you the courtesy of making sure that's what you intended to say. I wasn't sure, because you used the word 'GROUPS', but what you described a) didn't sound like a Skill Group, and b) still doesn't make sense to have garrotes and whips in the same category of any kind.

I don't see where All4BigGuns agrees with you, but their opinion doesn't seem important anyway.