So. I do not think Shock damage would be vaible, since you can just use shock gloves or shock frills. ice, fire, (sand?, light?) what do you suggest

Sand. Ignores armor, IIRC.

What do you want to do? There are some benefits to most of them.

I like blast for the visual effect -- fists that hit like explosions! Plus, good for knocking people on their arse.

Sound ignores (most) armor, too, but is the opposite of stealthy.
Fire has some secondary uses, like lighting cigarettes.
Sand makes me think of Sandman from Spider-man 3: http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTM4...X485_SY323_.jpg. Works best, if you're a Vampire with Mist Form.

eventually, they're all good. Even metal, if you're dice pool is good enough for a ignore-armor-called shot

It's more of a style and theme question.

Sound is far and away the best against people, but you can't hurt vehicles/drones/barriers with it outside of shenanigans like Vicious Blow. If you aren't going to be using Sound it should be because you want to punch tanks in half, in which case you should probably take an element that does not have a corresponding elemental defense for armor (ie, not Fire, because people can have fire resistant armor), and you would want an element that has some particular nasty effect against vehicles. Sand is a good choice (no special armor upgrade, vague magic teaparty effects that might help against drones and stuff), so is Acid (unlike Combat spells, Elemental Strike does not create only temporary acid; it will continue to melt things).

Sonic is just insane against anything biological or even spiritual, thanks to complete armor negation and disgustingly good secondary effects.

If you want a quieter and less lethal alternative to Sonic, the Smoke element also ignores armor and inflicts a decent dice pool modifier (although without the "stun" capabilities.)

Ice is a somewhat overlooked choice, getting all the bonuses of standard Cold damage, but also forcing Crash Tests on vehicles and slipping tests on living foes.

For a fist adept, Metal element is also potentially pretty powerful, adding +2 DV at the cost of a mere +2 AP. If you're going for one-punch devastation, combine this with bone lacing for punches that rival even the strongest melee weapons at up to (STR/2) + 5P.


~Umi

On a sidenote, doing a similiar thing with a Mystic Adept is also a possibility.

I'm fond of a custom FireWater aura, using Metal and any AP-Half element(like fire). Acid is surprisingly deadly as well, especially at high levels.

For pure DV, I would just use Critical Strike. Along with Martial Arts thats an easy +9 to unarmed attacks.

And if you also add the bone lacing and the Metal elemental effect, that turns into +14, don't it?

~Umi

Electric Shocks.
Higher Power Stick'n'Shock

Metal really isn't ever worth it. You're trading half+2 AP for 2 DV. Yeah, it does get you the biggest DV value, but people only need 8 armor to break even and past that Metal is just worse. This is especially bad because one of the big draws of not using Sound is breaking stun-immune things, and Metal is counterproductive for that.

In the end, it comes down to what Makki and some others have said. What sort of flavor are you looking for?

Do you want to get your DV as high as (meta)humanly possible?
Do you want to bypass armor?
Are you looking for interesting additional affects?
What of the above elements fits the style for the character your building?

All of the elements are viable (including metal) if you know what you want to use and build toward that.

*shrugs*
neat idea would be water(make them fall down and wet) and then electricity(shock somebody who is now wet and lying on the ground)

Actually, thats something I've never looked at. Is it possible to get 2 different elemental fists? One for each fist?

You can get them all, pokeman style.
But you can always only use one at a time, pokeman style.

How do they work. I cant find anything about that. does it give your "fists" the effects of said element but does damage based on your unarmed DV, or does it apply a secondary effect?

Both.
Electroshock for example uses your unarmed DV, then applies the minus half armor thing.
And then there's the secondary effect of -2 dice even if the target did not take damage, or however that works with stick and shock ammo . .

Cold ignores half armor, and is as stealthy as you could ask for.

Is there anything that helps smash through barriers, and if so, do elemental effects stack with that and halve barrier rating?

Smashing Blow adept power

Ah, so that is still in SR4 then.
Does it stack with the elemental effect halving thing?

Obviously, this power needs an Orgasm element.

No. It gives you AP - half impact. It does not modify your normal AP.
It does not even work to combine those at all. Each of the powers sets your damage to a certain element.

How about one hand with water element and combo with the other hand's shock glove.

I dont think it works that way. Otherwise, you'd have fisty adepts watering farms, fixing draughts, etc.

There is no effect that is limited to a single hand. Even if there were you would still only attack with one of the two.

Metal isn't all bad. Depends on the target... lets say your spirit is attacking other spirits while materialized. Their only armor is ItNW... effectively giving the spirit +2 damage with no increase in armor (+2 armor only applies if the target has armor to begin with). Your other option is natural weapon... again only works while materialized and then your best bet is natural + elemental aura (which the spirit can't control and can't turn off by strict raw). Lightly armored NPC's will have trouble with it as well.


Also the only stun immune target in the game is vehicles. Barriers still take damage from stun (reread the damaging and breaking barriers section). Otherwise you make the argument that a normal unarmed human can't break through a weak barrier like drywall or plate glass with his fists and feet. (stronger barriers will just take a long time to shoulder your way through since they'll soak the damage more likely than not; case in point shouldering your way through a door).

The various adept marital arts powers don't work with unarmed weapons. So if you armed one hand, not the other, both *should* work.

Frankly, I think it's all gimmicky and handwaving at that point.

Which is why you do the dual-element aura with metal and an AP HALF element. half of 2 is 1, so you're still coming out ahead on damage.

metal and sound together is pretty hilarious, for example. +2 armor to OH WAIT YOU DON'T GET ANY.

Hah marital arts! More seriously though, I don't quite get what you are trying to say. Of course a single character could have energy aura (which works with weapons) and the adept power elemental strike active at the same time. But you cannot use an armed and an unarmed attack in the same Action. Additionally even if both attacks were unarmed only one of the effects would apply to either attack.

@Udoshi: it does not work that way:



So either way you only ever get one.

Electricity with a bit of Critical Strike thrown in. The secondary effect is great, and the counter-mod (a common one) can be overpowered.

Any vehicle you can hit risks a shutdown period and a reboot. Don´t expect to kill a tank, but drones are fair game. Not moving for several seconds while in melee range should be deadly enough.

At one point I was trying to stat up Link, as a joke character for a game, and was trying to figure out a way to represent the various Elemental arrows - light, fire, etc.

I figured elemental aura on an arrow would do the trick. It makes sense, right? Make magic flaming arrow, arrow does extra damage when it hits.
But it actually doesn't because its not actually a melee attack. (it IS an easy houserule though)

But then I noticed something interesting.
Its super dumbly worded, but raw: All of your attacks count as Elemental. The DV boost is only for melee hits.
"Attacks are treated as cold, electricity, fire or some other elemental damage as appropriate to the aura". They forgot the melee restriction in the 4th sentence.

Enjoy your Laser(okay, Light Element) Machineguns.

Haha, that's the stuff i like, Udoshi.

ok.. I got my unarmed DV to 12p... and using Sound element.. so does that mean they 0 armor (unless they have sound dampening equipment or spells)? so basically I just about one shot anyone. even the trolls If I do not, well they get some mega nausea and deafening from that Guitar chord ( distinctive style, would that work for the negative quality?)

Yup. You would however be emitting sounds for the whole duration not only on attacks

awesome, so I am my own asskickin music band XD lol.

LOL.

Does that mean you come with your own theme music?

basically seems that way, just no vocals... usually >:3

Better add in that Knowledge Skill: Singing.

Edit: Oh god, you are a melee Bard. Punching people while singing.

Raiden, if your street name isn't something like "Tunes" .... I'm'a gonna have to HIT you. ;D

"My voice gives me super strength!"

i tried something like that with a cyber samurai once . .
all the voice-work available used together to do the ares screech sonic rifle with his mouth . .
and also to play his own soundtrack . .

and i think i had "can hear the soundtrack" as an edge in some character too . . .

How is it like to be farting at maximum force?

Fart jokes? That's what we've come to?

Back to punching with the rage of music god then.

disturbingly effective by using it as a release for poisonous gas actually . .
yes, i did that too . . no, not the same character . .

Slaanesh approves.

I think i mentioned it in another thread, but i've wanted to do this idea as a Free Spirit for some time now. A mix of spells and spirit powers to be the Free Spirit of Rock. Why use the rage of a music god when you can BE one?

Also, MetalAcid aura is possibly the scariest combination of elements you can have in an aura. Its not as COOL, but its totally broken.

It'd be broken if you could have more than one effect going at the same time i guess.