Ok, so I'm going to take a look at what I precive as being the street sam's actual Strengths and weaknesses compared to adepts at both character creation and during advancement.

Now the biggest thing that I have seen people up in arms about is the wireless bonus on wired reflexes. however, this bonus is the only way to get past the +4 attribute bonus cap in the game, and the only way to stack reaction enhancment in the game. so at the start with wired reflexes 2 and reaction enhancment 2 you can start with +4 reaction and +2d6 initiative dice. You pay a heafty price for this that is even steeper due to the fact that you CAN'T get alpha in character creation on Wired reflexes 2. So with Alpha Reaction enhancers you pay a total of 3.48 essence and 151120 nuyen. Compaired to Synaptic accelerator 2's cost of 1 ess and 190k nuyen this seems pretty steep. The real trade off that you are looking at is 2 reaction for 2.48 essc and 50k Nuyen.

Compared to an Adept's increased reflexes 2 at 2.5 pp and gives +2 Reaction and +2d6 inititive dice. Compared to Wired reflexes 2 adept wins hands down. Compared to Synaptic boosters Sam Wins, IMO. EDIT: Adrenal boost ads +2 Ini per level is a free action to use last for one round and you take drain equal to the number of levels you have. .25 PP per level. However upon reading increased reflexes again it states "the increase cannot be combined with other technological or magical increases
to Initiative."

Aluminum bone lacing is 1 essc and cost 18k Nuyen. It gives 4 damage absorbing dice (2 body 2 armor) and an unarmed damage code of STR+2 P. For an adept to get the equivalent of this they would take Mystic armor 4 (total of 2 pp), Killing hands (.5) and critical strike (.5). This is not a 100% apples to apples comparison, the Sam would still have an extra +1 to his damage code, but the adept can damage spirits.

Muscle replacement 2 would cost 2 essc and 50K and give +2 STR and Aglity. To do the same with Muscle Augmentation and toner would cost .8 essc and 126K. An adept would have to spend 4 PP on improved attribute to achieve this.

Adrinaline pump 2 gives a +2 bonus to all physical attributes (Incompatible with other reflex enhancement) for 2 +1d6 rounds afterwards you take "drain" equal to the number of rounds it was active and you ignore injury mods while it is active. Also it is a free action to initiate. There is no direct comparison to the adept at this point. Attribute boost is .25 PP per level effects one attribute, takes a simple action to activate and last for a number of turns equal to hits generated during activation.


Cyber eyes 3 cost .4 essc and have 12 capacity. With that you can get Flare comp, Low Light, Smartlink, vision enhancement 3. Cyber eyers are .4 essc and you can get similar bonuses (i'm getting tired of flipping through my book) Enhanced perception is .5 pp per level.

a smartlink installed in a natural eye or in a pair of cybereyes is more effective than a smartlink installed in an external device'

Sams can implant an ultrasound sensor, which is all sorts of amazing.

Lets look at advancment really quick then i'm done.

Initiation cost 10+ (3xnew rating) so 13, 16, 19, 21, 24. and 27 for your first six initiations.
Raising magic from 6-7 is 35 karma.
If all you are after is power points then taking Adept power point over a meta magic 6 times, is far more efficient than raising your magic for power points.

Meanwhile what can the Sam do with this sort of Karma?
At 13 he can raise one active skill from 0 to 3. or 2 skills from 0-2 or up a single skill from 5-6
at 29 (total) he could take a skill from 6-8 (ok he would really need 30)
at 120 total (the cost of 6 initiations) you can take a skill from 0 to 10 or one at 6 to 12. Or take 10 skills at 3
Or take an attribute from 2-7(Ok you need 5 more karma) or take an attribute from 5 to 8 and have some change leftover.

So IMO i don't see a huge gap in the balance. The high power points are amazing in advancement, but a street sam can also continue to advance his body with his nuyen (adepts can buy focuses but that will require more karma) while becoming very skilled or greatly improving his attributes. Sams and Adepts are not apples to apples. Adepts have no hard cap on their power points, but while they are initiating a pragmatic sam is learning more about fire fights, learning to haggle at the nearest car lot, running track and lifting weights. I find that as games go on my Sams have been many times more versatile than adepts, and could have enough flexibility to be useful in almost any situation.

I haven't worked with the system long enough to really make any hard judgements, but your assessment thus far seems reasonable. Each archtype has certain strengths and certain weaknesses, and overall they're roughly of the same caliber (assuming they are built for comparable purposes), even if they both have rough patches, and even if some of those rough patches probably should be tweaked in coming errata or splat books.

~Umi

yeah, while a ton of the wireless bonuses don't make logical sense and will need to be tweeked I can see what they were going for in game balance.

Unfortunately I can't even comment on Mystic Adepts. They currently have their cake, eat it, and take yours.

and of course, there's still the option for an adept to mix in cyberware when it is the better option...

We have yet to see how badly adepts are hosed by background count. The Home Turf quality (the only place in the SR5 core book where I could find anything about background count) seems to indicate that it provides a penalty to Magic tests. That would only affect a few abilities. If, however, it works like SR4 where you have to give up a number of power points equal to the background count, that would be a pretty huge con in the adept column.

I haven't read the magic section all together yet. Good to know that BC is going to be in a splat book. We use to have some interesting grenades that my buddy came up with that created a background count. (some sort of squid ink from an awakened squid that caused BC. I'm pretty sure the squid was actually in one of the books.) or they might of been in a book and I don't recall. that was 5 years ago

If adept uses 1 more powerpoint he wins pretty nastily, getting +3 Reaction and +3 iniative dice.

Ok your right, I should of addressed the level 3 boost. it is 3.5 pps and the highest possible initiative bonus for a non-hotsim VR character at chargen. In this one instance the Adept is superior. It may even be enough to get potentially 4 passes if you built for it.

That's not as easy to do, though. The particular 'ware that they'd get costs a hell of a lot more, and they can't cram in as much due to the fact that the lesser of cyber/bio essence loss is no longer halved.

Augmented Adepts might still be a possibility, but I think their "strictly better" status has been nicely revoked.

No they still are - improved attribute has been lowered (to 1pp/lvl as opposed to 3) but it is still 5x the magic/essence cost of your toners. Optimally adepts will still get some ware.

If the nuyen costs aren't a concern, sure. But given the existence of Qi Foci, the dramatically increased costs of the relevant ware, and the fact that they have to make some sort of notable mechanical sacrifice to be able to afford that ware...

If they were half the essence I might agree but the difference is still too large (at least for me).

Might be the sort of thing that takes a few characters to really figure out - but I think you give too much up to be able to afford that 'ware for it to ALWAYS be better.

I'm willing to bet I can make a tweaked out hyper specialist bio/adept with no problem. Unfortunately those types are usually just a one trick pony.

Adepts CAN take the exceptional Attribute Edge to get to 7 magic(yes, it works for magic and resonance now it seems) while the Sam CAN'T take it to get 7 points of essence.
And even if he could, the adept could take them both too then i guess . . This only gets worse when you go into MysAds of course . .

Currently, Adepts win when it comes to pure speed, whereas the Sam wins in regards to higher attribute baseline and higher durability.

I recall reading that you can only take one exceptional attribute.

After I initialy explained my group that Adepts are now stronger than Streetsams i went to prove that and build a Streetsam.
And now I think i was false about streetsams and she rocks and you are completly right. Though i'm not sure if our groups adept will in fact be faster.

21 Dice for Heavy Pistols and Assault Rifles (Agi 11 in 2 cyberarms, made possible by exceptional attribute, skill 6, +2 Smartlink, +2 Specialisation)
17 Dice for Monowhip (If you can't specialise - on the otherhand the Exotic Melee Weapon Skill doesn't even really exist, so there's that.)
12 Soak + whatever worn Armor (Like 12 for armor jacket)
8 RC on Ares Alpha (2 build in, 3 Gas Vent 3, 3 Gyrostab in Cyberarm)
INI 13+3d6
Limits:
Physical 5.33 -> 6
Mental 5.66 -> 6
Social 4.016 -> 5

still, even if there is only one exceptional attribute an adept can start with magic 7.
no idea how, seeing as you can't have more magic than essence+initiation grade.
still, it means an adept can have 5,99 points of essence-loss from ware.
and still have 1 point worth of powers to use in combination with that!


Hold on, that's a good question:
Why can people start with 7 magic if initiation in char gen is not allowed but your maximum magic rating is still essence+initiation grade?

It's 7+initiation grade if you have exceptional attribute.

Your Limit for the Attribute is Essence+Initiation Grade.
And your Essence can't be higher than 6. So even with
the exceptional Attribute, your Limit is still 6 Magic then.

Let's not forget that an Adept can walk through a cyberscanner without a worry in the world.

Most street samurai can't.

So Adepts have a MUCH easier time getting through security checkpoints, crossing borders, or taking a public flight.

No matter what formula you use, the important part is that Exceptional Attribute adds +1 to it.

Airports are very likely to have mages assensing the passanger, so not really(atleast straight out of chargen)

Does Assensing can give a list of the powers (or spells known) in SR5? Otherwise, a lot of implants are specifically labeled as restricted or forbidden, while as far as the books went, only a handful of countries ban all magic, and the default setting (UCAS/Seattle) only restrict spell cast above a certain Force.

Really? That sounds more like the GM's being an uncreative dick. Mages are extremely rare, and have a capability that some would pay a lot of money to employ. Why on earth would any mage be working as a magical TSA screener?

All an adept should have to do to not be caught is say that he's a mundane, and then act like one. Barring a sudden change in SR5, Adepts are not dual natured and do not light up the astral any more than a normal person would. To determine if a person is awakened (doesn't even determine which type- just that they're magically active in some manner), requires the individual to actively look and study each individual person. Multiply that by the many thousands of people going through Sea-Tac every day, and it just wouldn't be feasible to have someone assessing each and every passenger.

What would be very likely, in the ordinary course of business, is that the airport or significant boarder crossing hires out for its magical security rather than having to afford the salary cost of a single full time mage. That magical security probably maintains wards around certain areas and (if the rules on binding spirits haven't changed too much) have a couple spirits bound to the property itself to watch the place, or maybe assign a few tasks to the head of security so that a spirit could be on call for emergencies. If the airport has more money, maybe a sort of FAB chamber that passengers have to walk through in order to get on the plane so that any undeclared magically active people/items will get caught by the mundane TSA agents. They may also have a mage go astral and fly there from the home office in cases of emergencies... but in the ordinary course of business, it would be extremely unlikely that an airport would have a mage.

If it won't add anything to the story, just let the poor adept go through and scan his fake SIN like all the other PCs. If you want to throw a monkey wrench into the adept's escape plan? Have the magical advisor to Her Mystical Holiness, Shamalamalama, personally on the floor of the airport and mistakenly grab the PC by the collar (after assessing the PC) and start berating him for not being ready to go on as part of the adept interpretive dance troupe that's here to welcome her Holiness to Seattle. Said advisor then insists on personally escorting the PC so that he won't be late again. Magical TSA agents, bah.

As to whether sammies have to worry about scanners, that depends on your level of grittiness. Cyber has a bunch of little hurdles, probably from the heritage of cyberpunk, that don't matter in a more high action/adventure/cinema type game. Licenses, repairs, or cyber-psychosis doesn't much matter when you're swinging from dirigibles and having shoot outs on the top of the Space Needle. However, when you start putting the screws to the PCs, and start bringing those small conflicts into the story for cyberware, the magical PCs don't... have... anything.

I suppose the GM could start pulling in the whole 'fear against the awakened' and paranoia leading to torches and pitchforks... but the awakened aren't like Orks. You can't pick them out from a crowd. If the PC plays it smart, keeps their head down, and doesn't advertise the fact they're awakened, then the level of conflict of the gritty campaign just kinda passes over their head.

I suppose the GM could use background counts... but that doesn't provide any interaction with the setting/story. Ultimately, it becomes just another modifier, and if omnipresent, an uninteresting one.

Maybe you could get some mileage out of the local awakened community and make finding a talismonger that's more than a snake oil salesman something rare, but I've found that most of the awakened conflicts come from outside the PC- there is a varied scope, from gremlins to shedim, and eventually up to dragons but there is no intrinsic conflicts to being awakened that can be mined in a campaign focusing on the gritty aspects of the setting. And this, I think, comes directly from the fantasy heritage that Shadowrun draws from.

The more I think about this, the more I think the Adept vs Sam divide is ultimately caused by krazygluing cyberpunk and fantasy together without regard to the nuances, in a sort of a youthful naivety. But I wouldn't be surprised if the average Shadowrun player has been playing off and on for over a decade by now, and there really isn't an excuse for perpetuating that youthful naivety.

What SR desperately needs, and from every indication SR5 failed to achieve (and is really more SR4, only with different rules), is an avenue to play the awakened in stories that focus more on the intrinsic conflicts of being awakened, much like the selling of one's soul for cyberware.

So you are telling me that even though there are people walking around with the innate power of a small bomb and they wouldn't be monitored at air ports? lols. you are funny. Even at one mage in 1000 airports would still find a way to hire enough to keep a staff on hand. Actually I would expect that to be government mandated. Besides even if it takes more time to get people on plains by assensing each and every one, do you think TSA or whatever private security force that replaced it cares? Now how effective they are at their job is another thing. Not every mage is the magic 6 shadowrunner that gets 10s of thousands of nuyen in a night. I would expect them to have relatively low magic and assessing with a mage sec supervisor who is a bit better at his job.

Max already covered it (your new limit on magic is simply +1 after the quality). Here's my question, given the order of operations for character creation, can you purchase that extra magic point with special ATT points or do you have to purchase it with karma at the end?

I see the order as being a loose guideline. as loath as I am to say it you can use the exceptional attribute points to gain magic 7 rather than spend the 35 karma.

I feel the same way, but some games are really strict on the order of things. Like The Game That Causes Cancer, skills come before feats, otherwise you can't properly qualify for certain things when you're meant to.

Even in that you can go back to tweak you skills if you need to in order to get some specific feat.
Really if GM tries to be a dick about doing thinks in a trick order during chargen you can always crap the character and begin anew

Yeah, if its going to be a large international airport, they're going to have to have a wage mage actively looking for awaken and cross referencing their SINs and licenses to make sure they're legit.

On a smaller airport, Paracritters and handlers are cheaper and more available.

To assume just because the awakened are rare, doesn't mean that security wouldn't take them seriously as a threat to the public.

If anything the Street Sam with a number of concealed cyber should have an easier time getting through the airport. While their ware will set off the MAD scanners, considering almost every mundane has ware now, and the MAD only detects if ware is present and doesn't give you an exact list of all the ware installed, security would have to wave the Sammy through unless he clearly looks like a threat.

Also a lot of airports are probabley Megacorp funded and have securicorps for their security needs. I can totally see wage mages on rotation for anti magical threat security. After all to be Awakened requires a License

Magic in the Shadows pegged the awakened populace at 1%, but I haven't seen anything newer on the ratio of the awakened.

However this includes all variations. The standard full mages, adepts, aspected mages, and mystic adepts that the rules cover for normal PCs are obviously a part of that, but this number also includes dual natured individuals, those that can only enchant, those that can only assense, those with a knack that can only summon a single kind of spirit or cast only a single spell and nothing else. This also includes those that go insane, those that are untrained, and those that never knew they awakened in the first place. Now add in the fact that some/most Mentor spirits or Totems demand certain personalities that just aren't conducive to maintaining a job, let alone a soul crushing monotonous job for little pay.

These individuals can do things that the rest of humanity literally has no comprehension of and they have a monopoly on the manasphere. The corporations can't duplicate what these individuals have. This creates a scarcity but these corporations have more resources than any organization humanity has yet to experience. So it's trivially easy for a corporation to offer more money than an individual could conceivably spend in their lifetime if they go to work for the corporation, toe the corporate line, obey all of the corporation's rules, and basically sell their souls.

Sea-tac can't compete with the AAA's. If the mage is at all combat proficient, or can make spirits that are, the sixty billion different spec ops forces will gobble them up if they can. Even if they're not, and they're just capable of assensing, the AAA will shower them with money because they want an advantage at a board meeting or in negotiations. Hell, if some high muckety muck wants someone awakened in his entourage, just for the status, he can throw more money at the awakened just so that they can do party tricks.

What's left is all the mages that said there is no amount of money you could pay me so that I would use my magical abilities for pay. Which leaves the malcontents, the idealists, and those that just don't fit into the system. However if the corps can't control you through money, they'll use the law, and playing on the public's paranoia against the awakened, as even the most minor magical transgressions for the awakened tend to end up with the awakened in a dark hole with a magemask permanently glued to their face.

So while the governments may desire to institute TSA mages... they just can't compete for the sane awakened... and the rest are shadowrunners. Because lols, I am funny.

There will be plenty of corp mages willing to bind spirits, then loan their services for a hefty premium to security forces, where they serve as monitoring guards that assense incoming people. Those same mages are usually the ones that construct wards for money. It's a lucrative business, and you can definitely do worse than being a freelance security mage for hire. It's like being a legal shadowrunner.

or the airports just use various tech items or magic that are really good at telling if people like and make "are you awakened" a standard question asked any time you get on a plane.

a single net hit on analyze truth can really ruin your fun, and now that

(note: it is unlikely that "are you awakened" will be the only standard question, of course... i mean, you'll probably be asked if you have combat augmentations or training, weapons, illegal items, etc).

I have to agree that cyberware should be as common as dirt.
Magic is still rare.
Cyberware has been around since your grandfathers' day.

Datajacks and cybereyes are likely found in over half the SIN population.

And anyone who was ex military or ex security or even ex rescue worker will have serious cyberware.

Now I have to admit that anyone with zero essence is going to attract attention the way an individual of 7 foot tall and 300 pound of plus of pure muscle will.
That much cyberware mean they could potentially be very dangerous.
But in a busy airport they still likely see such individuals several times a day. .

As Moirdryd pointed out, international airports like Sea-Tac are corporate-run facilities. The airlines are corporate-owned. The passengers either are corporate employees on business travel or corporate-sanctioned touristic trips, and more often the important type than the rank-and-file.

And if the adept has masking and is carrying a sin that says he has a low grade talent with dancing?


Be pretty hard to tell if he was a 3 magic adept and a 8 magic adept.

I think a Wage Mage that could do that could make more money screening high security events.

Whenever I hear that using background counts is th primary mechanic for balancing the Awakened and that they should be used generously I can't help but wonder: if it's such a staple, why is it not in Core? While stuff like the mods on olfactory search tests from menstruating is?

An average sam is more metal than man, good luck trying to conceal all those cyberlimbs and booster clusters throughout the body and spinal column replacements on X-ray.

Also, just for you Stahl, because I like you. Quote from page 278-

Magic is a special Attribute that measures a character’s
magical power. Characters do not have a Magic Attribute
unless they select one of the priorities that specifically
provide one (see the Priority Table, p. 65). Magic
has a starting value from 1 to 6 (or 7 with the Exceptional
Attribute quality),

Yep, they can't catch every dangerous threat, but the point is that they'd be able to catch most. There of course have to be holes in the system, or else we wouldn't be able to do any Shadowruns.



I don't think xrays can do that. The Cyberware scanner has a hard time with a lot of high grades of cyberware and a lot of it. SR5 p366. The threshold to detect ware increase with the more ware and the higher its grade, so once again, because there are going to be a lot of people with ware, I can't imagine they'll want to waste their time scanning everyone that has some chrome in their system. With that said, a PC should almost always be stopped and require a face to work his word-romancy to insure everything goes smoothly for the Sammy.

And oddly, it seems that rating range and price of Cyberware scanners does not seem to be in the book. But I assume it's between 1-6 like it was in SR4. So it'll be hard for the scanner to get a lot of info on the sammy's ware.

Witch is followed by this:
"but you don’t have to settle for
that limit forever. You can go through a process called
Initiation(p. 324) that can enhance your abilities. The
maximum value of your Magic Attribute (if you have
one) is 6 + your Initiation level"

And even more annoyingly Bull flat out denied that it is in need of errata

The typical international airline grosses $1billion plus a year. TSA currently has an $8billion budget. There are 1000 "International airports" in the USA. of those only a handfull have actual international flights. The rest just have the honorary title for being big. That sounds like a pretty high security, and considering how many fly, high risk operation. As a corp with so much invested and on the line if "TSA" doesn't have sufficient astral security, you probably will provide your own.

If each of your team doesn't have a fear of being exposed at any time, you are probably playing shadowrun wrong.

Any medium-size airport will probably have someone who can Assence (p. 312) because that power puts pretty much every sensor to shame. In the immortal words of a great man "Assensing is straight up DAWG TIME! Awooawooooawoo!" It can determine if you are a technomancer or have gene treatments, and note if you are under the influence of anything. This is not resistable except using Masking (p. 326) and even then a skilled practitioner will note if you are using masking with a single net hit (if he can't get much other useful info he can still demand you drop the Masking or "You shall not ... PASS!!!"). No amount of skill will disguise this stuff from the Assense test.

Just one word for multi-object surveilance for awakened persons: Watchers

"Stay with this person <sending mental image of security officer> and tell him whenever someone with magical abilites walks within 2 meters of him."

Not foolproof, but then again: what is?

watchers typically have 2 dice for most things.

which means they have a 1 in 36 chance of critically glitching (and no chance of regular glitches), and not a very good chance of consistently even scoring a single hit.

anyone who doesn't like lots and lots of false positives and false negatives is going to need something better than watchers. anyone who is ok with that sort of accuracy could probably have people use a fortune-telling machine and get equally useful results.

Force-2 (Attribute) + Force/2 (Skill), to be precise. So a force 4 Watcher has 4 dice, a force 5 one has 6 dice. And 1 hit is sufficient to spot a (non-masked) awakened.

Edit: Although i have to admit the new drain-value for summoning watchers is a bit steep. The same drain as binding a "real" spirit. Since Spirits can do a watchers job far better it's probably just the limitations for bound spirits that give watchers a reason to get used at all.

Literally the only place in the rulebook background count is mentioned is in the Home Ground Quality.

Until the magic splatbook comes out, probably in 6 months to a year, it doesn't exist for SR5.

It exists, it just does not have any defined effect. Honestly, I would expect it to be much like it was in 4th Edition.

I expected cyberware to work much like 4th edition as well.

We can see how well that turned out.