Mine's older, bought and built in the late 1980's and still going strong.

This is wrong on so many levels... one in 1e and 2e DnD... experience charts were generally exponential until the mid to higher levels. Also.. .level was secondary to experience for determining power level. 1.1million xp would be a 15th level rogue and only a 13th level wizard! (so 15th vs 15th level kinda missed the point).

For this reason multi-classed characters advanced slower but were generally only a single level behind their single classed counterparts. IE: a 3/3 Fighter/Thief had roughly the same xp as a level 4 fighter. So your flat out assertion of 2/2 vs 4 is provably false on it's face in your analogy.


The other problem is the conceit that a mystic adept needs to be a full adept and a full mage with NO REAL SACRIFICES.


Elfenlied as always has been very vocal with his minority view that it's perfectly fine. All I know is when I find the guys who think it's fine... great I'll make a mystic adept and make their lives miserable. The rest of us who've actually played viable mystic adepts under ALL prior editions where the magic had to be split... know full well what havoc we can wreak on unsuspecting GM's with this questionable choice.

Those who like 3rd ed... will remember quite well the mystic adept rules in Magic in the Shadows... which were the best of any edition so far. They also required a split... and made it clear the character was an adept first... and a mage second. The adept spent PP to buy mystic ability the same as any other adept power.. mystic PP's were lost first due to magic loss or BGC or the like always... if the mystic PP were lost permanently the character would permanently become only an adept unable to act as a mage ever again by spending points on it again. So yes, all those saying the 3rd ed is like 5th ed are smoking something when it comes to mystic adepts. IIRC: some people would use Gaesa to reduce the PP cost of the ability to make aspected mystic adept mages of sorts.

Having a Mystic Adept have the full power of both a Magician and an Adept is like having a Magician or Adept that doesn't have to worry about Essence and can take all the 'ware of a Street Samurai.

~Umi

No. Wrong across the board. You're thinking 3e (worst multiclassing rules of all time, by the way). Being a 2/2/2 fighter/,age/thief in AD&D requires a tiny fraction of the experience it takes to get to 6 in any of them individually, and rightly so, because a 2/2/2 fighter/mage/thief isn't a 6th level character. It's a 2nd level character. Yeah, you've got some perks a single-class character wouldn't have, but you've also got some limitations a single-classed character wouldn't have (depending on the classes in question), and you paid extra for them.

Likewise, a SR4 3/3 mystic adept isn't anything like a 6 Magic mage or adept. Both of them are far more powerful. Now your Magic 6 Mystic Adept is a Mag 6 character instead of a Magic 3 one. This is a good thing. Yeah, sure, I'll concede a Magic 6 MysAd has a bit on a Magic 6 Adept, but you paid extra for it, so it works. Maybe the balance isn't quite right, but it's FAR closer than the insane idea that a 3/3 Mystic Adept is equal to a 6 Mage or 6 Adept.



No, that's the entire point of my analogy. Claiming a Magic 3/3 Mystic Adept is the right power balance to a 6 Mage is insane and wrong in the same way as claiming a 2/2/2 AD&D fighter/mage/thief is equal to a 6 wizard. It shows a complete lack of understanding of what those numbers actually mean.

Ah, yeah, that'd explain it.

That said, Mystic Adepts in SR work more like that than they do like multiclassing in other editions. When you play a Mystic Adept, you have an even split of power - you buy each point of Magic at full price, then allocate it to one use or the other. That's almost an exact mirror of the 3e multiclassing - you essentially "buy up" your class levels at full price, allocating each new rank to one or the other class. Hence the comparison.

~Umi

The cost difference between Adept and Mystic Adept is not great enough compared to the benefits.

Yeah, spending an extra 5 BP compared to a basic Adept in SR4 was nothing, especially since you were actually saving 5 BP if you're comparing to a Magician instead.

In SR5, you don't pay anything to be a Mystic Adept rather than a mere Magician or Adept. The cost is shunted over to the PP price, which, even at the Errata values of 30 Karma for 6 PP, is only the equivalent of 15 BP in SR4, which is easily offset by no longer having to split your Magic pool between spells and powers.

~Umi

or, to put it another way... right now, mystic adepts are getting to be magic 6 adepts as well as magic 6 magicians in most respects, but are not paying remotely enough cost.

i mean, at least if they had to buy up their magic attribute twice, i could say that they paid a price for it (even though just being able to pay that price, having that option, is worth something all by itself). but they don't. 30 karma? that should be enough to qualify for magic 3, at best (karma cost for attributes appears to be 5 x new rating, so buying from 0 ==> 3 should be 5 + 10 + 15 = 30). and that's at the proposed errata'd value... it just gets worse and worse with every single point of magic a mystic adept buys, where they get doubled karma from it.

by the time you've got doubled magic 6, that's 100+ points of attributes being purchased there. and at the very least, i could look at that and feel that they paid the right amount for the magic attribute itself... although not for the opportunity to buy that attribute in the first place, and especially not for the opportunity to double the benefit of all their future karma.

Small correction, they can leave chargen with 14 total points worth of magic.
(With an quality)

Which is amazing to me, as there are some people that do not see this as broken. *sigh*

they probably want to play mystic adepts.

I like my SR4A Mystic Adept, I really, really do. I have yet to even attempt to recreate him in SR5, but I would expect that he does not get much better, unless I take advantage of the lunacy that is the Mystic Adept Rules. Problem is that if I was to take advantage, he would not really be the character I have been playing over the last several years. *sigh*

Mystic Adepts do NOT get the full power of a Mage or Adept. To begin with, Adepts range in Magic priority from D to B, while Mystads are from C to A. This means that the Adept is going to have a lot more going for him by way of skills, especially since he can assign his free skill from Magic priority wherever he wants (and doesn't miss out on near as much if he just uses Special Attribute Points to get his Magic up). Then, the Mystic Adept has to spend 60% of his POSSIBLE chargen Karma on those power points. and has the remaining 20 to spend on both Adept and Mage stuff. Even if he's attempting the Mage+ thing, he'd have to spend 18 of that just to have a Force 3 Power Focus. The Mage, meanwhile, can do that AND get a Mentor Spirit (5 Karma), AND get a Spell Focus 4 (8 Karma), and let's say Focused Concentration 4 (16 Karma), and have 3 potential Karma remaining. The full Adept gets to have higher Attributes and/or Skills, and further can spend that potential 50 Karma on a Weapon Focus 3 (9 Karma) Qi Foci totaling Force 9 (18 Karma), a Mentor Spirit (5 Karma, and some of the choices are truly awesome for Adepts), Catlike/Natural Athelete (7 Karma), and STILL has 11 potential Karma to work with.

A pure Adept is better at being an Adept, and a pure Mage is better at being a Mage. The truth is, versatility taxes are one of the most frequently mishandled things in all of game design - 50% of one thing and 50% of another does not equal 100% of the effectiveness/game influence a character is supposed to have.

Keep on cheerleading for the freelancers Rhat.

You completely miss the point... and your own argument falls flat on it's face. The 30 karma you complain about spending on power points is chump change compared to what it should cost.

Skillwise the mystic adept can simply ignore his magical skills altogether and only lose out on 1 point of magic for the option to buy them later (for cheap! they got rid of the double cost for first rank). Really just putting a few ranks in summoning for spirits on the fly and maybe in counterspelling for some extra defense and you're set. No need for any spells then. And if you do have some spells... 1 rank in spellcasting (for a mere 2 karma) is all you really need to make use of them!

Then you ignore that future advancement costs for the mystic adepts are cheap... each time they buy magic they get *2* points. Not 1 point like an adept... not 1 point like a pure mage... but 2 points... one PP and 1 magic. They don't need to make any tradeoffs.

They can also advance PP by initiating like a pure adept (something which should have been left to pure adepts and pure adepts only). So between initiating and buying magic... you're looking at 2PP and 1 magic each time they advance both together.


Unlike most, I think adepts took it hard on the chin in this edition. Whoever argued for their costs (Critias based
on his comment in another thread about looking in on the Magic section and arguing for changes)... either screwed it up badly or applied a massive nerf hammer. Technical adepts are no longer good (their costs got doubled), social adepts again got hurt badly. The only thing which seemingly went down was the price of improved reflexes and that's no longer as good as it used to be. (each rank is only d6+1 additional initiative. nowhere near enough to get 1 additional pass for sure as in 4th edition!). Improved physical attribute is also noticably buffed but still questionable... (a full PP for each point of attribute enhancement). Attribute boost took it on the chin... it only changes the number of dice... it doesn't temporarily boost the limits as it should (it was one of the better powers I thought in the past).

Combat sense took it on the chin... danger sense was broken out of it to be it's own power... so it's now 0.75 per rank to do what you used to be able to do with 0.5.

Critical strike again, doubled in cost... so damage goes up by pure strength now... So you're better off taking attribute boost over this! (0.25... roll the dice and probably add 1-4 damage from the temporary strength boost).

Social adepts still have a lot going for them I feel... they only lost some of their more obscene dice pool bonuses (though they also got nailed by the technical adept skill cost doubling). Perception also got nailed hard... it's also now 0.5 instead of 0.25 per level.

The real lack of a 1/3 PP cost step shows badly... as a lot of the powers really are kind of hard to justify at 1/2 and I can see the argument that they were too cheap at 1/4.

Overall I think we'll continue to see many bio-adepts... Muscle replacement... increases both str & agility for 1 point of magic (bodyware). For a mere 25k per rating. Muscle toner/aug... for much less essence and about twice the cost can do the same. (I can see 'used' muscle toner being very popular! after a few sessions and a hot load of nuyen sitting in the bank account 0.24essence & 16k per point of rating.). Not only that buying back magic from a lower value 2->3 is much cheaper than buying it from 6->7...

Something certainly needs to be done about advancement - but at chargen, things work out pretty much how they should.

That said, even in the situation you've mentioned, they're still worse Adepts out of the gate due to having less Karma to spend on Adept and having lower Attributes and/or Skills. They have something that is measurably less than the full power of either side.

Also, I love how you seem to think that it's impossible to legitimately disagree with you.