Hi guys,

first of all two relevant passages from the book:

Skills:


Improved Ability Adeptpower:


I was thinking, why is everyone assuming that adepts can go beyond 12 and dont just reach the maximum rating at this power "faster/ earlier"?

It says, "skill rating is ranging from 1 ... to 12" and "this power increases the rating of a skill".

I know adepts could go til "maximum x 1,5" in sr4 but i dont get why it should be the same here.

Any ideas?

so your suggestion is that everyone except Adepts are allowed to have a 12 skill?

logic states that everyone is allowed to have the 12 skill which means that if this particular ability allows you to bring that up to 1.5x then 18 would be the maximum for an Adept with 12 skill + 6 power.

or are you saying if I brought a skill to 12 then bought the Adept power my Adept power would be useless? again, they would need to specify that sort of limitation & their wording implies that it can go above 12 for Adepts.

Yes, thats exactly what my suggestion was -.-. I just said, that adepts are reaching the final goal faster/ better/ easier; that is what my suggestion whould be and actual if you take the relevant passages its the only thing really "logic".



Very squishy. Should ... would.



So we have "The skill Rating is a numerical value ranging from 1 [...] to 12", we have: "The standard limit for skills is 12." and we have "This power increases the Rating of a [...] skill."

I dont see how "logic should state" any of your statements.

adjective: standard

1.
used or accepted as normal or average.

which means that under normal circumstances with nothing else modifying it. Then we have the Abnormal ability effecting it which states that you can go 1.5x the "Standard" limit.

You have a point.

Aside from what the rule says

If that power would not (sort of) augment the skill, why would anyone in their right mind, be learning it?

If we go by that logic, remember that specific rules trump general. If it increased the Skill Rating directly, the limit for IA would also go up; so instead of a rating 6 skill capping with 3 levels of IA, we'd have a skill level of 9 with a cap of 5. And because the specific rule says the new limit is skill x 1.5, the improvement can go on indefinitely.

Basically, your reading leads to a That Way Lies Madness interpretation that could break the game. Better to use Occam's razor and stick to the simple solution: It doesn't affect the base rating.

Except it cannot go on indefinitely. Max ranks in the power will be limited by magic, and total value would be limited by the skill cap. 6 skill, 6 magic and 6 ranks hits both caps immediately. Alternatively, it is rather simple to calculate max ranks of the skill before the power is added.

While I do not think this is how the power is supposed to work, I like it. It helps limit some of the massive advantages adepts seem to have over cyber lately. While the adept will be able to get to a skill cap faster than with cyber, it will eventually catch up. I like it. And as for why to take the power if it works like this. Raise a skill from 9 to 11, 42 karma 21 weeks training. Initiate 3rd time 19 karma 1 month, raise skill from 9 to 11.

I like CitM's interpretation. I think it is potentially -more- balanced than how it is used. But I am pretty sure the intention is to let adepts get a total skill value of 18-19. And then, as usual, the cyber adepts can get 20 with a reflex recorder.

That's still rather ridiculous. That allows an adept to start with a 12 skill ranking, before factoring in attributes or other bonuses. Way too much, in my opinion. Nine is bad enough.

Not to mention that the rules as written state that the improvement is capped at 1.5x rating, as opposed to being the improved rating being capped at 1.5x base rating. A pretty awful mistake, and I don't suggest that we should interpret the rules as they are written. If you really want to stick to RAW, it's pretty crazy, and the magic cap on an adept power rating becomes very relevant.

As to the interesting point by the OP about the rating of a skill being limited to 12 and how it limits that adept power. The question for me, again if we stick to RAW and don't try to interpret further, is which of these two rule snippets supersedes the other: "The skill Rating is a numerical value ranging from 1, ..., to 12", and "The maximum improvement possible is your current skill level x 1.5 (rounded up)." Shouldn't the second sentence also include something about the maximum improvement being capped at rating 12 total for the skill if that was the intent?

I think the whole adept power is worded too vaguely to begin with, and needs a well thought out errata.

The second line you are looking for is the skill ruling that the limit is 12, 13 with aptitude, for everyone.

Superseded by the Specific Rule for Adepts with Improved Ability, or anyone with Reflex Recorder.

Do recall that a starting character can have at most 7 points in one skill, meaning that they can get use out of (at most) 4 points of Improved Ability.

What this means is that to dump more into Improved Ability they first have to buy the skill up to rating 9 (from 7) at a cost of 32 Karma, and then gain a Power Point (probably for 13 Karma through Initiation) and then they can only put half of that PP into Improved Ability. Which then means another 2 points of skill (42 Karma) and another PP (16 Karma) before they can spend another half PP on it again. In other words, it's 103 Karma dumped into almost nothing but improving a single skill from 7+4 to 11+6.

If you really want to go for the gusto and get it up to 13+7 it's crazy more Karma, since you have to throw in a 35 Karma Magic attribute bump (and 49 more Karma in the skill) to do it.

In an infinite karma game, yeah, it looks like Adepts can knock the socks off mundanes, but in reality if you do this you end up with a character that's street-level in everything except a single skill, maybe having Improved Reflexes 2 and maybe having one or two powers at really low levels. And you'd better be really happy with your attributes, because you don't get to touch them for nearly 200 Karma.

So he might be able to shoot a cigarette out of a fly's mouth at 1,000 meters, but he's going to be surpassed in virtually every other field to pull it off.

Unfortunately, with the way Improved Ability is worded, the cap doesn't apply the way you think it does.

Because the OP postulated that Improved Ability actually raises the skill, and because the specific-case rule allows it to ignore the skill cap, you can start with an effective skill of 13+, and have PP left over. Also, for your hypothetical character, he could have low levels of Attribute Boost, which consistently take him to the augmented max. He'll be at least as good as a comparable character in many areas, *and* be able to shoot cigarettes out of a fly's mouth at 1000 meters.

Sorry for bringing this up again, but i dont think this is the final point here.



There is no such rule.



"the height of sentient achievement", and then adepts can get +50%. It was right in sr4, but i dont get why it should be now. It does not even seem to be right.





The word "standard" wich definetely refers to the quality-description and not to this power, does not say "do what you want".
The cap is 12, 13 with aptitude. Thats basicly it. The "skill x 1.5 rule" does not negate anything that was said before, in fact it limits it on top of the first rule.

So again, why is everyone assuming adepts can go beyond 12 that easy?

Edit: I dont want to argue. Maybe my english is not good enough to get it, or i am missing something. But for me it seems crystal clear.

it IS magic. i would imagine an adept who wants to run faster then anyone else, can run faster then anyone else. but then maybe a machine could be built to do the same thing. idk... now that i see that, ya 13 should be the cap

No, you're right. Under RAW, there is no exception under Improved Ability to the hard limit of 12 ranks in a skill (or 13 with the advantage), and Improved Ability explicitly states it increases the rank of the skill. This would translate into Adepts being able to get to the maximum rank quicker than mundanes, but the mundanes could eventually match the Adept with that same maximum rank.

What most are conflating is that older editions worked differently, and how Improved Ability worked then was consistent with how Attributes, in general, work now. It used to be that improved ability did not directly modify the base stat itself, but would create a new modified stat that would allow characters to exceed the base stat by 1.5. There's the added bonus that this interpretation is easier to apply, is consistent with other rules and older editions, and doesn't effect the karma costs for improving the base rank of the stat.

Honestly I use this alternative view, but yes, it would be a house rule, but it is probably one of the most common house rules there are.

I would argue that it is at very least INTENDED for Improved Ability to exceed the normal maximum; it may well be that the removal of a strict "augmented maximum" for skills has muddied things a bit. And as was highlighted, if you look at Improved Ability as directly modifying the base skill rating (as in, the skill rating becomes 9 rather than 6(9)), you get into absolutely ludicrous situations - meaning that in some form, Improved Ability must stand separate from the skill rank itself.

Only if you ignore the explicit use of "current skill level", i.e., the rating before you activate the power.

Actually, you can still run into problems that way, Qi Foci being an example. But that's actually aside from the fact that I'm fairly sure the intent is for it to go past the normal limit.

I'm... kind of boggled, here. Don't they talk about augmented skills at all in the skills section? Like they did in SR4? That seems an incredible omission.

Overall, I'm not liking how the adept ability works in conjunction with the higher skill caps. In SR4, the skills may have been horribly truncated, but at least a mundane with a reflex recorder (and sometimes a quality) could get within spitting distance of an adept, skill-wise. The gap seems a lot wider now, at least after char-gen.

Well, if the street sam is going to have easier access to attribute boosts and an easier time scrounging the karma for raising the skill (as the adept has to spend karma in a number of places the street sam doesn't)... The sam gets his dice in a wider area, and the adept gets more dice in his smaller area.

I kinda agree with the OP. Not only do i believe his point is RAW, i believe it is probably RAI. I believe the devs stated that they wanted to reduce the bonus dice and increase the skills, which would go in line with what the OP stated. Also wouldn't this mean that at character creation, this power can't be taken to increase a skill above 6 total. By that i mean if i have pistols at 5, i can't buy 2 levels of improved ability regardless of my magic rating? Hmmm i still like it.

I agree with you, for game balance reasons if nothing else. However, the OP wanted the ramifications of his reading. So, I'm going to try and see things from his perspective.

they describe the skills as 12 being 1 of a few in the world having this skill, so perfected and honed, they know no master to them in that field/skill. if adepts could bypass that, they would take over every professional sport in the shadowrun world, and i don't seeing that possible. they didn't before, they can't now. sure magical knowledge is something researched but so are these augmented players too, usually with so much enhanced specific gear that they have an edge on the adepts in a sport. nono it's capped.. it has to be. can they always have this power going? cause if so, it's almost a landslide when you apply it to whatever when you get high in the skill.

That argument applies just as much when it's capped at 6/7...

Honestly i think in this case there is no such thing as RAI. The intention here was to get fast trough the adepts-chapter, so they picked up all the old powers from sr4 and copypasted them into the new book. But yeah, maybe it was intended and if so, i like it. The fact that, like curator said, skillrating 12 marks the top of the tops, the best of the world etc. and adepts just like that could go to 18! made me read precisely.



I do not exactly understand what you mean (based on language), but if you want to say that i actually want adepts to be less powerfull, that is just not true. I mean, like you said, for balance reasons it would be fine, but i am a convinced adept player and naturally want them as powerful as possible

I actually think there's balance PROBLEMS if Adepts can't exceed the skill cap.

I would agree with that...

Would you care to elaborate on that?

I'd like to point out that reading adept powers as unable to breach the skillscap (Which I have to say makes sense to me) turns improved ability into a *major* karma saver. For the cost of a single initiation, an adept can basically get up to 4 skill ranks (magic increase + powerpoint metamagic). With a skillcap of 12 and a max improvement of 50%, that means taking a skill from chargen 6 to max costs an adept (14 + 16) 30 Karma to get to rank 8 and then the cost of one initiation to get to 12. Everyone else has to pay 114 karma. In the best case scenario an adept saves up to 71 karma. Within limits, this is also a repeatable process.

This is a decent boost early on and gives adepts quite some room to branch out mid to end game.

How are reflex recorders treated with regards to skill caps? Or are they in the same limbo that improved ability seems to be in?

Besides that QI-Foci are rediciulously cheap now and you can get some Foci for nearly everything, since you can have Magic x 5 worth of Focipoints bound at the same time.

And even with this fix, i see Adepts much more powerful than regular cybered-chars, no matter it is combat, covert-ops or social (and like i said, i almost entirely play adepts myself).



Since its nearly the same text, i would say yes.

Did I misunderstand this? I took RHat to mean that adepts would be underpowered if they couldn't exceed the skill cap?

Regarding QiFoci, the rules for focus addiction are pretty harsh this time around.

Thats right. But addiction only kicks in if you exceed magic by force. So you can have all the foci but only 1-2 active at the sime.

I must be missing the point here. Why are we concerned with skill caps for regular humans when adepts are, by definition, superhuman?

Yes, IRL Peyton Manning (who in SR4, at least, was listed at a 6 or 7 skill rating, IIRC) is skilled enough to thread a football over the hands of defensive linemen into his WR's hands (well, discounting this past Super Bowl). Peyton Manning the adept would be able to not only thread the ball past the defensive line, but also through the hands of multiple cornerbacks and safeties while being tackled, blindfolded and hitting the guy right in the numbers. It's one of the reasons that Adepts are so regulated in sports. It's not that they have easy street to reaching peak performance, it's that they can go past that, IMO.

Exactly. Adepts are not Normal Humans, which are capped at Skill 12.
They can Exceed Normal Human Limits - Therefore they can have skills up to a Maximum of 18 (Current x1.5).

I do not have the SR5 book so I cannot check...

Are there Dragons or other higher powered critters in the book that have skills over 12(13)?
If so you would have an argument... If not... your theory falls flat.

Edit: I have no side in this. I am just pointing out an idea.

So apparently dragons can routinely go over the 12(13) cap considering these skills are for an average example of the species.

Well then I guess there is a better argument for Adepts going above 12... Thank you for checking Jack.

NP, I like how the book points out that there are no known examples of adept dracoforms, which would honestly be extremely terrifying.

Airn't cybered characters superhuman too? So i still think the intent was for the skill cap to work as the OP suggested. But that's also my opinion and i doubt any poster would be playing at the same table as me

Cybered Characters can exceed 12/13 as well, through Reflex Recorders. They just cannot exceed it as much as an Adept can.

TJ, I'm going to hope you've either found the special exemption for RAW in SR5 for either Improved Ability or Reflex Recorders to exceed the normal limitation and are just about to share what page or where in the errata you found that rule, or that you were talking to one of the players in your home game about your house rules and just forgot to state that for the rest of the forum.

What I sincerely hope you're not doing, is asserting your opinion on how you feel things should be as RAW fact, because that would just encourage discrepancies in situations such as at cons or during Missions.

If you want confirmation, look at Missions FAQ. I am sure that Bull has addressed it.

I'm looking at the Missions FAQ right now, and there is nothing even remotely in the ballpark. Similarly, there's nothing in the Missions errata to do with Imp. Ability other than it is effected by background count. If I have a different version of these .pdfs, please point out exactly where you are getting this confirmation because I'm not seeing it.

Hmmm... thought it was in there.
Still, I stand by my Interpretation. It is ludicrous to think that a person could benefit from a Skill of 12 but not the magic that would boost it. *shrug*
Of course, I still think it is ludicrous to have skill ratings going to 12/13 anyways. It just was not needed. *shrug*

I do agree, and as I said previously, I would use Imp. Ability similar to how magic and cyberware effect attributes for my home game. But it would still be a house rule and not something I'd use with Missions, because Missions needs to adhere to RAW for cases specifically like this, as there are players who don't have anything but the SR5 corebook to work with and have never been to either dumpshock or the official forums.

Indeed... Not sure why I thought it was there, but I did.

It's alright... at your age memory does tend to go.

*sends warm soymilk and krill cookies then runs*

Note to self...
Check on disposition of team tasked for eliminating Sendaz...