1- Weapons:

In the 3rd ed Rule book, a Ranger Arms is 14S in damages, in my french version of Canon Companion, it's noted 14D. Which one is the correct one?


2- p.168, rule book 3rd ed:

"During game play, adepts may purchase additional Power Points at a cost of 20 Good Karma Points per Power Point."

I'm tempted to suppress that possibility and keep initiation as the only way to develop your powers but how is that developped in 4th ed and 5th ed?

Versus most individuals in the world it is merely Serious damage, against a French Target it is bumped up to Deadly Damage.

The errata for Shadowrun doesn't list any correction to the Ranger Arms: http://old.shadowrun4.com/resources/errata_sr3.shtml I couldn't find the French one to compare. However, the only other weapon that's close to a 14D is the assault cannon, which is not considered man-portable, and no rifles in the Cannon Companion are D, so I'm comfortable saying 14S is correct.

Per MitS, if you're using the initiation rules, you should not use the buy-for-20-karma rules as well, so you are correct. Having never seen anyone ever do this anyway, I don't know it's a big threat.

I can't answer how it's handled in 4th/5th, because this is an SR3 thread.

mmm thank you!

Ranger Arms - like all standard sniper rifles - is at 14S. The only (semi-) official weapons that deviate from that rule are

1. Barret 121, which explicitly uses special ammunition that causes the increased damage of 14D
2. one of the german additions to the german version of Canon Compion (Arsenal 2060) that features a 15S base damage which is derived from an option within the weapon construction rules

=> 14D on the Ranger Arms in the French version is most likely a conversion error.



4th and AFAIK also 5th removed that particular rule. However both do have an option for getting two instead of just one power point: one from actual magic increase after an initiation and one that can be taken instead of a metamagic upon initiation. That particular rule appears to be derived from a - back in the days of 3rd heavily discussed - rule concerning adepts of the magician's way who were explicitly denied access to the 20 karma rule but could choose to gain an "extra power point" instead of a metamagic.

From personal experience I can say that you won't gain any significant increase of (potentially ill-perceived) game balance if you deny physical adepts said rule option under 3rd Ed ... more like the other way round: You will "gimp" physical adepts in the log run, because you force them to initiate into absurd initiation grades and seriously hamper their development when compared to magician's with casting abilities, since spells (which are an analogon to adept powers to a certain extend) are far cheaper in the long run.

@ nezumi:

MitS did not suggest the removal of the 20 karma rule. There are only two instance where this happened:

1. In a FAQ-answer that couldn't provide any degree of backing coming from RAW
2. Adepts of the magician's way being explicitly denied access to the 20 karma rules within their special rules

I actually emailed FASA back in the day about the Power Points. The official answer is that initiation supersedes the buying PPs at 20 karma.

14 S is correct.

I would more compare adepts to samourai tbh. They already seemed to me (without the 20 karma rule) stronger in the long term. Am I somewhere wrong?

I guess that's a matter of personal taste. There's a general tendancy to compare (combat-oriented) adepts to samurai because people also tend to play the former as magical versions of the latter, but actually they are nothing alike. A samurai - just as any other mundane character - in SR3 has a pretty much finite scope of development: At some point he simply will hit the racially modified attribute limits plus whatever implants can (and cannot) do. And even when utilizing the implant surgery rules to insane levels you'll only ever have 6 points of Essence as the main stat for all modifications (inlcuding bioware, since the limits on that are also based upon Essence). Magically active characters however have a main stat that will never stop to increase once you invest karma: Their magic attribute has no upper limit when playing with initiation rules.

So when looking at the (extreme) longt term situations you'd have to compare adepts to other magically active characters rather than mundane ones because mundanes are bound to lose there anyway.

And when making these more appropriate comparisons it should be rather obvious that magically active characters with access to spell casting can improve their magical assets by learning new spells and increasing their magic attribute (also affecting their throughput with spells *both good and bad*) whereas physical adepts and aspected conjurers will at a certain point only have the option of increasing their magic attribute in order to acquire new/more power. If you leave the 20 karma rule in place adepts will have the option of acquiring more power without the need for increased magic attribute (to absurd levels) as a second option wheras the aspected conjures will be the only ones that are hung out to dry.

And as far as the "dangers" of leaving the 20 karma rule in place are concerned, just look at these two extremes:

1. Consider adept A who joins a magical group and initiates with ordeals every single time => This guy will reach grade 8 of initiation (including 9 metamagics) with magic 14 and powers worth 14 power points (powers individually limited by magic 14) before the next initiation (and thus the next power point) will cost more than 20 karma. His combined karmic cost for this will be 115 karma.
2. Consider adept B who initiates without groups and ordeals and switches to buying power points once the karmic cost exceeds 20 karma per initiation. This guy will end up with a magic attribute of 7 (one initation that is cheaper than the 20 karma rule), powers worth 14 power points (powers individually limited by magic 7) and a single metamagic at a combined karmic cost of 158 karma points.

If you want to make the karma expendure (almost) equal Adept B will spend 118 karma points on a magic attribute of 7, powers with a combined power point cost of 12 (still individually limited by magic 7) and still just one metamagic.

So my question would be: Where do you see a balance issue with the 20 karma rule in conjunction with initiation rules?

query:
how does this superceding work?
does that mean that the 20 points rule in the core book only was considered the official way to increase magic untill Magic in the Shadows came out?

I always ruled that yeah, MitS superseded, so if you did it the old way, now you do it the new way.

Dropping the 20 karma rule was a no-brainer for my group. The worst-case, self-initiating with no ordeal, averages out almost the same for the first three levels, and only starts to hurt at fourth level. However, we never had any characters sitting on 80 karma to spend to that point. The best case, you save a whopping 116 karma on that first 13 levels.

Past the 100/2,000 karma level, I'm comfortable sticking with the initiation rules because otherwise physical adept expenses would be the only improvement cost which is totally flat.

How do you compare that "flat cost" for power increase against the equally flat (and significantly lower) costs for the next spell in a magician's spell book? Particularly once adept and magician are well above 100/200 karma and have pretty much "topped out" on believable magic attribute plus "necessary" metamagics!?
Not to mention the fact that at least full mages can reduce that flat karmic expendure for spells even further.

Sorry, but the 20 karma rule certainly isn't "the only improvement" which is pretty much "totally flat" (or at least cheaper than your "flat cost") , since there simply is no real purpose of having spell forces higher than 8 (totally ignoring the fact that successfully learning a force 20+ spell isn't that likely)

Oh, and while we're at it: The (optional) cash for karma rule which is more likely to be utilized by cybered characters up until the point where they simply cannot improve any further in terms of cyber / bio is "flat" as well.

That's true, spells are also flat. However, mages don't normally use two spells at once, while two adept powers at once is very common. Plus (again, this is just in my experience), mages tend to blow karma on a million of other things first. Although if your point is that, over the long run mages outstrip street sams, I'd have to agree.

Cash for karma isn't a linear improvement because having a a stack of karma doesn't make your character any more effective*. Until you *spend* the karma, it's literally just a number. And most of the karma costs for things scale up.

*It could be you spend karma and get cash. I honestly can't recall, because I've never permitted the rule. But the same rule generally applies for cash expenditures. Sure, you can buy multiple guns, but much like multiple spells, you having 100 guns doesn't make you 100 times more effective. The big cash expenses are normally magical stuff, cyberware, and the sad, sad, rigger, but all of those scale up quickly.

Yes, and then the MiTS rule replaced and got rid of the original rule. Officially at least.

Sorry, but FAQ-answers that were given both via E-Mail and on the homepage weren't necessarily "official" in the sense that they were "correct", "RAW" or an actual representation of what the developers actually wanted the rules to be. The person behind "shadowrunfaq" at that time certainly gave answers to such questions that were outright wrong ... Starting with things like the the Essence costs of cyberware subsystems in eyes and ears to things like gaining actual line of sight for purposes of spell casting against targets behind walls by using a physical illusion to make the wall "invisible". And going by what I myself got to hear from Stephen Kenson via private mail when I - as one of two persons who were at that time responsible for the german FAQ that Fanpro Germany provided - seriously let's me doubt that the answer you received represented an "official stance".

And just to be perfectly clear: The MitS rule in now way "replaced" or "got rid" of the 20 karma rules in any part of its RAW, neither in original printing nor under any provided Errata.

I'm not sure why you seem so hot and bothered by this. OP got his answer. If he (or you) want to use the 20-karma rule, no one is stopping you. In my group, if someone wanted to do it that way I'd probably let them (but they'd be an idiot for it). It's not even an issue until three-digit karma, and at that point it's the GM's job either way to make sure everyone is keeping pace.

Granted. No true balance issue.


Yet, I'll ditch the rule anyways for fluff reason. I prefer having my adepts increase their powers through Initiation rather than 20K rule.

It "bothers" me because the given answers were/are either factually wrong or dubious at best. The claim that MitS suggested that 20 karma rule should be considered replaced by initiation rules: false!
The claim that it was an "official" stance that the 20 karma rule should be replaced with the initiation rules based on (private) e-mail communication with "the powers that be": dubious at best, since such a ruling would have required Errata in order to be "official" and the source that provided the answer was most likely "shadowrunfaq" ... over time the pseudonym of various people not necessarily known for being well versed with the rules (at one point it was even Rob Boyle himself who did the FAQ stuff and simply got it wrong by outright contradicting an example in the character generation section of the core rules).

I certainly have no problem with the OP deciding on removing that rule regardless of how I personally see that or you suggesting doing so despite acknowledging that it's virtually unimportant for a longer time and the use of said rule not necessarily being "cost effective". But I'd prefer that he makes his decision based on what I can consider "facts" and not "wishful thinking" ... and maybe I have some "unresolved issues" with some of the "official" FAQ answers that were given back in the days

@ sk8bcn

And what exactly would that "fluff" reason be? Because your preference of adepts having to initiate to gain new powers doesn't provide an actual fluff reason beyond the preference itself. It would certainly be interesting to hear a fluff based reasoning as to why casters have multiple options for increasing their overall power base (with lower associated costs) whereas adepts and aspected conjurers are stuck with just one option that should be considered "higher magics".

Every group I've ever been involved with dropped the 20 karma rule in favor of MitS. Just like you dropped the matrix rules for the ones in Matrix, etc etc.

Having not seen any FAQs on the matter, I'll go with source book rules trumping core rules - how it typically works.

As much fun as it might be to speculate about what Steven Kenson and Mike Mulvhill might have to say about what exactly we are supposed to do with this rule in order to have the real shadowrun instead of some pernicious evil twin version of shadowrun, I think instead I'll just sit back and let the OP administer his game how he wants.

Don't get me wrong about the "fluff" term. It's not a SR-background reasoning that makes me think I want to ditch it.


I just find that an adept going through the phases of initiation adds more flavor to the character development than spending 20 karma. It emphasis his development of powers a lot more.

You have to decide whether you join a group or not, ordeal... Exemple: you want you character to be a loner? You wanna join an initiated group? Which one? Several new NPC I can add. and so on.

It deepens the character's fluff.


Ok, I take away the possibility for the PC to switch at a certain initiation rank to switch his progression in order to min-max, but whatever!

Now that's a bit "odd" to me, because you're now mixing up the "fluff" aspect of going through certain phases of initiation from an ingame perspective and try to compare that to the karma expendure of the 20 karma rule (something that happens striclty on the offgame level of the game).
As a GM I would always expect to provide an ingame depiction of how new power is acuqired ... be it through initiation or the 20 karma rule.



Similar questions could be asked when using the 20 karma rule: Do you join a training group with members that already have access to the new power you desire? Do you do self studies? Etc.



You see, for me a character's fluff is certainly isn't necessarily "deeper" just because he used an initiation instead of another option. In my opinion it actually hurts a character's believable fluff if the only way to expand his powers is to gain initiation grades that must be considered "insane" or at least "unbelievable" after a certain point when looking at it with the game universe's context in mind. Depending on how you look at it anything beyond grade 5 seriously gets to a point where a character is in fact a well known "world mover" and it gets worse from there. So for me as a GM as well as a player it was always a relief to have an alternative way of acquiring new adept powers that didn't force me to either put a halt to the magical progression or go the "Nth grade initiate who remains a runner instead of becoming a well known member of the publicly known academic magic society" route.



For me it never was about "min-maxing", but your outlook seems to be fixated upon the (flat) karma expendure instead of a progressing karmic cost. However, the examples should have made clear that for a long time it's neither cost effective nor does it provide the same level of progression an initiation would. So what you're taking away is in fact something that has to with a character's believability / fluff and not necessarily a "min-max" option.

@cochise alright, I can respect that.

@Cochise:

Well, you must however take in account where I come from and what my plans are :

First, my question was linked to game balance issue:
=> I was proven that the 20 karma rule doesn't imbalance the game and actually (min-maxing wise) isn't the best way to max out your karma rule, at least in karma-ranges I think will stay in.

Point 2: My campaign is supposed to use 3rd ed for the 2050-2063 ERA, then move 4th ed up to 2075 then 5th ed.
=> As it was said that the rule doesn't exist in 4th ed, I don't want to create an inconsistency is the way characters can evolve (I m already annoyed enough with the Spirit/Elemental modification).

Point 3: Fluff
=> ok I grant you that. I can make things fluffy without enforcing iniation.


--------------------------------------------

That beeing said, thinking about balance, adepts >> street sams.




Subsidiary question: Does a background count affects Adepts?

Depends.

Bull put out an early errata for Missions and BGC was touched on as follow:



BCG has not really been formally addressed in SR5 rulebooks yet, but we suspect it will be in the magic splat book much like BGC was introduced for 4th in Street Magic.

Also given the above is how Missions are being played, it is probable that the game books will have similar.

Let's set aside for a moment the question of what the canon interpretation might be, and look rather at what the effects of each choice are.

First of all, for the vast majority of games the question is unfortunately irrelevant, or nearly so. Two grades of solo no-Ordeal Initiation cost 39 karma to the equivalent double-PP's 40 (though if you really want you could initiate once and buy one PP for 38 karma). Throw in an Ordeal on the second or third of three Initiations for 59 points, all without even getting to the question of Groups or having to consider the value of metamagic. There's a poll that I seem to remember around here that I can't lay hands on, but most games seem to end before reaching 100 karma, and many before hitting 50—so unless the player decides to go all-in on Power Points (no or very little improvement of core skills or attributes, no new skills bought up to proficient levels), there's unlikely to ever be a time when the player might want to take a Power Point instead of an Initiation grade.

Ignoring that depressing reality, however, is a long-standing tradition in the harder-core rules discussions, so let's look at the effects on higher-Karma games.

First, what's the return on investment for Power Points? I have cast SotA:64 from my presence as a thing unclean, so that might change the calculation, but with the powers from SR3+MitS:

The way you get post-chargen Power Points one at a time discourages picking up powers or power improvements that cost more than 1PP. For buy-with-20-karma, Improved Combat Ability is broadly competitive with buying Skill for any Skill of 6 or higher (assuming Linked Attribute is higher—if not, it's better).

Huh. Well, I'm still not sure what the marginal value of additional Power Points is (especially once you need to start juggling to stay under Magic simultaneous points), but I came into this thinking it would be hard to find things to buy after a couple of points, and unless you stay really specialized skill-wise that's apparently not the case.

Ok, I've come around partially on this question—eliminating the 20 karma/PP option does clearly reduce at least broadly-reasonable-looking options for advancement. I'll have to come back to this to determine whether the reduction is gimping, neutral-ish, or desirable, but that's something.

~J

What's that?

ps: i'm waiting for your further developments ofc.

So looking at your plans I obviously could provide "food for thought" for two points (1 and 3). As far as point 2 is concerned: My non-existant clairvoyance skill certainly didn't tell me anything about your plans based on the initial question, but looking at some of the fundamental changes between 3rd and 4th/5th concerning magic in general and initiation in particular I'd say that the 20 karma rule is one of your least concerns when making the transitions.



Depending on the overall karma level you expect to play in I'm not totally with you there. Adepts (just as magicians) do certainly have the better long term devlopment opportunities than samurais due to the lack of absolute caps on their special attribute. It's also more difficult to take away or temporarily hinder the usage of their "goodies" but that doesn't make them automatically far better than samurais in general. Samurais have a gear based progression that doesn't need karma at all, just money and time. Their initial costs of opportunity allows them to have far broader skillsets at which they are "good" to "super", whereas adepts usually can excel only in a certain niche / with a very specific skill.




For 3rd Ed the answer is: Standard background count (levels 1 - 5) doesn't (negatively) affect the majority of adepts with some exceptions

1. Any awakened character can potentially "feel" that he/she entered an area that is affected by background count. This doesn't have impact on the level of game mechanics, but certainly does provide the opening for a player to react on an emotional level.
2. Adepts with the astral perception power will be affected in their astral perception and suffer TN modifiers during combat against astral or physical targets while utilizing astral perception.
3. In consequence adepts with metagmagics that require astral perception (like Psychometry) suffer from background count as well

Mana voids (background count with levels above 5) will affect adepts as well due to the affects on available magic attribute while being in such an area.

"That"=being hard to find things to buy. Six levels of one combat skill plus Stealth is 4.5PP in Improved Ability right there, and an Adept (or any combat type, really) might want to take an additional combat skill, which makes 7.5. There are probably better things to spend the 90 karma on (than a second Combat Skill at 6 plus 6 levels of Improved Ability), but depending on the context and the adept build it's not unthinkable—range+melee could work, especially in a Bug City-like campaign with lots of spirits needing to be smacked in the face (weapon skill against stuff that doesn't have excessive INW, contest of wills with the weapon's Reach bonus against stuff that does, and ranged weapon for when you have standoff), or pistol+longgun for concealment+firepower. I'm still not convinced that that, or the other options for spending PP, are sufficiently compelling alternatives to bumping skills or attributes to make the loss of cheap PP past the first two or three that painful, but it at least demonstrates that it isn't irrelevant.


Attribute Boost requires the user to make a Drain Resistance Test, which is affected by TN modifiers from Background Count. Centering is a Magical Skill (or rather, has a Magical Skill), and thus affected. Well, unless you take the parenthesized section on MitS p84 to be an exhaustive list despite the clear existence of other Magical Skills. Also if you ignore the confusion caused by the writers forgetting about the distinction between the Centering Skill and the Creative Skill by the example on p74 (they imply that Johnny rolls his Meditation skill, which would be his Creative Skill, rather than his Centering Skill which is what the rules text says he should be using).

Oh Shadowrun, how I've missed you.

Divining is also an Active Magical Skill, and if for some reason you buy Sorcery you can take Cleansing and make tests with it (and then resist Drain). I think that's it.

But yeah, Attribute Boost and maybe Centering are the only ones you left out that are at all likely to matter.

~J

Ok, looking at how serious the effect of scrapping the 20-karma PP is. I'm assuming starting from a Grade 3 Initiate, 9 PP, 9 Magic, possibly one or two geasa for 'ware.

One obvious sink is boosting physical attributes past RML. For 7 and up, post-RML improvements cost at least 21 karma to 20 for the 1PP it takes for Improved Physical Attribute. On the other hand, you generally expect Physical Attributes to be permanent—I could see a GM looking askance at any plan that involved shuffling IPA Power Points into the "Inactive" category, which means that you're also effectively spending points of Magic as far as simultaneously-active powers goes. Even if you can get away with the shuffle, you're probably still going to want the IPA active at the times you'd want to use a bunch of other Powers as well—I could see shuffling Body in and out, but the better solution there is probably to just not buy Body up past RML.

I could see sinking points into Pain Resistance as profitable, but losing access to that seems to be closer to "balancing" rather than "gimping"—it's pretty potent, and I suspect the reason it isn't a problem is that there's better stuff to do with the karma after getting through a few build-core improvements.

I don't know. Maybe I need to build or solicit a bunch of >100 karma Adepts, but I'm not seeing compelling uses for the extra PP that make removing the 20-karma option excessively punishing. The attendant benefit is that you can then link Power Points and Magic directly, eliminating the song-and-dance around purchased-vs-active powers (well, unless you drag Virtual Magic Loss back in). Given the whole inactive-IPA issue, that's pretty attractive.

Do you have any examples of builds where it's a big hit? I mean, I guess if you insist on going no-cyberware and using Improved Sense for everything, or if you buy Improved Reflexes 3 and then try to build up the rest of a typical build on top of it, but it's not clear that there's a strong need to make either route painless.

~J

Edit: I should note that I don't think I've actually gotten an Adept I've played past 50 karma—most of my long-running characters have been Riggers—so I could well have a blind spot here somewhere.

On further reflection, although my usual approach to the Initiative question is to go with a Synaptic Accelerator possibly backed up with Boosted Reflexes or a Reaction Enhancer, but I guess Improved Reflexes can be bought up with only some difficulty at level 3 (and level 1, if not taken at chargen). Still, though, it's not clear to me that having to make sacrifices to go that route is a serious pain point for Adepts.

~J

Everything old is new again. I like to think my analysis has grown more sophisticated since then, but I'm entertained to see that I was complaining about the whole "swapping powers" thing even back then.

Edit: that's not actually what I was complaining about—I'd interpreted purchased PPs as also expanding the swapping limit.

~J

Hah, that was the last point I missed what I was looking for when I asked "What's that?" to kagetenshi

"It's even one more limiting factor to the 20 karma rule: Since acording the rule that you cannot use more power points simoultaniously than your magic attribute allows you to, having more power points via 20 karma simply restricts the numbers o powers that can actually be used at any given time "




Well, ok, granted, it's an non-issue.

If an adept wanna buy a PP with 20 karma in my game, he can.

No balance issue.
Minor consistency problem with 4th ed, who has deeper consistency problems.
pros/cons for every way to develop.

As I tried to point out: It's not necessarily a matter of "punishment" but rather "fluff" as far as grade N-adepts that run the shadows are "believable" within the game universe.



There's no need for dragging "Virtual Magic Loss" back in, since the number of simultaniously available power points might not be explicitly restricted but it is by implication: The very existance of Adept and Infusion foci depends on that limitation being in place. But for you this won't matter, since you still deem SotA'64 as non-existant I guess .

can you further expend what's in SOTA 2064? Considering I read the books in publishing order, SOTA isn't scheduled before a long time for me.

Sure. I'm just wondering on the one hand whether there are enough valuable uses for Power Points to get Adepts to Initiate past grade 3 or 4 if 20Karma/PP is forbidden, and on the other hand whether Adepts are really hurt by losing access to the 20Karma PPs. I haven't thought deeply about this, but the potential to converge on nine points of Pain Resistance is worrying—I can't find or remember any rules for what kind of action switching power loadout is or under what conditions it can be done, which means I can't see anything preventing the Adept from swapping out other abilities for Pain Resistance as they take damage.


Sooth. Though it turns out that I still wouldn't get rid of the Power Shuffle, what with Mana Warps effectively reducing Magic rating.

~J

I guess it will be a thin line between fair use and violation of copyrights there

First of all I'll have to remind you that just because some gear and magical stuff are listed in books like SotA'63 and SotA'64 that doesn't necessarily mean that all these things should only be available after 2063 / 2064. In fact many of the things in these books were either available during the mid-fifties in the 2nd Edition books like Shadowtech or in case of the magics could easily have existed before 2064 but weren't necessarily that well researched from an ingame perspective.

Now as far as my comment is concerned:

SotA'64 has a large chapter devoted to adepts with many new powers, metamagics and as previously mentioned two new types of foci ... one called Adept focus that works a bit like a power focus for magicians and one called Infusion focus that can provide a specific adept power the user normally doesn't have. Now one of the explicit benefits of the Adept focus is that it allows its bearer to use a number of powers with a combined power point cost of (effective) magic attribute + focus force simultaneously. By implication this means that adepts must normally be restricted to the simultaneous use of power points equal to their effective magic attribute (which can differ from the actual magic attribute once magic loss and geasa are in play). This implication also affects the powers gained via the 20 karma rule as you noted yourself. Now the first problem with that implication is - quite obviously - that errataed RAW of the 3rd Edition doesn't explicitly state that limitation of power usage anywhere (particularly neither core rules nor MitS) and going strictly by the wording even unerrataed RAW (of Man & Machine) only introduced that limitation when an adept opted for bioware implants. The original rules on magic "loss" by bioware used a mechanic called "virtual magic loss" (which in practice was worse than magic loss caused by cyber and thus had to be errataed). Part of that "virtual magic loss" was the explicit mentioning of adepts with bioware being restricted to the simultaneous use of powers with a power point cost equal to the (virtually) reduced magic attribute.

Further problems with the SotA'64 stuff was/is, that some of the powers, a larger number of the adepts specific metamagics and the Infusion focus by their nature were considered to be breaking the idea of "somatic magic", since some of the stuff affected mental powers, social skills or - in case of the Infusion focus - provided powers from an destinct outside source.

Other things that caused controversy to a lesser degree were:

• The "Way" concept was expanded upon in a manner that seemed to press adepts in rather strict setups whereas normal magicians (even aspected ones) were pretty mich free to combine stuff to their individual liking.
• One aspect of the M&M Errata was the reduced effect of the Mnemonic Enhancer as far as the karma reduction for learning skills was concerned. Yet SotA'64 introduced a metamagic that allowed adepts (and just adepts) to get an additive karma reduction => Technically any adept with a Mnemonic Enhancer and said metamagic could reduce karma costs for skills by 2 points (minimum 1) per skill level.
• Another metamagic (for Adepts of the Magician's Way) removed their primary opportunity cost: They could gain access to astral and meta-planar projection, although that astral projection was more time limited than for standard full magicians.

To me personally all that never was a big issue, but Kagetenshi is one of the outspoken "enemies" of what SotA'64 brought about (and many of the things are available under 4th and most likely 5th as well).

___________________________________________________



It depends on how "simultaneous use" is defined by the involved GM when dealing with that "power shuffle" during "combat" you're talking about. Because the rules themselves don't define that in any way. One of the most obvious things that would be highly debatable is the "power shuffle" on "Improved Reflexes".



Why should I fear an adept that has grade 3 who either allocates 4.5 power points constantly towards Pain Resistance (or "shuffles" them in by replacing others) when I can see the same with bioware (both in an adept as well as in samurais) in form of either Pain Editor (cheap but dangerous solution, that doesn't provide the full benefit) or Damage Compensators (more expensive but safer solution)?

I guess I'm not understanding your example.

If I recall correctly, even of the adept directly buys a lot of PP, his max levels are dependent on his Magic rating. So, you can't get nine levels of Pain Resistance until you're an initiate grade 3 or better. I don't recall anything in Sr3 that allowed power switching on the fly.

I allowed the 20-point rule in my games, alongside the initiation rules. It was used infrequently, since initiation was almost always better, even when the karma cost exceeded 20. It existed as a backup option if the PC couldn't or was avoiding initiation for some reason.

His example refers to the following (with regards to my comment about having to initiate to "absurd" grades for power increase): Once you get to grade 3 or 4 (= magic 9/10 => max power rating 9/10 with 3/4 metamagics and simultaneous use of powers worth 9/10 power points) the adept could face the situation where he has "all" powers he needs at sufficiently high ratings and with an effective magic attribute that is high enough to support the simultaneous use of "all" necessary powers.
The "problem" with adept powers is that - with the exception of very few - adept powers do not require an activation and there's no clear rule mechanism which determines whether or not a power is permanently active or can be used "at will". The majority of powers seems to fall into an "at will" category, so these can be part of the "shuffle" ... So the questions for the adept in the example are:

1. Which powers (with a combined cost of 4.5/5.5 power points) will he actually use simultaneously to the 4.5 power points that a rating 9 Pain Resistance would require?
2. Can the adept make gradual use of the rating 9 Pain Resistance or is it a matter of "on" vs. "off"?
3. Which powers - worth (up to, depending on the answer to the previous question) 4.5 power points in total - that have an "at will" functionality could be used simultaneously before a wounded adept has to abandon their use in order to maintain his then needed Pain Resistance?

There aren't that many high-prized power that can be combined into a simultaneous use with a combined power point cost significantly above 9/10. Particularly the power of Improved reflexes turns out to be a real pain in the ass there:

Rulewise there's no precedence that the loss of initiative dice during a combat turn will affect initiative of that turn. Same goes for a reduction of the reaction attribute. Nor is it clear if Improved reflexes is a permanent or an "at will" power => One could argue that an adept could use Improved reflexes when determining his initiative but temporarily abandoning its use during his combat phases in favor of other powers, thus creating a situation where up to 5 power points are actually never used simultaneously with other powers.

I guess deciding that you must spend a full turn in re-shuffling your powers would solve that nicely.

To illustrate this, note that Heavy Mortars and Howitzers first appear in SotA:63. Short of assuming that they were lost in the Crash and not redeveloped for over 30 years, they can't possibly be recent developments (they're generic, so they can't even be SotA versions).


That's not quite the case—MitS p85 says: "Each level of mana warp reduces a character's Magic Rating […] An adept whose Magic is reduced in this way cannot simultaneously use more Power Points worth of powers than their effective Magic Rating." The "in this way" could be taken as exhaustive, but it's at least a precedent. Unfortunately, the example doesn't illuminate the interaction with rated powers.


You missed the Social Adept powers, which when combined with standard Face techniques reached near-mind-control level powers—my copy of SotA:64 isn't handy (I wonder why), but IIRC you could get -3TN for social skills from Kinesics (and +3 dice, I think? And maybe other stuff?). Add -2TN for Good Reputation 2 and you're looking at +1TN to convince someone Neutral to do something Disastrous for them. Depending on the interpretation of Friendly Face you might be able to mix that in during many in-run circumstances for -6TN; Aptitude can push that to -7 for a selected skill. That leaves the TN mod to convince an Enemy (+6TN) to do something Disastrous to them (+6 TN) at +5, which isn't nothing but is solidly doable, especially for targets with less than 6 in the relevant attribute. This is before getting into the other sources of extra dice a Face Adept would almost certainly have, like possibly some levels of Improved Ability (expanded to apply to, among other things, Social Skills) or Tailored Pheromones. This is before getting into the effects this has on Availability.

If the GM allows GLaKI (which apparently many do, since it gets a spot on the Edge summary table) that's an additional -1 to -2 depending on the user and target.

For the peanut gallery, note that this isn't even all of the Social Adept powers—just the only ones I can remember offhand. It might be possible to go even further (though IIRC IA:Social has the same 0.5PP/level cost as combat skills, so at least it's a big investment and you can't do everything out of chargen).


For one thing, Pain Resistance is the best version of damage amelioration. Using the Edge Karma:Build Point exchange rate of 10:1, High Pain Tolerance costs 20 karma for 1 box (20 karma gets you 1PP which gets you two levels of Pain Resistance), and High Pain Tolerance is split between damage tracks while each level of Pain Resistance allows you to ignore a box of damage on both tracks. The Pain Editor gives penalties to Intelligence and some Perception tests (admittedly with a bump to Willpower), and also doesn't work at all against Physical damage which IME is by a fair margin the most common kind of damage. Damage Compensators are comparable (if, and this is a big if, the GM ignores Stress and the suggestion to conceal the player's exact condition from them) but expensive—both in terms of Bio Index (1.8 standard, 1.35 Cultured) and cash (50k¥ for L2, 200k¥ for L5, 600k¥ for L9—200k¥, 800k¥, and 2.4M¥ respectively for Cultured). Exactly how the karma/cash ratio goes varies by game, but I usually expect characters to gain 20 karma at at least the rate that they gain 100k¥, and substantially faster than they gain 200k¥ (after expenses). If you add in surgery rules, the balance gets even worse.

I think the key here is that Damage Compensators have drawbacks beyond opportunity cost (even ignoring Stress)—the Adept can swap Pain Resistance in and out and raise Magic via Initiation, while the Damage Compensator-user is stuck with the consequences of the Bio Index full-time, and the only way to effectively lift that cap (reduce Bio Index) is to improve Bioware to Cultured (which, aside from Tailored Pheromones, only serves to reduce the penalties of Bio Index—contrast with Initiation, which provides other benefits at the same time it increases Magic).


There isn't anything. The thing is, though, there isn't anything in SR3 "allowing" power switching at all, if by "allowing" we mean "providing mechanics for". Nevertheless, at least three separate parts of the rules (one superseded by errata) require Adepts to limit themselves to some subset of their powers, and none of them suggest that this is a fixed choice, so unless we assume they're disastrously worded even by Shadowrun standards there's clearly a way to switch. Only a few powers can really said have a distinct "activation" under normal circumstances, and while some of them (Rooting, Smashing Blow) give explicit actions or timeframes, others don't say anything—Quick Strike, in particular, can be no more than a Free Action, given that the whole point is that it's used when the Adept would not otherwise have an action. In particular it seems hard to argue that it would take more than a Simple Action plus a Free Action, given that that's what it takes to activate and then deactivate a Power Focus.


Actually, there's debatably support for the "no partial power use" view, though it isn't unambiguous. The example on MitS p86 says "Because [the effective-Magic-2 Adept's] Improved Reflexes 2 power has a cost of 3 Power Points, she cannot use it within the warp." There's no discussion of whether or not she could use it at level 1. I might try to dig up a copy of SotA:64 or pre-errata M&M to see if their examples shed any light. I guess there's also room to debate whether it's applicable to powers limited by level rather than cost, though it seems like treatment should be consistent.

That said, "on" vs. "off" penalizes Adepts for having powers of levels near their Magic rating. I think it would fix the "lots of Pain Resistance" problem, but at the cost of creating even more problems (admittedly most games probably don't have either lots of Mana Warps or Adepts who rely on Power Foci, but still).


Even setting that aside, the ability to swap out other powers as you take damage is potent—you could, for example, trade a die in your combat rolls (IA:Combat) to ignore the +1 from a Light wound, or trade three dice to ignore a Moderate wound. Under most circumstances that's a very good tradeoff—and when it isn't, you can swap your powers back the other way. Restricting swapping (by making it take time, or be done under non-combat conditions) reduces flexibility a little, but you still get to decide between your usual complement of powers and sacrificing part of that to ignore the effects of damage.

Just so it doesn't get lost, I'm still not convinced that this would be a terrible problem in actual play (at least up to some high threshold of karma), though the swapping issues do need answers. I bring this up because it's part of the following fork:

1: I think that there's a diminishing return on Power Points such that removing the 20Karma/PP option doesn't substantially hurt Adepts (and such that I don't think removing it would inflate Initiation Grades substantially—my gut reaction is that the main effect is that some players who might have taken 3 grades and 1 PP might then take 4 grades). I suspect that Skills, Attributes, and maybe Foci are better places to go from there.
2: To the extent that #1 is wrong and Power Points are a good place to spend that Karma, Pain Resistance seems like a pretty powerful way to spend those Power Points—powerful enough to maybe need some nerfing.

~J

Just as with the original Bioware rule in M&M: It may be a precedence for such a limitation within warps, but there's still no explicit statement for such a limitation in general.



I seem to have written: Further problems with the SotA'64 stuff was/is, that some of the powers, a larger number of the adepts specific metamagics and the Infusion focus by their nature were considered to be breaking the idea of "somatic magic", since some of the stuff affected mental powers, social skills or - in case of the Infusion focus - provided powers from an destinct outside source.

I just didn't want to go into details of the abuse potential where the Virtuoso metamagic certainly was just troublesome on its own when compared to the situation you mentioned about Kinesics in combination with Cool Resolve and adding all (equally) troublesome social Edges you can find to the mix.



I never argued Pain Resistance as an adept power not being "the best" offical approach to that goal, did I? I merely consider it not to be "fearsome" or "worrying" ... even at rating 9.



And I wonder why I wrote cheaper, less effective?

Sidenote: Excluding experiences from convention gaming Stun Damage occured far more often than physical damage within my personal experiences ...



Damage Compensators are "cultured" by design => No Bio-Index reduction (as well as no increased prices) by going "cultured". As far as money and karma are concerned? At least within my experience the former comes in far easier than the latter (and I have certainly seen several groups where 200k¥ came faster than just 10 karma). Bioindex of 1.8? Not much of a problem for a cybered character ... and even an adept can take that easily.

So while you're certainly not wrong with your comments, they use too many premises (and then still ignore the "karma for cash" and "cash for karma" optional rules) and include two ruleset that a majority of gamers don't touch: stress and surgery ... The former usually causes just more bloat than anything else and is too punishing for mundane characters - who already get the short stick in the long run when compared to magic users. And given what I have noticed about the internally inconsistant surgery rules and "lucky rolls" (and some cases "unlucky" ones) I can't blame people for not using these either.



For your attempts of SR3R certainly
But there I'd still look for a solution where an adept's direct magical progress - as well as the progress of an aspected conjurer - is not restricted to just initiation while casters (particularly ones with access to metaplanar travel) can progress with new spells (at lower and in case of metaplanar traveler even further reduced karmic cost).



Which - at that point - will "freeze" the adept in question into the niche he built himself. Not much room of broadening his approach to magically enhanced stuff. Particularly if you're not a fan of Infusion foci



Which might be the "better" idea of you really consider that to be that "worrysome".

I guess that's why I didn't pick up SOTA 64.

Again, I think I'm missing something.

First of all, excepting things like Mana Warps, I can't really think of reasons why an adept wouldn't have all their ongoing powers active at once. So, I don't see the problem there, at least in most situations. Even in those limited situations, there were ways around them: Filtering, IIRC, could counteract this more effectively than trying to swap powers.

Second, even though 9 points of pain resistance is very powerful, it doesn't seem to be any different than what any adept with Magic 9/Initiate Grade 3 would have.

Proper responses later when I have time, but:

I think it's the interpretation that when buying Power Points directly, your limit on simultaneously-active powers doesn't expand (so you're limited by Magic, not Magic+<number of purchased Power Points>).

(I should note that while I don't remember the full tally of evidence for that interpretation, one thing that makes it questionable is that it involves a reinterpretation without explicit rules changes—either that or with just base SR3 the only way an Adept can have a Power rated higher than 6 is by using Power Foci. Nevertheless, even if it isn't canon it should be, as otherwise it gives Adepts uniquely linear improvement costs as opposed to the supralinear costs for everyone else—most notably with Physical Attributes.)

~J

Well, yeah. That was the drawback to the 20-point rule, you couldn't increase your cap that way. So, if you ran the two rules alongside each other, neither rule had the advantage. Sure, once you reached a certain point with initiations, buying PP was cheaper; but since it didn't raise your cap, it was more limited. Really, in all the years I used both rules, I never had a point where adept players found a huge advantage in one over the other.

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AND HERE COMES A NEW QUESTION
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Not 3rd related actually.

My adept wanted a power that would change his face.

We came with a version creating an illusion of the face.

Then I asked myself: A spell is visible in astral (without astral reading). What about adept powers? Are they clearly seen when active or does it work differently?

Active adept powers show up just like a spell.

Passive ones are readable in an aura.

There was such a Power in SR3.
Facial Sculpt:
The adpet can sculpt his face as desired for a number of hours equal to his Magic attribute
Cost 1PP if i remember correctly.

where did you find this one?

That beeing said, Bigity answered my question more


additionnal question: what do you consider as passive and what is considered as active?

SOTA 63 maybe?

I think that was the one with all of the 'face' type adept powers.