QUOTE (KCKitsune @ Jul 12 2017, 06:37 AM)
Here is the problem for players. If you're a Full on Mage, you're kinda squishy. I mean even more so than normal. Your initiative is going to suck(1) and other than the utility spells, there is nothing you bring to the table that a smart street sam can't already do. Fireball? High Explosive grenade. Stunball? Narcojet gas grenades.
The examples that KCKitsune offers here are combat examples, with utility spells as an aside. In my experience, most magicians only take 2 combat spells and the other 8-10 are the "utility" spells that are what make a spellcaster the ultimate Jack of All Trades. Let's not quickly dismiss the value of all the crazy crap that magicians can do: Detect Enemies, Mind Probe, Heal, Physical Mask, Trid Phantasm, Invisibility, Euphoria/Opium Den, Levitate, Magic Fingers, Influence, Control Thoughts/Actions, and so on. Magicians are pretty awesome in non-combat situations, or in avoiding combat situations, to the point where they don't need to be the most efficient killers at the table too (although they can be if built that way).
I agree with Kiirnodel that "Mystic Adepts as they currently exist (in 5th edition), is that they are essentially Magicians+". There are several possible approaches to change this, depending on what you see as the root of the problem:
1) You can make power points more expensive at chargen. Say 7-8 karma each so that some serious compromises need to be made with negative qualities (and the opportunity cost of bypassed positive qualities) if the player wants to start with the full 6 PP;
2) You can make their Magician component Aspected, so that they can only take Spellcasting or Conjuring, but not both, or the Apprentice option from
Forbidden Arcana (one class of spells and one class of spirit only); or
3) Or you can get rid of Mystic Adepts completely and instead add more options for Adepts to take spells like KCKitsune's suggestions.
For the purposes of the rest of this post, let's assume that we're going with Option #3 and we want to replace mystic adepts with Adepts+, in Kiirnodel's parlance. Let's break down the various components that Adept Spell and Unarmed Adept play with:
A) Skill used for casting (Spellcasting for Adept Spell vs. Unarmed Combat for Unarmed Adept)
B) Drain (Regular vs. Regular x 2)
C) Range of spells (Any vs. Touch-only)
D) Maximum Force (Any vs. Magic/3)
E) Maximum number of spells (1 vs. Magic/2)
F) Cost (PP vs. Karma)
That's a lot of ingredients with plenty of opportunity to mix-and-match to find a balance that works for you and your table. My own preferences:
A) I like giving Adepts the option of casting without learning a skill they don't otherwise need. I would open this up based on the adept's Way, so Athletes/Artists/Speakers/etc could use a skill relevant to their Way. (No actual need to purchase a Way quality; I'm just trying to keep things open for adepts whose abilities manifest in ways other than face-punching.)
B) Adepts soak with Body + Willpower so most aren't going to be rolling 12+ to soak drain like you would expect a magician to. Since many adepts will only be in the 8-10 range, Drain*2 might be unduly harsh. Regular drain instead.
C) Personally, I really like the Touch-only restriction, as I think it fosters creativity. That said, I would allow LOS spells to be taken and just make them Touch-only instead, like Levitate or Influence.
D) Given what we've established about adept dice pools for soaking drain, I wouldn't have an issue with allowing them to cast at full Force. (Not allowing overcasting would also be reasonable.) If the adept wants to try to soak 6 drain with 8 dice, go for it!
E) Definitely more than 1 if the goal is to replace Mystic Adepts. Magic/2 would certainly keep the lid on the magician abilities, but I would prefer to allow up to the adept's Magic rating as the ceiling and then tweaking the cost so that not every adept is taking 6 spells by default. See below.
F) Cost is both a philosophical question of whether you think that casting spells should make the character less of an adept (by costing PP), as well as a mechanical/balance question of "everything has a price." If spells just cost karma then there's not a lot of reasons for an adept not to take a few spells - since spells are a relative bargain karma-wise - which would be the demise of the pure adept. That would be a significant canonical shift that I wouldn't want to make personally. To balance that, you can either make spells very expensive (10+ karma each) so that there are significant opportunity costs in selecting them versus initiating, or have a spell include a PP cost, which would do more to preserve the pure adept since the trade-off between casting and adept powers would be more direct. Let's also keep in mind that certain adept powers are already quickened spells, like Magic Sense and Combat Sense (two personal favorites), so if you opt for Power Points as the price then try to balance what the spells cost vs. the established powers (which are mostly 0.5 PP, but with "Limits" like Combat Sense's 1/level inherent limit offset by the fact that you don't need to sustain adept powers like you do spells.) If spells cost 0.25 PP then we're back to the "not a lot of reasons not to take a few" situation. I would tentatively start with 0.5 PP per spell, but watching out for things like Increase Reflexes (the 0.5 PP spell) being used to bypass the 3.5 PP adept power.
On that final point, you then have other considerations, such as do you allow adepts to use power foci or sustaining foci or reagents or any of the other tricks up a magician's sleeve. And let's not get started on Conjuring, which is a completely separate can of worms that would either have to be dismissed outright or incorporated into all of the above.
In short, there are lots of options available for how to adjust mystic adepts, which GMs will probably have to resolve on a case-by-case basis with what makes the most sense for their own table.