Cochise,

If a character who has centered their magical attunement and development around speaking and non-violence decides all the sudden that brute force is necessary and takes up Killing Hands, yes, the 25% increase makes total sense. They have strayed from their way. They have turned their back on the framework they've used for however many years in the development of their power to take up a new philosophy, the von Clausewitz doctrine you mentioned.

Is that 25% penalty permenant? That's up to the GM. If a shaman strays from the path of his totem and decides he wants to start picking up hermeticism, I don't think he really has a choice. He loses his totem bonuses and starts losing Magic Attribute, and I don't think he can ever get those things back without going back to this totem. He's lost his framework. So a GM, if they wished, could say the same thing about an adept; that once your Speaker turns his back on his Way to follow violence and brute force, he's forever going to be paying more for adept powers, because he's out of his framework. Or a GM could decide that it is possible for adepts to change Ways, after a time. Build a new framework. I would say this definitely wouldn't be a short process, but possible. If the GM allows it, the adept would have a new Way, built around this von Clausewitz doctrine, and the cost increase for his powers would fade away. Like a shaman who has returned to the fold.

It does make an adept stick to a certain philosophy to an extent. Consider that a trade-off for their powers; a balancing point against the cybersams and mundanes that have been bemoaning adept power. A cybersam can install any bit of ware he wants to up to his physical limits and not worry a bit about "philosophy." An adept doesn't have that luxury. Magic is all in the mindset.

You're arguing a lot of semantics now, which I'm just not going to get into, because I think it's silly.

Look, no, the paragraph doesn't outline every possible way to use the optional rule and how to work around the optional rule. The writers have to worry about word count; if we even bothered to include all that stuff, it'd likely be cut anyway. Usually there's a certain level of GM freedom and common sense assumed.

So you're right, it's not all explicitly explained in that paragraph. As a GM, if you need it explicitly explained for you, you can always choose to ignore it. It's an optional rule. Hell, even if it weren't an optional rule, you could ignore it in your game anyway, if you really wanted to. Or you could work a little of your GM freedom into it and apply it how you think it would work well in your game. Rules, when written in a tabletop roleplaying game, are little more than guidelines for a gamemaster. It's not like FanPro comes to your house and enforces them.

Also, keep in mind that the Ways are not just the little categories in SOTA64. Those are example divisions of philosophy, not categorical choices. Just because you say you're a member of the Speaker's Way, that's not the whole story. What is the character's philosophy? That is the important part. If his philosophy is largely pascificist, and he takes up Killing Hands, it doesn't matter if you explain it off with another philosophy that compares conversation to combat. That's not the character's philosophy.

Now, in my personal view, a character can change their philosophy. But it's not easy. They've trained their body and attuned to their magic to a certain philosophical framework for years, you don't just flip a switch overnight. It takes time to adapt, and during that time the adept is going to be penalized because they have uprooted their own belief system and haven't quite adapted to a new one. If a GM wanted to be a hardass, he could say they never quite will adapt; that once your magic is attuned to a specific philosophy, like the shaman who is called to his Totem, there is no other path for you.

The optional rule, as it's written, seems pretty open and ambivalent about that. It just doesn't cover it. It's a GM perogative at this point. In many cases, the writers don't consider GM perogative bad words.

Demonseed, I get the feeling you two are talking about different things with permanence. Cochise is talking about the fact that you never get back the power points you spent on the out-of-Way power, even if it is your Way or becomes it. I think you're interpreting it as him stating that all powers cost 25% more thereafter.

Or maybe I'm just misinterpreting it.

~J

Bad? No. Is it going to get anywhere? Probably not. Sorry. Don't know what else to tell ya there.

When it comes down to it, it is an optional rule, regardless of what Synner might have intended for it. He's a writer, but Rob makes those calls. And Rob apparently decided he wanted it optional right now. So it is. And Rob likely didn't want to spend too much word count defining all the possibilities of an optional rule. From my experience, the writers are usually over word count on damn near everything (myself included), and Rob's busy looking for things to cut. Hell, a lot of that stuff is cut on non-optional rules. It's figured the GM can make calls on that stuff, it doesn't need to fight for word count.

We clearly disagree on the idea of adepts and their philosophical frameworks, and how strict those are in terms of the adept's use of magic. You see them as more flexible, I do not. And the rules are likely left vague for exactly that reason. Maybe something like that would be cleared up and fixed in an SR4 main book, but I don't really think FanPro wants to crack down on fundamental adept rulings like that in a SOTA sourcebook. It's too messy there.

You also see the 25% power cost increase as permenant, even though the word permenant is never used in the paragraph. I do not see it that way. Again, the rules are likely left deliberately vague, because to get specific there (and even to make the rule non-optional there) fundamentally changes the way adepts work in a SOTA sourcebook, which is not something most gaming companies like to do.

cochise, you still don't seem to grasp what's meant when it talks about the ways being flexible. the ways are flexible and open to interpretation; 'way of the warrior' might mean one thing to one adept, and something slightly different to another. the adepts themselves are not flexible in their individual views of a given way--once an adept decides on a way, and decides on his interpretation of that way, he can't change it--and it never says, anywhere in SOTA:64, that an adept should be able to change his way. the ways are flexible; adepts, if you use the optional rule, are not.

no, i'm not missing it, and neither is anybody else. we just disagree with you on the point of whether or not that should be possible. you're trying to claim that "flexible ways" means that the adept should be able to change his mind about his way halfway through his life, and then complaining because the rules don't support that. but the rules were never meant to support that, and they never claim to. you've come up with a houserule for ways that suits the way you want adepts to work, and now you're arguing that the rules are broken because they don't back you up.

The fine print in the book clearly states that mfb is always right.

maybe in your book, it's fine print. in mine, it's printed in flaming ten-foot letters on the cover. yours obviously lacks the latest errata !!

You deface your books with your vanity? Tsk.

I'm going to try this one more time. I'm going to try to clarify what was meant by the concept of "Ways" in SOTA64.

A Way is more than a philosophy of life and slightly less than a magical tradition. It is an inner ideal, it is part of the adept's spiritual/mental self-image, almost a vocation. It is in no small part subconscious and it defines him as much as he defines it. It is something he continuously strives for even if sometimes he isn't even aware of it, a template for self-improvement. An adept does not wake up one day and decide to follow a Way or change his Way. That Way is an integral part of what he is only more so because magic takes that core ideal and translates it to his physical abilities.

Are there adepts who don't have a Way, who lack this fundamental ideal to strive for? Of course, many people (especially these days) lack that core drive towards "something", self-realization, or simply don't know where their "vocation" lies. In these people, magic isn't channeled by anything other than random need and desire... which in the accepted metaparadigm of the Sixth World means it is less focused and effective (and hence, in game terms, more expensive) - strictly speaking these are the "Lost adepts".

As mfb and others have correctly interpreted, Ways are only flexible in the sense that each individual adept has his own (when we refer to adepts of the Way of the Warrior we are actually referring to hundreds of different individual variations on that Way). There is no correct approach to a Way, there are cat burglars and ninjas in the Invisible Way (their powersets and development is entirely different), there are kickboxers in the Athlete's Way (because their focus is to excel physically to be the best they can be, rather than a being a born-scrapper).

However, once an adept sets down a Way (note - normally long before the character ever begins play) changing it, means having a not-inconsequential revelation or epiphany, a traumatic change of heart—something that changes not his outward philosophy and posture towards life, but rather the way he fundamentally sees himself. It is not something that happens overnight. It should be almost akin to someone discovering a religious calling, losing his faith, or undergoing a radical shift in personality or having a breakdown.

Is this restrictive? Yes, it's one of the limitations adepts - their somatic development is limited (and focused) by their own idealized (or in the case of Twisters negative) subconcious self-image which serves as a lens for his magical expression.

So what about an adept who undergoes a small change of heart? It was decided the "Lost adept" rule should be kept optional and open to interpretation, so that individual GMs (those who wish to adopt it in the first place) and players could judge where best to draw the line in their own games... and judge when such a mental shift is indeed justified and eventually complete, and consequently when the +25% modifier is no longer necessary since this means conditioning the modifier to roleplaying rather than a strict rule set.

BTW - I mentioned Grimoires and Awakening only as a reference to how far back this element exists (and has been mostly ignored). Obviously, I left unsaid that Magic in the Shadows covers exactly the same material for SR3.

BTW2 - The "testemonies" I was referring to were the ones provided by the various adept characters in SOTA64. There was a similar analysis (albeit from an outsider's standpoint) provided by Johnny Zen in Awakenings but we opted to use individuals who live these Ways (including a few off-beat approaches to Ways) to give some insight into the diversity within Ways.

Fundamentally, there's two ways (pardon the pun) to imagine a Way being "flexible."

The first way is to imagine the flexibility as the ability to change from Way to Way, outright. Someone could start out on the Way of the Athlete, play just a little too much football, and change to Way of the Warrior (in order to justify Killing Hands, or whatnot, to his facist GM who demands extra power points, if the change is not explained sufficiently). And then, later, that Warrior gets a few nice gigs doing commercials, and wants to change to Way of the Speaker, to toss in some bonus powers and really boost those ratings and profits. The character has a reason to change Ways each time, the Ways are changed, the Ways are, as such, "flexible."

I think that's wrong.

I beleive the "flexibility" inherent in the Ways is that, fundamentally, each Way is wholly unique to each character. If I explained to the GM from the get-go that my Athlete saw football as a defining characteristic of his life, and saw anything done directly to increase either his ability as a football player or his profitiability as a football player (coming to this decision through character soul-searching via the twenty questions stuff, examining his goals, etc)? Then the GM should be just fine with me taking any Adept power that will directly influence football playing ability. While still staying steadily true to the ideal of the Way of the Athlete, my character can easily justify not only IA: Athletics or Sprint or Great Leap or whatever, but also (potentially) things that would be seen as more combat oriented, like Combat Sense (for wiggling past tackles), Rooting (for linebackers and the sort), Improved Physical Attribute(s), or even Improved Reflexes or Improved Ability: Thrown Weapons, or Mystic Armor.

Those are things that would normally be seen as under the Path of Warriors, but could very easily be explained away as all sorts of crap that'd be handy to have on the football field, right?

That's the flexibility of a Way, to me.

Between you and your GM -- that's right, communication, not competition -- you work out the details of your Way. Don't try to take on "Way of the Warrior," in it's entirety, and define what that Way entails for the entire game world, and every Adept in it. Take on your Way of the Warrior, and describe how your character sees it, thinks about it, and walks it. Justify powers with logic on your side, rationalize it with your interpretation of Way of the _________, and game on.

If your GM doesn't find the rationalization to fit when held up beside the Way of _______ you first talked to him about, then suck it up and (if he's even using this rule), pay the extra 25%. Then game on, anyways, and maybe try to explain it to him in better detail next session.

The powers aren't categorized. There's no sub-sections of the chapters dedicated to listing Adept abilities, that say which ones go with which Way. Likewise, there was no list in the chapter describing the Ways themselves, stating which powers were available to characters here or there or anywhere. The only information we have on Ways is first-person narratives, describing how some character sees the Way -- if that's not a freakin' hint that the whole damned idea is supposed to be personalized to each character that it impacts, I don't know what is.

I think the whole concept of adept "ways" is pointless and overly-restrictive. Adepts have a limited selection of powers to begin with; now they would be penalized for doing anything that breaks them out of a stereotypical role.

To me, that's giving the GM too much ability to micromanage your character. It's like having a shaman having to justify every new spell he learns that doesn't "fit" his Totem (and by the way, I prefer vague, archetypical totems to anything that turns a shaman into a D&D cleric, with fussy rules to follow, replacing the previous broad guidelines).

I don't see anything good about using the ways as more than a general guideline. Either players will have their creativity stifled by being stuck with a certain role (hunter, warrior, athlete, etc.), or they will come up with a "way" that is so general that they could justify any power.

Now me, I follow the Shadowrunner's Way

I like the idea of Ways, but personally I don't think there's enough of them. We've seen only less than a dozen; I'm sure there could be more, lots more.

I also would prefer giving adepts a discount on powers when sticking to a Way, rather than increasing the cost of powers purchased outside that Way. A friend of mine (Hi Todd, if you're out there) once came up with the idea of adept 'package deals' for following traditional Totems; they idea was that the adept picks a Totem (like Snake or Dog or Chipmunk) and pays 3-5 points of his beginning Power Points into that Totem. He then gets a return of 4-7 points of powers from that Totem's list, and still has his remaining 1-3 points of Power left for some customization.

This was in the days of SR2, when adepts really sucked, compared to what they are now. But, I don't see why something similar could be used, with moderation, for adepts now. We just have to define enough Ways to give people a choice in what they want to be -- and allow enough space for customization, so we don't have cookie-cutter adepts.

(To any of you wondering why I'm espousing giving the adepts more power, when I stated at the beginning of the thread that adepts were 'pooching' the mundanes... adept powers like Improved Ability and Iron Gut don't pooch mundanes. It's when you get into the non-duplicatable powers -- Counterstrike, Cool Resolve, Kinesics -- that they start making it a clear choice whether or not to play an adept or a mundane. But as I've stated before, the mundane's forte is versatility -- this idea only helps the adept try to match the mundane in that area, but really isn't going to keep him up for very long.)

Note to Synner: Kinesics to counter negative penalties to Social Tests seems to work really well. And berserker Way of the Speaker adepts are fun. (I convinced the player to take the Geas 'Must be drunk' on his Kinesics and IA: Negotiations. He's a stuffed-shirt when sober, but the life of the party when plastered. )

Deacon - Good to see its working with just a minor tweak. As I said before I'm not a fan of the potential combined effects of IA: Negotiation and Kinesics but it wasn't my call. The berserker Speaker sounds like fun.

Actually, the very first PC I made when I was just starting SR was an adept but I told my GM that my PC would be taking some cyber and bio. Some players cut themselves off from the cyber/bio route with Bio Rejection or Sensitive System, I do not see the munchkinism of that precisely because of the synergy that a PC would get from magic and cyber/bio.

You know what I like about playing online? That I can't just roll a handful of dice and suggest an action like, "I talk the secguard's pants off." I actually have to write. And while I'm not the world's greatest writer, I am perfectly willing to have my social adept because I can write this: