So, way back in the Awakenings book for SR2 the concept of an Astral Adept was mentioned. In this case it was just a physad with astral perception who specialized in dealing with astral space. One problem we always felt this Astral Adept had was that it lacked one of the key abilities to be truly effective in astral space, namely astral projection. So recently one of my players decided he wanted to make a true astral adept and came up with this.

Astral Adept:
Cost: as per aspected magicians
Abilities: astral perception and projection, does not have access to sorcery, conjuring, or physad powers, but can using enchanting like any other character with astral perception. Starts with 35 force points which can be used for bonding foci.

I'm looking for comments and suggestions. Overall it seems a bit weak in its current form (I consider astral projection to be a significantly weaker ability than sorcery or conjuring), but it also seems like if anything else is added it becomes overpowered.

Astral Adept did have projection. Check Awakenings.

Hmmm, right you are, my memory just seems to have been corrupted over the years, have to run a scandisk on the old brain ;-} Ah well.

One other idea I came up with as I was typing the previous message. Similar in nature, but more so.

Adept of the Seekers Path
Cost: As for Full magician/ Adept of the Magician's Path
Abilities:Astral perception, projection, and Adept Powers. Starts with no force points, as per Adepts.

Makes for an incredible spirit hunter, a good physical fighter, but I don't think is more powerful than a full mage or Magician's Path Adept. Comments?

they should have full access to sorcery on the astral plane. sorcery also covers astral combat so they definitely should have it.

You can use either regular combat or sorcery for combat on the astral, and giving them access to spells at all, even just in astral space is a pretty powerful ability, not to mention the difficulty at defining why the can do it an astral space but not physical (not necassary, but I like some level of consistency).

Also note that adepts can already learn the astral combat specialization of sorcery.

Yeah, seems weak...until they have 2 levels of initiation...one for masking, the other for posession! Oh, the havok one could wreak!

The old astral adepts could use sorcery for astral combat, but couldn't summon spirits or cast spells. They could astrally percieve and project, and that was it. I didn't find them unbalanced at all, but I think they dropped them out of Third Edition because they wanted to reserve astral projection solely for full mages.

The Adept of the Seeker's Path seems too overpowered, though, unless you make them buy astral perception and projection as powers (I don't know how much you would charge for the latter - maybe 5 points or so). Have it be a requirement to start out with perception, and projection can be bought later. Otherwise, they are getting astral perception (normally a 2-point power) and astral projection for a mere 5 extra build points. They should be like adepts of the magical way, who have to spend their precious power points to get non-adept magical abilities.

that'd bring up a whole slew of questions, mainly revolving around which powers would and would not apply in the astral.

While we're reminiscing, anyone remember the Priority D Magic characters who could astrally perceive by spending Good Karma? I think it was in the Germany Sourcebook (or maybe the London Book)

We've always used that as a house rule: anyone who took priority D in Magic could purchase (SR2) magic edges and flaws. (Bad Karma was the exception: that continues to be required in our games - call it bonus points if you will, and it also holds down the karma pool.)

I don't think the Adept of the Seekers Path is overpowerful for an A priority PC. The power behind the Magician's Path adept is that all sets of abilities (physad, conjuring, sorcery) are accessible at the same time and sometimes build upon each other to create a greater overall effect (eg. sight magnification + spellcasting). That is certainly not the case with your proposal, Lucyfersam: (mostly physically-based) physad abilities rarely apply in astral space, and if you choose them so as to optimise in astral space, you will probably be hurting in physical reality.

I think it IS overpowered if they don't have to pay for astral perception and projection. Astral perception alone is like letting them start out with 8 power points worth of powers. And there's nothing stopping them from getting "standard" adept powers, since their astral powers are already bought and paid for. The two powers that work when astrally perceiving, killing hands and mystic armor, are hardly going to make the adept weak in the "real" world. Astral combat specialist adepts are normally weaker in physical reality because they do have to buy astral perception, costing them a third of their starting points.

jsut let the astral perception power give the magic A seeker adept projection as well.. done..

I agree that the Adept of the Seekers Path is balanced.

Don't forget that as it's priority A you can't take priority A attributes that IMO most adepts take, and that if you want to be really powerful in both astral and non-astral combat you want both your physical and mental attributes to be high.

Full mages can fling around mana spells in astral space, Seekers Path Adepts would never have access to this, although I suppose distance strike would work.

not to mention killing hands, and mystic armor, and pain resistance, and counterstrike, and improved ability (melee skill), and improved reflexes, and quick
strike. and maybe some others, whose use in the astral isn't immediately apparent.
don't get me wrong, i think the idea of a projecting adept is cool, but understand
that there'd be very little that would be able to stand against one. then, adepts
are designed to dominate their specialties.

And the relative power point value of each of those is a minimum of .5 per die. No maxing out three separate skills at 12 dice each for these types (apparently a common option among physads).

If someone wants to build a Seeker's Path Magician (priority A), spend their 6 power points to gain Quick Strike + Killing Hands (M) + one or two levels of Counterstrike or Pain Resistance - and at the same time spend the bps to keep all their attributes (mental and physical) high (priority B or C) - more power to them, they deserve what edge they get with astral projection and perception as a "freebie".

From the points people have brought up so far, I think it seems to be reasonably balanced. It is incredibly costly to try to have all of your attributes high, and as such a starting Seekers Path Adept will probably want to focus on mental attributes, weakening him in the physical (assuming they want to start out the best at there specialty). 2nd, killing hands is useless unless you purchase it at S or D, because there is no stun damage in astral and base damage code is M.
Further, while no reasonable single foe could stand against them, a group of spirits, or anything that had certain powers (say a wraith with its influence power) would still be able to effectively deal with the adept. They are better than most any single opponent, but they do give some things up to do that.

As for the paying 5 Bp to get astral perception and projection, a sorcerer pays those same 5 Bp for astral projection and conjuring, etc. (plus, in my game I dropped the cost for Adepts/Aspected magicians to 20 from 25 because otherwise it was impossible to create a character that could equal a piority based character, and even with the drop it is still hard to do).

In my games I use the following 'variants' on adepts/astral adepts

Spökenkierkeri - the good old germany sourcebook semi-awakenend who can use Astral perception for a cost of 1 good karma at each activation. Also has a strong psychological tie between eyes and ability - loose the eyes, loose the ability.
Cost: 5 BPs (Magic Priority D)

Spirit Watcher - slightly 'better' version of the above. Unlimited use of Astral Perception.
Cost: 10 BPs (Magic Priority C)

Astralist - a type of aspected magician capable of astral perception and projection.
Cost: 20 BPs (Magic Priority B)

Adepts of the Astral Way - an Adept with the ability to purchase the special Astral Projection power (cost 4 power points, requires the astral perception power). Follows the same rules as Magician's Way adepts otherwise.
Cost: 30 BPs (Magic Priority A)

Then there's two other possibilities - Changelings with the SURGE effect Astral Sight (total cost 11 BPs) or Dual Nature (total cost -5 BPs), but those requore you to allow people to choose their SURGE effcts (something you should be wary of doing - we tried that ... once)

A couple ideas to make a priority B "astral adept" more balanced: (bear in mind, I'm just brainstorming)

allow astral perception w/o +2 penalty to physical actions (as dual natured critters get, since they are so used to it)

extended out of body time? Lose 1 essence every initiate grade+1 hours? This could be a new metamagic for them.

Possible metamagic: We know all astral forms can manifest, but what about materialization? That would be HUGE, probably require some other metamagic prereqs. Maybe it could drain essence at an extremely advanced rate, to "tire them out" and force them to return to their bodies afterward, as a bit of a balancer.

Some or all of these could certainly bring an astral adept up to par with what other characters get for priority B.

I personally would not allow these characters to work under adept rules. I'd make them a ten point edge changeling ability. This would alow perception and projection but no magical skills. Remember that when they are projecting or perceiving they can damage spirits as magicians. Don't allow them starting spell points. Enchanting could be allowed if you allow it to all aspects as I often do.

My main concern with allowing them access to sorcery in even a limited sense is because of the broad uses for this skill. Once you open the door to one use it becomes harder to say no to othe rational extensions. This is why I do not allow adepts to use this skill for astral combat.

Force them to use either unarmed combat or my personal favorite, underwater combat. I often use underwater combat for unusual terrain types like space and this seemed a logical extension.

Materializing metamagic can be found here, at Mr.Kenson's page (I'd paste the text here, but I don't want to step on any toes) and it works fairly well in games as far as my own limited play testing goes.

This one is still in development:
Preserving - the initiate can perform a ritual (roll Sorcery) to extend the time a mage can spend on the astral - effectively suspending the essence loss of said mage. This counts as an extended exclusive action, much like sustaining an exclusive spell, and approperiate modifiers apply. If the initiate is interrupted, the magician starts loosing essence normally. Note, this must be started prior to the magician projecting astrally, otherwise it will have no effect.

Target number of 10-Essence? This makes it harder to significantly increase the time for low essence magicians - as it should. Every success (or every two successes) add 1 to essence for the purpose of determining time on the astral (effectively, the mage has a number of free hours before he or she starts to loose essence). Or add 10 mins per success to the time it takes to loose 1 point of essence.