So, right. You're playing in a game full of pro-Adept house rules, and talking about it while everyone else is talking about a canon game. That's what I thought.

Not to mention the +2 Tn's for any and all healing (Barring Spells)

Well, this thread's turned fairly ridiculous.

Actually its 20 (Exceptional + Phenotype Alteration) 10 * 2 For Attrib boost.

Not that it disproves your post

Night One + Exceptional Quickness (Edge) + Exceptional Quickness (SURGE) + Exceptional Quickness (Penotypic Alteration) = 11

Attribute Boost = 11*2 = 22

EDIT: Close, Shockwave, but no cigar.

You sure you can do that? Otherwise you can go Quick healer Edge, Qucikhealer Surge

-4 Tn's to healing? YES PLEASE!!

The Edge becomes a Positive Effect, no longer an Edge per se. Otherwise, even Penotypic Alteration is also useless, because the geneware gives the Edge as a gene alteration.

But -- again -- none of those edges, base stats, etc, are anything a mundane can't do just as easily. And then the mundane has many more, and much better init boosters available to him.

The one-trick-pony Quick Strike notwithstanding, Adepts still lose out when all you're trying to do is make someone fast. I'm not saying it's a good thing, I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I'm just saying it is.

On page 300 of the main book, it describes Boosted Reflexes as a "one-time electrochemical treatment". To me, that would seem to preclude upgrades. Of course, since you can get it removed with genetech, you can always do that, then get a higher version of Boosted Reflexes to replace it. But that roundabout way is the only way you can really "upgrade" them.


Adepts have decent initiative, but pure speed is one of the areas where they can't approach a sammie (but their own initiative is nothing to sneeze at, either). They have their own niches and specialties, and are more effective against some things (Killing Hands makes them much more effective against things like spirits), but a sammie is usually a much better generalist - toughness, speed, and improved weapon targetting in one lethal package.

I'll be honest. I prefer adepts because they're so much easier to create than sammies are.

Used cyberware can screw you up pretty bad. I'm not sure of the specifics.

For the record, my reason for giving an adept the ability to become absurdly fast after some initiation is because it's the only way to keep players from just cybering themselves at character creation. After all, why start on the path of the burnout when you could become faster and more accurate just by spending an absurd amount of karma?

If someone wants to know why I'm giving them Smartlinks, there's a good reason: It's a great way to soak the character for karma, and cause some realistic roleplaying. A character that has "bonded" to a favorite weapon or two is not likely to give that weapon up; the player will do the same because they don't want to spend any more karma. This also makes it less likely that the character will buy a plethora of weapons (Streetline Specials for easily-concealed killing; Manhunters for blowing away trolls, etc.) , instead sticking primarily with one weapon which they use as best they can. (This also requires the character to use tactics; a character who favors a heavy pistol will usually try to advance towards the target while maintaining cover so they can get a shot as opposed to simply plugging away with an assault rifle instead.)
And, in case you have not noticed, the largest benifit granted is a -1 target number modifier over that of an ordinary laser sight. The character can save a few actions by automatically adjusting things like fire rate and ejecting clips, but I rule that the former can be changed on the pistol grip itself (making it a Free Action) if you pay a large fee for electronic modification, and the latter can be automatically programmed into guns if you pay the small fee for an ammo counter.

In other words, these are both just ways to make physad characters actually play physads. A few hundred karma is required to get speed above levels gained by buying Alphaware synaptic+boosted, but the character will actually be an amazingly good shot as opposed to a street sammy with some extra dice.
Of course, I'm also getting rid of Geasa at character creation, and this is my little way of letting physads become more powerful than cybermunchies-if they workreally, really[b]hard[/b}. After all, even with Enhanced Reflexes IV (7+ karma cost), a bunch of extra weapon dice, and a shotgun for a weapon focus, you're still going to be pretty evenly matched against, say, a street sam with MBW 4, smartlinks, cybereyes, titanium bone replacement, some nasty bioware of your choice, a rocket launcher, panther cannon, HMG with absurd recoil comphensation, and a hyper-enhanced assault rifle, all betaware or cultured or made from scratch by an armorer. This is character that is more than obtainable if you've been playing long enough to obtain the absurd amounts of karma required to initiate a bunch of times. (Plus, the street sammy is also likely to have some pretty crazy high skills in a bunch of different weapons if they've been playing that long.)

Besides, just because I'm partial to physads (but want to discourage cybered physads) does'nt mean that anyone I'm GMing for will even want to play one. A good street samurai with fast reflexes and good solid skills in many weapons can easily outperform a physad at chargen, and they can still improve a great deal before the cost:benifit ration becomes insane.

Why not just have your Adepts use the published rules from SotA '64? All the stuff your house rules seem to be letting them do (bonding to weapons, smartlink-esque free action stuff) concerning firearms is covered there.

Because I'm about do GM for a bunch of Anime fans who I'm trying to convert to Shadowrun players. They're likely to want to play a non-cybered PC with generally good abilities, and I figure that it makes more sense to let them make an anime-style gunman instead of something cannon.

Also, the whole issue of geasa ONLY APPLIES AT CHARGEN. If a person wants to get some cyberware later (or has a darn good reason for cybering their adept), then so be it. However, essence-friendly reaction boosters take up less total magic than IR3, and make you go just as fast. Anyone with half a brain is likely to see this, and then make a super-fast character using alphaware boosted reflexes/cultured synaptic accellerator, a cheesy (and hard-to-lose, and inexpensive) talisman geas (A tin toe ring with a square lump of bone in it), which would leave them roughly 3 points of Magic left even after you throw in cybereyes and smartlinks. This leaves you with a very fast character with six extra dice in the weapon of their choice, and speed equivalent to that of a character who had just blown almost all of their starting magic into making themselves zippy. (And, due to the physad ability to boost quickness through the roof, they're likely to end up as fast-or faster than-as if they had pumped those points into enhanced reactions. )

Secondly, my modifications are nothing really special. For a total cost of 1 magic, a physad can get smartlinks and tricked-out cybereyes (and have some essence left over in that point; these two items can be had for a tiny total essence cost). Thermal and flare comphensation alone plus my "magi-smartlink" ability cost just as much magic with less of a benifit. They're still not as good as street samurai, but with one gun which they can use really well, they become a one-trick pony that can shoot really, really well with their weapon of choice.

The same applies for the reaction bonuses. Although IR4 would be neat-0 for a unarmed-combat type, a total essence cost of 7(!) make it all but inaccessible for most characters. It acts, more than anything else, as a sort of an incentive not to use cyberware because, if you take a Geas, upgrading IR2 to IR4 will only cost you 2.25 magic. (Any player smart enough to keep a character alive long enough to get the karma necessary to do this, and then actually spend it all at once, deserves the cookie.) It's still not MBW4, and it takes up almost all of your magical ability, but it allows for unarmed combat characters to mix it up with street samurai...and win.
(Also, please consider that, by this time, a street samurai would have beefed up weapon skills to about 9 or so, became an uber-awesome athelete, and shored up any weak points in the ability roster using the karma spent on making the character really, really fast. ).

Also, many people here say that physads should be one-trick ponies. I say: Why? Just because we paid FanPro (or WizKids or FASA depending on the time and viewpoint) 30$ for a set of rules does'nt mean we cannot edit them if we feel like it. I personally think that physads should be able to do things similar to that of a street samurai; their nifty physad abilities are cancelled out by the lack of such things as dermal plating, knowsofts/linguasofts, cyberarms, or crazy bioware. It might unbalance the game, but I'm trying to present an altenative

(Note: I'm far too cheap to buy a rulebook such as SOTA when it's going to be obsolete in six months. Instead, I'll buy a 3-ring binder and some printer paper, and write them up myself).

To be honest, I'm really not sure what anyone's still really talking about. The thread started as a discussion of what would be "brokenly fast" (or whatever) for raw init totals, then someone mentioned that Adepts were amazing OMG LOL speed ninja, and then...I dunno. I lost, like, a page and a half in the middle of some time warp, and suddenly all we're doing is figuring out -- just now -- that someone's been stating opinions wholly birthed in the realm of House Rule, because he doesn't like buying rulebooks or using rules (or something like that).

I lost track of what's going on, by this point. Are we trying to talk him down from his ledge, or just critiqueing his rules, or what? I could use some guidance, here. The conversation got away from me.

Physads don't have to b eone trick ponys, they're just better as one trick ponys.
Physads shouldn't be equal to Samurai. they are two different types of character and they should be played differently. There are tradeoffs to be made with the choice of what type of character to play. Trying to give an adept the equivilant of everything a samurai has is pointless. One might has well just let everyone start out with the exact same stats. As for the Power Point cost of I3 vs the magic loss caused by other options. Yes, it is possible to make some options more efficient. However, magic isn't the only cost to cyberware. There is also money. Physads with enough money to waste on reaction enhancers are going to be lacking in skills or attributes. There are always tradeoffs.

I also agree that you should check out SOTA 64. It has a canon "magical smartlink" in the more of attunment metamagic. Its only available to initiates, however. I'm not sure if it stacks with vision mag and laser sights. If it does it actually provides better bonusesl than a smartlinkdoes. Someone please enlighten me.

There are also Adept powers in there (fairly inexpensive ones) that provide a lot of the smaller, less immediately noticable benefits (reloading as free actions, etc) that smartlinks grant.

I mean, seriously, Spastic. If you want to just keep house ruling stuff, that's fine (if, in the future, you make it more immediately clear when what you're discussing and putting forth as proof of something is a house rule, and everyone else is talking about canon). But there's a book out there that every Adept fan should have, and you don't have it.

Eh, I don't have a problem with geasea, so long as the geasea are *meaningful*. Remember, at least for mages, breaking a geas means a +1TN to all magical skills, as well as losing access to that magic point; that's a pretty significant drawback so long as it comes into play once in a while.

Adepts, though, should have a more significant drawback for breaking an involuntary geas than "just" losing access to that power and its Magic Point. Maybe something like -1 die to all Active Skill tests for each geas broken? That's not as bad as a +1TN, but it applies to more stuff so it kinda balances.

no, no. that's permanently giving up geasa. just breaking them--not being able to find your talisman, but casting anyway--does not work that way.

ah. missed that.