Just wanted to start a thread regarding the practicality of the various ways of obtaining extra initiative passes in the game, ie, which ways exist and why one way may be better or worse than others (expense, essence cost, power point cost, sustaining penalties, etc.). As far as I'm concerned, it appears that extra IPs are really a key determinant in who is going to fare better or at least have more options in a combat (unless it's a matter of who one-shots who first), so I'd love to hear a discussion of the practicalilty of each version of IP adding powers, as well as what stacks or does not stack with what else.

I think i am alone with this, but i love the move-by-wire-system. Essence is equal to the wired reflexes, but with a lot of nice gizmos (more reaction, extra dice for dodging, skillsoft included [especially in SR4A a really good price/effort ratio], AND you move smooth). Of course it is hard to get at the start and expensive, but that war not the question.^^

Cyberware, Bioware, Magic Spell (Increase Reflexes), Edge and Combat Drugs are all the ways I'm aware of (off the top of my head) to increase IPs.

Cyberware is normally thought of as the cheapest and easiest to get. Bioware is really expensive. If you are a mage, Increase Reflexes are pretty mandatory for IP gain. And if you get a sustaining focus you are set. The downsize is you have a pretty noticeable astral presence with a spell like that active.

Edge is the one I think is most forgotten. Spend a point of edge and you get an extra IP...pretty simple.

Combat Drugs are good too. They last a while, but I think they all have side effects when they wear off. Something like Cram does a bunch of stun damage, so you have to be aware of your damage when its about to wear off.

Do combat drugs stack with permanent IP enhancements?

The rules are fuzzy. They say something along the lines of: initiative boosters are incompatible with each other. (Except in very specific cases.)

So, no. They don't stack.

My group has taken that to mean that if you are under the effects of multiple IP boosting effects, you use whichever one gives you the best bonus(es).


-paws

No, we have a player with a synaptic accelerator who tried to use it, but if my GM read the rules correct, the books say no.

I think that drugs a supposed to tack with other IP-enchaments, at least thats the impression i have gotten form here and the book.

In some cases, HMHVV infection can get you up to 2 IPs.

Yeah, but they are also incompatible with other IP-enhancements. But hey, better than nothing.

Also astrally projecting, going into cold/hot sim, or summoning a spirit to possess you (with the Channeling metamagic so you can still control your actions).

Good call! I was assuming the OP was referring to the Physical, but yeah, we might as well list all ways to gain extra IPs if for nothing else but completeness sake.

Submerged technomancers can gain up to four extra IPs through Echoes.

This is what is about to crack my campaign like metal fatigue. One can already hear the whine of the Sammies as the TMs go faster and get to hack too.

BlueMax
/enjoys a good whine.

Hackers can get 5 IPs in the matrix if I'm not mistaken. 3 for hot sim, then there is a commlink enhancement that grants an IP, and a piece of cyberware that each grant 1 that explicit ally stack.

Simsense Accelerator addon for your commlink
Simsense Booster for your brain. This one isn't cheap.

Am I wrong to think that a Rigger with extra IP could take all those IPs in combat through a drone? Looking at it that way, a you can turn VR passes into physical ones.

I seem to remember that there's a limit to the actions you can take involving the physical. Like the TM with the 5 ip's. He can perform one physical IP (probably at -6), and 4 matrix IP's. I may be wrong on this one, though.

LOL!
Just a hunch, but I think the OP was looking for the exact devices, spells, edge uses, and specific drugs... so that they wouldn't have to read intricately through 3+ books + errata just to get a full list, and informed opinions on the in-game pros and cons in comparison.

Granted, I don't have a clue what they are, and I'm trying to figure out the same thing by going through dozens of threads and learn it, but somehow I don't think an equivalent to a, "Well, there's stuff in the books that does it, but I don't know of any other ways." cuts it for the original question asked.

Honestly, I was just trying to see if there's anything I missed. The idea of invasive surgery 'for upgrades' is kind of abhors me, and even though bioware is somewhat different than cyber in a sense, you're still removing 'you' when you put it in...

I have noted (or had it pointed out to me, that is) that Increased Reflexes as an Adept Power is grossly inefficient. For the cost of 1 Essence you can get 2 extra IPs via bioware (synaptic boosters, right?) and although your Magic drops by 1 (we could assume 5 to 4), you don't have to spend 2.5 pps on Increased Reflexes 2. That leaves you 1.5 more power points net to spend on other Adept Powers.

Mages, of course, don't have to have terrible things done to their bodies to get extra IPs, but without that Sustaining Focus you're running at a -2 to everything whereas everyone else isn't. Then again, if all you had to do was get a spell and be off to the races scot-free (yes there is drain, but you can usually ensure you're able to on average accommodate the drain roll with enough hits), I think it would be unfair to the other options.

Problem with Synaptic Boosters (if I'm calling them the appropriate thing), is their cost: 160,000 , if I'm not mistaken. That's 32 BP at chargen, if you want to start the game with those extra IPs. That's a lot of money, and also severely limits your ability to buy other gear since you're approaching your spending limit at chargen.

While I do have a pretty strong aversion to weird bio-therapy or invasive surgery as well as the 'cost to your soul' aspect of it, any character I would make would tend to have a rather practical outlook on things and probably not be too weirded out by bioware as opposed to straight cyber. So I guess I was trying to things through a balanced, in-character or in-universe perspective of: a) you need extra IPs to survive/have a good chance in combat, b) I would prefer not to do heinous things to my body to get them, and c) what is going to be overall most effective without having me lose my entire 'soul' (being that this char will most likely be a mage or an adept).

I'm not looking to get into a huge debate of how OP mages or hackers or street sams are, just kind of trying to say, "Alright, you're in the Sixth World, and if you get into a gunfight or significant fight of any kind and are 1/3 as capable of acting as your enemies, you're a dead man. How do we fix this?"

Particular regard to being an Adept or Mage of some kind would be great, although at the same time I don't want to exclude the conversation from the perspective of a mundane--not everyone gets to be awakened, and they still need to stay competitive, too.

References to ease of obtaining these extra IPs in chargen are of course good for consideration, as well. Perhaps maybe someone would just want to stay alive long enough to scrape together the nuyen to get the job done later and if so, does that make other options more attractive, ie, synaptic boosters not so much of a concern if you're just spending nuyen (as opposed to BP)?

Your hacker with a maxed out commlink is looking at 5 initiative passes and an initiative of about 18. Combine that with a Stirrup interface placed not into an animal, but himself and he can be dealing death out faster than the street sam. It has the added bonus that when you're doing hot-sim VR hacking, you can install a high rating drone pilot with a fuzzy logic autosoft into yourself so that your body is not a hindrance but an asset to your team. .. leaving you with the potential of 5 initiative passes while hacking/rigging and a seperate 3 initiative passes your body is taking in the meat. The major caveat is you need to have 2 sota commlinks in order to run your meat-drone completely offline and safe from other hackers while you run your own hacking sessions, otherwise bad things will happen. Also, while I would never let a player do this, an AI could be the one running the show in there with above drone pilot taking care of things while it was off hacking. The potential for a great villain is there, however, as such an entity would be constantly abducting new "hosts," have a creepy disregard for its own bodily safety, and a guaranteed return until the PCs figured out what was happening and how to neutralize it...

The penalty for taking actions in the real world while in VR is -6 or something nasty like that. But that's for doing it with your meat body. That wasn't exactly what I was talking about.

If your hacker or rigger is an vehicle (or a drone with a rigger pod) on runs, and that drone has a gun mounted to it, and you're controlling or rigging the drone, you could be using those 4+ Initiative Passes via the drone (which you are riding inside of).

Or just leave your body in the car and send drones in with the team. Either way, your matrix actions are having real world effects, and doing so with your VR enhanced passes.

That's a bit strange. I mean sure, the matrix action of issuing a command takes very little time, but the drone still has to move, aim and fire in the physical world. Unless the drone is somehow configured for speed, I don't see any reason for it to get additional IP's. But that's just me.

No. Only Technomancers can get a 5th IP. The general rule is that no actor can have more than 4 IPs, and only the TM Echo has a specific rule that counteracts that general rule.

Sorta. The same book also has this



BlueMax

Actually there is a rule that combining a Simsense Booster (Augmentation) with the Simsense Accelerator (Unwired) will allow for a fifth IP in hot VR. It's spelled out in as stacking and saying "5 initiative passes total" in the description for one or the other (I think Unwired.)

With technomancers specifically, there are a couple of different ways to handle it - the Overclocking/Advanced Overclocking combo gives an extra 2 IPs in VR (on top of the standard 3), but Biowire/Acceleration gives up to 3 extra meat IPs (which can also be used in AR, I think). On top of that, taking Multiprocessing and Mesh Reality lets you use your Matrix initiative and IPs in meatspace (at a -4 penalty if you mix Matrix and meat, and capped by your normal physical IPs) while still perceiving and able to act in AR and VR. So if you submerge a ridiculous number of times and take all of the above, you can have 5 IPs in VRand use up to 4 of them for AR or physical actions.

This is on top of things like Macro and Multiprocessing that grant additional actions without full extra IPs. Macro also reduces the penalty for Matrix actions when using Mesh Reality to mix Matrix and physical actions.

Ah. Mea culpa. I missed that.

/tangent

I really wish that per RAW it was possible for a mundane with no cyberware to get 2 IPs (heck Id like to see even more) without spending edge

/tangent off

There are three different drugs in the corebook that allow exactly this. And really, if a mundane with no cyber could reliably get multiple IPs without using Edge or drugs, what would be the point of the various (expensive) magic/cyber/whatever mods to do the same thing?

They would be less important, I think that is a good thing. Multiple IPs while great in fiction do not work well in any game I have ever seen (SLA Industries I would say has done the best job). The less fun of sitting around while someone goes a lot is why they switch the IP order from 2e to 3e. 4e takes a minor step back as before a maxed out mundane human had a 33% chance of having two IPs without drugs. I think it should be more common not less common if your going to have IPs at all. When I was running a 2e group we used a modified 1e rule where you subtracted 7 then and capped it at 4 actions regardless of cyber/magic/whatever.

I wrote a much longer post before I realized it was completely off-topic, and I'll put it a new thread, but I do have an issue related to gaining more IPs; using those actions to shoot full auto.

I don't know why it's so cool to pit a quick elf against a big troll for exampulatory purposes, but it makes sense here. Let's say Turbo the cybered elf and Bubba the mentally handicapped troll are blasting at each other with the same submachine gun. If Turbo has synaptic boosters 3 and a submachine gun linked to an infinite ammo belt (I want one!) and holds down the trigger FA, he spews 40 rounds in a combat round. However, if Bubba, holding an identical gun (with an identical ammo belt) but no 'ware or magic holds down the trigger for a combat round, only 10 rounds come out. What sense does that make?

It all depends on how long it took our mentally deficient troll buddy to put two and two together to make three then rethink make four and pull the trigger. If the wired-to-the-teeth elf got a substantial drop and held down the button it's feasable that she'd spit out four times the munitions... and a fourty round belt is just a starter belt anyways

At some point the gun isn't going to go any faster. Its why chain style guns have multiple barrels so they don't melt. SR has no max rate of fire. I havent seen the huge problem yet in 4e but in some extreme SR3 builds you could fire 53 rounds per second from a submachine gun (8 actions, 20 round per action, round is 3 seconds).

[edit] the best MP5 that I know of right now is 15 rounds per second