In the discussion I'm having with Rhat, the pure adept is any adept who chooses not to have cyber/bio (right Rhat?). So every single item in any book can be bought by the pure adept, as long as it doesn't cost Essence. It's a pretty big list, kinda hard to miss. Hell, their list includes many things a mundane can't use either. So it sounds like you're saying that without cyber/bio, there's nothing in SR to spend nuyen on.

Did you miss the part where I said "...in certain ways" ? A pure adept concept is limiting themselves in certain ways, namely by not taking cyber or bio. There are upsides to this, there are some downsides as well. The blog post looks like they're getting rid of some of the downsides to playing a pure adept. Or as I've said many times, "fixing the wrong problems".

That's a fair definition. However, I'll point out that "can be bought by that character" is notionally not the same as "something for that character to spend money on". Just because they can buy it doesn't mean that it's something they're wanting to have - so by the time you're looking at the criteria as simply "can be bought by the character", I'd actually argue that you're demonstrating the problem. There's very little to make an adept say "Man, I want that... Need to get some nuyen!".

And playing a pure adept shouldn't be a lesser option.

I don't see why not. Are there more assumptions about what a pure adept is? Surely a pure adept can buy expensive armor / commlinks / drones / vehicles / weapons / drugs / gear / lifestyles / bribes (contacts) just like any other character? As well as expensive foci not available to mundanes. Is the assumption that a pure adept is a CC/gear minimalist/infiltrating adept?

I agree I just think the problems are more basic than "can't buy cyber/bio so they need something to spend nuyen on". As I've said previously, if they rebalanced adept power costs, this would go a long way.

Again, is the karma-for-nuyen thing not around anymore?

Karma-for-nuyen doesn't exist in SR4, though we house ruled it (and the reverse) in our last campaign and it worked very well.

What makes you think there isn't? Not even mentioning Knowledge Skills (which can pretty much be anything at all), that's what the Artisan skill is for. Rockers are totally still there, even if they're not as mechanically supported as they were back when Shadowbeat hit shelves. Hell, the new leader of the Seattle Ancients is a rockerboy (and with adept boosts, to boot), and last GenCon's tournament featured a rockerboy as one of the core team members/pre-gens (to say nothing of a project I'm currently working on, shhhh, NDAs and all that).

CAN buy, and WANT TO buy, are not the same thing.

Gear that does not support the character's chosen role/niche, and/or does not shore up a weakness in the character's build, is not relevant, and might as well not exist.

I mean ... the Adept (or other character) with no medical skills COULD buy a full-fledged Medical Facility. But why would they??



It was never, ever anything but an optional rule to begin with.

Forget trying to figure out how a metaphysical concept turns into electronic money and how that works in-game...

I've banned the Artisan skill.
In the current incarnation, it's beyond stupid. You take it, you can do basically anything 'artsy' with it. As an active skill, based on Intuition.
You can write sonnets, you can carve statues, play the guitar, paint pictures, etc.

One solution to this 'problem' (honestly, it's not a big one, it just bugs me), is to treat the Artisan skill like an exotic skill, meaning you need to chose the area it applies to.
This still does not address the issue that ALL of the art is apparently linked to Int, while I see e.g. playing musical instruments as more of a combination of Int and Agi, or composing a symphony as based on Log.
Furthermore, as an active skill, it is only useful for one kind of character (adepts, with Enthralling Performance), and a points 'waster' for everyone else. It's a skill that costs as much as knowing how to hit people with fast-flying lead, but has only a very niche applicability and almost no mechanical benefit.

This is why I've elected to treat 'knowledge skills' as 'knowledge and interest skills'.
Effectively, it means that you can be good at drawing, playing an instrument, dancing, or massaging people for half the karma, or even for the free BP at character creation.
Those skills don't necessarily need to be linked to Log or Int either, but can be used with physical attributes as well.
However, you need to have on skill per interest, or instrument or art form.
I've found this a very usable alternative, and even with an adept who's using it to captivate the audience, the karma savings are very negligible.


Re: Karma for Nuyen.
Apparently it means luck at gambling (if karma for cash), or giving money to the children gives you warm fuzzy feelings that you can translate into learning how to better kill stuff.
So, no. Optional rule. One, I've never, ever condoned or used. It's a horrible fix for a problem that only affects adepts, basically.


Interesting numbers. I feel they are off, but an intriguing ideal, still.

The problem at the moment is not if adepts are underpowered. The problem is that they only ever progress with karma. And not a bit here and there, but a LOT of it, to make a significant impact.
Sure, you can 'ware them up a bit, but in the end, you'll probably not want to let them go down the burnout path (a fringe case, obviously). But after that? Upgrades come only in form of hideously expensive betterware, to cram more in to have some more wiggle room with the essence you already paid. Other than that, there's still only initiation to notably raise your power cap.
At least, this way you'll know what to save up for. And having a beta synaptic booster instead of a life-long high lifestyle is a nice thing ... I guess.

Let me elaborate for a bit:
Mages want to raise their power (in their chosen field). They can do this with a diverse number of things.

• Learn spells.
• Raise magical skills.
• Bind foci.
• Improve drain attributes (wait, there's a spell for that. Forget it )
• Initiate and improve magic.
• Summon familiars.

While initiation is nice and cheap and can be done after 1 or 2 runs, the corresponding improvement in Magic is often only bought very much later. A power focus is almost always a better choice, since it gives multiple dice for a similar karma expenditure.
Foci also cost a ton of money, but not so much that it can't be done. In conclusion, we have a diverse list of karma sinks and one serious money sink.
Mages (and mystical adepts to a degree) are in a good place for spending both and not feeling shoehorned into the one decision that seems to make sense.

Mundane characters obviously have less things to do with their karma, but they can spread it out. Their skills and attributes usually end up higher than an adept's on the same karma level. AND they are getting augmentations to accompany their specialties, resulting in very high dice pools

Now, pure adepts basically only have one choice if they want to learn something new that fits their chosen field.
Improving skills? Doable, but unfortunately, the cap is there and quickly reached. It will get a bit better with expansion of the skill caps, but I'm discussing the current situation. It also results in only 1 die more.
The same thing (1 die more) is true for attributes, only they are horrendously overcosted for what they do for adepts who don't have access to the quick way of just implanting something.
Foci? Well, if you're wielding a big stick, you're in luck, otherwise ... not. The only focus that gives a comparable power boost to a power focus is the weapon focus, and it only works for ONE particular kind of adept. Everyone else doesn't have that luxury.
That leaves initiation, and since this doesn't do anything on its own, improving the Magic attribute to get that power point for moar stuff to play around with. As Pax demonstrated, this is, because of attribute improvement costs, stupendously pricey karma wise. It also costs _nothing_ in nuyen.

A starting gun adept, compared to a starting mage, both with Magic 6:
The adept needs to initiate (13 Karma) and improve Magic from 6 to 7 (35 Karma) for a total of 48 Karma before he can buy new powers or improve an existing one notably.
For the same karma, the mage can initiate (13 Karma), and then buy 7 more spells, each giving him a unique, new ability which benefits his field. That's a huge disparity, in case it's not been noticed yet.
A street samurai could learn martial arts (10 Karma), improve his automatics skill from 5 to 6 (12 Karma) and learn 2 maneuvers (8 Karma in total) and STILL have 18 points left for other stuff, while ALSO having options on what to do with the money he earned in that time.

Sure, in the beginning, there's lots of stuff to spend money on. But it's only basics, and all of it is mundane. None is 'adept specific' like foci or familiars are 'mage specific'. Nothing prevents the street samurai or even the mage to buy all these things as well, so for the sake of comparison, we can ignore these options.

That leaves the adept with two things:
1) Buy stuff you don't need for what you do. But hey, a fast car is always cool.
2) Save your karma for ages, then boost your power, while ignoring skills, attributes, martial arts.

Adepts are being forced down the initiation route, because it's 1) the only option to progress sideways instead of linearly, one dice at a time, and 2) because it's prohibitively expensive and as such prevents spending karma for other things.

The cost of powers being too high for what they do is a whole different, non-related problem, and I'm glad to see that people acknowledged the issue of character progression with adepts.
If qui- or tattoo foci (or whatever they're called) appear for adepts, they not only have the option to get powers for a karmic discount (assuming they cost less than initiation, and they better do ), but also spend money into a direction of progression according to the archetype. This will free up Karma for raising skills and other things.
This is a good thing. More options are (almost) always a good thing. Furthermore, it won't hurt _anyone_, so, I strongly disagree with phlapjacks assumption that this is a bad idea, or even badly implemented.


tl;dr: Artisan skill is bad. Karma for Cash is bad. Adept foci are good because reasons (see above).

The pure adept could have medical skills or combat skills or face skills or drone skills or...what exactly are you not understanding? Pure adept is not a concept in and of itself. You can have a pure adept samurai. A samurai that needs weapons and armor and fancy gear and so on. Or you can have a pure adept rigger who needs to buy fancy drones and commlinks and gear and so on. A pure adept face. A pure adept sniper. All concepts that are nuyen-intensive, with or without cyber.

An optional rule that is available to all character types, has existed for many versions, and that many, many players seem happy with. Seems pretty reasonable to look to something already existing like this as a "fix".

"You got lucky at the weekly poker game."

"You got a nice little side-job, off camera."

Or, my personal favorite: "You sold some karma to a free spirit."

What you're not understanding is ... could does not mean will.

Yes, a given adept could also be a street doc. Or he could be nothing of the sort.

Yet, you're counting equipment that some Adepts might want, as something that all adepts should count as "something to spend money on".

... my Ghoul parkour adept may have very little use for a tricked-out truck that dispenses six combat-equipped drones, plus a medical facility for implantign cyberware, and a simsense recording-and-editing studio. No, he needs decent but unimpeding armor, a decent lifestyle, some B&E tools, and the usual gamut of fake IDs and such common to all shadowrunners. He might want a cheap car or a motorbike for long-distance travel. Or maybe a bicycle is more his style, for all but the longest-distance treks. Becaue, you see, 99% of all that gear will do nothing for his ability to fill the niche he occupies: "stealthy B&E-and-CQC guy (who eats dead people)". No, not even a weapon focus - kind of redundant for a Ghoul, who has Claws already.

We have always used Artisan as an "Exotic Skill" and knowledge skills as an adjunct to the Artisan Skill. And if the Artisan Skill bothers you (as it seems to do), then just create a Special Skill. As for always linking to a Single Stat (Intuition), well, that is just dumb, and so when we take an Artisan Skill, we discuss it with the GM and link the paritcular skill to the relevant stat. Knowledge skills act as complimentary to the relevant Artisan Skill, when taken in that regard. It has workd out well for those who actually take the Artisan skill (which is admittedly not that often).

Over the years, we have had:

Rocker (Dance, Performance, Singing, and Musical Instrument)
Exotic Dancer Information Specialist (Various Styles of Dance)
UFC MArtial Artist (Thai Kickboxing Champion with the Ritualized Dance (Wai-Kru) skill associated with it)
Mechanic (Custom Motorcycles)
Cyberlogician (Ballroom Dance)
Technomancer (Vidoe Game Design)
Assassin (Simsense Producer and Personafixes)
Thief (Custom Holotechnology and Holographich Programming)

I am sure we have had others, but these are the ones that I remember off the top of my head.
There are a lot of things you can do with Artisan (or by adding special skills) if you really want to do so.

That's not a problem with a system, that is a problem with the character concept (or rather, not really a problem even with that, is it, minding how that asceticism is a part of the character concept). It's possible to build a perfectly mundane narrow specialist that'd need little to advance in his field, both in what comes to nuyen and in what comes to karma - except, maybe, investing an amount comparable to adept initiations into raising already high skills. Consider a parkour sammy - what would he need that your ghoul doesn't? Better wires? They're prohibitively expensive enough for it to be a non-issue, even if he's able to afford the Essence cost (which he likely won't, seeing how sammies come out of chargen with 1.01 Essence at best).

I disagree with the whole premise put forward here.

The player is putting an artificial constraint no enhancement whatsoever. Something like delta is actually a much better option for an adept because they have piles of money and the reduced essence hit is big. A player who refuses to spend resources on elgiblle ways present in the book then claims there are none is simply slamming his own doors in his own face.

It's no different than saying I want to build a street sam who wants to only use pistols... then griping that I can't spend money on AR's.

Mages similarly... have few to no outlets for their money and are almost entirely karma dependent. The only consumables of any note are ritual materials.


Overall the best thing I can think of in system is reduced karma costs for learning skills with the help of an instructor... you could see adepts paying for the best instructors they could find. Especially with the higher skill caps in SR5.

Similarly many of the complaints as regards street sams and the like are no longer as relevant with the changes in SR5. Street sams in SR5 will become much more karma dependent because equipment won't affect dice pools in the same manner. They'll need to put karma into their skills and attributes to advance them to their limits.

Other tools like drones also work well even with an adept... without being a rigger. You can pay top dollar for agent ICE & software, and autosofts... and actually run the drones as drones. A doberman with costly upgrades like signature masking, adaptive camo, gecko tips... can go anywhere you can and be remarkably stealthy with pilot a full set of autosofts. (pilot & autosoft at limited to 4... response 6... means you can have 17 programs and still have a response of 4 in the drone... without even resorting to tricks like program options.

I think you're dead wrong, for a coupel reasons.

One, I never used the word "asceticism", nor ever suggested anything close to it. The example I gave isn't a monk - he's a predator of back alleys, who uses his natural weapons in preference to what would be a largely-redundant manufactured substitute.

Two, "stealthy melee-combat guy" is hardly a concept that is inherently weak.


.... because there just isn't a lot on offer for fields that should be considered staple to the genre.


A weapon, for starters. Plus various assorted augmentations (synthacardium, strength / agility boosts, reflex recorders, balance augmentation, orientation system, UWBR or a similar all-'round sense, plastic or bettr Bonelacing, an initiative booster, and more).

And as the character progresses ... upgrades to all of the above, in ever-improved quality / grade.

When someone has little need for worldly possessions the state of his vows matters little.

Who said anything about "weak"? A stealthy melee combatant just doesn't need all that much stuff, is all.

All of which come from chargen, just like the adepts' magical abilities.

Grade improvements are prohibitively expensive, and since just upping an implant's rating is rarely possible (thanks to already near-death Essence), the sammie is left waiting for hundreds of thousands of nuyen to come his way, which is taking him no less time that it's taking the adept to initiate.

I have to disagree. Mages can spend Nuyen on powerfoci and sustaining foci, which can get quite expensive even with foci dependence rules and limites. And then of course the one point of cyberware and bioware (drain attribute booster like cerebral booster for logic traditions), trauma damper, pain editor, fabric, cybereyes etC) which directly or indireclty boost magical abilities. However it is still true that a mage develops mainly with Karma - which is not a bad thing considering the nuyen many GMs tend to pay. *cough*

And then of course indirect boosts for their "general occupation" as a runner: nano immunity swarms, drones for tacnets, high level links with agents, sensor software etc (which of course is possible for every kind of runner).

SYL

Not to forget those cheap foci. Try playing a TM, that is a character with "few to no outlets for their money" unless you go the Dronomancer route.

My own Techno (who started as an NPC 'cause none of my players wanted to be a computer geek in-game, in addition to IRL) ended up "fixing" that problem by, well, losing an arm and looking for a replacement. Ended turning into a "how much nuyen can I cram into one Essence point" minigame, making him a pretty solid combatant, all things considered.

/FACEPALM

I never said they had little need for "worldly possessions", either.


^^^ THIS IS WHAT I BLOODY WELL SAID. ^^^

Or rather, what I said was "not every adept will need every purchasable item in every sourcebook".

Overall, the point is that for ANY character, there is a selection of gear available to be purchased. This selection of gear can be very large, or the selection of gear can be very narrow. If you're choosing to play a concept where the selection of gear is very narrow ("stealthy melee pure adept"), well...it's your choice. You've chosen a concept that isn't gear dependent - live with it. You basically want to have your cake and eat it too - a character that isn't gear dependent, yet still has cool gear available (just for them!) to purchase.

A stealthy melee person should rather be clamoring for the devs to fix CC, not for the devs to introduce special candy just for him.

I'm just wondering how many karma it takes for the Sam to get an extra point of Essence? The problem I have had with Magic (since 1st edition) is that there is not limit on it. A Magic User (of any flavor) can potentially keep getting more magic where a mundain WILL run out of essence. The whole Magic system needs a rebalance to put a hard cap on the Magic Attribute like all other attributes and skills in the game.

Note: _Pax._ I'm not trying to pick on your post, but it was the best laid-out for my argument.

An important point of definition: For my part, I've been arguing from the perspective that "things for [CHARACTER TYPE X] to spend [NUYEN/KARMA] on" means things that the player would be motivated to get for the character, and not things that a player gets simply because they have money and nothing specific they want to spend it on. To use the most extreme example, non-rigger technomancers CAN y a lot of things, but they have basically nothing that, as a general case character type, they are MOTIVATED to buy.

Close combat is something that should be addressed, phlapjack, but it is a distinctly separate matter.

DMiller: While there is no theoretical limit to Magic/Resonance, there is a practical limit. Now, that limit shifts, but all the same it exists; in essence, this isn't really an issue until you get into extraordinarily high Karma scores, and that becomes more true with the change to skill caps and the introduction of PMS-Limits. The limit on Magic is essentially a function of the amount of Karma awarded and the extent to which the mage needs to spend it on things that are not getting more magic - improving skills (especially relevant here would be things like Counterspelling, but non-magic skills are also an extremely important factor), learning new spells, bonding new foci, long-term binding, increasing other Attributes...

We tend to play long-term games. Our current characters have been being played for over 2 years now.

I think the point some of us are trying to make is this:
Your typical street samurai is someone with 1) lots of money spent on cybernetics and weaponry, and 2) no karma sinks. Everything goes into skills and attributes.
Your typical mage is someone with 1) lots of karma spent on magic, initiation, and spells, and 2) does not need to spend money for the archetype. It is built right into being a spell caster.

By "typical", I mean a 'base archetype'. The street samurai has guns, blades, and cyber. The mage has spells and spirits. You can tweak the concepts all you want, and I'm all for that, but that isn't really a 'base archetype' anymore, it's more a themed character. (For example, I made a black ops shaman, combining two concepts I liked in the 3E book to do so. I'd not call that a 'base archetype' in the slightest).

Adepts are something in the middle. They spend a lot of karma to raise magic and initiation, to augment themselves, but these are usually lower than what a street samurai would get unless the adept goes whole-hog. Alternatively, the adept isn't really as versatile as the mage is, and the mage can more quickly expand his repository of spells faster than the adept can expand his abilities. The street samurai can dump more money into cybernetics over time, while spending karma to boost skills and attributes -- while the adept has to split his focus between buying skills and attributes, and raising magic and initiation to get better. Cybernetics is the 'theme' for the samurai, not for a baseline adept.

The way I see it, giving the adept something to spend money on which directly benefits the base concept - a magic-based class - is a good thing. Perhaps, ability wise, they'll get closer to the samurai, getting the buffs needed to compete. I don't think the benefits will match a fully tricked-out street sam, but it will provide the base template with more versatility.

You're talking about pure phsy-ads exclusively, right? Because any mystic adept, and definitely any adept willing to take cyber have no problems finding existing shiny toys to spend nuyen on.

What you bring up here seems like it would be better implemented by fixing the costs of adept powers. Rather than introduce new mechanics that might not work well, why not take what's already there and make it better?

And finally, I'll capitulate here and say that I realize this was probably just a press release designed to produce excitement about the new edition. So they might be fixing all the other problems as well (fingers crossed!), and just wanted to show off the new shiny. Just rubbed me the wrong way...darn kids get off my lawn!

Tashiro, I agree that things need to be balanced out, and IMO other than at the high-end they are balanced. Mages need karma more than money, Sams need money more than karma and adepts are something in between, this is balanced just not equal and balanced != equal.

Because that's a solution to a different problem.

DMiller: In sufficiently long term games, that is a potential issue you run into. I'm curious as to what point along the Karma scale you've found it came up, actually.

I've actually had two mystic adepts in my campaign, and pound-for-pound they were actually weaker than anyone else in the party. Dividing your magic attribute between spell casting and adept powers is already bad enough. Dividing your skills between spell casting and whatever your adept focus is, is worse. Putting cyber on top of that? That blows my mind.

Mind, an adept shouldn't have to use cybernetics to be competitive. Admittedly, there's an edge to spending 1, perhaps 2 essence in cyber, but I don't think any class with Magic or Resonance should be forced to use cybernetics to have skin in the game. If the archetype can't stand on its own merits, then there's something seriously wrong with it. I wound up using the 'maximum Magic / Resonance drops as Essence drops' rule, just to give something to the magic-using characters.

It seemed to crop up around 450-ish karma. Our most powerful group ever was around 1k karma and I had to come up with ways for the mundain to keep up by inventing new/custom ware.

A Myst-Ad who tries to be an adept and a mage is screwed. The trick is to get the two things working together - and generally, you're not looking at an even Magic split.

DMiller: How much do you think it might shift with the increase to the value of certain Attributes and the new skill cap?

I'm more looking at it as 'all archetypes should be viable', really. If you pick up any archetype, it should be functional, and not be left behind by any other members of the team. I don't mean that 'every archetype should be equal in each field', but rather that each should shine in their field.

The problem is, the adept is sort of a build-your-own archetype - which I think is a cool idea, but regardless of how you build him, he has trouble shining. To get the adept to shine, you have to invest a LOT of karma, and the payoff is significantly less than with any other archetype. The mage gets to buy spells and summon spirits, and the samurai gets to boost skills and attributes. A straight up adept's karma goes into magic and getting power points, which goes into getting abilities. Some of these abilities mirror spending karma to boost skills and attributes, while others go to provide cyberware-like bonuses. The thing is, samurai have Essence as a pool to reduce, which doesn't cost karma, and can spend nuyen to get all this cyberware to fill it - a secondary resource. A mystic adept is worse off, because Magic is split between spellcasting / conjuration, and power points, meaning he's even worse off, karma-wise, trying to compete with everyone else.

I think giving them a nuyen sink is a good start, actually. If the adept is capable of using nuyen to help bolster themselves, that puts them neatly into the middle zone between a samurai (spend lots of nuyen, not much karma), and a mage (spend lots of karma, not much nuyen). The adept spends 'some karma, some nuyen', and gets to meet both archetypes to a better extent. As far as I'm concerned, a baseline combat adept should be about par with a street samurai, with a higher karma cost and a lower nuyen cost, while a spellcasting adept should be about par with a mage, with a lower karma cost and higher nuyen cost. Not perfectly even... the street samurai and mage should still be a bit better than the adept, but they should be reasonably comparable.

... Why should a sam be better than a combat adept?

That's not a limit any more than 'well, this is the average amount of money paid out in a campaign' is a limit to how much stuff a character can own.

A mage/tm/adept can buy another point of their power stat within their first 40 karma, even with generous assumptions on spending it on other things. When can a Sam buy more cyberware capacity with karma, again?

RHat,
I’m not sure. All I can say right now is I’m going to wait and see (and hope for the best).

Tashiro,
On most points I agree, however it has been my experience that “Jack of all trades – Master of none” applies very well to adepts. They can do it all but not necessarily be the best at any of them. Properly built they can be a master of their trade, but in general they don’t tend to be.

I too am looking forward to more foci that are useful to adepts. Honestly under earlier editions, as a house rule, we opened up Power Foci to adepts allowing them to purchase additional powers using the focus with the understanding that once the powers were bought they couldn’t be changed. It did work well, but under 4th edition that option disappeared because of the changes to how Power Foci worked.

[e] Also unless your group is huge, do you need more than one expert in any one field? If not, then everyone should have a chance to shine and have the spotlight because they are the only one with a primary focus in their area of expertise.

There is some hope to be had on that score, because supposedly getting a skill to 12 is supposed to represent some serious dedication. IE, it's gonna be expensive. Using current costs as an example, assuming a chargen 6, you're looking at 285 Karma to get there. Starting at a 4, it's 340. Assuming a character with ranged, melee, and secondary/tertiary skills, there'd be places to put Karma for quite some time.



That's disingenuous, but technically he could get something like the Biocompatibiliy quality (if he didn't get it at chargen) for some Karma - assuming the GM allows it. More importantly, they can increase their capacity through their main advancement resource - nuyen for higher grades of 'ware. Further, you're completely ignoring the fact that the Awakened/Emerged character must initiate/submerge as well for every additional point past, potentially, the first.

Also, if you start with a hardcapped Magic/Resonance, it is actually literally impossible to increase that inside your first 40 Karma - 13 to initiate/submerge, 35 for the attribute. So, if you make a direct beeline for it, spending no other Karma until then, that's at the 48 Karma mark. Realistically later. The limiting effect, however, is primarily the RISING cost of both.

DMiller:
See 'Infusion" foci... in SR4... they contain an adept power... usable by the adept. No need to break power foci in that way.


As far as the rest... yes street sams do have the ability to get more essence... it's called deltaware.. they spend their cash and upgrade their ware to make space for more. It'll take 10's of millions of nuyen to get there though so just like magic it is a practical limitation that is never reached in most cases as well.


And others keep forgetting that street sams will be wanting the karma to raise stats even higher with the skill caps...
You're looking at about ~130 karrma to max out a single skill now if it starts at 4 provided karma costs stay roughly equivalent. So street sams will start hungering for karma... while magical types will have to balance raw magical power with their own skills making them even more karma dependent than ever before.

I don't see why having additionnal option for adepts would be bad as long as balance is maintained between them and Samourais.


But after thinking of it, I think that tattoos shouldn't be the only path to beef up your adept with nuyen. I still don't find it that original and have them all suddenly body painted doesn't seem that great.


I'd advocate it as one possible path to beef up your adept. But also add something else. After all, not all magical items in ED were supposed to be weapons, so why not other kind of foci (skill foci so to say)?

Also I don't find adepts an 'archetype' of their own... Especially the granola pure variety. That's people intentionally choosing to play with an arm tied behind their back.

The adept power costs are fine. There are serious drawbacks which come with using magic to gain your abilities which don't apply to cyber/bio. (You don't loose your increased reflexes boosts & passes in a BGC if you have synaptic... so if they were exactly the same cost at 0.5 each... If you make them cost less... each point of BGC hurts an adept that much more. Yes... adepts should be just as boned as anyone else in BGC... BGC is the closest thing we have to magical terrain. People who complain about it are no different than the guys who pull out a big sniper rifle in a FPS then complain when they're put on a close combat map where they can't use the guns range or power because all the long sight lines are blocked up.



At the end of the day... adept really is simply... I'm going to make a character who would be really good as a mundane... now I'm going to use some magic to make him even better. That's because adept powers don't require additional investment beyond simply buying them as if they were positive qualities... you don't need to buy enabler skills and 'known spells' and all the like. You simply take your own abilities and augment them higher than you could otherwise or in a slightly different manner.

The real issue isn't streesamurai vs adepts. It's cybered-adepts vs the rest. The problem is that cybered-adepts can choose to have the best of both worlds.

Zero. It just takes money (upgrade 2E worth of cyber to Delta Grade, you now have a 1E "hole" in which to implant new stuff).


No worries.





Yes, that is exactly what my POV on the matter is.

Yep. Honestly, my solution would be something simple to accompany this.


Allow mundane characters (no magic of any kind, fuck you TM's count too) to effectively buy back spent essence with karma, on a similar scaling to initiation. In exchange for karma, they get more ability to add bio/cyber, less resistance to healing, and avoid cyberpsychosis.

In-world, this would simply represent their spirit,body, and mind adapting to being a man/machine hybrid, and developing a 'new normal' transhumanism style.


That gives all relevant characters a nice way to dump either cash or karma to benefit their most relevant stat, while not being a force multiplier for adepts.

now THIS is an interesting idea O.o

Seems sensible to me. Magicians and adepts can make up for Magic rating lost to cyber, bio, or burnout with karma, after all. No reason a mundane shouldn't be able to, and it makes giving adepts coin-fed power boosts much less of an advantage.

Something in my game designer's instincts tripped on this, and told me that you couldn't allow it only for mundanes. Mind, if you were to allow anyone to do this, it would be yet another karma sink for magicians (and technomancers). It would not give them back lost Magic / Resonance, they'd have to spend more to recover it.

You'd have to only allow it for mundanes. Magicians already have a means of doing the same thing via initiation, and it would be a major power multiplier for cybered adepts if they could use it.

Which makes it a useless suggestion.
Either you pay for it (such as being magically active), or everyone can have it.

At first glance the idea sounds interesting, but then it even more invalidates the idea of cybermancy than the various cybermancy rules did so far ...

I disagree. With magically active characters, it becomes a karma sink. You're paying for initiation, spells, your Magic attribute, and then your Essence on top of that, and anything you spend to raise Essence is something you're not spending to raise Magic or buy spells. So, in the long run, you'll probably be weaker for working on your Essence.

Not at all. It's the power foci / magic rating split difference. Both do the same thing mechanically, but with different prices.

In this case, buying back essence would be a serious karma sink in exchange for more cyber, as opposed to cybermancy which is the fast and dirty way of taking someone off the street and not killing them while jamming more cyber into them than they can actually cope with.




This is only true if initiation and buying back essence both cause the next point of either to increase in cost. Otherwise, a magically active character with cyberware gets to offset the damage done to their Magic rating at a steep discount by taking the lower costing of 'buyback' and Initiation each time. I called out the cybered adept for this specifically because there is a lot of cyber that is advantageous for them.