Is it just me, or are the rules for adept open to horrible, horrible munchkinism? From +12/+12 ballistic and impact armour abuse with mystic armour, to the fact that adept powers have no availability or cost limits, (meaning that nothing is out of bounds at character generation) to the fact that adepts can raise skills sky-high and hit the 24 dice cap at generation...

Plus, if an adept sees a piece of cyberware that's better than his magic, he can just install it (low-cost stuff like smartlinks are an example) and the street samurai can't get any advantage over him. Plus, there's only so far a street sam can go before even deltaware cyber has filled all his 6 essence. An adept can keep getting powers indefinitely.

Would some kind of house rule preventing adepts from spending more than a certain number of power points on a single power at character generation be a good idea? I mean, sammies can't take wired reflexes 2 at chargen, should adepts be prevented from taking improved reflexes 2 at chargen?

You're not the only one.

A partial fix might be to limit all skill and other assorted bonuses to +3. That would help keep them from getting completely out of hand while still allowing some nice benefits. It limits advancement, but SR4 has used caps in lots of places, so one more shouldn't be fatal.

1) I believe that you are limited in Power levels to your Magic, so this curbs them a bit.
2) Magic past 6 is damn expensive.
3) Combat Senses are the new Adept munchkin move.
4) I sense that Mystic Adept can be used more effectively now. Their total Magic attribute (before they split between PP and casting/summoning Magic) is what limits there Power levels and max Force spells. Though i haven't search down this path my inner power-roleplayer child is telling me crunchie goodness is lieing in wait for me there.
5) They now offically Initiate just like the other awakened, instead of the screw-job they took in the SR3 FAQ.
6) Nobody needs to implant SL2 anymore unless they want to shun using a PAN for security reasons.

Overall yes they appear to be where the munchkin doth call home in SR4. At least for now.

That seems reasonable. I'll cook up something more solid when I actually have the book in front of me.

Edit: Blakkie, well, it's a house rule. It doesn't have to please the majority of people, I suppose

I'd suggest instead

An adept can buy no more than three levels in any one power at character creation

You can do ungodly things with three power points.

Yeah, but that still allows adepts to get the equivalent of wired reflexes 3 at generation.

Ah, you might have a point. I'm just pleased I'm not that only one who thinks they need some kind of limiter at generation

a sam can get synaptic boosters at chargen, they are equivalent to wired reflexes 2 and cost only 1 essence.

adepts are not overpowerd, just take alook what attribute bonuses a sam can amass with bioware. the essence costs are very very low.

I'd like to say that based on playtesting I disagree with the initial assessment. SR4 adepts are generally more limited and more expensive to develop than their SR3 equivalents.

a) An SR3-equivalent adept is significantly more expensive BP-wise in SR4.
b) You no longer necessarily begin with Magic 6 and hence 6 "guaranteed" power points to invest.
c) Initiation no longer automatically grants a magic point and hence a power point. You now pay initiation and Magic increases separately, so the development curve for adepts is slower than it was in SR3.
d) Magic rating provides a cap on power ratings just like SR3 (although you should take into consideration Magic is no longer 6 at start).
e) The fact that Essence loss subtracts from your Magic (whatever level it is) and hence your overall power points and max power rating means the decision to install cyber or bio is more complex than the straight forward trade-off in SR3.
f) the revised essence costs and price of cyber allows a sam more flexibility than under SR3.

One of these points is clearly wrong:

(a) Adepts cost 25bp in SR3. That's 20% of the total. 20% of 400 points is 80 points. For 80 points you can buy Magic 6 (65 points), Adept (5 points), and have 10 bp left over to spend on foci.

And another is very questionable:

(e) Bioware is a very viable option for Adepts. Five stat points in exchange for one karma point? Sounds like a good deal to me. And they get to keep their Sensitive System flaw for 15bp.

I'm not saying adepts are necessarily overpowered. It's just that generally speaking, it's very very easy to max out one aspect of your character, while a samurai type usually has to spread out his bonuses somewhat.

All we're suggesting is limiting how many points can be used on ONE power at character generation. Our houserule wouldn't affect their development past that point at all.

Max 3 rating seems reasonable. I wouldn´t worry about the wired 3 equivilent. Initiative boosts seem to be far less powerful than in any of the previous editions.

Yeah this is kind of how it's been for the last 16 years. Samurais eventually run out of things to upgrade to separate them from the pack, but Adepts always at least have the option of getting new powers.

Well, I don't see that as as much of a problem - samurai have the advantage of being able to spend their cash on upgrading their "powers" and their karma on upgrading their skills. Adepts have to use karma for both.

And by the time a samurai actually runs out of stuff to get, the game's already probably been running for years.

3 Points of Magic above 6 cost you 120 Karma.

Thats not what I call unlimited. Especially as the Sam can use both, money and karma, and the Adept can only use karma.

Quit trying to be disingenuous. You can't do it well.

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How about freeing up half your essence by replacing your chargen cyber with deltaware and filling that half up as well, thus doubling your gadgetry?

In the 16 years I have been playing Shadowrun I have never gotten a character access to Delta cyber... never. I don't see that as goal or a path for enhancement. It is a fairy tale not a reality. Sort of like PC's killing a GD, possible in the rules but not going to happen.

Perhaps in SR2... in SR3, the number of delta clinics was skyrocking, about a third of them being open to anyone with... well, it boils down to enough money.
(Perhaps they realized back then, that products need someone to buy them.)

An there was the problem - there was seldom a reason why, for those huge sums, one would implant ware when he/she could buy a small island and spend the rest of his/her leonized days in luxury.

On this side note, there is information about the Fuchi -> Novatech Delta Clinic in System Failure.

Well, if you think delta is unrealistic, how about betaware?

There ARE places to go beyond alphaware.

Wired Reflexes is a bad comparison, because they are overpriced crap in SR4 that noone will buy except the street-level thugs you are supposed to be facing early in your life.

The new standard is linear costs, and about .3 essence per attribute point. Some cyberware didn't get the memo, especially the legacy stuff like Dermal Armor, Muscle Replacement, and Wired Reflexes. Noone is going to get Wired Reflexes at the current price, not when for 160,000 you can have Synaptic Booster II (which is the same as Wired Reflexes except that it only costs 1 Essence Point).

If Wired Reflexes cost 11K and 1 Essence point per rating point, it would still be overpriced in the long run (since at best it's going to become Delta, and cost the same Essence as a Synaptic Booster but cost 30k more per rating point). At its current nearly 2 Essence per rating point and triangular nuyen cost, it's a kick in the hoop.

---

On the original subject: are Adepts underpriced? Probably. The fact that they get a 10 BP Magic Point for 5 BPs is pretty intense. Rather than having that little disclaimer about how the Gamemaster should put thumb screws on PCs who try to abuse the adept rules, they should just make Adepts less abusable as starting characters. And that means making them pay a full 10 BPs for being Adepts in the first place.

Also, the Karma costs are fragged. 3xnext rating for an attribute point? Who did the math on that? Scaling costs makes starting play as an Adept with few powers way too good. And being "the young guy who is barely awakening to his powers" isn't even a weird or cheese monkey character concept - it's just randomly overpowered by the karma cost rules. As things stand you could start play with a Magic on 1 and 1 point of cyberware for 15 character points, and then buy your magic up to 2 after just one session when you get 6 fraggin Karma. That's nuts.

Karma costs shouldn't be different from BPs. They really really shouldn't. We no longer have Karma Pools, and we no longer spend Karma on hooper nelsons, there is no need to even have a Karma value. Just give people more BPs as they grow in power.

-Frank

I suppose I should have added "if you are running a standard SR campaign" I though I had said that, or at least made it clear. If your playing in a Epic level game where your the Seraphim or something you don't worry about cash anyways, so why bother mentioning it in this context?

If you have to worry about money as a character, you will never see a Delta clinic.

If you don't then it doesn't matter.

Edit: I did say it.

I'm sorry, you're right. I didn't notice the essence multiplier had been adjusted. However, what's the benefit of turning off a synaptic booster? Does all reflex enhancement (adept, bioware, cyberware), rather than just cyberware, carry the potential for reflexive attacks on unintended targets and the like? It was only cyberware reflex boosters in SR3.

Page 254, under Motion Sensors shows a penalty for being hyper fast (dice pool penalty equal to the extra Initiative passes). Not sure about anything else, other than the usual roleplaying considerations of being twitchy in a public place and punching someone out because your reflexes are faster than your brain.

...

So, let me get this straight. Reflex enhancement does not, point of fact, actually increase the speed at which you move (i.e. the speed of your motion), but they do increase the likelihood that a motion sensor will detect you?

That... that's just swell.

They had a suggest pay scale in the SR comp. I always felt it was a little on the low side.

It doesn't overly surprise me that there's no mention of the 25% cost reduction for cultured bioware in the SR4 BBB. There's a lot of things stuck into the book that were previously the realm of rules supplements, but not everything is going to squeeze in.

However, I expect that SR4 will continue to do Bioware grades in the traditional manner, in that Bioware will be potentially available at the Cultured quality. However, since Synaptic Booster already counts as Cultured, needing to be tuned for the particular user's brain, there won't be an option for a more expensive, yet more essence-friendly version. Unlike Wired Reflexes, which you could eventually have access to at Delta grade.

I think, as a GM, whether I allowed players access to Deltaware would be based on whether I felt there was a need to help my Sammies catch up to the Adepts. Some decisions I make are going to be based on what works well for making the game fun to play. And when a Sammy and an Adept are likely to be fighting for the same spotlight and skillset, I'd like to have them feel fairly treated.

I thought bioware now was graded like cyberware?

Bioware is availible in standard, alpha, beta and delta version. See BBB SR4.
There is NO difference between cyberware and bioware except that they share different essence indices.

I would house rule though, that cyberware is upgradeable, but bioware is not.

Agreed. Bioware is yank-and-replace.