The Shadowrun Situation

[fectin]

Either that, or each level lets you pick one. If each type is objectively better than the one below it, your way works better.

That means if you're a Rigger and want a pistol as backup (or whatever) you can drop a couple points and pick it up, but it still takes a major investment in guns to be a generalist, or to use a rocket launcher.

I don't know shadowrun well enough to say if that's a good idea though.

[Stahlseele]

the PROBLEM with this is, that at a level where you can actually use serious hardware like an HMG under your idea you'd also get that level to your use of pistols making that a VERY deadly weapon that can be hidden easy.
that and you'd need to get to very high skill levels if you want to use a certain piece of equipment which means you can use all kinds of stuff you have no use for anyway.
now i know that having dozends of weapon skills is bad in terms of balance, but the control it gives you over where to spend your points somehow appeals to me more . .
such a broad skill would need to have higher point cost than something that does not allow such broad usage of course, which means you will be pumping valuable points into something you are only going to use 20% of at most probably.
and this kinda approach does not work for all skills/groups either i guess, so it would be a break from streamlining again too.

[Aryxbez]

There's a possible intent to go back to 4th edition, after trying 5th edition (ugh...Group did it before I came back, never my choice). Anyway, when/if we're going back, it'll be with new/better houserules in tow, this being Frank's Houserules +Ends Of the Matrix, and some others as well (combining of Melee/Ranged into their own skills, Diving/Falling into Swimming/Gymnastics or Atlhletics-Group,multiple Spec's,no-BS Healing/Medic priority healing crap).

Another thought is, be there any houserules that can fix the 4th edition Mystic Adept? I know a friend of mine wants to transfer over the way 5th edition did it, but as we know, are broken as all hell (not sure if any errata to up the cost helps that, I'm guessing;No). Also "Aspected Magicians", I'm not familiar with their origins (they were in 3rd ed apparently?) they're in Frank's Houserules, are they the equivalent "fix" to Mystic Adept as one is going to get?

[Ancient History]

Aspected magicians are just magicians that are limited to a particular skill (Sorcerer, Enchanter, Conjurer, etc.); in previous editions there were other types, but I can't remember if they transferred over. I'm pretty sure aspected magicians are addressed in Street Magic, but it has been many years. Anyway, they're not a fix for Mystic Adepts.

I don't remember how SR5 broke Mystic Adepts; they were generally a pain in SR4 because of (as I recall) inconsistent rules on how their Magic points counted and the general annoyance of mixing adept powers and magic skills, which was considered munchkinny back when Steve Kenson did it in SR2 Awakenings.

[Nath]

I don't remember how SR5 broke Mystic Adepts

In the original 5th edition release, Mystic Adepts kept their full Magic attribute for spellcasting and conjuring, while buying Power Point to spend on Adept's power for 2 karma per point, which was considered broken.

The errata changed this, to 5 karma.

[Ancient History]

Well, that would fucking do it. It was 20 Karma per power point as an optional rule in SR4 - and the canonical thing to do was initiate.

[Aryxbez]

Well, that would fucking do it. It was 20 Karma per power point as an optional rule in SR4 - and the canonical thing to do was initiate.

Soo...the fix to Mystic Adepts in 4th edition is just to take how it's handled in 5th edition (with the accompanying 5 karma/BP for a PP) ??

[Ancient History]

No. Because that's insane. The problem with 4e Mystic Adepts was not that they were overpriced; if anything, the 5e Mystic Adepts are absurdly underpriced. Total MagicRun territory. The main issue with 4e Mystic Adepts that I recall was a discrepancy on how Magic ratings applied to magical skills.

[Username17]

The reasons SR4 Mystic Adepts are not that good have to do with pricing and scaling. You're splitting your magic attribute, which gets worse and worse the more magic attribute you have and thus the higher marginal cost your magic attribute has. It's somewhat excusable to trade 3 dice from your spellcasting and conjuring to have some side powers, but four initiations later it's going to suck to high hell when you're five dice behind. As you go on, you get farther behind numerically and your marginal costs for improvement become farther and farther out of sync with what other characters are paying. Having 3 dice instead of 6 coming from your attribute is livable, but shilling out for your 3rd or 4th initiation to go from 4 dice to 5 is bullshit

The other big thing that trips up Adepts is that most Adept powers are bullshit. The authors were so deathly afraid of Adepts actually being good at kung fu that all kung fu related powers cost way more than there is any possible justification for. Often by a factor of 2, 8 or even more. Being able to shoot fire from your hands like Ryu is kind of neat, but compared to "knowing Power Bolt" or even "owning a hand gun" it's not actually that special. Even paying a quarter of a power point for that would be hard to justify, but go ahead and look at how much it costs to get Elemental Strike and Distance Strike. Just go ahead and look that up and cry.

Making an effective Adept character is actually deeply unintuitive. You hyper specialize in the niche powers that are actually good - usually by stacking with cybernetics and equipment in weird ways that allow you to exceed dicepool limits for non-Adept characters in narrow fields. The Adepts that people actually talk about being effective characters are things like the Pornomancer and the Hacker Adept. Nine times out of ten if a player wants to play a mystic adept it's because they want to play a sorcerous martial artist or they are deeply attracted to generalization. That doesn't work out well when the martial artist powers are overcosted shit on a plate and the powers people drool over are expensive ways to hyperspecialize.

If you wanted to fix the Mystic Adept, first of all you'd want to drastically cut the cost of most Adept Powers. Secondly, you'd want to have the Mystic Adept be behind in Adepting and Magicianing by a fixed amount. Tell them: you have 5 points of penalty to distribute between Magicianing and Adept Power, and you have to put at least 1 penalty point in each. You have a single magic attribute, but your magicianing and adepting both treat your magic attribute as being lower by that fixed amount you select at character generation.

---

Aspected Magicians were really important back in the days of Priority Systems. If you wanted to cast spells but couldn't afford an A priority, you could be Aspected Sorcerer and then you got Sorcery and Astral Perception but not Projection or Conjuring. The original nomenclature in the Grimoire was way less clear than that (it talked about "Physical Adepts" and "Magical Adepts"), but by 3rd edition it was clear enough.

There are "rules" for them in Street Magic, but no one uses them because they are absolute garbage. I had quite an argument when that garbage got proposed. It was so obviously unplayable that I correctly told people that no one would even use them and the setting would be lessened. One of several instances where things would be better had they only listened to me instead of digging in their heels and insisting on using their bad ideas from half baked first drafts.

-Username17

[Stahlseele]

If you wanted to fix the Mystic Adept, first of all you'd want to drastically cut the cost of most Adept Powers. Secondly, you'd want to have the Mystic Adept be behind in Adepting and Magicianing by a fixed amount. Tell them: you have 5 points of penalty to distribute between Magicianing and Adept Power, and you have to put at least 1 penalty point in each. You have a single magic attribute, but your magicianing and adepting both treat your magic attribute as being lower by that fixed amount you select at character generation.

i thought we were usually complaining about adept/magic-run?

[Whipstitch]

The other tricky thing is that specializing mundane skills super hard is a niche that doesn't have much synergy with being a magician given that most people who build spell casters will run out of points well before they run out of mundane methods of maximizing core runner skills like Infiltration, Gymnastics or Con. Not saying it's impossible to build an effective character that way, mind you, just that you're adding another degree of difficulty on top of build options that already stump newbies.

[Longes]

You can sort of make a MysAd work by sticking to the spells that work on low power, and that augment things you suck at. Take Shapechange for scouting and fast travel, take Invisibiltity to augment your existing stealth, take Levitate to get into a sniping position. Fashion is a good spell for speaker adepts, to change the disguises on the fly. Note that Shapechange allows you to turn into a human (with sucky stats though). Basically, don't take anything that has a saving throw or is an attack - stick to utility stuff.

[Nath]

I'm still not sure for what character concept niche to fill they needed Mystic Adept to break one of the fundamental divide of SR magic. Were they intended to be mages with some physical powers, or adepts with some spells? Or were they just supposed to close the gap between Shadowrun and Earthdawn awakened capabilities ?

To play a mage with some physical additional powers, there were spell like Increase Attribute and Initiative spell (which you can redesign with the Very Restricted Target option to lower drain), Clout and whatever.

Now if I had to create from scratch rules to allow adept to cast some spells, I thin I would have rather introduced something along the line of the Knack quality: an adept power that must taken once for each type of spirit and each spell, that you can then summon or cast with your full Magic attribute (or maybe once for each spell category if that ends up being too weak). Maybe also they shouldn't have to pick a tradition, and resist Drain with Constitution+Willpower (but then I guess trolls would be too good).

[Heisenberg]

Mystic Adepts are, so far, not a thing in SRPC (I was never a huge fan of the concept), while Aspected Mages are back in a big way, and fixed from 4E.

[Aryxbez]

If you wanted to fix the Mystic Adept, first of all you'd want to drastically cut the cost of most Adept Powers.

Thank you kindly for the explanation, it's quite useful. However, are the alternate point costs you provided in your Houserules doing enough of a adequate price cut? What about giving Mystic Adepts a 25% off on Adept powers on Top of the houserules? (apparently they could already get it via geas,so easier just to slap it there). Also, is there any specific reason behing a five point penalty spread? From what I can guess, it's tha -5 originally twas BS, while -3 sucks, it's still manageable?

In case your houserules don't go far enough, is there a general rule to reducing costs. Would you be dividing it by 2 or 8 to get a more sane cost? (possibly just .5 when in doubt?) My best guess otherwise is comparing it to other stuff that may replicate the power, and then reducing it "to, or below" that cost? (I realize I've asked this before in the other thread, sorry)

[Werewindlefr]

There's a possible intent to go back to 4th edition, after trying 5th edition (ugh...Group did it before I came back, never my choice). Anyway, when/if we're going back, it'll be with new/better houserules in tow, this being Frank's Houserules +Ends Of the Matrix, and some others as well (combining of Melee/Ranged into their own skills, Diving/Falling into Swimming/Gymnastics or Atlhletics-Group,multiple Spec's,no-BS Healing/Medic priority healing crap).

I knew Ends Of the Matrix (I'm using it), but I wasn't aware of any other houserules. Are they compiled anywhere? I could use a little sanity in my Shadowrun...

The authors were so deathly afraid of Adepts actually being good at kung fu that all kung fu related powers cost way more than there is any possible justification for.

I'm wondering if it's not a consequence of the two-shot syndrome. Maybe the authors are afraid to make anything more deadly when everything can already kill so efficiently.

[Lokathor]

There's a possible intent to go back to 4th edition, after trying 5th edition (ugh...Group did it before I came back, never my choice). Anyway, when/if we're going back, it'll be with new/better houserules in tow, this being Frank's Houserules +Ends Of the Matrix, and some others as well (combining of Melee/Ranged into their own skills, Diving/Falling into Swimming/Gymnastics or Atlhletics-Group,multiple Spec's,no-BS Healing/Medic priority healing crap).

I knew Ends Of the Matrix (I'm using it), but I wasn't aware of any other houserules. Are they compiled anywhere? I could use a little sanity in my Shadowrun...

If you're using the PDF, you should check the topic itself. After all the EotM stuff there's a "bonus content" post that explains better BP costs for stuff.

[Stahlseele]

Adepts should have a way to hyper specialize in one or two things for cheap.
Because that's their difference to the samurai(swiss army knife character. literally in some cases).
Adepts are adept at one certain niche. That's as per the fluff what makes an adept.
The Problems start when they start to highly specialize and get called munchkins and when they start to highly specialize in somebody elses chosen field of activity . . for example being a decker . . and rightfully so get called asshole.

And samurai are usually the gunslingers while adepts are kinda sorta the monk close combat monkeys of shadowrun, but close combat is a problem compared to guns.

So how does one make it so they can hyper specialize but stop them from trying to steal somebody elses show?
And how does one make close combat more viable for adepts without making it a no brainer for everybody else?

[Aryxbez]

I knew Ends Of the Matrix (I'm using it), but I wasn't aware of any other houserules. Are they compiled anywhere? I could use a little sanity in my Shadowrun...

Pending when you responded, if my last post was before your first one, could be little surprising ye missed my Hyperlink (I'll just link it below) http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=58685#58685

I imagine it's moreso the authors having difficulty on consistent vision, and not looking at each option from a game design perspective. So they're focusing too much on the REALIZARM, to want to allow Adepts, Street Sam or anything have cool stuff to do things with (or it sounds more Overpowered in their head than it actually is in practice).

[kzt]

Yeah, large melee weapons (axes, swords, etc) should be hell on wheels, if you can get close enough to use them. If you want to make adepts doubleplus lethal that's fine. The game system needs to in turn make it a poor tactical choice to try to close on men with guns. So yeah, on the rare case that you can actually get to arms reach without getting shot to hell you should pretty much win that fight.

[Stahlseele]

Which is kinda how it was under SR3.

[Werewindlefr]

Pending when you responded, if my last post was before your first one, could be little surprising ye missed my Hyperlink (I'll just link it below) http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=58685#58685

I imagine it's moreso the authors having difficulty on consistent vision, and not looking at each option from a game design perspective. So they're focusing too much on the REALIZARM, to want to allow Adepts, Street Sam or anything have cool stuff to do things with (or it sounds more Overpowered in their head than it actually is in practice).

I apologize, for some reason I didn't see the link you had posted in the message above mine. I was probably to excited at the possibility of playable SR4 rules.

The reason why I mentioned the two-shot problem is that I have the feeling it kind of restricts possibilities a lot for the authors. When almost everything can be killed in two short bursts (that's a resilient target), it's very difficult to make adept powers that feel relevant.

[OgreBattle]

I thought the drawback of melee weapons was that for every one swing you get, a pistol dude can shoot you twice.

...and shoot you from across the room too.

[Stahlseele]

The from across the room is not SUCH a big problem, if the room ain't that big.
If the room is big and you are frail, then yes, you will not close the distance due to being shot at.

In SR3, having heaps of Armor and Body and enough damage to cleave through vehicles was easy enough to achieve, if you knew your way around the rules.

[Whipstitch]

It's possible to make troll fetishists in SR4 that do OK too. It's just that the degree to which they suck is less of a secret.