[ZombieAcePilot]

One thing adepts can do (which people seem to forget) is boost any skill. You can play a mystic adept that uses his adept side to increase his spellcasting or take the improved healing abilities to better recover from casting spells with drain. So you'd be a super mage without astral projection.

[Psikerlord]

A Mystic Adept actually playing a Mystic Adept isn't an issue, because they don't have the points to spread around and be good at both. The problem is that a Magician can build a Mystic Adept and aside from losing projection, is just an inherently superior Magician, and an Adept can build as a Mystic Adept with the same inherent superiority. They don't ever have to buy new spells or increase their magical skills past creation to have all the magician capability they need to be an Adept, but better.

The effect is more pronounced with Mystic adepts built as mages, since they get the exact same Priority benefits, and after they buy power points equal to their magic with karma, get the rest for free, and just have a bunch of adept powers to supplement their spellcasting.

this.

OMG i cant believe magician and mystic adept get the same priority slots! so there is no reason to play a mage, at all. you are waaaaaaay better off going mystic adept and buying yrself 5 PP for the 25 karma at the end to give yourself, hmm lets see, increased reflexes 2 and astral sight and combat sense 3 looks good. what do i lose, 25 karma and astral projection. uuummm yeah mystic adept faceroll win.

[RHat]

...  Right, because you can never have better things to spend your Karma on.  Want a rating 3 Power Focus?  18 Karma.  Rating 4 Spell Focus?  Another 8.  Now add 5 for Mentor Spirit, and we're up to 31.  Maybe you want to grab Focused Concentration, too, or a couple of Rituals or Preparations.  A Mage has a lot of stuff to spend Karma on, and spending that Karma on Power Points instead directly makes you a worse mage.

[Lucean]

Not being able to project (without awakened drugs) is a serious enough drawback for the players in my group.

[Ryo]

Not being able to project (without awakened drugs) is a serious enough drawback for the players in my group.

Really? What is projecting even good for? I'm honestly curious, as I've never seen a value to it.

[All4BigGuns]

Honestly, in my opinion, 19 people at current count need to try to get themselves away from the way that video games balance things. For a tabletop game Mystic Adepts are fine as printed, for a video game, yeah, they'd be a bit 'overpowered'.

[RHat]

Honestly, in my opinion, 19 people at current count need to try to get themselves away from the way that video games balance things. For a tabletop game Mystic Adepts are fine as printed, for a video game, yeah, they'd be a bit 'overpowered'.

I'm curious as to what aspects you consider to be the differentiating factors between tabletop game balance and video game balance.  There certainly are differences, but...  I'm not sure what brings you to that conclusion.

[All4BigGuns]

Simple. Video games, especially single-player ones, need everything to be almost completely equal with no mechanic change between options so that the game can be completed no matter what option you choose without the difficulty increase being too drastic.

[Ryo]

I don't think you understand what people are saying here, Guns. Mystic Adept is overpowered in that any player who even remotely pays attention to optimization will take it over pure Magican or pure adept, because it can do the job better than either one. This actually reduces choice and limits interesting character builds, which is very bad for tabletop.

The ideal situation is for everything to be interesting in its own way, rather than blatantly stomping on the toes of anything else, which the Mystic Adept is currently doing with wild abandon.

[Ryo]

I don't think you understand what people are saying here, Guns. Mystic Adept is overpowered in that any player who even remotely pays attention to optimization will take it over pure Magican or pure adept, because it can do the job better than either one. This actually reduces choice and limits interesting character builds, which is very bad for tabletop.

The ideal situation is for everything to be interesting in its own way, rather than blatantly stomping on the toes of anything else, which the Mystic Adept is currently doing with wild abandon.

No, it doesn't reduce choice or limit anything. Just because certain types may gravitate more to it doesn't eliminate the others. I for one probably still wouldn't play one because if I want to play a Mage, I'm going to play a Mage and if I want to play an Adept, I'm going to play an Adept. I don't really play 'hybrid' type characters like this (I'm actually regretting the mistake I made in our Pathfinder game with the Paladin levels I took with my Cleric).

Which would be valid if it were a pure hybrid, like the Mystic adept is supposed to be, but unless you're planning to astrally project a lot, the mystic adept practically replaces the magician, since they share the same priority and The mystic is just a generally superior mage.

[Psikerlord]

Astral projection is good for recon and sending quick messages, but that's about it, in my experience....  And a mystic adept can do that anyway, by sending a summoned spirit to do recon for him, with their mental link the info is instantly available to the mystic adept, and send watchers to give messages.... So astral projection no big loss to the MA (albeit it is a loss)

[Medicineman]

Not being able to project (without awakened drugs) is a serious enough drawback for the players in my group.

Really? What is projecting even good for? I'm honestly curious, as I've never seen a value to it.

Spying !

Intelligence gathering of the magical kind
To know where your Enemy is without him knowing that you're present(until its to late for him when You send Spirit after Spirit to destroy him and he can't do anything against it)

with an astral Dance
Medicineman

[RHat]

Simple. Video games, especially single-player ones, need everything to be almost completely equal with no mechanic change between options so that the game can be completed no matter what option you choose without the difficulty increase being too drastic.

...  That's...  An interesting perspective...  But really, I think you misunderstand what balance is.  Balance in video games, for example, does not in any way require that everything be "the same".  You can have massive mechanical differences, and entirely different ways of doing things.  Actually, video game balance CAN allow for some things to be better than others provided that they require a higher level of skill to use effectively.  Thus, in a balanced video game, you can have first-order optimal strategies (basically things that are effective even for the unskilled) that are less powerful than those options that require greater skill from the player to use.  At that point, it's all about the skill curve.  MMO's and cooperative games in general are a different beast, but they are so in a way that they actually inherit from tabletop games, though of course there are some differences as with any such case.

In tabletop games, the entire notion of balance is more about the sort of experience that the players have on the game - the sort of influence that they have on the game world and on the story collectively being created by the group (the proverbial "spotlight" concept).  If (all things being equal) one player is, due to mechanical elements associated with his character, able to have a much stronger influence on the way the story moves than another, there is a balance problem.  With "hybrid" character types, a grossly simplified implication is that since they can have a strong influence across more areas, those characters who have an influence across fewer areas must be able to have a stronger influence in their areas.

So, if the Mystic Adept is able to function in both the areas of the Magician and the Adept, the Magician and the Adept must function more strongly in their respective areas than does the Mystic Adept.  Of course, I'd also argue that at 5 Karma per PP, this is indeed the case (at least at chargen), though of course there is the problem that under the current structure the only way to build a MystAd who is an Adept first and a Mage second is to select a relatively high Metatype priority (Human D+, Elf C+, Ork/Dwarf B+, or Troll A) and then spend 30 Karma on Power Points.

[Mad Hamish]

One thing adepts can do (which people seem to forget) is boost any skill. You can play a mystic adept that uses his adept side to increase his spellcasting or take the improved healing abilities to better recover from casting spells with drain. So you'd be a super mage without astral projection.

Checking that's not quite right.
"This power increases the Rating of a specific Combat,
Physical, Social, Technical, or Vehicle skill per level of
the power."

so you can't boost spellcasting with it

[Mad Hamish]

...  Right, because you can never have better things to spend your Karma on.  Want a rating 3 Power Focus?  18 Karma.  Rating 4 Spell Focus?  Another 8.  Now add 5 for Mentor Spirit, and we're up to 31.  Maybe you want to grab Focused Concentration, too, or a couple of Rituals or Preparations.  A Mage has a lot of stuff to spend Karma on, and spending that Karma on Power Points instead directly makes you a worse mage.

a) You're ignoring the benefits you can get from the adept powers
- you could spend 12 karma for 6 points in physical stats, how much would that cost you in karma?
- you could spend 7 karma on improved reflexes, which frees up a spell slot so a net of 2 karma to have it always active without sustaining, which means no sustaining focus needed either, and to sustain a force 6 spell for those 3 dice costs 12 karma for a rating 6 sustaining focus, so the mystic adept is well ahead on that (5 karma for the spell, 12 for the focus)
Or looked at another way focused concentration lets you sustain a force 6 improved reflexes for 24 karma, over 3 times the cost of having it permanently on and it means you can't buy other qualities, to sustain armor rating 3 takes 12 karma.
You have a bit more flexibility with the quality but you've got opportunity cost and for 12 karma you can effectively have a force 6 spell (Increased Reflexes) 7 karma, Astral Perception 2 amour and 3 points of permanent armour (or 1 point body and 1 point permanent armour)

how does 2 karma for Astral perception, 7 for improved reflexes 3 and 3 additional reaction or body compare with what you get from anything else?

note that you're limited to 25 points of positive qualities and with negative qualities that could leave you with 38 karma available for everything but adept powers
Maybe you pick up some adept powers that let you buy less spells, maybe you depend on a couple of spells to free up for additional adept powers.

You can't do everything as a beginning mystic adept but then again you can't do everything as a beginning mage either and there are certainly things that a mystic adept can do a hell of a lot cheaper than the mage (boost skills, boost physical attributes, get native initiative boosts, bonuses to social effectiveness if you're looking at doing some face work),
Rapid Healing and/or Pain Resistance can stop penalty dice which might be more of a boost than a power focus at some stage (and note that drain can't be healed other than by time),

Also note that you have the option of picking up qualities, focuses etc in play, it's fairly tough to pick up a natural +3 dice to initiative any other way than being a mystic adept.


b) You don't need to spend much karma on power points to get benefits.
So you could spend 2 points on Astral perception and 3 points of karma for +3 dice on Perception and Assessing.
That's a lot cheaper than you can get 3 dice on 2 skills normally...