[Solomon]

I am amazed when I look at a physical adept build that misses some really cool and inexpensive things you can replicate easily with ware. If you are doing martial arts style you should have penetrating strike and more critical strike. Where is your combat sense? I love being able to do big numbers of damage but I especially love being able to avoid big numbers of damage too. The perception abilities are also awesome. You cant hit it if you cant find it. I can buy a sensor package to wear on my wrist, face or belt or whatever to replicate everything your cyberware does for perception but you cant say the same about enhanced perception, magic sense and all the other great abilities. Adepts aren't powerful but they can be wickedly versatile.

[JoeNapalm]

get Kinesics: 5

Kinesics maxes at 3

ok, so we are at 49 dice.  Not 50 dice but still the current blue ribbon winner.  That lets you buy 12 hits before edge, buy the way.  Probably enough. 

That is, indeed, awesome.

Enough dice to stop a throwing star dead in its tracks!

"For the past four years, male modeling has had a shadow cast over it by one man and five syllables: Der-ek Zoo-land-er."


-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist

[Shiroi]

I've actually done variants of that experiment - and I've always concluded that the augmented adept pulls further and further ahead of the pure adept. If you disagree, I think it's most likely because you are building the augmented adept in an inefficient way. I think the strongest argument would be this: make me a pure, no augmentations adept on 400BP, then add 200 karma and 500,000 nuyen. After I see what you are focused on, I'll make an equivalent augmented character that is numerically more efficient.

Before I drop here a fast combat build of an adept, I have to say, that I am kinda suprised, that nobody here mentions Adept centering. This ability is not to be underestimated, because you have negative modifiers in every fight, and if they really are not present, you can make your own (called shots to avoid armor, called shots to increase DV, shooting from cover/+ moving vehicle etc.)

400BP Human adept
Qualities: (+10)
-5 Adept
-10 Warriors way ( Improved reflexes, Combat sense, Mystic armor, @magic 8 - Improved Ability ) ; preffered X Gease optional rule)
-10 Perceptive
+5 Prejudiced (Gypsies)
+10 Amnesia
+10 Records on file
+10 Vindictive

Attributes: (-305)
-30 Body (4)
-40 Agility (5)
-20 Strength (3)
-40 Reaction (5)
-0 Charisma (1)
-40 Intuition (5)
-10 Logic (2)
-20 Willpower (3)

-40 Edge (6)
-65 Magic (6)
0 Essence (6)

Skills: (-98)
-26 Pistols ( or Automatics,... etc.) (6/8)
-18 Perception (4/6)
-18 Assensing (4/6)
-18 Unarmed (4/6)
-6 Dodge (1/3)
-6 Infiltration (1/3)
-6 Survival (1/3)

Powers: (PP - 6)
-3 Improved reflexes III
-0,75 Combat sense II
-0,75 Mystic armor II
-1 Astral Perception
-0,5 Enhanced Perception II

Equipment is not so important at this point, cause even if you spent a lot of nuyen for augmentaion, we still can +- buy the same things.

Advancement: (200 karma)
-76 Initiation grade (1-6) (Adds 5 power points + Adept centering - 7 dice now)
PPoints to spend: (5)
-1,5 Combat sense II -> VI
-0,75 Mystic armor II -> IV
-1,5 (-1,125) Improved Ability III (Pistols)
-0,5 Quick draw
-0,25 Attribute boost I (Agility)
-0,5 Enhanced Perception  II -> IV

-75 Magic (7,8)
-40 Init. grade (7,8) (Adds 2 power points + Attunement item - any pistol + Masking metamagic)
PPoints to spend (2,375)
-0,75 Combat sense VI -> VIII
-1,5 Mystic armor IV -> VIII

-8 Attunement item bond

So in this teoretical exaggerated example, you have Adept centering @ 9 dice (which is rather insane), Attunement item bonus @ 5 dice, +8 Armor, +8 on reaction defensive and anti-suprise rolls, perception rolls with 16/18 dice, same goes for Assensing rolls. Attack rolls with pistol are at 21 dice, modified by any success from Attribute boost power( 9 dice so +-3 likely). Ranged defense @ 16 dice, melee @ 19 dice.

There are also other variants you can use. Using the Gease optional rule will add even more power points, rolling an elf for aditional agility, or adding Changeling II quality for metagenetic improvement ( intuition or agility), but these changes dont influence the ware/no ware difference (=.
An unarmed melee variant would also be interesting to compare. Because I think a possible muscle toner/augmentation, synaptic booster and other bioware upgrades that can fit in a -2 essence loss, cant profit over the 4 point of power points and 2 initiation grades loss.

Last thing I want to mention, as I saw your gunslinger character, in the advancement section, you cant increase your magic 3(5) - reduced by 2 with bioware - by 20 karma points to get a magic 4, you need to spend 30 karma as if your magic was 5 and you wanted to increase it to 6, then applying the -2 from essence loss. Hope it helps.     

[Solomon]

That build is, of course, predicated on the GM allowing you to use the optional rule for power points at initiation. Is that optional rule used in Missions?

[UmaroVI]

Before I drop here a fast combat build of an adept, I have to say, that I am kinda suprised, that nobody here mentions Adept centering. This ability is not to be underestimated, because you have negative modifiers in every fight, and if they really are not present, you can make your own (called shots to avoid armor, called shots to increase DV, shooting from cover/+ moving vehicle etc.)

Last thing I want to mention, as I saw your gunslinger character, in the advancement section, you cant increase your magic 3(5) - reduced by 2 with bioware - by 20 karma points to get a magic 4, you need to spend 30 karma as if your magic was 5 and you wanted to increase it to 6, then applying the -2 from essence loss. Hope it helps.   

These are both false.

First, Adept Centering does not work like that. It is a free action to use. Calling shots is also a free action, and you only get one. So you could, say, Free Action -> Adept Centering, Simple Action -> Call Shot, Simple Action -> Take Shot.

So far as I know, you are just wrong about increasing magic. SR4A says "Anything that reduces a character’s Essence will also reduce Magic. For every point (or fraction thereof ) of Essence lost, the character’s Magic attribute and her Magic maximum rating are reduced by one. A character with a Magic of 4, for example, whose Essence is reduced to 5.8 has her Magic immediately reduced to 3 and her maximum to 5. Further Essence reductions do not reduce the character’s Magic again until Essence drops below 5."

It says nothing about this working differently than any other change to an attribute and I could find no reference to a special case.

[UmaroVI]

That build is, of course, predicated on the GM allowing you to use the optional rule for power points at initiation. Is that optional rule used in Missions?

No, but I'm fine with working under that assumption. Ways are also not allowed but again I'm fine with assuming them for this purpose. If anything these both benefit augmented adepts over pure adepts.

[Solomon]

Somewhat related question about combat sense. Is the only limit on this power your magic attribute? Could I honestly Have a 8 reaction and 8 dice of combat sense for 16 dice of defense on any action? It says it adds extra dice to surprise and defense tests not to all reaction tests and the Gunslingers reaction + combat sense exceeds racial max on reaction so is there really no other limitation than magic rating? That right there seems pretty stellar reason to use an adept to me if it is actually the case

[UmaroVI]

Yes, it stacks; it's not a reaction bonus, it's a bonus to reaction tests.

[Shiroi]

Before I drop here a fast combat build of an adept, I have to say, that I am kinda suprised, that nobody here mentions Adept centering. This ability is not to be underestimated, because you have negative modifiers in every fight, and if they really are not present, you can make your own (called shots to avoid armor, called shots to increase DV, shooting from cover/+ moving vehicle etc.)

Last thing I want to mention, as I saw your gunslinger character, in the advancement section, you cant increase your magic 3(5) - reduced by 2 with bioware - by 20 karma points to get a magic 4, you need to spend 30 karma as if your magic was 5 and you wanted to increase it to 6, then applying the -2 from essence loss. Hope it helps.   

These are both false.

First, Adept Centering does not work like that. It is a free action to use. Calling shots is also a free action, and you only get one. So you could, say, Free Action -> Adept Centering, Simple Action -> Call Shot, Simple Action -> Take Shot.

So far as I know, you are just wrong about increasing magic. SR4A says "Anything that reduces a character’s Essence will also reduce Magic. For every point (or fraction thereof ) of Essence lost, the character’s Magic attribute and her Magic maximum rating are reduced by one. A character with a Magic of 4, for example, whose Essence is reduced to 5.8 has her Magic immediately reduced to 3 and her maximum to 5. Further Essence reductions do not reduce the character’s Magic again until Essence drops below 5."

It says nothing about this working differently than any other change to an attribute and I could find no reference to a special case.

Well, as a GM, I would really not allow a player to build a character with magic 2, buy some ware to drop to 1, spend 5 karma to increase the magic to 2 again, buy something to drop it to 1 again etc. This is IMO kinda broken.
As for the Adept centering, the Called shots are only an example of negative modifiers, you have many others that will probably occur.
I am looking forward to your augmentation proposals 

[UmaroVI]

I'm not going to start defending SR's design choices  I'm sure if you tweaked the rules enough, you could make things different, but the magic/ware interacting like that is part of why augmented adepts are better than unaugmented.

Yeah, I'm not saying adept centering is BAD, but it's not as good as you think it is. IMO 6 is the "sweet spot" for it, since that lets you negate blind fire which is most likely the biggest penalty you're going to get (remember you can only negate ONE penalty - so if you have -2 from glare, -3 from being in melee, -4 for calling a shot, you can't negate all of them at once even if you have Grade 9 centering).

[Shiroi]

I'm not going to start defending SR's design choices  I'm sure if you tweaked the rules enough, you could make things different, but the magic/ware interacting like that is part of why augmented adepts are better than unaugmented.

Yeah, I'm not saying adept centering is BAD, but it's not as good as you think it is. IMO 6 is the "sweet spot" for it, since that lets you negate blind fire which is most likely the biggest penalty you're going to get (remember you can only negate ONE penalty - so if you have -2 from glare, -3 from being in melee, -4 for calling a shot, you can't negate all of them at once even if you have Grade 9 centering).

Well, this is somehow new to me and I am not sure if that is correct.

• Adept Centering (Adepts Only): Adept Centering is similar to
the Centering metamagic (see Centering below) but only available
to adepts and mystic adepts. It allows an initiate to reduce
negative dice pool modifiers to Physical and Combat skills by her
initiate grade—as long as she can physically perform her chosen
method of centering.

I dont see any limitation and negative and positive modifiers stack. But yet again, its up to the GM to decide, rules are only a guide line and if they are not comprehensible, GM decides .

[UmaroVI]

Oops, my bad, I was thinking of something else.

[UmaroVI]

Yo, I can't get your costs for Initiation to add up. Are you assuming that the character belongs to a magical group and is doing an initiatory ritual? You don't have Arcana and thus cannot join a magical group, and it would cost you 5 karma to join anyways.

I'm going to assume you do something like drop Survival or whatever for Arcana, edge the roll to join, and then actually have 205 karma, because I don't want to make you redo stuff over this - so I'll just use your values for initiation to keep things simple.

[UmaroVI]

I had 2 bp, and about 19000 nuyen left unspent that I don’t want to mess around with.

Cutting to the TLDR:
No longer depends on Attribute Boost for high agility
Significantly better defenses
Better physical and astral perception
Better skills
2 more recoil compensation

There’s an edge case where the original character has 1-2 more dice - if there’s a situation where Attribute Boost could go up beforehand and also there’s at least a -8 penalty, none of which comes from Recoil - but in every other situation the augmented character is better, often significantly so. Even in that edge case, the huge edge in defenses make up for it, IMO.

Net Changes:
+2 defense tests
+1 initiative
+4 armor
+2 Willpower (+1 stun box as well)
+3 Physical defense boxes
+1 Assensing
+4 Perception
+1 Survival
+5 Infiltration and Unarmed compared to non-attribute-boosted state, +2 compared to average Attribute Boosted state (and no simple action required to get rolling)
+4/+1 with Pistols
Trauma Damper effect (shift 1 box from P to S when P damage taken, cancel 1S when S damage taken, minimum damage 1).
+2 recoil compensation
Can cancel 3 less in penalties with Adept Centering


Gross Losses:
-1 Combat Sense, -8 Mystic Armor, -1 Improved Ability (Pistols)
No Attribute Boost (Agility) since it’s redundant
-2 Item Attunement bonus
-3 Adept Centering cancelling penalty
Gross Gains
+1 Reaction
+5 Agility all the time (+2 compared to Attribute Boosted state with average rolls)
+2 Willpower
+12 Armor
+2 Pistols skill
+3 Physical Perception
+1 to Intuition-linked skills
+2 to defense tests
+3 Physical Damage Boxes
Trauma Damper

400BP Human adept
Qualities: (+10) [10 more spent for comparison]
-5 Adept
-10 Warriors way
-10 Perceptive
-10 Aptitude (Pistols)
+5 Prejudiced (Gypsies)
+10 Amnesia
+10 Records on file
+10 Vindictive

Attributes: (-285) [20 less spent, for comparison]
-10 Body (2) (with ‘ware, augmented 4 for most purposes)
-40 Agility (5) (with ‘ware, augmented to 10)
-10 Strength (2) (with ‘ware, augmented to 3)
-65 Reaction (6) (augmented to 9)
-0 Charisma (1)
-40 Intuition (5)
-0 Logic (1) (with ‘ware, augmented to 2)
-40 Willpower (5)

-40 Edge (6)
-40 Magic (5)
0 Essence (6)

Skills: (-106) [8 more spent for comparison]
-34 Pistols ( or Automatics,... etc.) (7/9)
-18 Perception (4/6)
-18 Assensing (4/6)
-18 Unarmed (4/6)
-6 Dodge (1/3)
-6 Infiltration (1/3)
-6 Survival (1/3)

I agree, lets not fiddle with nuts, bolts, and low-cost items.

Advancement: (200 karma)

Magic will drop to 1 with essence loss, max magic drops to 2.
Increase magic to 7 and initiate grade to 5 (you have to alternate, but it’s faster to just write it all out at once:
Magic will cost 135, initiating will cost 57
8 for Item Attunement

Initate powers: Masking, Adept Centering, Item Attunement, +2 PP

Final PP allotment: 9 PP to spend. Warrior’s Way discount applies to Improved Reflexes, Combat Sense, and Improved Ability (Pistols)
[3]   Improved Reflexes 3
[2.75]   Combat Sense 7
[.75]   Improved Ability (Pistols) 2
[.5]   Quick Draw
[1]   Astral Perception
[1]    Enhanced Perception 4

Final Ware Loadout: -3.913 essence, 481000 spent.
(2.106 after Adapsin, 1.053 after halving) Cyberware (134200)
(1.2) Alphaware Cybertorso with Customized Body 6 (49000)
   +2 Body [2] (800)
   4 Armor [8] (2400)
(.45) each x2 Cyber Lower Leg (10000 each)
   4 Armor [8] (1200 each)
   Foot Anchor [3] (4000 each)
   1 free capacity for amusing things
(.24) Alphaware Attention Coprocessor (18000)

(1.2) Geneware (170000)
   (.2) Genetic Optimization (Agility) (45000)
   (.4) Reakt (45000)
   (.4) Qualia (40000)
   (.2) Adapsin (40000)
(1.66) Bioware (234000)
   (.56) Alphaware Suprathyroid Gland (90000)
   (.1) Reflex Recorder (Pistols) (10000)
   (.64) Alphaware Muscle Toner 4 (64000)
   (.2) Trauma Damper (40000)
   (.16) Alphaware Cerebral Booster (20000)

[Shiroi]

Well, my first impression is - its not legal. Second is, if it would not be legal, why posting it , so  - its a nice display of rule abuse (=.

I don't have the core rulebook with me now, cause I am at work, but if you look at the Adept quality description, I think, there is mentioned a warning for GMs about not letting players misuse this quality. Well, it fits for you perfectly (=.

It all comes back to the essence loss/magic advancement karma cost. A -4 essence, 7 magic character is in fact a magic 11 character.
(BTW. we keep a house rule of limiting magic @ 9 = 1,5x natural maximum of 6. If you loose 4 essence, your natural maximum for magic becomes 2, limiting you to magic and grade @ 3 =1,5x2)
This is the main reason, why no one in our group would even think about such a character (=.

Anyway, good job with this, the character looks complete ruined for me  , but it has probably better ROLL chances that the pure one.   
I will check all the ware you listed to improve my knowledge and get more info on it, because I am not really familiar with cyber torso/legs replacements and I don't know how exactly they work.