[Bluetooth]

I can understand that, since I personally dislike PDFs. I would much rather have a solid copy of it in my hands.

[All4BigGuns]

I like both, but PDFs tend to be cheaper to get hold of.

[Bluetooth]

If I could afford both I would. Right now the pdfs would be a god send, as I am not even in the same city as my books. Makes verifying details real hard to do.

[CanRay]

The "Find" command is also a researcher's friend. 

I still know the old tricks, however.  *Sighs*  Ah, the days in the library before the Internet was commonly available to everyone.

[baronspam]

Ok, so it brings the ways that are listed in Street Magic out of the fluff realm and into the mechanics... hopefully they make it hard cover.

Way of the Adept is only about 15 pages, it will probably not get printed on its own in hard copy.  It has been a very good seller for them from what I understand, so if they do a physical print run collection/anthology of some of the .pdf products I am sure it would be on the short list to be included, but I don't know if such a thing is being contemplated.

[baronspam]

Bluetooth,

Here is another link, this one to a thread by UmaroIV in which he gives a bunch of sample characters that he built.  Umaro is one of the local mechanics gurus, so these guys are highly optimized.  They may not be suitable for use at every table.  Much like the famous CharOps boards of another game that shall not be named, they are more of an example of what one can do.  I am not saying that is is necessarily what one should do.  Umaro has a long description of his assumptions and design standards, what sources he used and did not use, etc, before the links to the characters themselves.

Having said that, there are three in the bunch that are adepts, one focused on melee combat, one focused on pistols, and one focused on thrown weapons.  All three are quite effective, but you will notice that they share two qualities, which tend to be common among the mechanically efficient adepts- they don't do a whole lot out side of their specialty, and they all mix magic and technology. 

Oh , duh, the link: http://forums.shadowrun4.com/index.php?topic=4495.0

[Mirikon]

Adepts are only underpowered compared to hyper-optimized types. Which is like saying your sedan is underpowered compared to a Formula 1 race car.

[Pants Of Doom]

Adepts are underpowered compared to their pure technological counterparts.
I know that houserules are not for everyone, but I tend to give any Adepts that play in games I run an extra .25 points in powers for every point of magic they have, that changes slowly over time. So an adept that spends half his time in the desert doesn't have to worry if the game suddenly shifts to an all urban campaign, since his Temperature Tolerance wasn't taking up any space that did go to something like quick draw.

[baronspam]

Adepts are only underpowered compared to hyper-optimized types. Which is like saying your sedan is underpowered compared to a Formula 1 race car.

I will buy this if you drop hyper and go with "optimized".  I think the designers of the system didn't really test the mechanical limits of the rules very well.  There has also probably been a degree of power creep with all the supplements and additional rule books compared to the original core rules.  Look at the example characters in the SR4A.  If that is the standard for the table, its easy to build an adept that keeps up with or probably exceeds the benchmark there.  But honestly, those characters, purely from a mechanical point of view, range from mediocre to outright bad in terms of what you can pull off with a 400 bp character.  I find even my more casually built characters tend to exceed their abilities. 

If the desired quality is speed, and the formula 1 car costs the same as the sedan, why the heck do you buy the sedan?

[Mirikon]

If the desired quality is speed, and the formula 1 car costs the same as the sedan, why the heck do you buy the sedan?

Because sometimes you desire to do more than one thing. Because you can drop a killer engine in the sedan, do a bit of minor body work, and have a car that hauls ass, but doesn't raise any red flags when you drive through the middle of suburbia. Because there's more cargo room in the sedan.

This goes into the whole thing about building a world, instead of getting the biggest batch of numbers. The ability to walk through metal detectors and go through any airport in the world without setting off alerts, while being ready for combat at a moment's notice doesn't show up anywhere in the 'I roll X dice to hit' arguments, but you have to agree that this is a very valuable ability. And if you initiate to get Masking, then you can pass some astral scans, as well.

Taken in isolation, technological builds, or adepts that sacrifice Talent for Ware, are mechanically superior. It is in all those intangibles, such as the fact that an adept can get into the meet with the Johnson ready to roll, while the street samurai with the cyberware gets stopped at the metal detectors, that makes the difference. And a social Adept can do some extremely nasty things, some of which CAN'T be duplicated by technological means.

[CanRay]

Formula 1 Car:  Seats 1.

Sedan:  Seats 4-6 depending on type of sedan.

[Mäx]

Taken in isolation, technological builds, or adepts that sacrifice Talent for Ware, are mechanically superior. It is in all those intangibles, such as the fact that an adept can get into the meet with the Johnson ready to roll, while the street samurai with the cyberware gets stopped at the metal detectors, that makes the difference.

Except that bioware is at least as hard to detect as you being an adept, so an augmented adept can walk in the meet exactly the same way as non-augmented adept can and then proceed to kick his ass

[baronspam]

Formula 1 Car:  Seats 1.

Sedan:  Seats 4-6 depending on type of sedan.

But as I said, If what you want is speed. . . not passenger capacity.  I was replying to an argument that basically said they are only under powered if you compare them to characters that are actually built well (from a mechanical point of view, none of this has to do with rp).  Well, I find that kind of a silly argument.  Two cars, both cost the same, one goes as twice as fast as the other.  If what you value is a car that goes fast, you are likely to find the slow car under performing.  I have yet to see a combat adept that would not be significantly better by dropping 1-2 points of magic and replacing it with bioware, and in some cases some cyberware as well.  I have yet to see a combat adept built as a combat generalist that was not outperformed by a heavily augmented character.  Yes, you get some advantages like not setting off the MAD scanners, etc, but when the rubber meets the road and its time to smack something down the street sami will have bigger dice pools overall than the pure adept.

Now, there are things an adept is good at.  If you want to be crazy good in a narrow specialty (best guy with a pistol EVAR, that kind of build) or you want to use adept abilities as a force multiplier to increase skills in a certain area (like a hacker adept) adepts work fine.  But the thing they seem to be at first blush, a magical alternative to a technological general combat/physical character, just doesn't work very well.  In fact, I think the only thing harder to play than a pure adept is the "pure mundane" concept.

[Mirikon]

See, I never design characters to do one thing. I make a combat adept that can brace herself on the ceiling while the guards walk by, and sneak past the sensors to steal the shiny.

Those couple points of magic you lose from getting ware? Yes, you can gain a couple dice in your specialty, but you could prove more useful to the team if you branch out, and get the ability to fall from a fourth story window without breaking bones. You still can easily have 10-13 dice to attack in melee, which is about what I normally have in my builds. But as I've said elsewhere, I prefer eliminating weaknesses to optimizing strengths.

[Sichr]

Im amazed that someone can find that Adepts, maybe karma expensive, long term characters but with virtually infinite possibility to grow due to initiation, are underpowered in comparsion to cybered characters, that have6 points of essence and nothing more ever after...
For instance...Samantha Roth, listed in State of the art: 2073 OMG she is awesome...adept...