[Arioch]

Page 117 shows the Brawler Adept with 2 levels of the Critical Strike power for unarmed combat. Page 309 shows the Critical Strike power, but it does not have the same "per level" that other powers (such as Improved Ability) show denoting you can take more than one level of the power. In fact, the text says "... can be selected multiple times, each time for a different melee skill."

So which is correct? Can I follow the template of the brawler adept and take the power more than once to make a punch that knocks the socks off a troll, or can I only take 1 level of the power for each melee combat skill per the stated rules?

Thanks for the clarification and potential errata.

[Xenon]

1 rank max per melee skill is correct.

Archetypes are riddled with various mistakes

[ZeConster]

They nerfed it after the archetypes were made, and forgot to fix them. 1 level per melee skill max is correct.

[Scawire]

Ah I wanted a Dim Mak master that knows where the neurological points are on the body to cause a KO with just a small hit. That does exists in the real work just so you know. Oh well maybe the next magic book will have some cool unarmed combat adept abilities for me to add to my Mystic Adept. 

[Xenon]

(necro thread warning)

Ah I wanted a Dim Mak master that knows where the neurological points are on the body to cause a KO with just a small hit...

that would be a mystic adept with the spell Punch or possible Death Touch....
(not multiple levels of critical strike)

[Medicineman]

Ah I wanted a Dim Mak master that knows where the neurological points are on the body to cause a KO with just a small hit. That does exists in the real work just so you know. Oh well maybe the next magic book will have some cool unarmed combat adept abilities for me to add to my Mystic Adept. 

The Answer is Nervestrike
You have to Houserule/convert it from SR4A or wait for the 5th ed Streetmagic Book

with a converted Dance
Medicineman

[Scawire]

Well Dim Mak in the real world would be, NerveStrikes to paralyze a person, Killing hands to kill a person, and Neurological to KO the person, or again hit Stomach 9 to KO the person but then again Stomach 9 would also kill the person 7 years later.

Neurological point the 4 on the human body don't kill you (no killing hands) does not paralyze you no NerveStrike they KO you, Stomach 9 tricks the body into thinking it has high blood pressure so the blood pressure of the body drops and you faint, of course if your strike tares the cavity it will degenerate over around 7 years and you will die, it will seem like you had a stroke to MD's.

The only thing with using spells is you have to play a Mystic Adpet to do it so the adpets lose the true Martial Arts ability to do it.

I would love to see a version of Nerve Strikes that only paralyze one limb at a time since CO 10 paralyzes the arm and if you train long enouph you can learn to project your chi a short distance and hit this point and paralyze a persons arm that has a gun in it. Everyones seems to think MMA is the best martial arts system and guns are never going to be taken out my a true martial artist, extend your chi and paralyze their arm the gun is now no good.

Oh ya I know this is an old forum I just wanted to add a some comment about my option, SR5 still rocks and all but just drop ideas and comments, I didn't even expect anyone to comment on it.

[Scawire]

Oh I thought of one more thing the might be cool to think about, if you use chi to strike at Dim Mak points strength has nothing to do with how well it works it has more to do with did you hit the right point at the right angle and did you put enouph chi into the strike to shock the meridian system. So I was thinking if you could get an adept ability that did Magic Rating damage instead of Strength damage that would be uber cool.

Just ideas, I am glad some one asked about the level with critical strike, since my book has the starting of the adept abilities saying the guy had a few levels in critical strike for a skill, so it is good to know what your guys ruling is. All the rest I'm saying on this post is not to get you guys to change the critical strike but maybe add new stuff to give my adept better dim mak abilities, when the new books come out...... Ya new books!!!!!

[Shinobi Killfist]

IMO.this is really a talk with your GM issue unless you are talking missions.  They pretty mucb gave the reason which is with super strength, weapons etc. critical strike could stack to absurd damage levels.  Fact is even without critical strike it is at absurd damage levels so great job there guys. 

The brawler adept could have had 4 levels of critical strike in her punch and she would still be a totally balanced character, actually she would still be weaker than a street sam.  Multiple levels of critical strike are perfectly fine, like many things in this game a player can break the game if they abuse various rules in combination.  Don;t have a player trying to break the game, and you wont have an issue. Ask your GM, just explain hey I want to be bad ass in melee combat without having to be a roid rage monster, is that okay?

Hopefully by the time the magic book comes out they will have figured out that their fix to massive damage troll hurt the game more than it fixed anything and they iwll get rid of this really bad rule,.  That way missions players and people who play RAW have a decent range of builds outside of muscle dude for melee combat. 

[ProfessorCirno]

Ideally there'd be a way to replace (some of) a potential strength bonus with a different bonus - one that costs slightly more then just making the Incredible Hulk.  This way, big bad troll bruisers can still be big bad troll bruisers, and the dainty elves can also become swordmasters - more agile and thus more precise then troll, but, given an average on resources spent, less damaging and powerful.  An elf who TRULY wants to be one with the sword could spend even more resources on whatever this is to meet the troll without being Elvy McLargeHuge...but, well, the troll could probably tidy up their Agility too, eh?  It also ensures trolls don't go Strength 10, Extra Damage 5, Murder Literally Everything 30.

That said when it comes to pure unarmed, I'd consider doing it with Killing Hands.  Let Killing Hands ALSO increase unarmed damage by 4P but that doesn't stack with anything else that increases unarmed damage.  .5 PP makes it a little more expensive then just sticking on some Spurs as far as essence -> PP goes, and you lose the -2 AP, but do +1P and save the 5k nuyen.  And you don't have to take any 'ware!  Bone density is flat out more expensive completely, but also gives the bonus to Body rolls for damage resistance tests.  It also lets you start with the +4P, which 'ware won't do.

Alternately, if this is too powerful, Killing Hands increases unarmed damage by +2P each point and can be taken twice.

[Michael Chandra]

Killing Hands is how the Adept injures Spirits and Vehicles without a weapon, so is plenty good as it is now.

[ProfessorCirno]

I mean ideally (and who knows, maybe I'll make my own someday) I'd like to see something that gives adepts a boost when using "non-mechanical" weapons (as guns are, let's face it, rather fine on their own).  There's Weapon Focus for swords, though that cuts into your Foci economy for Qi Foci, but something to give adepts a reason to grab those throwing knives or a bow instead of the gun would be cool.  I keep coming back to the idea of replacing part of the strength bonus, though that's more mechanical then anything else - it's so much easier for sammies to increase their stats that I guess I partition "high strength" into the cyber sammy benefits and look for something different in adepts.

I'd put the unarmed damage bonus in killing hands to make it for unarmed damage "only."  As it stands there's SUCH a strong push for shark adepts to drop the point of essence into thicker bones or wolverine claws, I'd like there to be some sort of opposing choice.  Also I still prefer my adepts to be un-aug'd, so it's totally a personal thing and not a game wide thing.

[Shinobi Killfist]

It used to be killing hands that had the levels,You bought it at either Light, medium, serious, or critical damage level,. Critical was 10 boxes, so a single touch started at you are dead, please resist this.  Now trolls hit for 9-10D which meant you you had to hit 9-armor as your TN to try and resit, while a chi master might be hitting for 2D which meant any roll other than a 1 resisted some damage. Still if you got more hits on your attack than they have body dice, that is one dead dude. 

In 4e they split it to critical strike and killing hands.  Which is totally cool IMO, the .25 PP may have been a bit cheap though.  At .5 I think its in the right ballpark in 5e, its just doesn't have levels anymore which cuts off a wide range of character concepts for what I consider a totally unimportant goal of stopping troll monster damage from going even further past the breaking point that it already is. 

I'd be somewhat okay with a killing hands boost like 1-3e but really just adding levels to critical strike solves the issue.

[ProfessorCirno]

Yeah, I'm mostly working off the idea of "...but nothing that makes the high strength troll even STRONGER."

If you're ok with accepting that the troll is going to just plain get better, things get way, way easier.  And to be honest, it is a bit weird that, of everything, that's the balance worry 

[martinchaen]

Everything has a price.

A troll has the potential to get to 14 STR. But he's never going to be able to reach 10 CHA. The Troll CAN do all roles on a team, even being a Face, but there's no denying that his natural abilities lends themselves well to being a meat shield and or brawler...