[UmaroVI]

You mean, a physad holding an ordinary weapon? Foci get their ratings reduced by background count, and a -6 essence cyberzombie would drop a force 6 weapon focus down to 0.

[Mäx]

I can't say why some people hate adepts, but they sure as frak aren't sub-optimal.
A simple fact is that there are very few niches in this game where being an adept won't make you better then mundane, as pretty much anything a mundane can do, an adept can do it better.

[RelentlessImp]

On the WOTC forums, these are the people who brought you PunPun, the War Hulking Hurler ("how much EXP do you get for destroying Toril?" "All of it."), mathematical arguments trying to prove that fighters are useless because barbarians and rogues can do more damage than they can, and so on.

I'm gonna take umbrage to this statement. These aren't the same people. The people who bring up Pun-Pun and Hulking Hurlers throwing moons are the ones who don't understand the concept of THEORETICAL optimization as opposed to PRACTICAL optimization. Pun-Pun is the former. A Rogue with a Ring of Blinking throwing flasks is the latter.

Sorry, don't have much else to add to the conversation, but as someone who frequents the WotC boards and pushes for practical optimization and high amounts of roleplay, I couldn't let someone go and bash the morons of the board while including the rest of us.

[The Big Peat]

I can't say why some people hate adepts, but they sure as frak aren't sub-optimal.
A simple fact is that there are very few niches in this game where being an adept won't make you better then mundane, as pretty much anything a mundane can do, an adept can do it better.

Are you including the augmented in the mundane?

As Umaro said earlier, the maths on this has been done quite a few times.

Anyway -

WAYS TO MAKE ADEPTS BETTER

The first and most obvious is to hand out the Way of the Adept path for free. Immediate points reduction. I don't know if that completely closes the gap, but it goes a fair way towards doing so (I'd also take out Way of the Burnout to discourage augmented adepts, who don't need encouragement).

After that - well, I'd have to see how far that got you. Buts it an obvious quick and easy boost.

[Tsuzua]

I can't say why some people hate adepts, but they sure as frak aren't sub-optimal.
A simple fact is that there are very few niches in this game where being an adept won't make you better then mundane, as pretty much anything a mundane can do, an adept can do it better.

It's pure adepts that are sub-optimal.  It's quite easy to grab the low hanging fruit of both the adept and ware trees.  Cybered adepts are fine.  They tend to be more specialized than mundanes, but better at whatever niche they pick.  That's a fair trade-off in most games.  But, most people don't want to play cybered adepts.  They want to play pure adepts.

Pure adepts run into several issues.  The first is that many adepts powers are too expensive for just being simple keeping up with mundanes.  The second is that a lot of the cool adept powers are either just nifty (slightly reduced falling damage) or overbalanced (the restriction on melanin control, keratin growth's drain).   There's also the fact that it's a common assumption that adepts are the melee character type."   Therefore in addition the issues pure adepts have, they also run into the all the issues melee has*.  Ultimately you end up seeing a lot of pure adepts who spent a lot of effort on being as good as the street samurai who decided to having a cyberspur would be cool. 

Sadly the fix for this is extremely hard.  Critias's effort with the Way of the Adept is laudable and a very good start.  However you then run into the issue that the good adept power list is quite short.  This combined with the fact that powers don't really scale with magic rating means what ultimately happens is PP discounts just let you get the good out of adepts for less.  Then you start waring it up.  Cybered adepts are just fine, but they get the same power boost from discounted adept powers that pure adepts do.

*- That is not to say you can't make a good meleer in SR.  It's just that it's harder from both a character creation and tactical standpoints than most people assume it'll be.

[Mason]

You mean, a physad holding an ordinary weapon? Foci get their ratings reduced by background count, and a -6 essence cyberzombie would drop a force 6 weapon focus down to 0.

You mean a -6 Essence Cyberzombie would drop it by 4 points in a 6 meter radius. All CZ's have a BC of 4.

[FastJack]

You mean, a physad holding an ordinary weapon? Foci get their ratings reduced by background count, and a -6 essence cyberzombie would drop a force 6 weapon focus down to 0.

You mean a -6 Essence Cyberzombie would drop it by 4 points in a 6 meter radius. All CZ's have a BC of 4.

Thanks, Mason.

Yep, so the PhysAd still has a Rating 2 Weapon Focus, plus whatever powers they still have left, meaning they can still hurt the thing MUCH worse than any other weapon (Immunity to Normal Weapons) like grenades, missiles, rockets, bullets, etc. So, when fighting the Cyberzombie, which would you rather have, a PhysAd or a Thor shot? Because he's definitely walking away from the one that ain't magical.

[rasmusnicolaj]

We allow Adepts to bye extra PP for karma as also was an option in SR3 up to maximum Magic/2 extra PP. And we use Way of the Adept.

I guess there still could be some more choices but I think pure adepts are fine if not as powerful.

Rasmus

[Mirikon]

Thor shot would still work. You can't have cyberzombies with less than -6 Essence, and even then their immunity to normal weapons only gives 12 hardened armor. Thor shots obliterate everything within 200m, and deals 30P (-5 per 100m) for everything outside the first 200m. Even dragons would have trouble surviving a Thor shot.

[CanRay]

The Saint Of Killers, OTOH, would just stand there and go, "Need more gun." 

[UmaroVI]

You mean, a physad holding an ordinary weapon? Foci get their ratings reduced by background count, and a -6 essence cyberzombie would drop a force 6 weapon focus down to 0.

You mean a -6 Essence Cyberzombie would drop it by 4 points in a 6 meter radius. All CZ's have a BC of 4.

Thanks, Mason.

Yep, so the PhysAd still has a Rating 2 Weapon Focus, plus whatever powers they still have left, meaning they can still hurt the thing MUCH worse than any other weapon (Immunity to Normal Weapons) like grenades, missiles, rockets, bullets, etc. So, when fighting the Cyberzombie, which would you rather have, a PhysAd or a Thor shot? Because he's definitely walking away from the one that ain't magical.

Oops, you are correct. Let me review the cyberzombie rules again.

..

Alright, you have got to be shitting me. What? A melee adept is perhaps the single worst type of character possible to go toe to toe with a cyberzombie, and will get their ass handed to them unless the GM is running the cyberzombie and sandbagging/fudging dice like mad. Or unless by "initiate" you mean like rank 6 initiate with Magic 12 or something crazy like that.

[Mäx]

Are you including the augmented in the mundane?

Yes, almost any augments a mundane can get, an adept can get too.

[UmaroVI]

Are you including the augmented in the mundane?

Yes, almost any augments a mundane can get, an adept can get too.

Well, then I think a lot of people will agree with you. Augmented adepts can be optimal and aren't weak - they are paying more to specialize more and that's not at all an unreasonable thing in Shadowrun. It is pure (non-augmented) adepts that a lot of people are saying are suboptimal.

[Mirikon]

I dunno. I think the nastiest thing I've ever seen was a completely unaugmented Troll Drake Adept with a combat focus.

[The Big Peat]

Right, with you now Max. What Umaro said.

If I had to rank them in terms of optimal it would go

Augmented Adept
Augmented
Adept

They're all useful, you can have fun with all of them, but if you must have the most effective character possible you go with them in that order. I would also say that the gap between Augmented Adept and Augmented is slimmer than that between Augmented and Adept.

Note: I am thinking solely of combat here. Doing little sums in my head, I think the Adept trumps the Augmented as a Faceman... again, the Augmented Adept is for the win.