[adzling]

Well it's my observation base upon the character my players create and the ones posted to these forums.
So not purely a reaction to this thread.

Basically unless you hit the team over the head with constant, severe background counts and/or limit the number of casters in a party to just one then mundane characters are pretty much irrelevant in modern Srun because a mage (or even better a mystic adept) can do everything they can do only better or with more secondary options.

Mundane/ Cyber characters are mostly irrelevant and street sam's are a thing of the past when mystic adepts are at the table.

Yeah, THAT'S the logical extension of an admittedly contrived white room scenario. Oh please.

[adzling]

mystic adepts are bad IMHO because they can do everything any other character archetype can do, only better. Or with more secondary options.
Why be a decker when you can be mystic adept that hacks better than you can in AR?
Why be a sam when a mystic adept can eat your mundane ass for lunch using the same tools you do?

This is not true with wared physical adepts in my experience.

So MysAdepts are bad but wared PhysAdeps are somehow A-OK? Weird.
If you want to 'balance' out the Awakened folk try banning sustaining foci, quickening, heightened concern, and focused concentration for them.

[JmOz01]

As someone playing a buffer Mysticadept, you are right it could be extremely overpowering if you have 2-3 characters like mine in a group it can go VERY bad for everyone...

Scary thing is that my characters backstory is that he was the last surviving team member of a cross trained group of MysAdepts (All mages, all deckers, all fighters)...so the group that took them out he is hunting....

[halflingmage]

This is basically just a mental exercise.  It presupposes that a group will sit down not just with the intention of ruthlessly optimizing their own characters but to synchronize the builds to work together.  And when you do that you can come up with ridiculous things.  But it is no  more ridiculous than pornomancer builds with unbeatable social skills, gunslinger adepts with high 20's dice pools to attack, Cyber-trolls with more than 40 dice to soak damage etc etc.

Also, if you think they are unbeatable, all it takes is one guy with astral perception to drop an ARO on the tac net and several others to start firing the grenade launchers.    Sure, against opposition with no magical support they are hot death on a rocket, but cyber characters against low end opposition without high end combat skills are also hot death on a rocket.  Basically you are saying "we would really kick ass against opposition that is bad at countering what we are good at."  Any GM worth his dice bag will have you fighting bug spirit swarms, toxic shamans with a piles of bound spirits,  draco forms, shedim masters, vampire cabals, etc. 

[bdyer]

No leg work? no debuffs? my shadowrun team would DESTROY this one smoke grenade jammers forboding spells stealthing marks on your teams deck and commlinks and thats just one character

So, in order, Jammers do nothing because nobody cares about noise, Forboding does nothing because 18 dice spell defense plus buffed willpower, Smoke Grenade does nothing to stop Astral sight so the mages still target just fine, Decker would have to turn on Ultrasound.  But first you've got to beat the illusion spell to see them, and then beat the stealth test when you're at -6ish perception and the whole team is running with 9 Agility, 5 or more stealth and possibly Chameleon suits.  Small dice pool vs large dice pool and small dice pool needs to win twice to even roll initiative.  Seriously, invisible, concealed, stealthy characters will walk right on by anything without Astral Perception.   

Unless you've got a team of mages and spirits to beat down the mages and spirits the meat puppets don't even get to play.  Which is the point.  Starting runners shouldn't be facing a squadron of Spirits and Mages, but that is what is required to counter this mess.  Or some other silly thing like massive background count, Astral Guard Dragon, or Hive full of true forms. 

Its Rock, Paper, Scissors, where the mages are Paper, but they're a whole ream of paper so the scissors just don't cut it.
[/quote

You do realize that ultrasound and radar will cut through all those buffs

Also it will be funny when the team loses 12 or more buffs to mana static.

[Hobbes]

This is basically just a mental exercise.  It presupposes that a group will sit down not just with the intention of ruthlessly optimizing their own characters but to synchronize the builds to work together.  And when you do that you can come up with ridiculous things.  But it is no  more ridiculous than pornomancer builds with unbeatable social skills, gunslinger adepts with high 20's dice pools to attack, Cyber-trolls with more than 40 dice to soak damage etc etc.

Also, if you think they are unbeatable, all it takes is one guy with astral perception to drop an ARO on the tac net and several others to start firing the grenade launchers.    Sure, against opposition with no magical support they are hot death on a rocket, but cyber characters against low end opposition without high end combat skills are also hot death on a rocket.  Basically you are saying "we would really kick ass against opposition that is bad at countering what we are good at."  Any GM worth his dice bag will have you fighting bug spirit swarms, toxic shamans with a piles of bound spirits,  draco forms, shedim masters, vampire cabals, etc.

I would suggest to you that a GM fiat "You're Ambushed!" by a volley of explosives is a TPK for any group.  Including the Super-Cyber-Soaking Troll by the time the overpressures get calculated.  Pretty much the definition of Degenerate Game Situations.  http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RocksFallEveryoneDies 

And yes basically a mental exercise, if a GM were to allow a team like this at a table I would expect draco forms, shedim masters, vampire cabals, ect.  Not the sort of things you commonly see thrown at a out of the gate runner team.

[Hobbes]

Cute team for babys first runner team btw

Thanks!  Merry Christmas to you too Rooks!

[Hobbes]

You do realize that ultrasound and radar will cut through all those buffs

Also it will be funny when the team loses 12 or more buffs to mana static.

Ultrasound, Motion Sensors and Radar are active sensors easily spotted and avoided (or hacked) if they're on a static emplacement.  If they're on a Patrolling Guard or drone, you need to avoid the patrol, same as any other runner team.  Also, Ultrasound, Radar, and Motion Sensors are not auto-detect.  The user still needs a Perception check or Sensor Use Check.  These are common security devices that any runner team can avoid, not sure why they'd present a particular difficulty to this team. 

Vibration Sensors are more problematic since they're passive, but can be stealthed so are likely not a problem unless the dice bounce badly. 

Mana Static is right up there with high background counts the team becomes fairly typical runners until they geek the mage.  Presuming some sort of foreknowledge on the part of the security forces isn't completely out of line, the PCs did blow away whatever ward or spirit that came first.  But to go from "Patrol Spirit Went down" to "They're coming through here set an ambush with the handy mage with just the right spell!" seems a tad of a stretch.  If the PCs are walking into an ambush without some sort of mechanical or in game reason I would suggest that just about any runner team is going to be in bad shape.

[Whiskeyjack]

Well it's my observation base upon the character my players create and the ones posted to these forums.
So not purely a reaction to this thread.

Basically unless you hit the team over the head with constant, severe background counts and/or limit the number of casters in a party to just one then mundane characters are pretty much irrelevant in modern Srun because a mage (or even better a mystic adept) can do everything they can do only better or with more secondary options.

Mundane/ Cyber characters are mostly irrelevant and street sam's are a thing of the past when mystic adepts are at the table.

Yeah, THAT'S the logical extension of an admittedly contrived white room scenario. Oh please.

Yeah this is not my play experience AT ALL, in a group with 2 full casters.

[Rooks]

detect life and detect enemies is go to bread and butter spells but ya, magic can also be a huge liability

[Hobbes]

As someone playing a buffer Mysticadept, you are right it could be extremely overpowering if you have 2-3 characters like mine in a group it can go VERY bad for everyone...

Scary thing is that my characters backstory is that he was the last surviving team member of a cross trained group of MysAdepts (All mages, all deckers, all fighters)...so the group that took them out he is hunting....

Pretty much.  A second Mage tends to be a bigger boost to the team then a second Decker, face, or hired gun.  You pretty quickly reach a broken state where the GM either slaps you all with a book, or custom builds opponents loaded down with specific counters to the PCs instead of rolling with what makes sense to actually be security for whatever you're hitting.

"Okay gang, for your first run you're hired to hit Aunt Mable's Cookie Factory and find out what makes them oh so good."  and it turns out Aunt Mable is a Grade 3 Initiate Vampire with a cabal of mage followers and a small army of Ghouls and Hellhounds guarding the place.  And you don't want to know what's in the cookies.

[Marcus]

I think most regular readers know I'm not a huge fan of MYSADs, it is possible to build them to doing things very well, and yes they have amazing potential. BUT their initial development is often low. It does come down to who's making the character. i don't doubt that the layedout team would work, basically as advertised, so long as those making them had a decent understanding of how the system interacts. But keep in mind your paying for every thing MYSAD wise, 30 karma for power points is no joke. It essentially boxes builds in many ways. For this application pretty cookie cutter build would do the job just fine though.

wared up adepts can get very specialized and it can lead to the point of problems, but the same can be said for a couple other options as well. I don't think there is anything wrong with banning MYSADs ether.

[Hobbes]

Well it's my observation base upon the character my players create and the ones posted to these forums.
So not purely a reaction to this thread.

Basically unless you hit the team over the head with constant, severe background counts and/or limit the number of casters in a party to just one then mundane characters are pretty much irrelevant in modern Srun because a mage (or even better a mystic adept) can do everything they can do only better or with more secondary options.

Mundane/ Cyber characters are mostly irrelevant and street sam's are a thing of the past when mystic adepts are at the table.

Yeah, THAT'S the logical extension of an admittedly contrived white room scenario. Oh please.

Yeah this is not my play experience AT ALL, in a group with 2 full casters.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that any table that you're at Whiskey is likely a touch more challenging than what you'll see in a standard module.  Just a suspicion.  ; )

[Csjarrat]

My main issue with mysads is that they get access to everything bar projection. I'd rather see them as aspects by default, forcing either summoning or sorcery as a choice for the build. Having access to everything but only losing projection which is niche anyway, means they get too much boom without enough need imho. If they're built to a theme and ok'd by a GM, it's no bother but an optimised party of them all synced to work together is just going to lead to headaches on the table. Fun paper exercise trying to build it though :-)

[ZeldaBravo]

So MysAdepts are bad but wared PhysAdeps are somehow A-OK? Weird.
If you want to 'balance' out the Awakened folk try banning sustaining foci, quickening, heightened concern, and focused concentration for them.

....and Spirits that Sustain, and Psyche, and having more than one Caster in the group, and Alchemy, and turning the Decker into a super ninja so they can just walk right up to something and direct link/hack the host/giggle to victory.

Spirits are okay if they have to have LoS and have to be manifested. Everything else is fine.