[penllawen]

I never played 5. 

So this is a continuation of a broken rule.  Good lord. 

No wonder people complain about Magicrun.  Yikes.  Just yikes.

Actually, I don't hate this (and I'm pretty down on MagicRun.) PhysAds have long had it quite tough in terms of advancement, compared to their augmented cousins. This lets then purchase PPs for a still-decent amount of karma, but they still have to choose the "give me PP" metamagick instead of any of the others, so it's not free.

[GuardDuty]

Wait, do I have this right that power points are now decoupled from Magic Rating?  That I could have 7 pp but only 6 Magic? 

I accept it may be RAW but is that also RAI?

Even before 5E, there was an (optional?) rule allowing PhysAds to buy power points separately.  Is this really that different?

[Typhus]

Meh.  It makes the Magic rating of the Adept almost fully pointless, whereas Magic for other classes is an actual measurement of power and ability (spell force, ability to tolerate drain, etc).  Breaks the well-established logic entirely too.

[Typhus]

I mean, the whole thing used to be you initiate and with that you got a power and an attribute boost.

Then they broke it up to where you could do the two separately, which actually increases the total cost.  However, you still had your power capped by the Magic rating.  You always had to grow your Magic rating to get the new power point.  It was on par with casters/conjurers.  I don't recall seeing that optional ability in earlier editions to buy an extra power point, but its been years.  Was it in 4e Grimoire or something?

Regardless, If you take that cap away, now adepts get to just initiate, and skip the Magic cost.  They get a far greater boost that way, or so it seems to me. 

I guess I don't see it a resource parity issue either.  Where a Street Sam needs money, an Adept needs Karma.  With the trade off during downtime mechanic, the Adept should be able to swap nuyen for karma well enough to catch up. 

Feel free to Change My Mind.  I lack some context.

[Xenon]

Mystic adepts don't gain power points from magic at all (beyond unadjusted magic from magic or resonance priority during chargen). Post chargen the only source of power points is from selecting it via initiation (and binding Qi).

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Yep that's basically it.  Adepts are a variant form of Sammy that use the currency of karma rather than nuyen, and they have unlimited upwards mobility whereas the sammy has a hard cap of 6 essence.  Furthermore, the Adept is able to toggle between powers by means of the Qi foci, whereas sammies can technically replace existing augmentations for different ones it's a much bigger deal for them.


These are reasons why I'm not so sure it's not completely intentional that Adepts only start with a cap of 4 PPs in chargen.

[Michael Chandra]

As long as they can awaken the PP afterwards instead of suffering permanent damage, I'm fine with it as intent.

[GuardDuty]

I mean, the whole thing used to be you initiate and with that you got a power and an attribute boost.

Then they broke it up to where you could do the two separately, which actually increases the total cost.  However, you still had your power capped by the Magic rating.  You always had to grow your Magic rating to get the new power point.  It was on par with casters/conjurers.  I don't recall seeing that optional ability in earlier editions to buy an extra power point, but its been years.  Was it in 4e Grimoire or something?

I do admit, now that I look for it, I can't find it in 4E (although I did find the suggestion to allow adepts to take a power point as their metamagic in Street Magic).  So it might not have been an option there after all.

SR3 CRB allows adepts to purchase additional power points at a cost of 20 Good Karma, not even listed as an optional rule (p. 168, beginning of right column).

[Typhus]

Interesting.  Shows my own ignorance I suppose.  We didn't play much of 3.  Mostly 1, 2 and 4.  We'd learned the ways of 2 almost by rote, and characters rarely were played long enough to initiate, so perhaps that was part of it.   Just feels like the Adept is bypassing a normal karma tax this way, with more bang for the investment.

Having a focus give you PP also just weirds me right out.  Doesn't even make sense to me as a concept.  Not asking for a defense of it, just sayin'.  This really ain't my game any more. 

*Makes old man noise*

[GuardDuty]

Having a focus give you PP also just weirds me right out.  Doesn't even make sense to me as a concept.  Not asking for a defense of it, just sayin'.  This really ain't my game any more. 

*Makes old man noise*

We can definitely agree on the focus thing.  Doesn't make sense to me either.

[PatrolDeer]

Having a focus give you PP also just weirds me right out.  Doesn't even make sense to me as a concept.  Not asking for a defense of it, just sayin'.

Regarding your previous post about Resources vs Karma, Focus giving a PP  would actually make sense in the matter of how reward system works. Everyone is getting flat karma and flat NuYen for a successful run.
In pure numbers, Qi focus seems to me as a NuYen and karma based PP. This allows Adepts to fine tune their characters and use that NuYen. The mechanic to bind it, is similar to learning spells, so with hindsight and clarification made by Xenon, it feels like an attempt to unify the underlying mechanic of karma cost/nuyen vs gaining abilities.

[penllawen]

Regarding your previous post about Resources vs Karma, Focus giving a PP  would actually make sense in the matter of how reward system works. Everyone is getting flat karma and flat NuYen for a successful run.

I don’t do that, actually. I award a flat pool of karma and another of Nuyen, and let the players divide them (unequally) in any ratio they choose. It’s a little clunky, but I like it better than the “trade Nuyen for karma / karma for Nuyen” system that Missions has.

[PatrolDeer]

Everyone is getting flat karma and flat NuYen for a successful run.

I don’t do that, actually. I award a flat pool of karma and another of Nuyen, and let the players divide them (unequally) in any ratio they choose. It’s a little clunky, but I like it better than the “trade Nuyen for karma / karma for Nuyen” system that Missions has.

It is a reasonable idea penllawen. My though about how flat reward system works comes from the 6E, Running the game. But I like this one!

[penllawen]

It is a reasonable idea penllawen.

Thanks! I think GMs need to do something, because there's this big split between archetypes-that-need-karma and archetypes-that-need-nuyen. And this seems to me like the neatest solution.

[Shinobi Killfist]

I mean, the whole thing used to be you initiate and with that you got a power and an attribute boost.

Then they broke it up to where you could do the two separately, which actually increases the total cost.  However, you still had your power capped by the Magic rating.  You always had to grow your Magic rating to get the new power point.  It was on par with casters/conjurers.  I don't recall seeing that optional ability in earlier editions to buy an extra power point, but its been years.  Was it in 4e Grimoire or something?

Regardless, If you take that cap away, now adepts get to just initiate, and skip the Magic cost.  They get a far greater boost that way, or so it seems to me. 

I guess I don't see it a resource parity issue either.  Where a Street Sam needs money, an Adept needs Karma.  With the trade off during downtime mechanic, the Adept should be able to swap nuyen for karma well enough to catch up. 

Feel free to Change My Mind.  I lack some context.

I think why it started occurring is ware started to provide far far more than adept powers at char gen. It’s hilariously so in 6e. You can use all of your starting magic to get what is less than a 1/6th of what a street sam got. To boost your agility by 4 you’d need a rating 16 Qi focus. And that’s a mere.8 essence for street sam.


Edit to add what I really dislike about this is it really pushes adepts towards burnout and really just being street sams with some extras. It is imo damaging to the setting.