[UmaroVI]

Honestly, if I was building a pure adept, Combat Sense and Counterstrike 1 are probably things I'd have, because they aren't useless, just overly expensive. But I've never been able to build a pure adept that wouldn't immediately improve with ware, and so you wind up cutting down to the handful of useful and reasonably priced adept powers so you can stack them with the useful and not overly priced augmentations.

[Shinobi Killfist]

That actually reminds me of one of the things I hate about adept powers.  The breaking down of them into .25 bits.  Don't get me wrong some are also clearly overpriced even without that, improved attribute could have been .5 a level with no increase for going over racial limits and it still would be debatable on whether or not you should get bioware for attributes.  I think combat sense is fine at .5 a level in that it would be way too cheap at .25 a level, I wouldn't have a adept alive without 6 ranks+ in it if it was .25 a level.  But it might be closer to a .4 a level power, IMO. 

[UmaroVI]

Yeah, I think that's one of the problems. You also get stuff like Penetrating Strike, which is just blatantly worse than Critical Strike (but can't be cheaper because of the .25 minimum).

[Shinobi Killfist]

I never take penetrating strike because it is such a bad deal in comparison.  A lot of powers cost too much this one is an obvious good example since as you said critical strike is just clearly better.  What also gets me are the fun powers that seem to have a fun tax because they are not worth what they cost.  Wall running, gliding, traceless walk.  They are all so situational and not that great in those situations that they are barely worth .5PP much less a full PP.  They are fun and cool so it is like they cost more just because of that. 

This topic hits home for me because I think adepts and mages should not be motivated mechanically to pick up ware.  At most there could be reasons to for character concepts to take ware and the character wouldn't really be penalized more they he benefited.  Kind of like it was a balanced choice.  When the mechanics motivate you to go counter to the setting things are a bit screwy IMO.  The setting claims that they want to take as little ware as possible heck ideally no ware, but sometimes there are certain pieces so important to the job/role they have they will take a small hit to their magic.  It isn't supposed to be this ware is just so much better than my magic I'm gonna load up on ware.

[UmaroVI]

The other big problem is that someone seemed to have gone through the adept powers and added in "Gotchas!" even when they weren't needed. Melanin Control is the one I love to QQ about as the perfect example: it lets you change... your skin color ... BUT you can't change it outside the limits of your ethnicity, because it would be REALLY BROKEN if for .5 pp a white guy could disguise himself as a black guy. It's especially insulting because it wouldn't be a particularly good power anyways.

[JoeNapalm]

The other big problem is that someone seemed to have gone through the adept powers and added in "Gotchas!" even when they weren't needed. Melanin Control is the one I love to QQ about as the perfect example: it lets you change... your skin color ... BUT you can't change it outside the limits of your ethnicity, because it would be REALLY BROKEN if for .5 pp a white guy could disguise himself as a black guy. It's especially insulting because it wouldn't be a particularly good power anyways.

I am TAN MAN!

Fear my bronzed fury!


Lamest. Superpower. Ever.


-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist

[Onion Man]

The other big problem is that someone seemed to have gone through the adept powers and added in "Gotchas!" even when they weren't needed. Melanin Control is the one I love to QQ about as the perfect example: it lets you change... your skin color ... BUT you can't change it outside the limits of your ethnicity, because it would be REALLY BROKEN if for .5 pp a white guy could disguise himself as a black guy. It's especially insulting because it wouldn't be a particularly good power anyways.

I am TAN MAN!

Fear my bronzed fury!


Lamest. Superpower. Ever.


-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist

I get the feeling that melanin control has that gotcha in it to restrict normal fleshtone characters to normal fleshtones, while my silver skinned SURGE character would be restricted to silvery metal tones.

[FastJack]

The way the section reads, is that it puts a limit based on five skins tones that you can only go up or down one "notch" in the list.

Skin tone goes from albino to caucasian to tan to brown to black. So, if you were normally tan, you could go from caucasian to brown but not albino nor black. The others are beyond the limit of your body to produce. (And caucasian in this regard would be fair skin like Irish gingers or Norwegian stock.)

[Charybdis]

(And caucasian in this regard would be fair skin like Irish gingers or Norwegian stock.)

Or IT guy....