[crowofpyke]

My pistol adept that I use for SRM is nearing his career path end by capping out his XP/Karma awards.  I figured it might be fun to try an unarmed combat adept, something I have never done before.  I have been using Hero Lab from Lone Wolf Development to iterate through possibilities.  I guess I am not coming away feeling very good about it....  But perhaps I am missing something.

If you are going to make a Human unarmed combat physical adept, how would you do it?  Thanks folks!

[UmaroVI]

First, I'd be sure that I really, REALLY wanted to play a human, because trolls (and to a lesser extent orks) are a whoooole lot better at it.

Take a look at my sig and the Martial Artist; he's also a face, but if you do just want to punch things you should be able to tweak things easily.

[Ethan]

My first suggestion is to use Chummer. 

Almost all my Unarmed Adepts have been human, and the thing I struggle with the most are the mental attribute ratings. They'll really suck in order to be somewhat decent in a fight.

I'd really consider losing 1 point of Magic/Essence for some Bioware. Not necessary, but it'll give you a boost at the start.

The first question is this: Penetrating Strike or Elemental Strike? Quiet and deadly, or potentially quiet, deadlier but also flashier.

[Critias]

Critical Strike works well enough to overcome the metaracial disparities, IMO.  Sure, an Ork or Troll would always be a hair better (because they can take the same power), but depending on the power level of the game it's not like you'll be outright gimped or something;  there are enough ways to get your Unarmed pool really high, and your Unarmed damage really high, that the odds are good you'll still be plenty capable.

The bigger problem, of course, is the general balance of melee vs. ranged combat.  My advice?  You'll need to make sure you've got (a) a way to get in close before you get shot full of holes, and (b) a fall-back plan.  Be really fast, be really sneaky, be tremendous at dodging and/or soaking, be all of the above...but have a way to close the distance in one piece.  At the same time, though, accept that melee combat isn't always the option, and you don't want to be dead weight to your group.  Be able to fill in in a secondary role, and be able to still do something of value when the answer to the problem isn't "punch someone."  Have a reasonable ranged combat skill, pull double-duty as a Face, just make sure you can do something besides Kung Fu, and stay a reasonably well-rounded shadowrunner (not a one-trick pony).

[crowofpyke]

Critical Strike and Penetrating Strike.  Understand that part.  Taking Exceptional Attribute for Strength and the Improved Ability for Unarmed Combat, sure.

But am I missing something else?

And yeah, I get it that the character needs to be able do something else besides "The Matrix" notion of "I know Kung Fu."  But what I am struggling with is that when I finish the character off... well, the amount of dice and damage an Unarmed Combat Adept comes away being capable of doing, just does not compare to what a Pistol Adept can do....  Am I just to spoiled from having played a Pistol Adept?

I will post my Unarmed Combat build this weekend and we can pick it over and perhaps I really am missing something... or it just isn't as strong as I thought it would be....

[Mournclaw]

You probably are missing martial arts (from arsenal, you know)...? Also, have you already taken about the improved ability (unarmed combat)? And defensive powers are a must for the unarmed adept IMHO.

[Critias]

To be honest, the super-high Strength probably isn't worth it (since Strength:Damage is a 1:2 return on investment).  I'd stop at 5, and just take Critical Strike from there (unless you want to dip into bioware and get a little Muscle Augmentation, which goes nicely with a little Muscle Toner).  The points required to get a human to natural Strength 7, though?  Ugh.  Yeah, I wouldn't bother.

[UmaroVI]

Critical Strike and Penetrating Strike.  Understand that part.  Taking Exceptional Attribute for Strength and the Improved Ability for Unarmed Combat, sure.

But am I missing something else?

And yeah, I get it that the character needs to be able do something else besides "The Matrix" notion of "I know Kung Fu."  But what I am struggling with is that when I finish the character off... well, the amount of dice and damage an Unarmed Combat Adept comes away being capable of doing, just does not compare to what a Pistol Adept can do....  Am I just to spoiled from having played a Pistol Adept?

I will post my Unarmed Combat build this weekend and we can pick it over and perhaps I really am missing something... or it just isn't as strong as I thought it would be....

Penetrating Strike is actually really bad and you shouldn't take it. So is Exceptional Attribute: Strength. Both of them have a really, really bad bang to buck ratio.

Punchy adepts will never be as good at fighting as shooty adepts on the whole. The reason to be a punchy adept is because you can take your fists anywhere but you can't take pistols anywhere.

Missions also has a ruleset that really hurts both melee and adepts, because Martial Arts and Way of the Adept are disallowed, so that doesn't help.

[crowofpyke]

Way of Adept - some things are allowed in SRM.

Martial Arts - yeah, not allowed in SRM.


I will play with it some more, but you guys might be right, the rules set limitations in SRM might make a unarmed combat adept not worth it in SRM.

[Ethan]

A cool sideline could be the "Power Thrower". Not strictly great, except on paper, but it's badassery adds even more style. Plus it's relatively quiet, except for exclamations of pain from throwing a playing card into someone's eye and so on.

Without Martial Arts, Unarmed Adepts are even more meh when compared to the Gun Adepts.

[Critias]

Penetrating Strike is actually really bad and you shouldn't take it.

Whoof, yeah.  I hadn't noticed they'd mentioned Penetrating Strike.  It's not that it's terrible -- I mean, I guess if you Initiate a hojillion jillion times and have Magic and Karma to spare, it's nice to have? -- it's just that it's terrible for the cost (especially compared to Critical Strike).  If you're worried about armor, you're much better off with one of the Elemental Strike variants (depending on just how flashy and loud you want to be, when the shit hits the fan and "loud" is okay)...but yeah.  The price on Penetrating Strike is really high, for what it actually does for you.

Way of Adept - some things are allowed in SRM.

Unless the Bull'ster has changed something, unfortunately not.  WotA is, entirely, made up of optional rules, and as such is specifically not allowed in official Missions campaigns.  I've taken to occasionally adding WotA-friendly notes here and there in a few of the adventures I've written (for folks just running the adventures casually, at home, and not as part of a formal campaign), but for "real" Missions games, WotA is off-limits.

[All4BigGuns]

Penetrating Strike is actually really bad and you shouldn't take it. So is Exceptional Attribute: Strength. Both of them have a really, really bad bang to buck ratio.

The way I look at it, this power would be the reason to go Adept for unarmed rather than augmented mundane with bone lacing, as the augmented has zero access to AP for unarmed attacks.

[UmaroVI]

That's not actually an advantage, though. AP is not actually better than DV, in fact it's worse. 8P -2 is always worse than 10P, and usually worse than 9P as well (except vs. drones and vehicles).

[lurkeroutthere]

Way of Adept - some things are allowed in SRM.

Critias would know, he wrote the book and he's heavily dialed in with missions.


Punchy people, regardless of race always suffer from this simple problem, punching someone is a complex action, always always always and the target gets to throw their unarmed or other appropriate close combat skill into the defense "for free" without actively dodging. Those two factors combine to really gimp close combat across the board. The only net gain for unarmed combat guys is they can take their fists anywhere, which doesn't come up to often in missions, but when it does it's really handy.

Basically as any other type of fighter you don't have to kill people with your first shot, you get the second to finish them off.  A melee guy has to be able to incapacitate in one swing, a prospect that is actually more tricky then it sounds.

I'm going to echo Umaro, by most objective standards penetrating strike is terrible, costs a significant amount and the most your going to get out of it is what -3 ap? Kind of crap, your better off putting those points into something else. That somewhere else should probably be attribute boost. Get a point of it for each physical attribute, sure it won't be as potent unless you've got time to charge your chi but that's not a bad way to spend the time you spend closing the distance with people.

If your planing on playing a human unarmed combat adept it's going to be all about your initial dicepool and getting that as high as possible as quickly as possible. That way you hit successfully and roll those hits into damage. It also allows you to hopefully KO multiple targets by splitting your dicepools. Obviously they have got to be standing rather close.

Now if you want to be really cheesy, get yourself yourself a maxed out AGI with a shock hand. Your critical strike bonus will apply to the shock hand. I feel dirty actually typing it but by the "paid for by essence" logic it's solid, and rules wise it's solid.

[All4BigGuns]

That's not actually an advantage, though. AP is not actually better than DV, in fact it's worse. 8P -2 is always worse than 10P, and usually worse than 9P as well (except vs. drones and vehicles).

Actually it is an advantage of the Adept. Both could probably manage the same damage in some way or another, but if you think about it, a given damage value without AP is going to be worse than the same damage value with AP. And from what I can tell, Penetrating Strike is not all that overpriced, as I've never really had an issue getting maxed Penetrating and Critical both in an Adept build (though the latter tends to get lowered back away from max, since most GMs would aggro the piss out of an ork with 12P damage punches).