From:	Chris Ryan <chrisr@****.FIT.QUT.EDU.AU>
Subject:	Re: Phys Adepts
Date:	Wed, 19 May 1993 14:43:29 EST

Jason replied:

> Chris, you've missed alot.

That's certainly possible - I've only just started playing in a SR2 campaign. ;-)

> When was the last time you tried to use a heal spell on a maxed bio/cybered
> character? It's nearly impossible. Once these guys take damage they have to
> live with it for the entire adventure. Physical Adepts bounce over to the party
> magicians and are better in no time.

Agreed, this is something I had forgotten. Does bioware affect essence (point to
the person who hasn't really read Shadowtech yet... :-) )? If it doesn't, I believe
you could make your martial artist via this and not have the healing problems. Of
course money, etc could be a hassle, but that's another story.

> There is also astral perception. I'd like to see a samurai do that.

A nice advantage, but one that isn't really necessary to a 'martial artist'.

> Then there's Initiation. Sure you begin with six points of magic and getting
> two extra initiative dice cost 4 of them, but with time and karma you can get
> unmearsureable amounts of magic and the power that goes with it.

That karma could be put into skills and attributes instead, and given the cost of
initiation, it probably would be more useful to do so (of course I don't have the
rules with me to check it out, so I can't be sure). Initiating gives you an extra
magic point (i.e. when you've finally got to grade 1) to use on the phys ad
abilities.

Is it worth it? The costs for the phys ad abilities seem to really chew up the
good ol' magic points. To get the two extra initiative dice and a decent level
of killing hands (say S) costs 8 (from memory), hence you have to be a grade 2
initiate - and this is before you get into the other nifty bits of extra dice or
pain resistance, etc.

> Then there is centering and advanced centering. Now it takes a good bit of
> karma to get these powers, but if you get Advanced Centering on combat skills,
> you can start ignoring combat modes like damage and cover. Wouldn't it be nice
> to have Target Number of 3 verses a target with partial cover? Physical Adepts
> can get that but samurai's can't.

This is something I can't comment on, because I've yet to read this part of the rules.
From your example above it seems quite interesting. Maybe this could be the area that
makes them significantly different to martial artist street sam.

> The rule is really simple, any thing a samurai can do a Physical Adept can do
> better, it just takes a ton of karma to do it.

And it seems to me: *lots* more karma.

Chris