From:	John Dukes <dukes@*******.NET>
Subject:	Re: [SR3] Physical Adepts
Date:	Fri, 4 Jul 1997 03:35:57 -0500

>Personally, I kinda dislike physads nowadays... At first, in Grim1, I loved
>'em, a neat new type of character for folks to play. But in recent years, I've
>realized why I don't care for them, and have never played one: they were made
>to be sammies without the big drawback of a sammie, namely Essence loss. My
>groups have always taken Essence losses for char's rather seriously, prtraying
>people with low Essence as less sane, more paranoid, and less humane and human
>than everyone else. This is only hinted at in the rules, but it was our take
>on things, and I liked it, it fit SR's gritty feel for me. Then along come
>physads and, especially in 2st ed, they were the magical replacement for
>sammies. It blurred the line between mages and other types of characters.
>Physads didn't have the drain problems of mages, or the Essence-loss problems
>of sammies... Not that I'm going to sit and advocate that PAs be dumped fromt
>he rules, too many would mourn them now, but they could be more distinct from
>sams.
>

I really find cyberware/bioware distasteful... I very rarely play a cybered
character.

I wish the system had magic based as a learnable skill... like anyone has
the natural talent to use magic, however the years of training required to
harness the ability is beyond the willpower of most people... like say any
mundane given enough years of study could learn magic... I dont like the
idea of magic being based entirely on genetics...

>This is a good candidate for revision in 2nd Ed.: Physad power purchasing,
>perhaps not linking it to Magic Attribute so much. Perhaps letting that
>attribute be a limit on how *high* a physad's powers can be bought, let them
>purchase with experience or the like...
>
>
>losthalo
>

I guess a Physad has an advantage in that it is possible to break the 6
magic points through initiation, whereas a sammie cant really break his 6
essence without taking some highly risky procedures like cybermancy... The
thought of a physad initiate of like grade 14 gives me the shudders... he
could have deadly hands D and distance strike... could hit you for
(strength)D from 20 meters away, and would probably have 4d6 for
initiative... yuck...