Physical Adept Character is SUX!

[LuluTheDuck]

In my previous run in Shadowrun games I always play range or magic character. In this playthrough I try playing as a Physical Adept. At the start of the game even with 4 points in Quickness and 4 points in Dodge, my character went down in 3 consecutive shots!

Enemies seem to never miss when they attack me, maybe because I was standing so close to them... BUT that can't be helped because I'm a melee fighter!!!

Here're why I think PA is sux:

1. Melee weapon seems to be weaker than Range weapon of the same level.

To me this is unfair, because Melee fighters take extra risks fighting at close range than Range fighters, fighting in the safe comfort of distance.

2. Physical Adept need to spread their points across too many attributes
STR, Close Combat, QUICKNESS, Dodge, WILL and QI. That is SIX attributes. Other characters only need to spread between 4 attributes. At least Melee Street Samurai don't have to worry about WILL and QI.

3. QI spells are bias towards unarmed attacks!

I count there are 4 unarmed exclusive spells, I can't find any melee weapon exclusive spells!

4. Most QI spells require activation which cost AP.

Here's the problem with that: With Spell Buffs such as Shamanic ones, they can be cast on other characters, what that mean is your Shaman can act as support character, hanging back in the safe distance and just buff your team mates. Your team mates can enjoy the Buffs WITHOUT losing any AP to put those buffs into actions immediately.

The problem with PA QI spell buffs is, they must be cast by the PA him/herself! Which cost AP, in most likelihood your PA must wait for the next turn to put those buffs into action! This pose a huge problem especially when you are fighting behind enemy line surrounded by 3-4 angry trolls with shotguns! One turn of Inaction can mean a certain death for melee fighter.

5. Melee Street Samurai can do everything PA can do.

Because of the above issues with PA, why bother playing them when you can play as Street Samurai and put those points spent in WILL and QI towards more STR or QUICKNESS. You'll get more powerful character than PA can ever be.

What do you guys think?

[HoroSaga]

Physical adepts are decent, but they require more specializing and micromanaging than other classes, because of the large number of skills and attributes they use. One of the first things you have to decide is if you want to be a weapon-based physical adept, or an unarmed-based physical adept.

They're both actually quite viable, as long as you pick one and stick with it through the whole game. Melee weapons start of somewhat lackluster, but once you've unlocked the magic swords around Tier 3, it suddenly becomes incredible. There are actually other threads people have started, complaining about how overpowered swords are.

Unarmed is also quite viable. While it does less base damage than melee weapons, the Killing Hands power can quickly change this. You can also augment it with unarmed weapons such as the brass knuckles or stun glove - personally, I'd recommend the stun glove because it's cheap, and it provides an auto-stun attack that you can use once every couple of turns.

The second thing you have to decide is whether you want to be a "dodgy" adept or a "tank" adept. Generally speaking, being a tank-adept is going to be far easier on your Karma.

A "dodgy" adept needs to maximize his evasion, by boosting his Dexterity and Dodge ranks, but this can quickly become an exorbitant cost that takes away from all of the other attributes and skills that they need. It's actually almost cheaper to just cheese out a bit, and spend six Karma on the Conjuring skill tree, just so you can get the Fish totem (permanent -10% to be hit). Personally, I wouldn't really bother putting any points into Dodge, myself, other than maybe a small token amount (no more than 6 Karma).

A "tank" adept just needs to focus on boosting their Body and keeping their armor upgraded. Armor actually significantly reduces damage this time around. It also helps to try to tactically place yourself when approaching enemies for melee. If there's cover available, then try to use it, because it will further reduce damage. Again, it helps to cheese a little here. Put some points into CyberAffinity - three ranks in the skill will grant you an extra Essence point that you can safely use to purchase Bioware and Cyberware with. That will let you buy some choice upgrades that can further increase your survivability, especially in the torso and skin slots.

You also need to decide whether you're more comfortable using "active" or "passive" Adept powers. Personally, I tend to prefer passive powers, simply for the sake of convenience, but as a general rule of thumb the activated powers will be more powerful - at the cost of requiring an action to trigger.

Beyond that, you just need to budget your Karma accordingly. Strength and Willpower are your priorities, followed by Body and maybe Dexterity. Skill-wise, you want to focus on Qi Casting and Close Combat, as well as either Melee Combat or Unarmed Combat, depending on your specialization. Don't worry about maxing out the trees too much, because it's just not practical with the finite amount of Karma available. If you want to do some planning ahead, though, you can generally expect to have anywhere from 200-220 Karma by the end of the game.

EDIT - If you REALLY want to cheese out, there are a lot of people getting in on the "Drug Mule" strategy. A single point in Drone Control and a basic Datajack will let you equip a Drug Mule, which is a very basic drone that comes equipped with a regenerating stock of drugs. The first turn of combat, just turn on the drone and have it pump you full of delicious combat drugs. Then turn it off, and enjoy your five rounds of drug-enhanced mystical kung-fu.

Alternately, you can grab a medical drone instead, to help keep you alive on the front lines.

[LuluTheDuck]

Thank you for the PA guide. Very enlightening indeed. I think PA character is the most complex build a Shadowrunner can ever play. There are so many stumbling blocks and very easy to take a wrong path in your karma spending.

I just hope HBS will fix and update how PA works in their future games to make it an easier build.

[LuluTheDuck]

Originally posted by HoroSaga:

The second thing you have to decide is whether you want to be a "dodgy" adept or a "tank" adept. Generally speaking, being a tank-adept is going to be far easier on your Karma.

A "tank" adept just needs to focus on boosting their Body and keeping their armor upgraded...

Beyond that, you just need to budget your Karma accordingly. Strength and Willpower are your priorities, followed by Body and maybe Dexterity. Skill-wise, you want to focus on Qi Casting and Close Combat, as well as either Melee Combat or Unarmed Combat, depending on your specialization.

I'm a little confused about how To-Hit is calculated for PA?

1. Do STR and Close Combat points effect To-Hit chance for PA using Qi attack (such as Qi Focus/Qi Onslaught)? Or is it only WILL and QI Casting points count in To-Hit chance of Qi attack?

2. I heard many people says that Melee Weapon SKILLS and Unarmed SKILLS do NOT count into To-Hit chance while using Qi base attack? Is it true?

3. For Tank build PA, would it not be impractical, since you are going to stock up on alot of Medikits and not to mention you probably need to drop few karma in INT and Biotech?

Thank you HoroSaga

[Kernest]

In all 3 Shadowruns by HBS I've made the 1st playthrough as PA, and I've loved it and totally crushed it. PA is one of the better classes in my opinion, it just requires quite a bit of thinking.

The thing about PAs is specifically that they're not Street Samurais. Their main stat is Willpower, which makes them nearly immune to spells, and that is in addition to the skill that gives them medium cover (yes, medium) from all spells always. The biggest vulnerability of Street Samurais (both ranged and melee) is that they specialize in avoiding physical damage, not magical damage and can be devastated by a single fireball crit.

I think HoroSaga is mostly right in his assessment. Many players make the wrong choice of spending too much karma on Quickness and Dodge. I usually won't put more than levels 2 in Quickness and Dodge both, maybe 3rd towards the very end, and usually end up spending more karma in the Charisma tree (on Charisma alone) than in the Quickness tree.

One reason why you might take a bit too much damage is that sometimes a PA charges in alone while the rest of the team just fires from cover, this inclines the enemies to all target you since you're not in cover and are closer to them. That problem is usually fixed by bringing another melee specialist with you.

[Hex]

Pure ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in this thread.

Can't linnk straight to the thread apparently, sigh.

[HoroSaga]

Originally posted by bernardchu28:

Originally posted by HoroSaga:

The second thing you have to decide is whether you want to be a "dodgy" adept or a "tank" adept. Generally speaking, being a tank-adept is going to be far easier on your Karma.

A "tank" adept just needs to focus on boosting their Body and keeping their armor upgraded...

Beyond that, you just need to budget your Karma accordingly. Strength and Willpower are your priorities, followed by Body and maybe Dexterity. Skill-wise, you want to focus on Qi Casting and Close Combat, as well as either Melee Combat or Unarmed Combat, depending on your specialization.

I'm a little confused about how To-Hit is calculated for PA?

1. Do STR and Close Combat points effect To-Hit chance for PA using Qi attack (such as Qi Focus/Qi Onslaught)? Or is it only WILL and QI Casting points count in To-Hit chance of Qi attack?

2. I heard many people says that Melee Weapon SKILLS and Unarmed SKILLS do NOT count into To-Hit chance while using Qi base attack? Is it true?

3. For Tank build PA, would it not be impractical, since you are going to stock up on alot of Medikits and not to mention you probably need to drop few karma in INT and Biotech?

Thank you HoroSaga

1) Strength and Close Combat effect mundane melee and unarmed attacks, but Will and Qi Casting effect special qi attacks. You'll want to make sure you raise both, unless you're planning on exclusively using just qi attacks. Generally speaking, both the Melee Combat and Unarmed Combat skills have several useful attacks that can complement many of the special qi attacks.

2) I believe that is the case, but I'm not one-hundred percent certain. Personally, I try to keep my Strength and Will even, just in case.

3) Well, I've never had much trouble with Bio, honestly. I raise it to 2 on all of my characters, just so I can see Hit Point totals on my enemies, but I rarely raise it higher then that. Generally speaking, it's always best to use your companions' medkits first, because they regenerate after each mission - so you're more relying on their Biotech skill than your own. It also never hurts to have Gobbet along, because her healing spells can be very handy.

Though THAT does remind me that it may be worth investing a very small number of points into magery - just enough to get the healing spell. Generally speaking, it's a lot more useful than medkits, unless you get into a position where multiple enemies hit you in a single turn.

[TheDeadDude]

If your sole purpose is to tank with PA, which they are amazing at if you spec them that way. Why stock up on medkits when you can get so many of them lying around on mission runs. You can get gobbet to heal you or invest 3 points into spellcasting for heal 1.

Honestly my sword wielding dwarf is just shredding through things but to start out PA sucks no question. You need to use cunning and guile to survive the first bit then you just snowball into GODLY zones.

Get enough quickness/dodge endgame and that light cover in the open ability so things can't crit you and you are gold. When you get close combat 6 or 7? you get coverbonuses when next to other allies or enemies. The crit ratio for chi casting skills is stupid high, i've never seen my crit % lower than 80% at will power 8 and chicasting 8.

If you buy that sword that drains AP on crit you can literally stunlock everything in the game and just keep hitting things until they are dead.

So all this said, how does PA suck? They are already the most OP in the game. In terms of damage Assault rifles are the best but in terms of locking down your opponents.... Melee-adept/razor claws and swords are practically unstoppable.

[Hex]

Omg so much misinfo, no wonder you people have trouble with Adepts.

[TheDeadDude]

I'm running a successful build right now, how is this misinfo? Please elaborate.

[Yamxela]

I read your post Hex, and I agree with most of it. What do you think of boosting spirit summoning to 3 to get the cobra totem though? (+5% acc, +1 dam)

[HoroSaga]

Originally posted by Hex:

Omg so much misinfo, no wonder you people have trouble with Adepts.

Sure, there's like fifty ways to run a Physical Adept. Why not share your own build?

Honestly, Shadowrun: Hong Kong is easy enough that all but the worst builds will eventually pick up enough momentum to tear through everything you meet.

[Hex]

Originally posted by TheDeadDude:

I'm running a successful build right now, how is this misinfo? Please elaborate.

No you're running a mediocre ♥♥♥♥ build that gets carried by your team.

My adept does roughly 160 dmg per round, never takes more than 4 damage from anything and locks the enemy I'm hitting with an 80% hit chance with Qi Onslaught without Aim buffs.

No encounter throughout the game has lasted more than 3 rounds on Hard.

[Hex]

Originally posted by HoroSaga:

Originally posted by Hex:

Omg so much misinfo, no wonder you people have trouble with Adepts.

Sure, there's like fifty ways to run a Physical Adept. Why not share your own build?

Honestly, Shadowrun: Hong Kong is easy enough that all but the worst builds will eventually pick up enough momentum to tear through everything you meet.

I've shared my build so many times in various threads it's kinda getting tiresome.

Find a thread called "let's talk builds", it's on the 2nd page for me.

[HoroSaga]

Originally posted by Hex:

Originally posted by HoroSaga:

Sure, there's like fifty ways to run a Physical Adept. Why not share your own build?

Honestly, Shadowrun: Hong Kong is easy enough that all but the worst builds will eventually pick up enough momentum to tear through everything you meet.

I've shared my build so many times in various threads it's kinda getting tiresome.

Find a thread called "let's talk builds", it's on the 2nd page for me.

You could have just as easily copy/pasted the relevant information here, but sure. If the OP wants to track down the thread in question, I'm sure they'll do so.

[Yamxela]

Originally posted by HoroSaga:

Originally posted by Hex:

Omg so much misinfo, no wonder you people have trouble with Adepts.

Sure, there's like fifty ways to run a Physical Adept. Why not share your own build?

Honestly, Shadowrun: Hong Kong is easy enough that all but the worst builds will eventually pick up enough momentum to tear through everything you meet.

Exactly, as the wise Raymond Black would say, "There is no wrong way to eat a Reese's"