General Shadowrun Questions

[Alberic Strein]

So, for a game I'm GMing the party is up against toxics, and while so far they've been up against a lot of summoners, that just hasn't been working out, because we have ONE mage. Everyone else hasn't had much to do, and I've had to dumb down a few encounters to prevent things from going topsy turvy.

Anyway, I was thinking of throwing some mystic adepts at them. Idea being sorta avatar style martial artists who happen to throw radioactive fireballs as part of their martial arts.

Only I know next to nothing about Adepts and how to make one a decent challenge. Any tips?

We are talking SR4E/A right?

In which case the issue with mystic adepts is that they demand a huge investment for subpar rewards, having to split up their magic score between adept powers and spells, meaning they get a pretty low score for either/both.

That issue does not exist with NPCs, you can raise their magic stat higher than it should be, or whip out something like "they got these powers from toxic spirits" and that they don't follow normal rules.

It also gives you flexibility, have the guy with low-ish magic for spells fight the mundane, and the one who still got most of his magic for spellcasting fight the mage.

As far as shooting fireballs avatar-style, the spell for radioactive fire exists in the SOX supplement, so their martial moves may only be fluff, something you narrate but has no existence rules-wise (besides a high-ish unarmed combat score maybe?) as they cast their spells. Or, if you want to go the adept route, you can combine killing hands+elemental strike+distance strike, for a total of 3PP, houseroule the element damage to be radioactive fire, and you're good to go. They don't hit very hard though, so you might want to add critical strike, and to leave enough points to leave enhanced reflexes on a sustained focus.