PaG's GUIDE TO PHYSADS

Thanks to Empirate for the idea of making a couple of pages about the different Shadowrun archetype.

For the first installement of a group of texts aimed at helping people play different arhcetypes in Shadowrun, I decided to write about the physad, or physical adept (or adept in the 3rd edition). Why a physad? Because they are one of the most underrated yet fun to play archetype in the book... Let me explain why, and other neat stuff in this text.

Why a Physad?

The first question somebody could ask himself about a physad is about his role in a Shadowrunner's team. After all, he doesn't pack the punch of a fully cybered sammy, or the magical power of the mage... But the physad has other strenghts.

The most important advantage is that everything in a physad is contained within him, and is natural -- he doesn't need fancy gizmos to do what he does. This is a huge advantage: he has most of the stuff sammies have access to, but with much more subtelity. The physad with an initiative of 4d6 + 12 will have a much easier time getting through an airport than the sammy, who'll make every alarm ring until they die of exhaution. Another advantage is that his powers are much less visible than a mage's. Somebody is more likely to trust a guy who's just very good at fist-fighting than a guy who make people catch fire just by looking at them. Besides, the powers of the physads come from inside themselves and affecting only themselves, therefor they don't need clear line of sights. Put a mage in a dark room against a physad, and see who ends up as Sheesh-Kebab.

Why not a physad?

Problem is, physads actually are one of the lest powerful archetypes in the rulebook. A fully cybered sammy can whipe the floor with a physad and a mage will just make him roast (if he's in a normally lit room, that is). As I said, they are greatly underrated, even by the game developpers themselves it seem -- there have been two books on magic for Shadowrun (The Grimoire and Awakenings, of course) and both give much less information about physads than mage, and the main rulebook ain't better. That make sthem hard to play -- even though there are countless examples of sammies and mages and how they were useful, you can only find a handful of stories in the sourcebooks about physads. It becomes pretty hard to find their real use, and what can be done with them (yes, there is more than the 'super-martial-artist' type of character). Finally, another problem is Shadowrun Companion, that sourcebook rendered lots of the physad's capacities next to useless. Taking the right edges and flaws, any character could have many capabilities which were only available to physads before.

I'll play one anyway, what now?

Ah, character creation. One of the most fun things with a physad character... The relative absence of references concerning physads makes creating characters very interesting: making a unique character is easier than with other archetypes, which have much more examples of different types of PCs. There are many ways to make a physad, from the archetypical "super-ninja" to the burned-out physad.

I've done many physad characters in my playing career, here are some of those basical concepts. An example of an original choosing of powers would be an elf I did. He had only two powers, and no cyberware. Those two powers were "Danger Sense" and "Quick Draw" (the last one costing way too much in my opinion), which allowed to sense danger coming and react to it very quickly. Of course, he wasn't an extremelly powerful character, but I'm no "power gamer". Another interesting character would be a burned-out physad NPC I used in a game. Still with the "Danger Sense" power, he was a sniper who lost his left hand in an accident. The hand was replaced with a cyber one, and it contained a couple of neat things, the rest of the essence served to augmentate is capacities. James Bond type of characters are interesting to make with the physad archetype too. With some mystic armor, some enhanced senses, "free fall" and missille mastery can make some truly cinematic characters... Finally, let's not forget the social adepts, which I developped :).

The most important aspects of a news physad character are his attributes and skills. Money is almost of no use, expcept if you want to buy a weapon focus, so a very low priority in "ressources" is very acceptable (and your GM will be forever grateful to see at last one of his player make a character that doesn't start with a million nuyens). Don't concentrate only on combat capabilities either -- the relative weakness of physads makes it necessary to be intelligent to survive. Usually characters that tend more toward the covert ops side of shadowruns live longer than those made as combat specialists (note that is still true with all archetypes, it's just more obvious for physads). Good ratings in intelligence (dumb physads don't live long), athletics and stealth are all very useful.

The choosing of powers at character creation is very important: getting new powers cost a lot (20 karma points per power point according to the 3rd edition) and beginning characters don't start with too much points to spend. Read through all powers, and try to find an interesting way to cimbine them to make a unique character, while still not being underpowered compared to the other PCs (few starting physads are stronger than other PCs... Except if in a team of otakus, that is). Something to strengthen initiative and attack capacities are always useful, as are powers to enhance thoughness. All in all, just don't pick up pointless powers (sense direction of wind, spit in the air without hitting yourself, etc.) at character creation. What is important is to have a general idea of the what you want your character to be able to do, and aim for it, removing pointless-but-useful powers along the way.

I'm in there, what do I do?

Now that you've created your character and started playing, you gotta make that character interesting and develop it in a fun way. This all comes down to a lot of stuff I've already said, so I'll just mention some specific examples of what could possibly make a game fun.

As I've said countless times, having a goal for your character is one of the most interesting thing in a game that isn't railroading. Some examples of these could be: find a long lost master (what he'll tell you once you find him could give you many other goals), find a magical artifact of power (weapon foci are always popular among physads), seek revenge against somebody (the responsible for the death of that long lost master, maybe), make the corporations fall, find the way to inner peace (if you have a GM who could handle such type of game), etc, etc, etc.

And of course, an interesting personnality is an integral part of an interesting character, so finding some personnality traits you'll enjoy develop is very important. For example: the slow to anger but fearsome physad, the burned-out physad who became burned-out after an accident and now just hate his new cyber part, the charming and seductive social adept, the double-talking and manipulative social adept, the witty and fast thinking teenage physad, etc.

There is much more to playing a physad than first meets the eye... If you've never played one figuring they were too weak, try it today -- you might be surprised at how interesting and differently powerful they are...