Muahahah...yeah. I would spend nuyen for guns if i had KARMA to purchase physical attributes and active-non-magical-combat-skills, or if i wanted to screw my magical abilities by putting cyber in my body that lowers my magic that already cost me BP to raise. Cool idea...but maybe you misunderstood the point. It´s about playing a mage, not a burned out loser.^^ And as soon as i find useful gear for a mage, i will let you know. Nothing that comes to my mind is so expensive, that it would take me more than 5 runs to gain the money for it. And then? I collect money and play the old sex-drugs-and rock n roll game? Pfffffffffffffttt...^^

Oh I see, you are one of the idiots who believe that a "pure" Mage who uses nothing but magic is a viable concept if your DM actually runs his world in a semi-reasonable manner and assumes that corp security experts aren't utter and complete morons.

No, i´m one of the idiots who is capable of calculating. Mixing magic with cyber is a short-profit but longterm-disadvantage solution that is not acceptable. And if one thing is for sure when you have a magical char., then it is that you never have enough karma to do all the things you need. The basic need of this "raw-material" is much too high to fulfill all your needs and if you have a artificial created shortage for such an commodity while the other players can dip out of 2 sources, the "balance" is somehow f***d up. But maybe in your little world 2 equals 1? Who knows?

Nice try, but you really should either double check your "calculations" or find a decent DM if you honestly believe that remaining "pure" as a Mage is somehow superior to using cyber/bioware to boost your abilities. Not to mention that out of all of the "one trick ponies" magical abilities is the easiest of all to completely negate so without mundane skills to fall back on you are worse than dead weight.

That wasn´t a "nice try", this was a logical-finishing-move. You are just in a shock-condition and didn´t realize that you are beaten.^^ The only thing you produce when you spend points on active-combat skills, physical attributes and the like, is a mage that sucks on both sides of the spectrum. You are lousy at fighting and a lousy mage. You don´t earn enough karma to excell on both. And about bioware: you spend 10BP for one point of magic, this 10BP are for the dumpster when you put ´ware in and then you haven´t even calculated the points for the money the ware costs. Go back to kindergarten, start maths from the beginning and then we can go on with our discussion, ok?

Ouch.


<insert Evil GM Laughter sound byte>


Yeah, its never been easy cheap easy being a magician in Shadowrun. Karma has always been a problem.

-paws

Yea...and not that I want to really take part in the heated exchange up a bove, but they do bring up some good points. My favorite is that if you spend Kram to make the mage better in Mundane combat, then your magic suffers from lack of attention/growth. Kind of like the jack of all trades, master of none argument.

But, I have to say that Mages are probably one of the most powerful archetypes out there, so I gess the devs just want you to work that much harder at it.
Thank god for Houserules!

Well, this probably the most bitter and sniping conversation I've ever seen between "I really like a little chrome on my mages" versus "pure purity pure pure is the way to go." And it devolved fast, too.

You guys goin' for a record or something?

probably best to not get involved with it....
but I suppose I would be one for the Pure purity pure pure faction...just becasue it's how I want to play. But if you like chrome, cyber-mage would be interesting.

Compromise too: In street magic there is technology that actually works with Magic, mayber there is some sort of Magic channeling cyberware or Magically powered implants, like being a half-golem kind of thing.

There are several precedents for enchanted implants, particularly weapon focus spurs.

-paws

I figured there would be...and with a bit of creativity...you might be able to add to that somewhat...there are examples of Manatech in Street magic after all...that's what I love about PnP RPGs over Videogames, you can edit the rule as you see fit to conform to your own playstyle. Can't say the same for videogames though... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Cash for Karma:

If I was to use some sort of rule for this I would keep it simple.

"donate" 75% of your earned money per run to self improvement for +1 Karma.

You may want to rethink that exchange rate a bit, unless you're seriously suggesting that a mage who's just risked his life to earn 100,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) on a run would really want to pay 75,000 of it for a single point of karma. If you're going to do cash for karma, you need a fixed exchange rate. Your method just screws over mages and other karma-hungry types (like technomancers) more for making more money.

I've never bought the hype to see karma as...well...karma. I still think of it as experience points, period. So to me cash/karma transactions don't come by donating anything, but by spending the money in a semi-realistic fashion to cultivate the experience points you'd like to earn from it.

It could be tuition to a night class at MIT&T, taking a few classes on Advanced Hermetic Theory. It could be money you throw at a local gym to get your Strength or Stamina up. Maybe it's the nuyen you spent to get a friendly decker to score you some UCAS Army demolition manuals, or it's the expensive parts and tools you got to tinker with your car and get your mechanic skill up.

I've never seen it as "you donate money to a local metahuman orphanage, and get your Agility increased as fortune smiles on you for your generosity."

Cash for karma is one more chance to make someone think about the downtime, to dig a little deeper into their character, and to explore the game world while you ask -- reasonably -- for a justification of what they're doing and how.

THis makes a whole lot more sense actually...since "Karma" is gained usually from the shadowruns...which are kind of illegal, and probably not good for your karma (in the non-experience points sense). Doing bad things doesn't give good Karma...runs often qualify as "bad things".

As I understand it, what's good for your karma will vary based on your dharma.

Anyway...

I think either version - "yay! cosmic bonus!" or "paid training" - is reasonable, depending on the character.

-paws

As far as i know, karma only means "movement" in sanskrit or whatever language they had at these days. So the destiny only wants you to actually DO something, it doesnt judge in which direction you moved. I thought about that in earlier days and always wondered myself how lame university professors get their karma just by sitting behind desks.^^

Uh-huh, and the end result of your "genius" is a character that the corps can virtually negate unless the DM humors your foolishness by playing them like morons.

Guys, guys, GUYS! This is an intellectual discussion not an opinon farm. You can disagree with whatever someone else says but don't start yelling at the other guy and insulting them 'cause they choose to see it from a different point of view! Also, bring only arguments with examples and not just Cyberware bad; its more useful than magic! In my own group virtually every mage has given up one point of essence to cyberware so they could do some cool stuff with it without being shackled with geasa. Just how we choose to roll. Nothing wrong with it, and if you don't like it you don't have to make a character that way.

The reason I posted in the first place was to find ways to lower the cost of bonding foci or conjuring an ally spirit. I'm not asking for SR4 to be changed to make it free; just offer me other options that don't require so much karma. Like a geasa at initiation, it'd have some sort of drawbacks, but I can live with that if I'm giving up stuff that I don't use (I'd buy a new car without air conditioning to save a buck since I like rolling down my windows instead; same sort of thing).

If you don't like where this thread is going, please, post a valid argument with game based example or just don't read it. We all have an opinon, and its fine if you don't agree with mine.

Toolbox does bring up a good point for technomancers; are there any suggestions to lowering the cost for sprites and such; like programing part of it the old fashion way and giving it the "spark" of, er, technomancy goodness (I'm sorry I don't know what to call that).

Sign--

Wacky

For Technos, it's not spirtes that have huge costs, it's complex forms. Buying a rating 5 complex form up to 6 in character gen costs 1 bp. In play, 6 karma. Thats a huge difference, and that's for all the complex forms that the techno has.

I was thinking about reducing the cost of improving a CF down to a flat rate of 2 karma per increase.

Exactly. Apart from purely external stuff like drones, everything related to a technomancer's schtick costs karma (aside from sprites, actually, since they're free). Even their focus equivalents - widgets - are free in terms of nuyen but require an Echo (bought with karma after submerging, which also costs karma). Skills, attributes (which act as system and OS ratings), complex forms, yada yada yada.


That could work; it'd mean TMs could afford to diversify a bit in chargen rather than having to pour huge amounts of BP into CFs if they're even remotely concerned with build efficiency. Isn't there also an optional rule in Unwired to make CFs act more like spells, in that they're unrated at purchase and you choose the rating on the fly? I haven't actually looked at the karma cost changes, though.

With regards to cash for karma/karma for cash rules, the rule I always use (bearing in mind I run SR3 so this will need tweaking) is 1000 nuyen times karma pool buys 1 karma. 1 karma buys 500 nuyen times karma pool. You can only buy karma equal to the amount you've earned and you can only spend half your earned karma on nuyen.

Hey Wacky. You don´t have to fear our discussion. Even if we bash our heads, we are still good ´ol runners and we have to stick together. Sometimes you have to accept, that the "intended" purpose of a discussion is changing during the time and finally nothing is left...humiliated...but still alive somehow. Fear the curse of the internet. ^^ *insert spooky noise*

And for once we agree Machiavelli. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)

Come to the dark side...MUAHAHAHAHAHA....we have cookies.^^