Well, if you finish Delta-ing all the 'Ware you ever want, and your Essence hole pushes you over, say, 3.9 to 4.1, it would be a "useful" treatment to make Health Spells more effective on you.

Thank you, everyone, for fixing that up for me.

I think it would be a bit funny to grab that technomancer that's always been screwing with your character and cyber him up to less than 1 Essence, then pop it all back out and let him heal up, since it would, IMO, drop him to no magic.

You'd need a good amount of cash for it, but that would really muck up someone's life.

Just remember that cyberware and bioware leave different essence holes, not a generic one.

Which is dumb. In my eyes. But then, using Essence for Bioware in the first place was dumb too. In my eyes. And especially doing that thing where the lesser of two eveils to your essence only counts by half. Which is dumb. In my eyes.
Essence for Cyberware, Bioindex for Bioware. Bioindex is Essence + 3. Simple enough.
Under SR2, Bioindex was Body+3. Yes, you could get about 20 Points of bioware into a Troll. But back then, there wasn't enough Bioware around to fill up 20 points.

I think it was done just to simplify the whole process.
That's what everyone is looking for right?
Right. Because we say so, that's why.

Yep... Don't know how I missed that... but there you go...

Keep the Faith

I don't know of anybody who actually keeps track of the seperate cyber/bio Essence holes. That just seems like way too much bookkeeping and work for something that was never actually that big of an issue. In any case, typically a person is going to have either more cyberware or more bioware, and it's going to stay that way. Seems rather pointless to enforce the rule. It's best ignored, sorta like the old ruling that said you couldn't combine reaction enhancers with wired reflexes.

I Actually keep track of that...

Keep the Faith

So do I.

Ignoring the rule would cost more Essence loss.

Actually, one valid reason for people with no Magic/Resonance Attribute to use Revitalization: getting Essence back above 1 to get out from under cyberpsychosis. It's not going to come up in a game very often, I think, but there it is.

I've never had anyone in my group ever end up with an essence hole. We've never upgraded ware, or had it removed. Mainly because we usually couldn't afford it. The only group of characters we ever played that *could* have afforded it were all awakened, and had no ware for various reasons.

I just discovered that rule last night. Too late for me. I ripped out my wires about 80 karma ago, and replaced them with much basic, alpha and beta bioware.

The latent awakening quality lets you bypass the normal process of Magic loss at char-gen, but it has a lot of disadvantages, too. You are starting out with a Magic Attribute of 1, no awakened skills, and no spells. So you are way behind the power curve, even without factoring in how your implanted 'ware drastically lowers the maximum of that Magic Attribute.

Buying Magic up to 6 at char-gen, and losing a point or two of it due to some choice 'ware, may be more expensive, but it still tends to result in a more effective awakened character.

I disagree. My reading of the rules is that BPs describe your character at the second the game starts. The BP you spend on gear represents gear, bought, stolen, or self-coded. The BP you spend on attributes are your attributes now. I'm doing a horrible job explaining myself. Your character doesn't have to buy the magic up, then loose it to the ware. The ware will set the limit on how much you can get - take three points of ware, your essence will be 3, and you can only get a magic of 3 at chargen, but that will cost you (quality)+35.

That is how both my GM and I read it, though your millage may vary.

The unreleased errata for Augmentation (included in the german release) removed that.

But the section on attributes comes first. Ware comes later. And I'm almost certain its actually stated somewhere.


For instance, what stops me from buying Magic 6 and getting a point of 'ware? I bought up my magic first, then got the ware. Doesn't happen the other way around.

Definitely. 'Ware subtracts from your actual Magic, not just your potential magic. You buy your Magic attribute, and then the 'ware sucks it away.

It talks about it in more detail on pgs. 62 (under Essence rating) and 84 under Cyberware and Bioware) in the core book (not sure where it is mentioned in SR4A), and the subject has been hashed out in exhausting detail in this forum. Nothing wrong with house ruling it differently, but the RAW is very clear on the subject.