As long as we're talking about the flavor of the word Essence, I'm somewhat against changing the name of the stat to something like "Humanity" or "Integrity." When a human runs out of Essence, they die. A human who runs out of Humanity or Integrity becomes something less than human but doesn't actually die, animals have the Essence stat afterall, you can't call it Humanity. A better term for it might be "Life Force" or something techy like "CNST (Central Nervous System Tolerance)," just so long as the term implies that whoever has it can't exist without it.

I do understand where you are coming from. So how do you all feel about keeping essence as is, and just not charging it for things that are minimally invasive. Lens replacement/ upgrade, that sort of thing? inner ear repair/ upgrade would be a bit more, but not much because of the need for a hole in your head.

courses of high intensity Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulators can rapidly increase strength, while not requiring surgery. This can only take you to the max, but cannot push you beyond it. I am sure some process for lacing artificial bonding points will be developed so that more tissues can be added without total skeletal compromise.
I guess what I am saying is that for things that can be done with out going beyond normal maximums essence should not be taxed, but for things that go beyond, I have no problems.

Why would you not charge for those? The sole purpose of Essence is to balance out augmentation and limit what players can take. It's affect on the Magic attribute is a characteristic of the Magic attribute, not Essence itself.

That is true, but we have hard limits on racial stats anyway. I am thinking of a means of enhancement that has more to do with highly advanced training than straight implantation. Granted my way would take a series of months to achieve, but for most individuals needs, I think it would be sufficient, and if it is not, they are in better shape to withstand the more invasive methods of advancement.

Granted I could see a maximum on how much good such training could achieve, say at most 3 points per stat with out costing essence. I am not trying to create supermen, just looking at where the technology would go. There will aways be people who need more power now, and for them direct cybernetic replacement is a viable option and they will have to pay for it. But for simple enhancements within the bounds of what one could achieve if one devoted oneself to it, well, I am speeding the process from decades, to months.

Actually, if you are going to have a non-monetary 'ware limit at all you should try and base it around what scientifically could kill you when you have too much 'ware, rather than magically as Essence does by how far from human the augmentation makes you. The way I see it, the reason a character would realistically die from having too much 'ware would be that there was an immune rejection in his system or the pieces of 'ware in his body interacted in such a way with his body and/or with each other that they overstressed his system and one of his primary organ systems failed. Therefore, anything not requiring invasive surgery would not cause Essence loss but everything else would, including common augmentations such as cybereyes or even lens replacement because even though the risk would be low there would still be a risk of fatal surgical complications. Things like cyber suites would lower the essence cost of ther individual parts because the augmentations within those suites would be designed to work with each other and would be less likely to cause fatal complications in their interactions with each other.

What all of this means is that you probably shouldn't simply do away with the essence costs of anything. If you want your players to have more 'ware then their Essence rating should increase to signify that surgical techniques have gotten safer in the past few centuries and the risk of dying from biosystem overstress has lessened. For balancing reasons you shouldn't individually change any 'ware's essence cost because then realistically you would have to make something like Pathogenic Defense cost more because it replaces the spleen and increases the risk of immune system rejection and make something like a cyberarm cost less because in a controlled situation the loss of a limb and its replacement with something mechanical would have a very small risk of surgical complications, even though the actual mechanical benefits of a cyberarm far outweigh the mechanical benefits of Pathogenic Defense.

That's my two nuyen anyway.

I agree with the above.

If you want things like cybereyes to not cost essence, then there's no reason why everyone *wouldn't* have them. Make it fluff. The basic human character includes cyber eyes and a few other standard "modifications" that "don't cost essence". If you want more performance, you have to pay essence as you're more deeply modified.

You're getting into transhuman concepts here, and while that's a fine place to go, turning away from the entire central theme of where the lines limiting what makes a "human" lay would lessen the entire experience.

The AI agents sound similar to the concept of Daemons from His Dark Materials, only in a non-material sort of way. It's a lot of NPCs to manage (as many as the party, plus the rest of the game), but you could do some really cool thematic exploration by, say, mapping the entire nervous system of the brain/body to create a template that the AIs "grow" off of, creating in essence, a distinct "soul" that talks to you very readily. If you have it, the old world of darkness game Wraith: The Oblivion contains the shadow, which is a dark version of what I'm kind of envisioning. It might give you worthwhile ideas in that direction at any rate.

You are correct. Its not really that odd. For example, look at computer programming. 99.9% of the work is figuring out what you want and how to do what you want done. Its about planning and strategy, not reflexes and tactics. So having more IPs won't let you roll any more often (though coding in hot sim might get you bonus dice), because its not a task whose time is measured on the scale of combat (actions) but rather in basic units of time (minutes, hours, days).

Most technical tasks (repairing cars, etc) would be similar. Only ones that are specifically "combat" (contests of one user vs another, or a user vs a machine, etc) would likely benefit from extra IPs.

Hence, you won't see wage slaves with wired reflexes. You can't compose a memo or cook a burger any faster just because you have wires.

I think in certain professions still might. You might not be able to cook a burger faster but you could cook more burgers without burning them with reflexes. Some professions as well that require you to act at the same speed as you would in combat like surgeon or pilot would also benefit from wired reflexes.

Not so poignantly. Right now, Shadowrun implements the law of diminishing returns very effectively. To get from 2 in pistols to 3 costs far less than to get from 6 to 7. The new character will usually be only a few points behind the experienced character in those dominant skills and attributes - not enough to make or break them (as opposed to D&D, where the new character will likely have a fraction of the hit points, skills and base attack bonuses of the experienced character, even allowing for the diminishing returns of XP).

Currently, that's the same with cyberware. The old guy has the skillwires AND wired reflexes because he saved up long enough to get betaware (and has paid out, literally, on the order of $3-4M for it). But the character coming in with only wired reflexes won't be that far behind, even though he only spent $500k on his suite. If you remove the essence limits, the old character has a linear progression, which means after a few runs, he'll have capped out his major skills, but he'll still be adding ware in and there's no slowing down.

You may not be able to cook A burger faster but cooking a whole griddle of burgers gets easier with faster reflexes and a hotter grill.

Another future rules question: should I make weapons and things proportionately more powerful, or leave the scale alone and explain that things have remained in rough balance overall?

Keep the scale the same. Shadowrun doesn't need to become any more deadly.

That's a difficult question. From a proper setting question, weapons SHOULD be deadlier (and armor more effective). Technology, historically, has swung back and forth between favoring offense and defense. And of course, there would be more and better cyberware to help defend.

The big question is, should it be more deadly, or less? More deadly means people have to plan more, sneak more, think more, and everything is higher risk. Less deadly means they can get away more, so expect more overkill, giant explosions and such. But only tap it one way or the other. Too much and the game quickly will break.

I guess my arguement for leaving things be, is why have massive numbers on both sides? The respective kinds of gear are going to be about the same proportionately more effective on both sides; armor and weapons.

Well, there's always the case of weapons being used against UNARMORED targets. In which case, the advance in armor tech is irrelevant, but the advance in weapon tech very well might be. Though I expect what you'd want in a far-future setting would weapons designed to avoid blowing holes in space ship hulls.

Actually, I'd honestly expect most advanced weaponry to primarily see an increase in Armor Penetration capabilities, which considering that armor would advance along the same path would at least provide a valid excuse for not modifying core damage and armor. Unarmored targets are just hosed under the current system anyway if they get hit, why bother doing all the math and risking extreme balance failure if you can handwave the problem away?

My point was, you can decide "well, in this setting, weapons are more potent", then just add +1 to all weapon power ratings. Or alternatively, say armor is more effective - and add +1 to all armor ratings. it's not a huge change, but it brings damage codes in line with how you imagine the universe.

If anything, magic would be more prevalent if you consider the 6th world to cycle like the 4th did. Not everyone would be magically active, but the percentage would be much higher.

I think the OP is ignoring the shadowrun story and just trying to use the system at a higher tech level.

Not exactly ignoring, but taking extreme liberties with.
One of the other posters made a comment that I think is interesting. What DO you do with Magic in space exploration? I know that fireteam alpa's base on the space station has special trees and things that make magic work, but how do you make it stable on a FTL ship? In Warhammer 40k Stellar navigation REQUIRES magic. (They basically astrally perceive a beacon and guess direction and distance from it)

Have an extremely large world tree in the center of any ship where it matters and keep it healthy with a great form plant possession spirit, or even better, Inhabitation Ally spirit, as well as lots of love and care from a group of mage gardeners, plus pure, natural spring water that has never been treated in a factory and a good deal of soil from all over the Earth. Human feces might work as fertilizer to create a kind of symbiosis effect that could create a more powerful, stable biosphere. If you do it right, you ought to be able to mitigate the effects of the mana void by having a large enough biosphere as well as create an aspected background count for mages of the gardeners' tradition that will further push against the void. It'd be interesting to create a tradition like that of space-faring tree-hugger mages who competed with other traditions of space-faring tree-hugger mages in the space-faring business. At the very least this setup would create a sustainable environment for a ship's population to live off of, even for extended space travels such as colonization missions.

Human feces?

That worked before the age of industrialization. Currently its full of drugs and heavy metals. So best way to kill of that tree. It would need alot of treatment in a recycle plant before its phosphorus, which could be turned into fertilizer.

But thats not what were after. Otherwise the tree would work.

Remember that 40k has no problem working magic in a different way, yet their tech is on decline. So i a SR based techie setting, it would be hardly a problem to compute distances/course in our universe. It depends on the problems of the FTL you want to use. Total Sumbmersion in a sea of energy like 40k? Or a simply calculation along routes without gravity like Star Wars.

I may have to break one of the 3 rules of magic, sorta. And not the ones about creating/destroying matter, or bringing things back to life. I was planning on using semi teleportation. Its not exactly instant, and it is definitely not without error or risk. think of time as a part of a co-ordinate set, once you leave your origin you are kinda throwing a dart in 6 dimensions and trying to arrive at the right place/time/state of being. (you can arrive dead)

Edit for post script:
Idea, sail the ship through the metaplanes.