Imagine a mage who's allowed a 400bp + 300 karma character a generation, and drops a hefty chunk of that Karma on an ally spirit?

No doubt about that... it is a recurring nightmare... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Thread-necro here, but this is only a month old and third highest on the search function. This seems to mean that the following is relevant.
My copy of Running Wild lists infection as this:

Is this superceeded by Runner's Companion, or have people missed it?

I think that the Ghoul Virus (HMHVV III) is the worst offender, as by RAW it is passed by Touch alone...

Er, well, yeah. I mean, that's possibly the biggest b*itch in the world. But that's not what I was trying to ask/point out.
I was pointing to the stated fact that Mages/Shamans/Adepts/etc kept their Magic rating after transformation, and that I hadn't seen that mentioned in any of the three most-recently-updated threads on Infection. Therefore, I wondered if the whole community had missed it, or if it had been changed somewhere.
If not, you might houserule that all Infected character have the 'Infertile' Negative Quality - otherwise you (might) have one character starting out as a Vampire, spend no points on cash because the team covers him, then Infect everyone else right after the first mission. Because 1 Essence for all those bonus' rates at GOOD THING, and as for waiting something 20 missions (assuming the Karma cost isn't higher than the BP and at least 4 Karma per run) till you can advance your skills, well.....start min-max'd on a skills-over-cash way, and pick up Skillwires. Obviously not all groups would want to miss out on that much karma, but it is an option.

Okay... Gotcha...
And yeah, going 100 Karma (or so) without actually receiving any of that Karma would suck immensely in my opinion... But I try to avoid the infected at all costs anyways... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Well, if it's only 100 karma I'd be fine with it. With 100 you could raise 3 skills/stats from 5 to 6, add a R1-skill and maybe some Specializations.
Vampire is +2 to Agility, Reaction and Charisma, +1 to Intuition and Willpower, plus a whole bunch of Powers, of which the leading few are: Regeneration, Astral Perception, Mist Form and Essence Drain. Oh, and the stat bonus' add to your Max ratings as well.
Seems better to me, even at 200 karma I might go for it..

There is that I guess... But having that Inflicted upon a Character who did nto want it is pretty harsh in my opinion... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Oh, of course. I'd probably lobby for Burning Edge to come out of it alive but un-Infected. It's at the very least a character-concept killer, although if you could work around it you'd be a better player for it. Anything other than a mindless species wouldn't be a complete, utter ruin IMO, but I'm fairly obviously in it's favour.
And the point was these people wanting to become infected. I mean, I can see people deciding 100 BP is worth more than 200 Karma and start looking for a Vampire to Infect them as soon as they leave character creation.

Wait-wait-wait. Since when are we paying or receiving Karma for GM-assigned qualities?

Since many people on these boards believe that's how it should go - it is a Positive Quality after all. These are the same people though that don't award karma for Negative Qualities that they give players.

I'm not in that camp. You don't gain karma for Negative Qualities and you don't pay for some of the Positive Qualities you gain, such as Infected ones.

You know, I honestly never thought much of it as any other way - at least for Negative Qualities. A lot of them are vague, and might have their bonus' added in without looking at the rules. I mean, if the run-down for every job is 'Breach door with tank', then your GM is likely going to make your life harder, in the same way that adding Distinctive Style and/or Enemies would. A second reason is that it almost rewards players for bad actions in some cases. A third is that the Karma bonus you get is half the Karma required to buy it off, which could get into some kind of twisted add-remove escalation game of Player vs GM. It would limit their Karma-gain for a while, and is an effective RAW way of saying "You are an asshole, Karma turns away from you until you attone."
I did consider minor Positive Qualities getting handed out. but due to the fact that (as far as I remember) no rules/suggestions were made about this and they were for allowing Quality-buying in play, it kinda slipped my mind as a possibilty.

Plus it's the attitude difference between -
GM: You have been Infected.
Player One: Woo-hoo! Par-tay!
Player Two: Urgh, *BLAM*.

P1 characters may go looking for Infected even without it being a free quality, so you have drawbacks to increase the cost beyond Legwork to get Infected. P2's may re-roll for either ruined character concept or planning, or both.
Even though the point is a good one, I only really wanted to know if
- people knew about keeping your current Magic
- it had been erratta'd out
- if that changed the viable-ness of Infection in play, which is what threads like these discussed.

The problem with being infected during play is how it happens.
It kinda works out like this:
Mage A has essence 6 Magic 6, and is human
Vampire B successfully uses his Essence Drain power on Mage A, and Mage A loses 1 essence (and accompanying 1 magic)
Repeat those two steps until the Mage is reduced to 0 essence, and 0 magic (burned out). Vampire chooses to use his infection power on freshly drained 0 essence dying former mage.
Mage A wakes up as a vampire with 1 magic, but since he had the magician quality, he retains the ability to cast spells, but with a seriously neutered magic rating.

*edit*
the only complication to the process is when youre dealing with an initiate mage who has a magic rating 7 or greater, BUT reaching essence 0 is supposed to make you burn out anyway.

Aaaahmm...question. MY version of the runners companion does NOT contain the last part of the last sentence that says "...and has an Essence of 1 and Magic of 1 (or retains her own Magic attribute, if higher)." But this sentence IS part of any other form of HMHVV, but not the version I that we all love so much.

Besides that, i DON´T see it in the description, that you loose your complete essence. You wake up with essence 1, but it is not said that you reached 0 before. And if you didn´t "burn out" completely, it would be absolutely adequate for a mage to become infected as long as you are initate of grade 5 at last.

Ditto. As established a month ago in this thread, it looks like vampires/etc. specifically have Essence 1/Magic 1, period. Ghouls/loup-garou/whatever have no forced Essence number (beyond definitely losing 1, for the Infected max of 5), and specifically get Magic 1 *or* previous Magic (-1 from Essence loss).

This seems fine with me. Vampires/ilk are strong enough already. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) If you're Awakened, be a ghoul. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

The disease description in Running Wild is more recent, and is considered to supersede Runner's Companion in those instances where there is conflict (unless someone in a position of power somewhere has trumped me, the most recent version of a thing is the one that's run with...and I wouldn't put it past someone to have trumped me).

While I didn't achieve nearly the success I wanted to, I was trying to fix a couple of things in RW.

Ah, I see what you're saying. Okay, then *that* settles it: Essence 1 and *keep* your Magic if it's higher than 1 for wendigo/vampire/etc. Done and done. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

A player in one of my games became a Banshee and how he coped with the magic loss was temporarily boosting his Magic with Essence Drain. That allowed him to get all the way back to his normal Magic. The only downide was that he had to have breakfast and dinner - killing two metas a day through Essence Drain.

This would be a good but very risky solution. Not very playable i think.^^

Especially if the opinion of the rest of your team mates matters to you in any regard.

Depends on your team, doesn't it. They might just really not care. Considering the death toll of some games and background fluff, an extra 2 bums "disappeared" every day the job takes doesn't always matter.

I don't agree with losing Magic from the Essence-loss pre-Infection. Maybe it makes sense in fluff, as well as game-balance, but I dislike it. Besides, getting Infected in-game is by RAW definition houseruled. Look up Infection in the 4a rulebook; Player characters transformed through the Infection power automatically become NPCs upon their “death” and are controlled by the gamemaster from that point forward. It doesn't mention RC provides alternate rules, like the Wireless Word section does Unwired. If we're going by strict RAW, that's your biggest stumbling block.

The team he was in was forming into the generals for an Infected army. So I guess his decision with his elf kinda made sense.

Ya, its sounds like one of those "When in Rome" situations, except in this case Rome happens to be John Carpenter movie.