Genetic Heritage and You(r parents). Options

[McAllister]

Genetic Heritage: AUG pg. 20
"Though genetweaking isn’t yet widespread, the technology to successfully modify a metahuman genome has been around for well over three decades. It is thus possible that children have inherited genetically-modified genes from one or both progenitors. Such an inheritance means the character can start play with one genetic modification (see p. 72) for free. Such characters also possess an unusually high tolerance to the introduction of foreign code into their genome. As a result, the nuyen costs of transgenic genetic enhancements for the character are reduced by 20 percent."

Transgenic Alteration: AUG pg. 93
"Most of the functional changes available through biotech (p. 61) are also possible through transgenic alteration for comparable Essence and nuyen costs but longer treatment times (typically several months)."

Hi. My name (isn't really) McAllister, and I'd like to talk to you, Dumpshock, about RAW. Specifically, I'd like to discuss two points that relate to Genetic Heritage, and to get your opinions.

First, as far as I can tell, deltaware Synaptic Boosters rating 3 are "functional changes through biotech," and therefore "also possible through transgenic alteration..." Obviously, this would be such a gross return on investment (2,400,000 nuyen for 10 bp) that even I, in the deepest depths of "just trying it for fun" could never conscience doing it. But where is the line? For one thing, I'd imagine any transgenic alteration would count (in cost and Essence use) as deltaware, because matching it with your DNA is superlatively customized; however, that's somewhere between fluff and crunch. What if I just used it to have a rating 1 synaptic booster?

The second point I'll raise is a bit more nebulous. RAW, a person with Genetic Heritage is born with less than 6 essence. I have no problem with this; even with to-day's technology we spliced primate genes with jellyfish ones, and made a glow-in-the-dark monkey. I've seen pictures of it; it does not have 6 essence, and never did. There are also warforms, which never appear in print explicitly but are mentioned in Augmentation (they're custom-engineered organisms to use as combat biodrones). Those would never have 6 essence even if two of them were able to procreate, because of all the alteration. However, if I'm born with 5.8 essence from built-in genetweaking, Awaken, raise my magic to 4 and then add another .8 essence worth of 'ware, would I take a magic hit? IIRC magic only goes down a point when essence goes down a point, and that wouldn't happen until I got under 5 essence. So why couldn't a chargen magician take the Genetic Heritage quality, fill out that first point of Essence with other 'ware, and suffer no penalty to magic (except having to initiate earlier to raise the cap)?

Please note that by "opinions" I had in mind something like "well, here's why it would/wouldn't work" and not so much like "you clearly eat your own young, I hope you get sick and die."