[X] My Assistant

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Or simply making implants cost less essence...

[hyzmarca]

Cheaper implants would make mages more powerful. The essence cost is what discourages them from taking cyberware in the first place.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

..for mundanes.

[Garrowolf]

Why not make it so that mages can only have a certain level of magic loss set to whatever level you want? If you want them to have some communications stuff and some visoin enhancements then restrict it to 1 essence. That way you don't have to worry about changing the essence costs causing imbalence with them.

Another way to do it would be to come up with a list of cyberware that you don't mind mages having. these could be things like the senses and communications and some bioware kidneys or something. Use the normal essence costs on them. Then allow them to go hog wild on that stuff but don't allow the rest. Maybe the reason is that the magic conducts and causes feedback from other kinds of cyberware. Whatever the reason, your mages wont be out of control and you can amp up your mundanes.

[Konsaki]

How about instead of thinking up new rules to remake the game, you guys use the rules that are already there to limit mages? Background Count, anyone? Focus Addiction? Wards? Magicly active moss? Dual natured critters guarding a compound?
There are alot of options already in the game to slam mages who are amping up their 'endless' magic stat.

Really, the only thing I've read here is the age old 'Sam vs Mage' crap. Sure, you threw TM's in there in the first post, but anything else has been drowned out by the 'Mages are too powerfull' and 'Mundanes are too weak' junk.

My two :nuyen: at this point.

[Garrowolf]

Konsaki, how does any of the things you listed reduce the power level of the mage themself or restrict the cyberware?

Background count can be avoided. You don't have to use foci to become ungodly powerful, so focus addiction and wards are not that much of an issue. Magically active moss and dual natured critters limit one ability each (astral and invis).

You didn't address the issue, you pointed at a road sign that said, "No Tanks on this road!"

[Konsaki]

Well, what's the issue? Why do you think that mundanes are so weak that they need something like this to waste karma on?
What is the point, karma wise, where mages are way too powerful? When does it come to a point where both mundane and mage just have way too much Karma on their hands to spend and it ceases to be 'Shadowrun' and is instead a game of 'Demi-god'?

Once it gets to a point where your mundane has to whine about mages have a magic stat (wow, who would have guessed that mages have magic) that they can waste their Karma on and the mundane is maxxed out, I think it's time to restart with a new character or just snag 'Latent Awakening' from the MitS book and start your own magic stat to waste your non-mundane's Karma on. (Whew, long run-on sentence)
I can estimate that it would take around 400+ karma before you even get to the point where the 'endless mage' problem even arrises, if that. Course, I may be wrong, it hasnt been the first time.

[hyzmarca]

Except that requires even more effort to maintain balance and it also destroys the flavor of the game.

How about this

Positive Quality -
Cybermancy 20BP
Characters with the cybermancy quality have been exposed to unnatural magical rituals designed to prolong metahuman life. They do not die when their essence reaches zero and can continue to add cyberware as their essence drops into the negatives.
Characters with negative essence may not possess Magic or Resonance attributes. If a character with Magic or Resonance reaches negative essence, he automatically loses that attribute.
Cybermancy is a rare art and the treatment is only available from the most SOTA Delta Clinics and the most vile of back-ally bloodmages.
It is strongly recommended that characters should not be allowed to take this quality at chargen.

Negative Quality -
Astral Hazing -5BP or -15BP
The mere existence of characters with the Astral Hazing quality disrupts the flow of mana around them. If a character with Astral Hazing stays in an area for an hour then that area will develop a background count of 1. The background count will increase by 1 every hour until it reaches the character's essence value/2 (round up).
When the character leaves the area the background count fades by 1 point every hour.
Characters with a negative essence value and Astral Hazing produce mana voids in the same manner, with the background count decreasing by 1 every hour until it reaches their essence value (round down).
The background counts produces by Astral hazing are never aspected. Magicially active characters with this quality suffer the same penalties as everyone else.
The qualiy is -5 for characters who do not have a magic attribute and -15 for those who do have a magic attribute.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Because it still dosen't adress the fact that you're talking apples and oranges - or :nuyen: and karma. Sure, there may be an exchange rate, but it's ALWAYS a disadvantagous rate.

So even if your DM is letting his mundanes trade in Karma for :nuyen: in huge lumps, he's still never going to afford enough to get all that delta he needs. And you do realize that to buy the Cybermancy positive quality with Karma, you'd need forty Karma. That's a pretty damn significant chunk, and it dosen't even adress the cost of the cyber itself.

And anyway, cyber only goes so far - you're still limited by your augmented maximum. A human can never have a Body stastitic higher than 10, with the Exceptional Ability Positve Quality. Not even if he's the goddamned Robocop, a full-conversion Cyborg with obvious CyberEverything...

That's still less than an unaugmented Troll, and it's a lot less than what a mage or PhysAd can achieve with his spells. Plus, he's a freaking full-conversion Cyborg!

I think you're missing the point. The point is that while the ability to install all the cyber you want is theoretically neat, the fact is that it's not all that good. You're still limited by caps, plus you're outlaying ridiculous amounts of :nuyen: for all those goodies. Whereas the Mage and PhysAd need only Karma.

I'd say just go with the OP's "Self-Actualization" routine. It's entirely appropriate, balanced, and fits nicely within the rules we have already.

[mfb]

ShadowDragon8685, seriously, man. if advancement is easier for the Awakened because karma is more readily available than cash, then maybe the GM should hand out more cash and less karma. my GMs have tended towards the opposite, actually; most of my characters live comfortably, but i have to squeeze every point of karma to get maximum value out of it. neither situation is optimal for every group, and if there are problems, it is the GM's job to fix them.

and as far as augmented maximums go, it's been suggested that removing those maximums would go a long way towards correcting any perceived imbalance between high-end Awakened and mundane characters--without making up completely new rules that go directly against all previous material.

self-actualization as presented here is entirely inappropriate for SR. the whole point of cyberpunk is that you're trading in your soul in exchange for power. yes, the fantasy aspect means that's not always necessary--in which case, such mechanics should be fantastic, which means magical. man, unaided by either augmentation or magic, should be limited because that is the basic premise of the SR world.

[ShadowDragon8685]

mfb, my point is that Karma awards and cash awards aren't even comparable.

For the amount of money it would cost to turn someone into a Deltaware Monstrosity, most mages could have set up their own Oricalcum factory and lived forever in luxury. Most of them WOULD have. They could have a set of armor made out of solid oricalcum, backed with Ubotanium, dikoted and then coated with Rutherenium... For every day of the year.


But even ignoring that, there is the fact that even Cyberware is capped, Magic isen't..

[Garrowolf]

I have a question - who are you trying to reflect?

Please give an example from movies or something to show the kind of person that you are trying to reflect with these rules. Are you trying to show a super genius or a super athlete or what?

[mfb]

[ShadowDragon8685]

Sure... Give out free cyber - and who's installing it?


Yeah. I thought so. The Runner who's stupid enough to go under Mr. Johnson's knife is a dumb fuck.

[mfb]

yeah, gosh, it's impossible for runners to get cyberware installed. that's why nobody has cyberware. crazy world!

one more thing the GM can handle. it can be as easy as providing them with a trustworthy street doc contact.

[hyzmarca]

You know, there is a reason why my little writeup didn't say anything about deltaware being necessary to the process and that it is available from the vilest of back-alley blood mages. Characters who can afford deltaware don't need cybermancy unless Augemntation makes Move-by-Wire baddass again, and I don't see how that is possible without destroying the augmented caps.
The ability to apply cybermancy to lower grade ware makes it far more accessable, even if finding someone who will perform the procedure takes some effort.


40 karma being too extreme a cost, consider that a magical character has to pay 293 karma in order to initiate and raise his magic attribute 6 times in order to gain benefits equivalent to six negative essence points worth of 'ware.

Of course, 40 is a lot of karma to pay up front so a leveled system would be better, say 5-10BP per level with each level allowing the character to take another negative essence point. Or maybe 10 +(level*3) karma per level with the quality being unavilable at chargen would be more appropriate, bringing the costs in line with initiation.

As for magic being uncapped, well the magic stat is uncapped. Magical stat bonuses should be limited by the augmented caps. Adept powers are limited by the augmented caps and Samurai have far more in common with Adepts than they have with magicians. The big complaint is that Samurai eventually hit their essence limit but Adepts can keep initiating and gaining powers forever, nevermind that most adept powers are less efficient than the equivilant 'ware is. Adepts can get the 'ware and have the powers.

The problem is that mundanes don't have a special mundane stat that they get to raise as high as they want to while magically active characters and technomancers do.
Well screw that, mundanes don't need a special stat. They already have the ability to sell chunks of their soul with very little real consequences while magicians, adepts and technomancers feel those consequences acutely.

Cybermancy puts them back on equal footing. Samurai will be able to keep getting ware so long as they can pay the costs are are willing to deal with the healing penalties. At some point, healing penalties make further cybermancy impractical, but that is how it should be. At some point karma costs make getting more adept powers impractical. All things being equal, adepts and cybermantic Samurai will face very similar caps.

However, the magician kicks both their asses. The magician kicks both their asses for exactly one reason and one reason only, his special capless magician stat is rolled for pactically everything that he might want to do. An Adept's dice pools are determined by his capped stats, capped skills, powers that modify those stats and skills, and (occasionally) powers that provide bonus dice to specific types of tests . A Samurai's dice pool is determined by capped stats, capped skills, 'ware that modifies those stats and skills, and (occasionally) 'ware that provides bonus dice to specific types to tests.
The magician's dice pools are determined by a capped skill and his uncaped special stat, a fact that allows the magician to Powerbolt the Earth into dust if he initiates often enough. Samurai and adepts have an upper limit on what they can accomplish with a dice roll (before edge). Magician's do not. There is a way to correct this, of course, but some people want like it. It is simply really, exchange Magic's role with that of the tradition-specific drain stat. This caps spellcasting out at 14+bonus dice but makes it much easier for high-grade initiates to resist the drain of powerful high-force spells.

Balancing Technomancers with hackers it a much different problem, however, and I'm not familiar enough with the matrix rules to tackle it at the moment.

[Luddite]

Is this really an issue? What is the likelihood that a game will run so long, and be so karma intense, that the sammie will have 5.99 points worth of delta grade cyberware, the best weapons and armor on the market, a full slate of maxed skills, and still be significantly less powerful than the mage or adept? Fairly low I'd say. Further, if it does come up, so what? The universe isn't game balanced.

[Mistwalker]

I see we are having another Magic is Broken discussion.

Shakes his head

[djinni]

[toturi]

[Narmio]

[Moon-Hawk]

[mfb]

it's not a problem because people do it; that is, it's not in and of itself unbalanced or broken. it's a problem because it makes for a very limited game--and i'm using a specific definition of "game", here: the part of the RPG experience where you earn advancement, the same way you earn advancement in parcheesi or monopoly. the game of SR is limited sharply; you can take your character to its extreme reaches right at chargen, or hit them right after chargen, and from then on you're stuck advancing in secondary and tertiary interests. this is somewhat alleviated by the fact that SR4 has a wide variety of skills useful and even necessary in a given area of expertise (in other words you can't generally be a one-skill wonder and survive). that still doesn't remove the chafing feeling i get when i make a character who's as good a shot as a Ghost.

which is basically what the OP is trying to fix, albeit only for mundanes. i just think he's going about it completely backwards. (i also think it's like shining the silverware on the Titanic, but that's for a different thread.)

[Ravor]

hyzmarca, unless 4th's version of Man & Machine has Cybermancy rules that really blow my socks off, consider your second version (The one that costs the same as Initation) as stolen for my campaigns with some very minor tweaks.

It's brillant.

[Mistwalker]