Mnemonic Enhancer Options

[Sphynx]

Yeah, forget spending Power Points on Improved Attribute (unless it's body). For 1 Power Point, you can get +5 total to Strength and Quickness. Well well well worth it, especially if you have a generous GM that let's you Geasa it off. And believe me.... for the karma reduction in skill advancing from bonus attributes well makes up for the loss of the Mnemonic Enhancer's bonuses.

Also, they still haven't explained the Doc's question about... If Memory Retention is the key, then why doesn't the Photographic Memory Edge provide a similar karma reduction? Gonna keep to our House Rule of no Karma Reduction from the ME.

Lastly.... you suppose there'd be a problem with routing your SkillWires to your Encephalon to increase your Task Pool? Trying to help my friend rebuild his character to the new Eratta (he has 3 CED's over rating 3).

Sphynx

[Kurukami]

[Ol' Scratch]

Nope, it says it can't be combined. In that case, his Improved Reflexes overrides the Enhanced Articulation's bonus to Reaction.

[Kurukami]

[Ol' Scratch]

<just rolls his eyes> It's sad when a GM has to take to cheating his players instead of just saying "no" to implants or whatever else if they think it's broken.

[Kurukami]

It's also sad when munchkinism and Essence/Magic min-maxing is so rampant as to leave anything other than magical characters in the dust. Mages and physads are already tremendously powerful, far more so than most starting samurai or other characters.

Buuuuuut that's just an old bugaboo of mine, and completely off-topic.

[TinkerGnome]

Man and Machine is very specific that the highest bonus available is the one that applies.

[Kagetenshi]

Personally, I think I'm going to houserule that the ME works as canon for active skills, but does the -rating karma thing for purchasing knowledge skills.

~J

[Lilt]

I'm afraid to say that I'd go with the DnD technique of only applying the highest legal bonus. If there is some question as to what bonus is better, I'd let the player decide. IE: If a character had both Wired 1, 4 points of Reaction Enhancer, and Enhanced Articulation (+7/+1D6) and Increace Reflexes 2 (+4/+2d6), I'd let the player choose which he wanted to use.

[edit]Sort-of what TKG said[/edit]

[Rev]

Yea, thats pretty crazy.

Phsads can get 8 points of bioware leaving 2 points of magic, and can use weapon foci, and can initiate.

Cyber charachter can get 9 points of bio/cyber.

Street sams are almost obsolete.

[BitBasher]

Theres downsides to that, they get a plus 4 to all healing rolls with 8 points of bio.

[Siege]

Yeah, but they have to live long enough to initiate.

Samurai get a major boost in terms of overall damage stopping, enhanced strength + reflexes and don't worry about having to lose magic when getting hit.

Not to start the adepts vs samurai argument (again), adepts are better specialists than samurai and then only within specific fields.

-Siege

[Lilt]

Don't forget that physads cost 25 points/priority A/B before you count things like resources that you'll want reasonably high (An B/A, or around 20 points) to buy that bioware.

[nezumi]

[Rev]

Psst 2 power points.

Anyhow:
True, better keep it to six bioware points and 3 magic.

And yea physads were somewhat weak previously, in my opinion. I don't agree with the whole "specialist/generalist" thing though. Highly specialized sams are just as fearsome as highly specialized adepts.

Still seems like a sort of massive rule change for an errata.


PS I wasn't really thinking of starting out full of bioware.

Maybe start with one point of it, but as the game goes on replace those relatively weak adept powers (like enhanced attribute) with cheaper (power point wise) bioware whenever you get the money.

If the money level of the campaign is high enough to give sam's any chance of upgrading the magical charachters will find plenty as well. If it isnt the magical charachters were doing better already and this certainly does nothing to hurt them.

[Ol' Scratch]

One power point? The adept can havel 9 points of Bioware still have all 6 of his Power Points if he had the resources for it and chose to do so. Sure, he needs five geasa for it, but he's still able to do so.

I have no idea why they decided to add this silly one-half Bio Index thing to the rule (not to mention adding it to Essence loss before determing Magic loss). Simply by allowing mages to geas off Bioware would have fixed everything. Bioware would still be more "magic friendly" that way because it wouldn't actually kill their Magic if they hit 0. They could still initiate and overcome it that way, which they can't do if Cyberware gets you down to Magic 0.

But oh well. Overcompensation seems to be standard when errata's concerned.

[Rev]

I would agree they overshot by a mile.

I like the adding the two impacts together then applying them. The whole thing with magic going up and down in integer values is just an approximation by the system. Making them loose two magic for two small mods seemed stupid to me.

However if a charachter can have 5 geasa without being majorly inconvenienced to use magic (ie most of the time they cannot use it) thier gm is making it far too easy.

[Zazen]

[Sphynx]

Yeah, I think it overcompensated as well. I also think it's not an Eratta, it's a complete rewrite of the rules, seems that the eratta page is becoming less and less eratta, and more and more 4th Ed. :P

And fyi, as a munckin you do 8 Bioware because you plan for being 150+ karma down the road and still have plenty to advance. :P I can't help it, I always do magic user for any PC I make, even if he's gonna go 5 points of Essence loss, just because of advancement oppurtunity (and I don't do Geasa for it usually)

Sphynx