Essense Loss and Magic Increase, Where has the magic gone? Options

[Nightwalker450]

Ok last session my group had an in character discussion, that then had to go out of character to speak mechanics.

The in character discussion, our cyber face trying to explain to a (technologically inept) adept that he could increase his peformance by adding cyberware, if he went sparingly and selective the boosts out of the cyberware could offset his loss of magic prowess.

The mechanics, when do you increase your magic? Before implant, after the implant, or it doesn't matter. The player that is the face is of the opinion that since your magic drops, from 5 to 4, the cost to raise your attribute is 15 Karma (New attribute value x 3). This is the base reading from the book. But I feel that since cyberware inhibits your magic you would still have to pay for it compensating for the essense loss. Since in creation this must be done, it only makes sense for it to be done during play as well. Unfortunately there is no place in the book that goes into this.

Here's where I see the problem with just allowing the attribute x 3. Here are 3 characters that are exactly alike, only difference is their timelines. The cyber spirit slayer, has 1 adept power of astral sight, 5 essense worth of cyberware installed, and carries a weapon foci.. All of these end with Magic of 1, and Essense of 1

1-Ready at creation (65 BP)
2-Basic Adept (Mag 1, 0 BP), who increased his Magic over time to 6 (60 Karma), then decided to go chrome and replace everything with cyber except for the 1 point. (0 BP, 60 Karma)
3-The Muchkin... Basic Adept (Mag 1, 0 BP) In Game Increases his magic by 1 (6 Karma), then installs another Essense of Cyber (Magic +1, Essense -1) Rinse and Repeat this until he is the same as the others
(0 BP, 30 Karma)

So there's the breakdown should the Muchkin be able to do this using half the karma as the other person. Creation doesn't differentiate from when you got the gear so why should in game?

[Kyoto Kid]

...the way I understand it, if the character loses 1 MA to implants this drops her cap to 5 for the purpose of requiring initiation. So, if she wanted to later raise her MA to 6 she would also have to initiate.

[Dashifen]

@Nightwalker:
You have one problem with your example: adept with astral sight begins game with a Magic of 1 that "may not be increased during character creation or raised with Karma" (p. 24, Street Magic). Thus, a person with that quality and 5 points of cyberware no longer has a Magic of 1.

However, your question is still valid for other examples.

If you have a character A with a magic of 1 who subsequently pays 6 karma to raise her magic to 2 and the installs 1 point of cyberware, re-lowering her magic to 1 and also lowering her cap to 5, one can repeat this process 5 times spending a total of 30 karma.

However a second character first raises his magic from 1 to 6 for a total of 60 karma and then installs the same 5 points of cyberware. These two characters might end up numerically similar, but have spend vastly different amounts of karma.

I don't know that I have a problem with this. One represents the very careful manipulation of the body's energies with respect to cyberware and magic -- probably a long term goal or experimentation over the course of years by a corporate R&D lab or some such. The latter seems to represent a life-changing event in the course of someone's life, perhaps an accident?

Either way, two different ways to end up at the same place.

[Ryu]

You can save a few points of karma if you go with low magic for quite some time. That is balanced, so we go with new attribute*3, based on magic after implants. RAW does not support a virtual magic rating anyway.

(Ruleswise you are fine (for implants below 1.0 Essence cost) to go 2-1-2-1with presaved karma, and go straight for max magic afterwards. I personally would have a talk about metagaming vs. gaming with the player in question.)

[Exodus]

Yes Actually, I'm planning on making an adept with the Synaptic Boosters. Much more Magic Effective than the adept ability. But in order to get rating 3 Synaptic booster I need to purchase 2 more points of magic, so I can inturn lower two points without affecting my other Adept abilities. Full speed adept with lower cost to essence.

[Nightwalker450]

Adept Power Astral Sight, not Astral Sight Positive quality for any that misunderstood.

I like the idea of the person carefully working, in order to do it. It sounds great, but the karma reflects that they actually put half of the effort into it than the other person.

The way our group started drawing this out is like a circuit. You have 6 lights, if you install cyberware it doesn't just remove one of the lit ones, it effectively replaces that light with a resistor. You need the same amount of magic to maintain as you did before just 1 point of that you're not getting anything out of.

[Ryu]

What is the problem with different costs for different histories? You have the same issue with different costs for attributes bought at/after chargen, so you could say the same about min/maxing there (We houserule attribute increase cost for the attribute before racial mods, reducing the effect).

About the only thing I care for is that a magic 6 character with cyberware will have spend much karma on maintaining that magic rating. A weak magic rating is easy to repair, it should be cheaper than maintaining the maximum natural magic rating (which would even require initiation for that). And most magic 6 builds I´ve seen could, from the power level, well take the disadvantage of a few karma compared to the rest of the group.

[DireRadiant]

There is a tradeoff. It's not like someone is sitting around doing nothing while earning the karma for the big bump life altering event. During that time the advantage of the high Magic isn't available. So yes, karma efficient, but will actually survive to spend it?

So I don't think there's any difference in which approach, up to the player, there are tradeoffs.

[Jhaiisiin]

It'd take more bookkeeping, but I'd prefer to run it as the karma expenditures being based off the "unaltered" magic attribute, meaning, what it was before you cybered up. So if you started at 5, and took 2 points of 'ware, then it'll cost you the same cost to move from your current 3 to a 4 as it would for an uncybered person to move from 5-6. Your ability to improve your arcane connection should not get easier with the more ware you install.

[Kyoto Kid]

.in previous editions this was the way I went with adepts - most notably the original KK (#94) because I was reluctant to take her MA above 7 due to the Magic loss rule for wounds. With that now gone in 4th ed, I am more likely to keep an adept purely magic (Ki, chi or whatever you want to call it) based without optimising through Bio/Cyber implants.

Yeah, increasing MA above 6 is expensive Karma wise (& the dumb er I mean, Short One will most likely never be able to find a group as that requires an Arcana [logic] test), but the idea of running a totally "pure" physical/gunslinger adept is now more intriguing. True the slightly augmented adept is more powerful but also more limited if she wants to mprove her adept abilities at a later time as this will cost more Karma. Also doing so at Chargen it is a more expensive proposition for as I illustrated in another thread, that Synaptic booster I effectively costs 16 BPS on top of the 10 BPs (possibly 25 if she starts with an MA of 6) for the MA point sacrificed.

KK4.1 (the "test"version for learning the 4th ed ruleset) with an MA of 5 and no implants was pretty darned effective and that was in a fairly tough campaign.

[Ryu]

The way I´m comming from, you are not improving your arcane connection, but you have to repair it. And your overall potential shrinks. If I improve something, I want it to be better than before.

[Jhaiisiin]

EDITED:

Recreating this post due to me being able to better address your concern, once I actually paid attention to it.

You're still improving your attribute. Say you have a magic of 5 with 2 points of essence lost. Effective magic of 3. You pay the karma costs to improve your magic rating to 6, raising your effective rating to 4, because 2 points are still inhibited by unnatural modifications. That's how I see it anyway

[Ryu]

Ah ok, that is valid. Deviations from RAW are par for the course.

[Jhaiisiin]

Don't have my books with me, atm due to being at work. So RAW basically states that they get the lower cost? Damn. Nod to the cybered goons again I guess. *shrug*

[FrankTrollman]

[Riley37]

I'd write MAG stat in a format similar to aumented stats, as if Essence penalty was a negative form of Augmentation. If you start with 5 STR and 5 MAG, then you get Muscle Augmentation 2, you end up with STR 5/7 and MAG 5/4.

If you then spend 15 Karma on STR, you get STR 6/8
If you then spend 15 Karma on MAG, you get MAG 6/5

If you start with 5 STR and MAG 1, though, and get Muscle Augmentation 2, you end up with STR 5/7 and MAG 1/0, and once MAG reaches 0, it stays 0 forever (BBB p.164)

[Ravor]

Do you also do the same for Edge?

[Riley37]

Cogent point - if you burn Edge for Hand of God, what do you pay to increase it?
Edge 3/1 if you started with 3 and burned Edge twice?
Then pay 12 Karma to go to 4/2?
If you have Edge 1, and burn it, what happens? 3 Karma to increase 0 to 1?
If you just pay based on current value, I can see the temptation to take Edge 1, and occasionally burn Edge for a critical success, and regain it for 3 Karma. But that's not my own play style.

[Ravor]

My perhaps mistaken understanding is that the Devs have said that you only pay your current Edge when increasing it, which is one of the reasons that I went and house-ruled Magic Loss so heavily in my games.

[Nightwalker450]

Justifications- For various things

As to metatypes not having to pay for their racial bonuses. physical attributes should be harder to boost as you reach the high end, just by the amount of effort to keep breaking a higher and higher barrier. And for metatypes with bonuses how can you improve yourself when most equipment isn't made for that STR or BOD, or whatever you are trying to exercise. How can an elf improve his CHA when the number of people he can talk to on his own level is so few, he has to dumb down his negotiations so he doesn't loose the gangers he's talking to.

If you were hit by some paralyzing car wreck that actually lowered you existing attribute and your max, you should pay more karma to raise it. Its the price of overcoming your handicap. And its this principal that makes me think that a mage should have to pay to overcome his handicap, the cyberware.

Burning edge doesn't lower your max edge. So its really not a permanent affect on your character. He's not inhibited so much as used up his luck in that one shot. But yes this can easily be abused, and if someone was burning edge at least once per session for critical hits, I would recommend charging more for his edge. Can only ask so much from the Hand of God, before its going to want more in return.

[Jhaiisiin]

In the case of a permanent burn of Edge, sure, I'd make him play by the same rules we're suggesting for magic or attribute loss.

[Moon-Hawk]

[Jhaiisiin]

Hmm... Yeah, attribute improvements like that would be out of sync. Maybe the base (non-racially-modified) stat for physical attributes, and the racially modified version for mental attributes. That would seem to deal with the disparity...

Of course, all this leads to a silly amount of bookkeeping.

[Moon-Hawk]

[Karaden]

I'll present you with a bit of research I came up with after the question came up in the thread for a PBP game. It was most notable because of the fact that we where starting the game with 300 karma spent, and so of course this question came up with an adept. We ended up ruling to use the augmented idea for the sake of stopping easily passing the akward phase of gaining 30 karma with 1 magic. (Granted it was a social adept so much more plausable)

Here is some stuff that I've come up with since then.