Sharing the Wealth, Essence Drain, Drain Energy, and Your Group. Options

[Ramaloke]

So I know that there are various ways to gain access to powers which allow you to drain essence, karma, magic and other such attributes. I'm also aware of the fact that most of these are horribly unbalanced. However I posit a question: If the gains weren't limited to the offending character, but could be distributed to the other players (in order to give parity) would they be so terribly broken? Here are two spells that I've cooked up:

Karmic Bridge
Type: M • Range: T • Duration: P • DV: (Karma Value)
This spell allows the caster to act as a bridge between two characters (who must both be willing, and the caster may designate herself as one of the two characters involved), allowing them to give karma to each other. Each extra hit allows the targets to transfer one point of karma.

Essence Gift
Type: P • Range: T • Duration: P • DV: (Essence Value)
This spell allows the caster to make a gift of his essence to another character. The exchange is permanent. For every hit on the spellcasting test the spell caster may give one point of essence.

If a magician had both of these, and the ability to drain essence or karma (via endowments, or via power pacts, or some other way), would these be unbalanced? Sure, it takes some of the control out of GM hands but I think it would be quite feasible.

I'd like to hear your thoughts.

[pbangarth]

Balanced or unbalanced versus what?

It seems at first read that these spells take a power that would allow an individual to suck the life out of his neighbours in order to empower himself, and transfer that power to a group. So instead of one monstrous, million-karma character, there are now a bunch of monstrous million-karma characters. Amongst themselves, they are balanced. Compared to the rest of the world, they are monstrous million-karma characters.

[TheMadderHatter]

The Essence spell struck me as enabling a character to have high Resonance/Magic while possessing every cybernetic enhancement that can be crammed into one body. In addition to causing massive imbalance to the detriment of mundane characters, it would also make cyberzombies largely obsolete, no? If I can just PAB-reprogram a mage into agreeing to kill himself in order to make my chosen cyborg (not the jarhead kind) have Essence 6 again, the whole concept of cyborg replacements making one less (meta)human ceases to be any impediment at all.

I'd be extremely wary of allowing such a spell to be possible simply because it removes a balancing factor from the game.

[Ramaloke]

The point is that these powers are unbalanced is already mentioned, I agree, they are unbalanced, even more so if only one player in the group has access to them. If a player/npc gets ahold of him woe be to others.

The point of this is to, well, as the title says. Share the wealth.

[Yerameyahu]

Those both sound like metamagics or spirit powers, not spells.

[Ascalaphus]

Well, it opens the door to systematic exploitation of the poor. See that hobo? Maybe he's got a point of Karma that he'll sell for 100 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) ? Then adapt that tactic to entire neighborhoods, especially with schoolchildren (chock full of Karma!), who will now have no future prospects but immediate monetary satisfaction.

Initiate, rinse and repeat.

[Ramaloke]

Hrm, that is a good point. I think you are right, they would be more feasible as metamagics/spirit powers than anything else. I should have thought of it myself.

Well, it opens the door to systematic exploitation of the poor. See that hobo? Maybe he's got a point of Karma that he'll sell for 100 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) ? Then adapt that tactic to entire neighborhoods, especially with schoolchildren (chock full of Karma!), who will now have no future prospects but immediate monetary satisfaction.

Initiate, rinse and repeat.

Actually, it doesn't, the powers themselves open that door up, these are built on those powers. Any abuse is already there, in game, and is legal to use.

[Yerameyahu]

Re: your actual question, I think these are still unbalanced. They just unbalance everyone. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) From a fluff angle, there's no great reason having Drain X would let you Gift X; obviously, this is fully dependent on who you let get these powers, for what, etc. On the crunch side, you've basically just allowed one balance problem to become 3 or 5 or however many. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) It could easily be used with 'burner' characters, to avoid some of the built-in restrictions on powers and augmentations (Mystic Adept with 'ware, etc.), or to 'concentrate' power (generally, power curves are exponential, so a couple gods are better than several men).

As you say, the basics of these already exist in the game… except they're very rare and only affect the very rare people who can get them.

[IcyCool]

So I know that there are various ways to gain access to powers which allow you to drain essence, karma, magic and other such attributes. I'm also aware of the fact that most of these are horribly unbalanced. However I posit a question: If the gains weren't limited to the offending character, but could be distributed to the other players (in order to give parity) would they be so terribly broken?

So let me see if I've got this right, you think taking this broken ability to get tons of free karma and essence, and then making the benefits of it more easily accessible somehow makes it less broken?

[Ramaloke]

Well, one thing to consider is that if you are sharing equally (yes, I know, seems unlikely but bare with me) and you have four-ish characters in the group, you just changed your "ridiculous karma factory" from 1 output to 4 outputs. If you are scoring about 20 karma a week with Energy drain you just bumped that down to 5 karma a week for everybody.

Is it good? Yes. Is it unbalanced, I think it depends. If you aren't doing an "unreasonable abuse" (yes, I know, funny that), and abusing things within reason its well... more reasonable.

So let me see if I've got this right, you think taking this broken ability to get tons of free karma and essence, and then making the benefits of it more easily accessible somehow makes it less broken?

More like I was thinking that if (for some reason) a player got ahold of it he would quickly outpace his allies in effectiveness, this at least would give some parity.

[Yerameyahu]

I think the point is that the abuse *isn't* having one character out of step with the group ('group imbalance'). It's player(s) vs. world.

[Ramaloke]

Well, aren't the players already above and beyond the average person? I mean, whats a little more imbalance?

Average humans have 3s in all their attributes across the boards, and 0 in most skills.

It's a little strange to place an arbitrary limit on the "distance" between the players and the rest of the world because "they are imbalanced versus the world", since that statement is true from step 1.

[Yerameyahu]

That's a very bad way to put it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) If you had a set of runners with 20s in everything, would that be okay in most circumstances, with most gear, with most opposition? The point is that the game has a certain range of 'normal' power, which certain abusive tactics can quickly render obsolete. Obsolete means 'no fun', that's all. Yes, you can obviously play Shadowrun at various power levels; no, most of the content is not useful to hyper-powered characters.

[Ramaloke]

Well, looking at the net gains for both spells/metamagics, we have another method for karmagain, which the GM still has control over (not everybody is a walking pool of unspent karma, few should be), and extra essence.

The essence is actually more powerful than the karma in my opinion, since it allows for cybered up mages and technomancers, or, like TheMadderHatter said, makes cyberzombies less special (though, when you get right down to it, a cyberzombie that started with an Essence of 12 is going to be way more nasty at Essence -6, cyberzombies would benefit too, they would just be rarer and more bad ass).

Though even then, you still have to pay for your ware.

Consider the street sammy/gun bunny with oodles of ware, what do they really gain from having a higher essence? They dont suddenly get more money, if they were going to trick themselves out to below 1 essence anyway, they probably wouldn't have the funds to trick out to below 1 if they had a starting essence of 12.

What's the major benefit of this? Some health spells work better. Thats all that I can find. Not terribly amazingly broken. Though when the character starts racking up yen (which is completely in the hands of the GM), he'll start to see some real gains (but again, is that an issue when magicians > gun bunnies anyway?)

[Yerameyahu]

A lot of 'ware is very cheap, because it's intended to be limited by Essence. That's what the entire Grade system is about. That goes a hundredfold for adepts, mysads, etc., as I mentioned above; plus, they're traditionally seen as having less to spend money on. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Why are you saying 'oh, sams won't benefit too much, so it's okay', when the whole point is that mages are *already* better… and *they* will benefit disproportionately? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Ascalaphus]

The nasty thing about this is what it implies for people like AAA CEOs. They'd have the resources to just buy up Karma by the 100s.

It's also an accelerating imbalance; the more powerful you are, the better you'll likely be at convincing people to "donate" Karma to you. Or else.

[Yerameyahu]

Which would instantly lead to godkings, who'd fight titanic battles with the dragons, let in the Horrors, and end the game for everyone. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Ramaloke]

But realistically, how much alphaware cyber do you typically start off with? I've never had cause for more than 2, and this doesn't negate the awesome that is alpha through delta. Makes them less needed but they are still above and beyond standardware. You might be able to go longer without upgrading to alpha+ but you'll still want to eventually.

But laying that aside, I think that while it would still be unacceptable for most games, some games could certainly put such mechanics into play and not have any problems.

Which would instantly lead to godkings, who'd fight titanic battles with the dragons, let in the Horrors, and end the game for everyone. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) , You dont think that sounds Epic? I think that would be a fantastic premise for a SR Game, I mean, hot damn!

Though, what both of you two are forgetting is, this is the type of metamagic you would pioneer. Why share your goodies with everybody? Not everybody can pull off cybermancy, for example, and while more than one group knows how, Id say that less than .0001% of the awakened population has any idea of what is involved in that kind of thing.

-edit-

I'll also point out that I suppose this sort of thing really isn't needed, there are already rules for buying services from magicians if you are not awakened. You just need to find a magician with an appropriate bound spirit (because you can bind free spirits, including blood and shadow spirits and other such like), and pay him money to have the spirit use its power pact or endowment or whatever you need. This is just a little less cheatery than that method.

[Yerameyahu]

I'm sure that many people start with plenty of cyber, and a fair bit of the restriction is Avail, not Essence or even cash.

I certainly agree that you *can* make game-changing rules to play very unique custom campaigns. That's not the frame of reference I use for evaluating things, though. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

If you can invent it, someone else already did. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Ramaloke]

Not necessarily true about the inventing thing, I'm pretty sure thats why patents and such are worth a damn (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) , just saying. True innovation might be rare but it does happen.

[Yerameyahu]

*shrug* We're talking about Shadowrun. There's always someone not just smarter and better funded, but vastly smarter and vastly better funded. It's pretty incidental to the discussion, though. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Mardrax]

Add a "Natural essence may not exceed 6 in this way, and any essence modifications the character might have are still added to this." And you have yourself a spell I might consider allowing in my game, as it's reduced from übermensch-maker to a defense against what little essence drainers exist.

Which, in my book, really shouldn't be PCs, or their ally spirits. Like Street Magic sasy at some point, Blood and Toxic stuff is not meant for use by PCs.

You want to play godkings vs dragons, grab yourself an Epic Level Handbook, Deities and Demigods, or just go play Scion or Exalted. SR's system or provided content isn't made for that level play and completely breaks down... Unless you use all the essence to get more penis implants.
I believe the quote is "Thors fall, everyone dies."

The effort at trying to balance something broken is appreciated, of course, but all you'd accomplish like this is slowing the descent into madness.

[Yerameyahu]

Good point, Mardrax: if it's replacing what's stolen, as a sort of mystic medical treatment, that's more usable (albeit, still in very specific campaigns). I mean, a mystic medical treatment that still requires robbing something else, but hey. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[IcyCool]

If you want your group to advance more quickly (by gaining more karma), why don't you just discuss it with your GM? If it's the sort of game he's comfortable running, then he should be amenable to it. If it's not the sort of game he's comfortable (or capable of) running, then forcing the issue is just being a dick about it.

[Ascalaphus]

A spell that steals/accepts donations of Essence would be a wicked thing to have for say, a Black Magic Tradition caster. It'd scare the living bejeezus out of everyone. But I'd say that it can only
A) heal lost Essence (but not Essence "encumbered" by implants)
B) provide some fuel for castings/drain resistance similar to Blood Magic.