Transhumanism or superheroes - without essence cost, how hard would the game break?, When money and BP/Karma are the only factor... Options

[Yerameyahu]

Anyway, that's just me. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I wasn't saying resemblance to levels and feats is necessarily negative. The implementation is all that really matters. (My pet fix is to re-scale skills to 12 and uncap them, letting accelerating costs rein in growth.)

Interestingly, there's a basic mechanic similar to that which approximates the cost of 'buying up' Essence, as suggested above: just start everyone at 0 'augmentation use', and make them go *up* instead of down. The more you get cybered, the harder it gets (accelerating). This could be implemented various ways, including buying-up Essence, cost-mulitpliers on each successive implantation, even (though probably not) Lifestyle costs. Assuming you wanted anything like a 'ware limit in the first place, of course. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Irion]

@Yerameyahu
You mean you buy up Essence and the mage may invest his essence points in magic and the sam may invest his essence points in ware?
Sounds good. But how to fix, that the sam is paying twice during chargen? (BP for money and for essence?)
Or does the mage needs to buy up magic and essence. (Leaving initiations out of the picture...)

[Yerameyahu]

I haven't thought it through at all, but that seems like a good instinct. But, you needn't implement it as buying up Essence at all; instead, one option is for each new implant to simply cost more, as your body becomes more and more strained (or something; fluff comes second). (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) This is effectively how the alpha, beta, delta stuff already works, but more abstract.

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

Well, way to go, this is actually a really productive discussion!

@Brainpiercing7.62mm

Which is rulewise a VERY bad thing and should be corrected. Because with something like that, you open the floodgates for abuse of the system or make it unusable for any other kind of character.
It should not be like that.

Alright, normally I agree with this kind of comment...

Magic, Essence and Ware
Essence loss works like Boni or mali from Spells or ware.
For every started point of essence your effective magic raiting is reduced by one. So a mage with two points of essence loss would have and a starting magic of 5 would have a magic of 5(3).
This means he would be treated as a magic 3 mage except for raising magic, until he regains his essence.
If he would like to increase his magic from 3 to 4, without raising his essance again, he would need to spent 30 Points of karma. If he wants to raise it further he needs either to gain an additional point of essence, regain one point of his used essence or initiate once.

1)This takes care of all the possible loopholes further ruling might open. There is no way a mage might be able to ignore or lowball the price for essance loss/cyberware on his magic. And a sweet side effect you may now use essance draining creature on him, without screwing with his character too much.

I'm not so sure about that: If essence drain creates a modifier to magic score, then after being drained a point of essence he would have to buy back his magic paying for his FULL unaugmented magic attribute. That screws him over a bit more, I would say.
I agree though that an ALWAYS a mod method is more consistent than any hack-jobs that sometimes make things modifiers and sometimes don't.

2)An other possibility is to use a "ware index", calculated the same way essence loss from where is calculated. But ware does not decrease your essence, you are limited to "max ware index"= current essance. The drawbacks this "ware index" has on magic would be open to discussion

This I don't quite get.

Mundane Initiation
To use mundane Initiation you must be a meta race. Critters might use it with the GM approval. It is howerver not usable by Free Spirits, AIs or Infected

Costs: 10+3xgrade.
Effects: For every grade you are able to raise your natural essence score. Your maximum essence is raised as is your current essance. The cost are "new maximum essance" x5 (or x3).
For every grade you are able to pick one special ability:

For all abilities round up.
Mastery of Skill: This allows you to raise one selected skill further with karma. Up to a new natural maximum of 6+Grade. May be picked more than once for other skills.
Mastery of Attribute: This allows you to raise the natural maximum of an attribute by Grade/4. (May be picked more than once for other attributes)
Updated healing: You are one with your augmentations. For all healing tests you may add Grade/5 to your essance score up to your max essance.(Thinking about just allowing max essance or give Grade/2...Why not just full grade? It's not like mundanes will be shitting karma just because now they have a use for it. Healing times are already fast, making them a bit faster isn't that big of a boon.

Strong Will: Whenever you resist a spell with only willpower, you may reroll every dice which did not score a hit once.
Resistance of Steel: For every two points (one point) of essance loss due to Cyberware you gain one additional dice to resist any kind of mana-based direct spell.
Natural augmentation: Cultured bioware and basic bioware grade alpa or higher can regenerate as it would belong to your body. This means for example your bioware is healed automatically by augmented healing, spells or the regeneration power. In addition it makes those Implants harder to detect. Increase the threshold for scanners or Assencing by one.

This is all pretty good.
I've put in some corrections I'm seeing. I still think a different name rather than also calling it initiation is in order, BUT I can see where you're coming from. The powers, maybe call them Metaphysical abilities (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) , all seem nice. I'm not sure the Natural Augmention does much, though. There are no damage rules for cyber or bio anymore, or are there? If anything, it should simply negate healing penalties, but Augmented Healing already does that. The thing I'm missing is an allowance for skill groups. It should be possible to raise them above 6, also, simply because normally taking skill-groups in specialty skills is already shooting yourself in the foot.

I am a bit at war with myself if I should base every ability on your lost essance. But this would make this "advancement" a bit too worse for lightly cybered. And those need it really bad...
Having ideas for many more, but need feedback first. Too good, to bad, more based on lost essance, more on kept essance and so on

Ummm... lightly cybered are mostly mages and adepts, which means they don't really need much of a boost (at least not after Way of the Adepd). A lightly cybered mundane is obviously doing something wrong, because such a character could only be played for pure flavour. If flesh were equivalent with cyber or bioware in game terms, then the game would be doing something wrong.

[Irion]

@Brainpiercing7.62mm

This I don't quite get.

You do not loose essence but the essence limits the amount of ware you may have build in. (Thus there won't be essence holes anymore. Making bookkeeping easyier and if you cybersam would ever get drained of essence he won't be instant dead but would need to get rid of some ware fast!)
The other benefit would be, that the drawbacks of ware for magic users could be done independent from essence loss.
(For example: Every point of "ware index" increases drain by one, reduces magic by one or something different)

I'm not so sure about that: If essence drain creates a modifier to magic score, then after being drained a point of essence he would have to buy back his magic paying for his FULL unaugmented magic attribute. That screws him over a bit more, I would say.
I agree though that an ALWAYS a mod method is more consistent than any hack-jobs that sometimes make things modifiers and sometimes don't.

Well,you may get back Essence through Gen-tech and regenerate your magic. So You would not really loose this point of magic. It would only be blocked untill you are healed. Even if you raise your magic attribute, you would get this point back with cellular repair and in the end you would not have lost any Karma...

A lightly cybered mundane is obviously doing something wrong, because such a character could only be played for pure flavour. If flesh were equivalent with cyber or bioware in game terms, then the game would be doing something wrong.

But if we are already building the "Epic level handbook" for shadowrun, why not think of those poor souls too?

The thing I'm missing is an allowance for skill groups. It should be possible to raise them above 6, also, simply because normally taking skill-groups in specialty skills is already shooting yourself in the foot.

Right now, you would need to select every three skill on their own.
But feel free to add one for skill groups...

There are no damage rules for cyber or bio anymore, or are there? If anything, it should simply negate healing penalties, but Augmented Healing already does that.

There are a bit in augmentation...
Natural augmentation was meant to be a bit for the infiltrator (bioware hard to spot) and the self sustaining man. Maybe I should allow normal healing of the implants, too. If not to severly damaged at GM-fiat.

[snowRaven]

There are no damage rules for cyber or bio anymore, or are there?

Advanced Medical Rules in Augmentation, ppg. 120-127.

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

@Brainpiercing7.62mm

You do not loose essence but the essence limits the amount of ware you may have build in. (Thus there won't be essence holes anymore. Making bookkeeping easyier and if you cybersam would ever get drained of essence he won't be instant dead but would need to get rid of some ware fast!)
The other benefit would be, that the drawbacks of ware for magic users could be done independent from essence loss.
(For example: Every point of "ware index" increases drain by one, reduces magic by one or something different)

True. I'm thinking, though, that the most simple method is at this point to use most of what's still in the rules. I would stick with mundane initiation.

Well,you may get back Essence through Gen-tech and regenerate your magic. So You would not really loose this point of magic. It would only be blocked untill you are healed. Even if you raise your magic attribute, you would get this point back with cellular repair and in the end you would not have lost any Karma...

Yeah, let's just pretend I didn't totally forget that you can now get essence back...

But if we are already building the "Epic level handbook" for shadowrun, why not think of those poor souls too?

Yeah, those poor souls are the ones that make mundanes look really bad. Trauma/Platelet overcasting mages, MT4 or CAoA adepts and the like.

Right now, you would need to select every three skill on their own.
But feel free to add one for skill groups...

Yeah, it gets iffy with the costs... but maybe it's not actually an issue to just make them interchangeable: mostly skill-groups, except maybe cracking, aren't needed at high ratings, because you won't want all the skills, just at most two in your specialty. Taking them high often means voluntarily spending more, anyway.