Exceptional Attribute: Mundane Only, ...Character Generation Houserule Options

[Wired_SR_AEGIS]

Unfortunatly, yes. The route to cover this by lowering essence cost notably leads to better cybermages and little else. Which is why I think taking out the 1+1/2 rule is such a big mistake, probably the biggest in what we've seen in the rules so far. Making it dependent on the character not haviing a magic or resonance attribute, on the other hand, takes cybermages down a bit compared to the sam, at least.

Right! And balancing the cyber-mage is a key component of this discussion. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

...honestly, that's where a not-insignificant portion of my ire has always resided: The end result of combining the Awakened Character template + Cyberware.

I think your suggestion is pretty sound. Are you seriously considering implementing it in your games?

Much as it screwed with many characters from SR2, I liked that rule best (with SR4's a close successor). SR3 numbed that down with their Errata later, where bioware only caused 1/2 bioindex Magic loss, and introducing overstress.

Interesting. I didn't recall that. Though, it's been the better part of a decade since I really spent much time thinking about Shadowrun. Almost sounds like they were throwing a bone to SR 3 Adepts.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

[Sendaz]

I remember one group that did the Higher (Cyber or Bio) Ware at full value and the lesser at half value, but they also made magical types/awakened critters lose Double their magic for any essence loss.

So if a normal joe paid 0.4 essence for that set of cyber eyes, a mage would lose the same 0.4 essence but lost 0.8 Magic. It tended to curb the cybermage option a bit and made the threat of burnout from both cyber and drug abuse/similar a real threat.

[hermit]

I think your suggestion is pretty sound. Are you seriously considering implementing it in your games?

Yes, very much. If SR5 is implemented at all, it will be with a - priobably refined - version of this.

Interesting. I didn't recall that. Though, it's been the better part of a decade since I really spent much time thinking about Shadowrun. Almost sounds like they were throwing a bone to SR 3 Adepts.

They definitly were. They also introduced a lot of powerful new options for adepts in late splatbooks like SOTA 2064.

[Wired_SR_AEGIS]

I remember one group that did the Higher (Cyber or Bio) Ware at full value and the lesser at half value, but they also made magical types/awakened critters lose Double their magic for any essence loss.

So if a normal joe paid 0.4 essence for that set of cyber eyes, a mage would lose the same 0.4 essence but lost 0.8 Magic. It tended to curb the cybermage option a bit and made the threat of burnout from both cyber and drug abuse/similar a real threat.

Mmmm. That would definitely curb some of the perverse Cyber incentives that Mages have. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Yes, very much. If SR5 is implemented at all, it will be with a - priobably refined - version of this.

Keep us posted on your final iteration. As well as any insight you have into how it plays out in practice.

Last thought: Would you ever automatically grant the Quality for characters who choose Priority 'E' for Magic/Resonance?

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

[hermit]

Last thought: Would you ever automatically grant the Quality for characters who choose Priority 'E' for Magic/Resonance?

That could be considered. It's still a hotfix, and would probably interact badly with 5E's iterations of Sensitive System, so the final form will likely change.

Whether it sees much testing depends on whether, if and how SR5 is implemented with my local guys, of course. Some are quite unenthusiastic about it.

[Seerow]

Honestly if you wanted to make something mundane only to fix the balance, it needs to be something a lot more major than a quality few characters ever take to begin with.

We're talking on the level of "Edge is now Mundane only. Magic/Resonance replaces Edge when the character becomes awakened", or something similarly crazy.

[Shemhazai]

We're talking on the level of "Edge is now Mundane only. Magic/Resonance replaces Edge when the character becomes awakened", or something similarly crazy.

Bringing Magic/Resonance to 7 at chargen does take away edge in every case except for humans and elves who use their two highest priorities for metatype and magic, or in one case where humans use their highest priority for metatype, and priority C for Magic, sacrificing all of the magical skill points and either 5 or 2 spells if they want priority B to be something else.

And what does Magic really do in SR5? One more die in the dice pool that, if it hits, just adds to drain anyway, assuming they cast a high enough force to make it matter. One more point of base damage on Indirect spells. One more success allowed before the drain becomes physical. Two higher maximum spell Force, probably the same for Conjuring and Enchanting. Maybe something to do with active foci. Another Power point for Adepts. (Those last two would be nice, actually.)

And look at what it costs on top of that. 14 points of positive quality. No thanks, unless I see something in the rules to make it worth it. All that to save a whopping 35 Karma, assuming it will still cost 5 x new rating. (Which I haven't seen confirmed yet.)

So far, it looks like drain minimization is where the real power in this edition lies. With a 30 dice pool for doing magical things, you can expect about 10 successes assuming the Force you're dealing with allows them all. And then your drain, which can't be mitigated by anything other than your natural healing, will really hurt. But who am I kidding? Who's going to get 30 dice? 7 Magic + 7 spell focus + 12 skill + 2 specialization + 2 mentor spirit = 30 dice. Oh right, you could spend your probably reduced edge too if you want to actually die from drain.

[Wired_SR_AEGIS]

Honestly if you wanted to make something mundane only to fix the balance, it needs to be something a lot more major than a quality few characters ever take to begin with.

We're talking on the level of "Edge is now Mundane only. Magic/Resonance replaces Edge when the character becomes awakened", or something similarly crazy.

That would be pretty crazy. I'd be concerned about unintended consequences with something like that. The design goal is something with a small footprint in the rules, that doesn't dramatically impact the game and is more of a nudge in the right direction.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

[Seerow]

That would be pretty crazy. I'd be concerned about unintended consequences with something like that. The design goal is something with a small footprint in the rules, that doesn't dramatically impact the game and is more of a nudge in the right direction.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Nothing 'small footprint' is going to rebalance the mess that has been made of street sam vs mage balance over the last few editions.

[ShadowDragon8685]

If you're looking to give augmented characters some means of achieving vertical Karma parity with Awakened characters.... You're probably SOL, unless you bust out the military hardware and let the street sams run around in the equivalent of powered armor with an Ares Thunderstruck modified for burst fire in their arms and an LMG turret-mounted over their shoulder. And even then, you'd need to come up with a way for them to dispense horrible murderdeath onto spirits and such, perhaps by letting that Thunderstruck fire a chunk of magically-active iron that is substandard as a projectile against mundane targets but counts as damage from a magical source.

If you want to come up with something that might make street sams a more attractive option... My knee-jerk reaction is to let them spend Karma to "buy off" the essence impact of augmentations. Explain it as the 'ware becoming more holistically a whole part of themselves over time. But, it has a catch attached to it. The Essence price of any 'ware so bought off is also deducted permanently from the character's Magic or Resonance rating, and automatically rounds up to the next whole point. This doesn't affect the street samurai, the gun bunny, the rigger or the hacker, because they don't have a Magic or Resonance rating. However, it will be a big blow to the Wizard/Technomancer who thinks they'll just load up with .99 Essence worth of the best 'ware and then buy it off - each item they buy off will raise their Essence by its value, but will permanently reduce their Magic by 1. It will be a definitely not-worth-it trade-off to any magician or technomancer, without coming outright and saying "you can't do it because we said so;" the option will still be there, if for some reason they want to do so. They just won't want to unless they've initiated a lot, want to buy down their essence loss for some reason, and are willing to eat the hits to their Magic. (Let their metamagics/equivalents remain unaffected, don't be completely heartless.)

This will give Augmented characters license to expand horizontally using Karma instead of just nuyen. So sure, when you need something a given magician specializes in, it's hard to beat him, but when you need something odd done, call in the goofball who has as much cyber in him as Adam Jensen.

If this is for a MU*, you might also consider allowing this only for 'ware that's been in a character's body for a given amount of real time or game time equal to a given amount of, like six months to a year. So sure, you could get your old alphaware Wired Reflexes 2 ripped out and install the Delta Wired 3 for less Essence cost, letting you buy more 'ware to put in there, or you could buy off your trusty reliable Wired 2's essence impact off completely for Karma, letting you get something shinier and new with the Essence and nuyen you just saved.

It would also make people with full cyberlimbs and a cybertorso an actually-useful option. I'd let that be a chargen option-quality for those specific types of cyber.

[Wired_SR_AEGIS]

Interesting suggestion. I like the spirit of where it's coming from. And building in a mechanism that makes it impractical for Awakened characters gives it a more targeted effect.

May be a bit heavy handed, though. That isn't an insignificant change.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

[ShadowDragon8685]

No it isn't an insignificant change, and I'm not sure what the proper pricing on it should be, either. Maybe 10, 15, or 20x the essence cost of the implant.


But you're not going to change a significant problem with an insignificant change to the system, and you don't want to introduce a mechanic that would let mundanes buy more Essence without the Awakened do so as well, as they will be saying "Well, why can't I do that?" This lets you restore Essence lost to augmentations, without buying more than your original grand total, which would be of too much interest to unaugmented magicians.

Another implementation might be to not restore the lost essence, but convert the karma-integrated aug's essence cost into essence hole. You could then gain that essence back normally, if you wanted to spend the time and nuyen on rejuvenation therapy. And, of course, retain the loss to special attributes for doing this, because magic/resonance does not play well with cyber, and convincing your aura to fill those pieces of metal and alien flesh and make them a full part of yourself is gonna take some sacrificing.

If you wanted to be less than outright evil to the magicians/TMs and such, you might let them track their special attribute by percent, and while it would functionally fall to the next lowest integer immediately, they could then use the remainder to buy off other low-impact augs.
Example: Sally Shadowmage has Essence 5, Magic 6, and has initiated once. She has a cybereyes basic system rating 4 (.5 essence) and a cyberears basic system Rating 4 (.5 essence) and thinks it's about damn time she got a datajack to boot. If she just bought a datajack, her Essence would drop to 4.9, dropping her effective Magic to 5. Alternatively, she could buy off, with Karma, the essence impact of her cybereyes basic system. Doing this would penalize her magic attribute by .5, making it 5.5 and lowering its effective rating to 5, but the Metamagic she learned for having initiated would remain intact, and it would leave her with an essence hole of .5 to play with. It would also let her buy off her Cyberears at the same time, or at a later date, giving her an essence hole of 1 to play with, penalizing her magic by another .5, to the whole integer 5. Under my original proposal, her first buy-off would cost her 1 whole point of magic, and the second would cost her another, leaving her at Magic 4, despite having only reclaimed one whole point of Essence with which she could then buy Magic back up with yet more Karma, or install yet more augmentations. It's clearly not a worthwhile trade-off, as she'd have to buy back up to 5.

But again, that depends on how much you want to support the "Magician with one point worth of augs" concept, since the whole point of having cyberware eat your soul is to prevent the Awakened from also being street samurai or super-riggers and rendering the mundane characters superflous. That said, even if you go with the friendlier option of the second, if the magician is spending Karma out of his ears to mitigate the effects of getting ware, he's not Initiating, or buying more spells or binding foci or whatever.

You could also just go with a bit of Because We Said So and simply make doing this cost the Awakened more Karma than the Mundane. This would also allow you some leeway to, for instance, charge the Emerged more than the Mundane, but less than the Awakened, because let's face it, technomancy, while great, is not as universally-useful as magic.

[Wired_SR_AEGIS]

But again, that depends on how much you want to support the "Magician with one point worth of augs" concept, since the whole point of having cyberware eat your soul is to prevent the Awakened from also being street samurai or super-riggers and rendering the mundane characters superflous.

Right. That's the central objection.

Which is also why I was curious if there had been a karma curve modeled during development at which it was clear that at specific karma thresholds, awakened characters pulled ahead. And also where on that curve they were designed to have rough parity.

July 11th needs to hurry up and get here, so I can start ripping through this core book in all its PDF glory. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

[Sendaz]

July 11th needs to hurry up and get here, so I can start ripping through this core book in all its PDF glory. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Due to a last minute change, you only get to preorder your PDF on the 11th. The actual release of the PDF is to be 1 week before the hardcopy comes out.


Just kidding (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)


heh, pretty funny, eh Wired_SR_AEGIS?

*schnick*

Wired? Um... where did that extendable baton come from?

*tap* *tap*

Ha ha .. very funny .. we get it.. I made funny .. now you making funny right?

*tap* *tap*

Wired??

WIRED???

<fade to black with several crunchy sound effects in background>

[hermit]

You should have hacked his baton. He'd have lost all the boni from it if you had bricked it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

[Wired_SR_AEGIS]

Due to a last minute change, you only get to preorder your PDF on the 11th. The actual release of the PDF is to be 1 week before the hardcopy comes out.


Just kidding (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)


heh, pretty funny, eh Wired_SR_AEGIS?

*schnick*

Wired? Um... where did that extendable baton come from?

*tap* *tap*

Ha ha .. very funny .. we get it.. I made funny .. now you making funny right?

*tap* *tap*

Wired??

WIRED???

<fade to black with several crunchy sound effects in background>

HA! Oh man, you totally got me.

...my jaw was hitting the floor, and my eyes were widening while I prepared to groan in anguish.

Hehehehe. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

-Wired_SR_AEGIS