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> What is Essence Exactly?
CaptRory
post Jul 7 2014, 07:46 AM
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I was talking with one of my GMs tonight. He was helping me roll up a Shadowrun 4a character since he played and GM'd it for a long time and we got into a disagreement over Essence.


My point of view was that scraping the bottom of your Essence Barrel means you're the next best thing to a Borg Drone. You become less and less (meta)human as you have parts ripped out and replaced and it effects you even if the game crunch doesn't support that.

His stance was that since it applies no mechanical penalties to social skills, charisma, etc. that there was no penalty for having next to no Essence. You're basically the same person just with more hardware. (Yes there are penalties to things but in the context of this discussion they don't count.)



Does anyone have sources to answer this? The game book was markedly unhelpful.
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SpellBinder
post Jul 7 2014, 07:51 AM
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Compared to SR4, SR5 & SR3 have a lot more involvement in game mechanics than just how much 'ware you can shove into you're body or how penalized a spellcaster's Heal spell is.
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sk8bcn
post Jul 7 2014, 08:04 AM
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I consider that Essence is the soul of the character, tough the explanation variates in the books.

The soul idea made the most sense to me.
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Elfenlied
post Jul 7 2014, 08:09 AM
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It's a mechanic designed to limit ware, particularly for awakened/emerged characters.

In SR4, you suffer no adverse effects (besides penalties to healing checks) for having low essence unless you take certain negative qualities.
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Fatum
post Jul 7 2014, 08:36 AM
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Here's a first-hand account.
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bannockburn
post Jul 7 2014, 09:26 AM
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QUOTE (CaptRory @ Jul 7 2014, 09:46 AM) *
His stance was that since it applies no mechanical penalties to social skills, charisma, etc. that there was no penalty for having next to no Essence. You're basically the same person just with more hardware. (Yes there are penalties to things but in the context of this discussion they don't count.)


Short answer: Your GM is right.
The lack of rules for this situation means that RAW, you can go down to 0,1 and never have any issues relating to nice things like puppies, ice cream or cotton candy.

This being said: There are rules, if you want them. You can pick up cyberpsychosis in a variety of flavours (in the form of fun mental and health issues) from the Augmentation book and / or use the cyberpsychosis optional rule there. Even then, it's pretty tame as a negative quality, and something you can easily avoid. The rules are on p. 21, Augmentation, if you're interested.
You can also be a good roleplayer and just say that your character relates less and less to his fellow humans, the more meat he sheds. There are bound to be effects if you're able to kill someone with a flick of the wrist, before they can even react. You'll probably feel superior, self-assured, and maybe even a bit more inclined to use violence to solve problems. After all, when you're a hammer (not Captain Hammer, this would be inappropriate (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) ), every issue looks like nails. There doesn't need to be a roll for this kind of behaviour. You can just say that this is how you play your character.
On the other hand, you're also completely free to just state that your character received counseling to cope with his loss of essence, and suffers no adverse effects at all.

Now to your original question "What is essence, exactly": There is no exactly, although none of the previous posters are wrong (even though I'd debate the soul bit, not being someone who believes in this kind of thing).

Different editions have handled it differently, but here's my explanation:
Essence is not the soul. Essence is not just a mechanic. Essence is, in essence, Essence. There's a reason why there is no other word for it, because Essence is its own distinct thing. It is a measure of a thing that interacts with your body and the manasphere. If you lose too much of it, your body's connection to the manasphere breaks and you die. That's as specific as my explanation gets, because in my eyes it's not a graspable thing, just something where the limits are clear (although they can, in the case of cyber zombies, still be broken). That's also why it gets harder and harder to heal a body magically the lower its Essence score is.
Furthermore, in my opinion, Essence does not have anything to do with how you interact with the world around you or skews your perception of it, that's what particular implants are responsible for: A cyberlogician will tend to calculate odds and make decisions based on this and may come across as aloof, or outright terrifyingly ruthless; a gillette or razorboy will threaten with spikes of built-in chrome, because they know they're a weapon and can cut anyone they disagree with. Active boosters make people twitchy, because they are constantly on adrenaline, and so on.
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Stahlseele
post Jul 7 2014, 09:31 AM
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Also remember:
The more penalties you assign to augmented characters, the more magic/adept run you will see.
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Shortstraw
post Jul 7 2014, 09:37 AM
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QUOTE (Stahlseele @ Jul 7 2014, 07:31 PM) *
Also remember:
The more penalties you assign to augmented characters, the more magic/adept run you will see.

To be counteracted by the prevalence of background counts.
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Stahlseele
post Jul 7 2014, 09:41 AM
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QUOTE (Shortstraw @ Jul 7 2014, 11:37 AM) *
To be counteracted by the prevalence of background counts.

That argument pops up so often and i have yet to see it actually being used.
Nobody has problems with loading more and more problems on augmented characters, but oh no, not the magic ones, because they paid points for that!
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bannockburn
post Jul 7 2014, 09:44 AM
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QUOTE (Stahlseele @ Jul 7 2014, 11:41 AM) *
That argument pops up so often and i have yet to see it actually being used.


It does become quite an arms race, as soon as incompetent GMs realize that magic PCs are somewhat heavier hitters.
Seen it happen multiple times.
Of course, it's only a problem if you start penalizing cybered characters in the first place and don't know how to handle them wizards (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)
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Shortstraw
post Jul 7 2014, 10:46 AM
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QUOTE (Stahlseele @ Jul 7 2014, 07:41 PM) *
That argument pops up so often and i have yet to see it actually being used.
Nobody has problems with loading more and more problems on augmented characters, but oh no, not the magic ones, because they paid points for that!

I don't do either but the other guy that runs our games dislikes awakened characters.
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sk8bcn
post Jul 7 2014, 11:42 AM
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QUOTE (bannockburn @ Jul 7 2014, 11:26 AM) *
Different editions have handled it differently, but here's my explanation:

Essence is not the soul. [...] Essence is, in essence, Essence. [..] It is a measure of a thing that interacts with your body and the manasphere.

[...]Furthermore, in my opinion, Essence does not have anything to do with how you interact with the world around you or skews your perception of it, that's what particular implants are responsible for: A cyberlogician will tend to calculate odds and make decisions based on this and may come across as aloof, or outright terrifyingly ruthless; a gillette or razorboy will threaten with spikes of built-in chrome, because they know they're a weapon and can cut anyone they disagree with. Active boosters make people twitchy, because they are constantly on adrenaline, and so on.


Actually, Bannock is right. But I found it more comfortable to link that with a soul. It's a concept easy to understand. I don't even need to believe in soul (it's just a game paradygm-I don't believe in magic neither):

e.g.: A cyberzomby is a soulless killer.


Actually, at the origin, every cyber-modification made you less human hence street samourais. They had a bushido-code to keep a human behavior.

With time, it faded more and more as Transhumanism became the new anticipation model.

I guess it's coming back in 5th because the autors want this edition going back to it's Cyberpunk roots.

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Shortstraw
post Jul 7 2014, 11:53 AM
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QUOTE (sk8bcn @ Jul 7 2014, 09:42 PM) *
e.g.: A cyberzomby is a soulless killer.

They aren't soulless killers just soul impaired life disposal technicians (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif) .
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Stahlseele
post Jul 7 2014, 01:21 PM
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Shadowrun goes to great lengths to keep the term soul of of the game.
Well, not so mcuh anymore in SR5.
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Novocrane
post Jul 7 2014, 01:55 PM
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Whether there's a soul or not, there's some kind of astral energy and some amount of physical matter involved. The way I've read it is to say Essence is what binds the two.
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Neraph
post Jul 7 2014, 02:02 PM
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QUOTE (Stahlseele @ Jul 7 2014, 03:41 AM) *
That argument pops up so often and i have yet to see it actually being used.
Nobody has problems with loading more and more problems on augmented characters, but oh no, not the magic ones, because they paid points for that!

I ran a mage with Astral Hazing. I beat my GM to that arms race - I've never encountered BC higher than my own character.
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Tanegar
post Jul 7 2014, 02:38 PM
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QUOTE (Fatum @ Jul 7 2014, 03:36 AM) *

+10 internets to you, sir. Hatchetman's tale is what made Cybertechnology my favorite Shadowrun book. Possibly my favorite book in any RPG.
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pbangarth
post Jul 7 2014, 02:51 PM
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QUOTE (Stahlseele @ Jul 7 2014, 05:41 AM) *
That argument pops up so often and i have yet to see it actually being used.
Nobody has problems with loading more and more problems on augmented characters, but oh no, not the magic ones, because they paid points for that!

I detect a note of bitterness there. Sorry to see it.

I played a Free Spirit PC in Los Angeles. Its Force went up and down like a yo-yo. Headed to its home plane or out to the desert regularly just to feel whole for a while.

Now, don't laugh too hard, I'm sending an adept to Mars. Near as I can tell, he will never see his full Magic again, unless he returns to Earth. Where he is likely to be murdered by the syndicate that took a disliking to him.
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Sendaz
post Jul 7 2014, 02:59 PM
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What do you call a rocket with 100 Lawyer Adepts on a one way trip to Mars?

A good start. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)
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Stahlseele
post Jul 7 2014, 03:15 PM
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@pbangarth
yeah, slightly bitter about that, as i love my truck sized ammounts of metal held together with a bit of biomass . .

and no, i won't laugh at that at all.
if he knows what he is getting into, he only has himself to blame, and if he actually CAN get his magic to work up there, it might be a force multiplier to be reckoned with, seeing how there is no real way to have magical security up there . .
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X-Kalibur
post Jul 7 2014, 03:45 PM
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You'd just need a LOT of plant life in that Martian base in order to see some magical ability. Hope he doesn't have astral perception and doesn't try and use it.
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Elfenlied
post Jul 7 2014, 03:48 PM
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Most Adepts I've seen have about 1-2 points of Bioware for Initiative and attributes, and would be mostly fine.
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Sengir
post Jul 7 2014, 04:04 PM
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Essence is not your soul, but a measure of how strongly your soul/spirit/karma/... is tied to the physical body. The more the body changes, the weaker the link becomes, until the spirit finally has had it and takes off. What cybermancy does is tie this departing spirit forcefully back into the dying body.
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Tymeaus Jalynsfe...
post Jul 7 2014, 04:48 PM
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QUOTE (Stahlseele @ Jul 7 2014, 03:41 AM) *
That argument pops up so often and i have yet to see it actually being used.
Nobody has problems with loading more and more problems on augmented characters, but oh no, not the magic ones, because they paid points for that!


We use it. So much so, in fact, that I always design Awakened characters to be able to actually function in a BGC of 2.
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ShadowDragon8685
post Jul 7 2014, 05:04 PM
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Essence is a mechanical limiter to prevent Augmented characters from simply cramming more-and-more augs into their body, and also to prevent Awakened characters from benefiting both from augmentations and magic, without penalty.

They come up with in-character justifications for it, but personally they've always rung a little hollow to me, especially as magical characters can improve perpetually, if not without difficulty, by Initiating. But you have it.

Frankly, I go with it as being "whatever you want to be," especially in 4e. Some guys who go to 1 Essence are only a half-step above a cyberzombie. Other people go to 0.01 Essence and they remain the liveliest, most human life of the party ever. Because quite honestly, Augmented characters get shat upon enough in Shadowrun, especially as compared to Awakened characters, they don't need to be mechanically pidgeonholed into being soulless murder-monkies, too. Transhumanism does not cost you your soul. (Unless you want to play your character that way.)


As for background counts, I don't use them except in really exceptional places. I tend to assume that any magician is capable of overcoming low-level "emotional/civilization life" types of background count, IE the often-stated fact that any city has a permanent BGC of 1 or 2.

If you want to find the kind of background count that penalizes you in my games, you'll either need to go someplace that's been specifically aspected to a tradition which is not yours, or which has been the scene of extraordinary events and emotional outpouring, like the site of a mass murder, or a house of worship, or a funeral home which has been the site of countless grieving parades of people.
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