What if PCs could use Karma to increase Essense?, Reactions from people on the street. Options

[blakkie]

[Eyeless Blond]

I'm not sure why people are having such a knee-jerk reaction against raising Essence like an attribute. Why, specifically, would it be so terrible? The ability to raise Essence would be a good way to balance mages getting lots of cyber, because at that point raising Essence wouldn't raise Magic, and cyber implantation would still cause Magic loss. It wouldn't make the sam any more powerful at really high karma levels than the high-Grade Initiate (Grade 6-7 initiate would be approximately the Attribute-equivalent of the Essence 12 cybersam, except the cybersam also spent millions of nuyen on 'ware which the mage spent on foci). It would, however, give the sam the same sort of "infinite advancement potential" that adepts and mages have under the current system.

So, what's the problem?

[Cain]

The problem is game balance. I've tried this under all 3 Shadowrun incarnations, and I've never been able to create an awakened starting character with the firepower and toughness of a well-designed 1 million :nuyen: street samurai. I've been able to create super-specialists that exceed him in certain areas; but in the overall picture, sams start out much more powerful than the awakened.

Now, this of course evens out as the game progresses. Mages and Adepts become progressively more powerful, while the cyber-types plateau out eventually. But that's all part of the balance of the game. The price you pay for being cybered is that you'll soon hit the limit of flesh and blood.

[blakkie]

[Fortune]

As far as we know, under SR4 rules, no Attribute will be able to be higher than 6 (plus any applicable racial modifiers). Why should Essence be any different? If you really have a problem with balance, introducing new and more Essence-friendly cyber should do the trick nicely.

I voted for the crack-ho! ;)

[sapphire_wyvern]

Well, while we're talking about cyber balance....

I think that most cyberware (and drones, and electronics gear, and whatever the new hackers use for illegal utilities) should be drastically reduced in cost.

Then, the range of starting money should be correspondingly contracted so that characters can have an equivalent (to SR3 levels) amount of cyberware, illegal utilities, drones, etc.

In SR4, they're bringing starting character attribute and skill levels away from the "elite" level they currently occupy. It doesn't make sense for a starting shadowrunner to have ware crammed into their body that would pay for a permanent High lifestyle.

I'm against reducing the competency of starting characters, so the best solution is to reduce the relative cost of the 'ware.

It also makes all those gangers with implanted cyberweaponry actually make some sense, and gives the GM a little more freedom for light cybering of security and police forces without the PCs complaining about the economics.

Good for the game in many ways, as far as I can see.

[blakkie]

Ya, with another throttle besides :nuyen: that spread out cyberware implants over the career of a character you could lower the equipment costs without having them go nuts during character creation.

[Fortune]

Most likely because Essence isn't a usable Attribute as much as it is a limitation, much like in SR3. Hell, we don't even know if it is an Attribute at all. Although Jon said it was in another thread, he also said that Initiative was an Attribute. I wonder if that can be 'bought up' with Karma. :D

[Grinder]

I want it! Adepts can buy power points, why can't mundanes buy essence? :D

[NightHaunter]

No way. Picture this.
Mage wires 3, smartlink, Muscle rep, and full use of magic.
Oh give them a VCR and and killer deck as well.
Here we go 1 man shadowrun team.

Oh yeah I actually tried this several years ago it doesn't work.

[RunnerPaul]

Even if we ignore the game balance issues pointed out above, this would also invalidate major chunks of setting. Even though there's a debate about what essence is, the implant designers and the surgeons know that you can only implant so much chrome before you kill someone. That's the whole reason behind the creation of cyberzombies, for instance. If someone could get an implant, and the essence impact of the implant were to get smaller as time goes on, cyberzombies suddenly don't make a whole lot of sense when you weigh the drawbacks of being a cyberzombie against the drawbacks of just giving the patient's body time to adjust to each individual implant before putting in the next.

In short, this sort of change would be like the 2nd-to-3rd edition transition's "Ordinary plants can't block an astral body like the previous editions suggested, they have to be dual natured to do so" only magnified 10 or so.

[Grinder]

Blablabla in-game-logic blabla :D

More power to the mundanes! So: only available to mundanes!

Yes, i'm not dead serious about it. ;) I like the idea but heavily doubt that it ever will happen.

[blakkie]

[Botch]

I seem to be only one of two who answered, yes.

The whole concept of essense is cocked and lacking in internal consistency. The closest thing I can imagine it to be is a power-source-thingie for your aura/persona-thingie.

a) A child is born with cataracts and thus blind from birth. Does removing the catacts affect the child's essence as it has gained a new sense.
b) A man is short-sighted and needs corrective techology, at what point does essense loss start? With glasses, contact lenses, laser surgery, or simply cyber-eyes; why?
c) A person loses all/some movement in their legs, why does a peg leg cost essense(CyberPirates) but not a wheel chair or walking stick?
d) A person is hard of hearing why does the hearing aid, which is essential to interpret sound affect this "essense" when it is moved from outside to the inside of the ear.

I want essence to be a stat with a ceiling of 6 just like the attributes. I don't have anything like the body I had when I was 5, not even the same atoms, so why does it matter so much when part of me changes from a collection of mostly hydrogen/oxygen/carbon to metals and longer carbon chains.

Your aura is you, you are your aura, but rapid changes (cyberware, etc) cause a separation. No adult in shadowrun has the aura of a baby. So yeah, cyber damages your essence and thus your aura/soul is weakened because your abstract concept of self had diverged dramatically and suddenly from your physical actuality causing a spiritual disassociation.

Edited to finish the point

So if you spend time (karma) focusing on settling into your new form the spiritual disassociation is reduced, just like aging does not effect essence. This can be carried further and the introduction of essence loss for the removal/loss of body parts becomes game-balancable with essence that can be restored.

[nezumi]

I voted for the crack.

I can certainly see it being seriously unbalancing, no question about it. But I would set it up so its more pricey than initiating. It would be very, very unusual to see someone with more than 8 essence, and those are the experienced people. (Keep in mind, the price would be based off of your essence not counting cyber. So the wired to the max sam is paying just as much as the adept.) A mage wouldn't want to use it because, unless he's level 14 initiate (which means he's already pretty god-like), it's simply not worth the cost in karma. It saves him from losing a magic point in the future. No metamagic, costs more karma, etc.

As has been said over and over again, until my brain bleeds, mundanes really don't have reasonable places to put their karma. Assault rifles 16 really isn't a huge improvement over assault rifles 15, but it costs how much karma? Whereas the mage, for that amount of karma, is learning his new level 10 spell (yay for quests to the astral planes) and working on his new initiation where he learns how to divine the future.

[Ellery]

How much karma do your mundanes have to spend, anyway? Between all the combat skills, all the electronics skills, all the intimidation skills, etc., there are lots of places to usefully spend karma. And with knowledge skills and the like, there are lots of places to spend karma for flavor, too.

If you don't want to have any diversity in your skillset, then yeah, it gets hard after a while to keep improving the same thing. That shouldn't be a surprise--sounds like a feature to me.

[blakkie]

[Eyeless Blond]

[blakkie]

[Eyeless Blond]

[Vuron]

Well I think certain cyberware that should be extremely useful and commonplace that currently has crazy essence costs should be significantly revised (uhh can you say radios? ;))

Further I think that there should be so readjustments of really peachy keen things that become mandatory for adepts to have higher relative essence costs (enhanced articulation).

I'd say that one thing that should definitely be examined if the essence recovery and upgrade process. It should be possible for a street samurai to trade in his used smartlink when he can afford it to a standard on up.

Maybe another way to balance it would be to offer individual components upgrades in ways other than decreased essence costs.

Let's say the base smartlink offers a set benefit but when you want to upgrade it to whiz bang level you not only get decreased essence cost but more useful effects. For alot of cyberware this really isn't going to be neccesary (woot i just upgraded my cyber cellphone and got these cool new features) but it would allow more a different sort of upgrade path than just trying to pack the most cyberware you can into a 6 essence body.

[nezumi]

[Dawnshadow]

If you're playing a game where the mundanes have gotten that powerful, and you aren't making more skills useful, then the mundanes have a right to feel like they're stagnating.

If, on the other hand, you're playing a game where skills are useful then they mundane will never feel stagnation. He/she/it may feel like the maximum power is capped, but not stagnated.

Beyond that, I like 10 more than 8 for skills -- and the training rules should be scrapped at high skill levels, since you reach a point and you're developing your own style more than learning someone else's.

[nezumi]

As I said, these are fairly young characters. Well below 100 karma. The reason why so many skills aren't useful is because they have a team. The sam doesn't need to learn etiquette because the face does that. He can get it up to 3, but anything past that is really just a waste. Same with electronics. Same with computers. And since he can only use 1 weapon at a time, same with more than half of the weapon skills.

Example, we have a team of 5 (which is the smallest of my teams).

The sam has some karma he's sitting on. He can:
Wait a little longer and add it to his favored weapon skill (and we all know the super benefit going from 10 to 11 in a skill brings).
Put it into a new weapon skill he isn't likely to use
Put it into a skill someone else has at a much higher rating
Put it into something off-the-wall. Sailboating. Suborbital b/r

None really look terrific.

Lets look at the mage.
He can do ALL that PLUS:
Initiate and gain a metamagic
Learn fireball 6 or one of the bajillion other super-useful spells
Create a familiar
Bond to some uber piece of gear (since he doesn't have a ton to spend money on)

Any of those look better than anything available to the sam.

Plus, I have as of yet to see anyone add a piece of cyberware in-game. I've been playing for almost a decade, and no one has *EVER* bought cyber. I'd like to see someone go under the knife for once.

Perhaps I'm not letting them 'use skills'. But I run the combat the same way as probably anyone else. The only skill I've really tried to dump is electronics vs. electronics b/r. And this seems to be the difficult my sams are having. (Riggers and deckers don't seem to share their difficulties, and faces generally drop out too early to care).

[Dawnshadow]

Since when is someone else having a skill a reason to not take it? Does everyone just call up the face when they need something off the street? Do they get sent places that they all have to socialize? I mean.. my group is in a really strangely structured game, permanently employed be someone, who does most of the negotiations himself.. but we do have to do some of the stuff ourselves. My charisma 3 Street Sam was the one approached for a major job.. he did a lot of the initial discussion and prep stuff for it himself, then let his boss take over for the final details (like, talking them into a little more nuyen).

Likewise: If I put skills into something really off the wall, I expect them to either be useful in the future (I know we're going to be on a ship, so I take a ship skill), because they make sense for the character (multiple weapon skills -- because he has had to grab weapons he didn't know how to use before. Usually when he's already in trouble.)

I think the major problem is that your group seems to pigeonhole skills, so that other than weapons, it's only one person that needs skills. I've never encountered that really in my group. They sometimes help each other out getting things, but a lot of their stuff is individually done too..