Wrong. You coul not. If you healed up your essence and lowered it again, you would again lose magic.

Btw: It reduced your current magic attribute AND the maximum.

Actually, in the long run it's not a boost. If we talk lengthy campaigns, money is not a problem - it's infinite resource (you can't get all the money, after all), so if you don't have enough money, you just wait a bit until you get more. Essence on the other hand is a finite resource, you have 6 of it and will never have more. So eliminating Essence discount and introducing money discount actually benefits the short term while damaging the long term as it lowers the overall amount of chrome a character can put in himself, but gives earlier access to more advanced tech. For example, my current street sam would have enough money to buy delta move-by-wire under these rules, but as he'll have to pay the full 2.5 Essence instead of 1.25, he'll have to drop some other implants. Under 4A rules I'll have to make a few more runs before I get the needed sum, but in the end I'll get all implants, bio and cyber, I want at delta grade and have around 1 Essence left for emergency needs, awakening and the like.

i rather doubt that getting delta move by wire was the standard for SR4. sure, it was a theoretical possibility, but it isn't exactly something you can automatically expect everyone to have.

now, maybe in *your games* it was reasonable to expect a street samurai to have a few million nuyen to spare (and not retire) and know the right people to be able to find and access a delta facility... but i very much doubt that would be common if we were to do some research of what most gaming groups had.

if deltaware has become more accessible (and betaware too), then it is definitely a buff for most groups. whether or not it's a buff that outweighs the 1/2 essence cost of your lower total, i don't know, but it's definitely a buff.

Yeah, if your Samurai had enough nuyen or clout to run MBW3 and he hadn't retired, you were definitely doing it wrong, lol.

I mean, the easiest way to win at Shadowrun in SR3 was Resources: A, Permanent High Lifestyle, retire.

Yeah. MBW3 was only slightly less Mythical than Excalibur (did anyone ever get that sword to the Last Knight of the Crying Spire? to whit -H-).

While essence is definatley a Very Finite resource Karma and Nuyen are not "infinite" resources. There were usually other things that need paying for along the way and new 'ware was something you negotiated for in the paycheck haggling or something you saved for for quite some time. Once or twice you might hit a motherload of Paydata in a run or something that made it faster to get the cash.

Not necessarily. I have yet to make a character who runs for money alone.

WHere are you getting this from?

Step 6: Resist Drain
Drain calculation is listed for each spell; the Drain Value
is determined using the Force and the listed calculation,
but can never be lower than 2. After casting a spell, you
must resist Drain using the dice pool for Drain Resistance
according to your tradition. Remember that if the
number of hits you rolled when casting the spell (Step
4) exceeds your Magic rating, then the Drain causes
Physical instead of Stun damage.

I think that's something for the errata thread then, because...

sTeP 3: ChOOse sPell FORCe
You must declare the Force at which to cast the spell. The Force acts as a limit on the spell. Higher Force spells are more powerful, but cause more Drain. You can cast a spell at a Force up to twice your Magic rating. If the number of hits (not net hits) you get after applying the limit exceeds your Magic rating, the spell’s Drain is Physical instead of Stun damage.

You're right, I misread the rejuvination rules. It restores your essence, but does nothing for magic/magic cap loss. You're generally better off with the essence hole in 4th ed if you're magical and ever plan on getting ware again.

Carry on

Not really looks to be working as intended to me it fixes the whole cast at force 1 then spend edge to uncap exploit.

I can easily say that it's you who's doing it wrong if after a meaningful time of play your character can't get access to the high-end resources.
Delta grade MBW3 costs only 1.75 millions. A joygirl will make this sum in 8750 hours of work which is slightly less than a year of lying on her back with her legs spread wide. If your team is making less in a year than a joygirl, something is really wrong

But that's not a valid argument I think.

I mentioned my charactrer only to illustrate my point. It's an example about the infinity of money - they are infinite in the world. You can always add a few new bytes to the credstick. Of course, not all and every game would come to this point, but they might as well do. (And my game has come, so if I plan to convert my character from 4A to 5th, he'll be severely nerfed). But the game gives an option to have something, namely delta grade ware, so it's perfectly legal to have it. If the gear isn't meant to be used, there's no need for it in the books. And I really think that having something like 'look at the shiny! Like it? You'll never get it. Ever!' is a poor game design and have no reason to accuse Shadowrun of it. So I'm assuming that if there are rules for certain gear, it is meant to be used in the games.


I'm sad about those game groups, really am. Never to play a game to its fullest is really sad.
As to retirement - every starting street sam can sell his chrome and retire. Hell, You make a starting character, get all the bucks you can, and then you don't need to worry about money for the rest of your life. It means that shadowrunners are in the business for some other reasons than a retirement plan. At the very least, it should be viewed as a professional sport. For example, one NHL team just bought out the contract of one space-loving goalie. Under the agreement they'll be paying him $1,5 MLN a year until he is 50. Will he go for an early retirement? I highly doubt it. Next season he'll be playing in some other team.

And yeah, I agree that it's a boost - in the short term. If you plan a three-four-five session game, you probably won't feel the difference. In the long run it's quite the contrary. I could speculate that the boost comes in the mid term, when you get just enough money to afford some stuff, but not enough to afford all the stuff you want, while in the short term you'll either fell no difference or feel worse, but that would be speculation until I get hard numbers. And I'd hate to speculate.

Wow, things got cheap in 4th. I totally agree that stuff is put in game to use, but MBW3 (in SR3) was a hell of a toy to get anyway. But Delta MBW3? That used to be a spend of 24,000,000 nuyen with a base time of 90 days using an Etiquette roll against a TN of 27 to locate (base time divided by successes). Or you could get the stuff via RolePlay etc.

Either way took some serious effort to get your hands on.

But hey, that was a differant time. Some things were in the books for the GM to use (like Cybermancy) more than for Runners to use.

That still happens (Toxics, Dissonants, Cyberzombies), but is generally specifically marked as such.

And it tends to slowly shift over time. Tech prices should go down, availability should probably shift over time, etc, etc. We traditionally kind of hand wave that sort of economic shift away a little bit (by assuming there's something off-screen special about this year's Dermal Plating that will, somehow, explain why it costs the same and does the same thing)...but I think with cyberware grades, for instance, that's a good example of a natural economic/technological growth.

It used to be that custom chrome was the brightest shining stuff in the shadows. Then folks could start with Alphaware, for a hefty price. Then folks could get into a Delta clinic, with the right contacts (and Alphaware could be bought in a mall kiosk). And then...y'know? There's always been that kind of availability shift for some stuff. Move-By-Wire is a good example of that.

Makes total sense Critias, aye, just was shocked to see how much of a drop it was.

I would assume that between 2062 and 2075 that indeedy the number of Delta Clinics was bound to rise from the Dozen or a Score in the World in '62 to probably a Hundred or so in '75 and yeah I can see Alphaware being kiosked even during 3E (infact I believe it was mentioned back then in man and Machine as being available in limited numbers that way.

So really Standard is the new Used. Alpha is the new Standard. Beta is the new Alpha and Delta is the new Beta. Cool stuff....

er...

How much more common does that make Cyber Zombies?.....

I'm glad I'm almost exclusively a GM and not a player... because I'd be worried.... *Cue maniacal laughter*

Hmm, aug max is now natural attribute +4 . . so muscle 4, either cyber or bio + suprathoid gland is illegal or at least useless?

Seems so. Pick one or t'other.

Just turn on your bioware's matrix connection gosh

Fully agree. While there are some people out there that wanted to keep Delta artificially rare and prohibitively expensive (particularly when compared to its gameplay benefits), those people have always irritated me. Incidently, they tend to be the same people that complain about "MagicRun", not realizing that they are contributing to the problem.



Softmax +R4, or SR5's equivalent of Exceptional Attribute/Genetic Optimization.

It's not really bad game design. The gear exists as an example of what the biggest of big corporate players have access to. The rules exist for the GM to use as he sees fit. If the players can get it, cool. If the gear exists for the players to realize that no matter what, they're still small fish in a massive ocean, then it's still cool.

If you're approaching it as a "Look at the shiny, Nyah nyah!", I think you're just looking at the world of Shadowrun in the "wrong" way (there's no wrong way to play, but "wrong" as in how the universe has always been presented canonically).

So yes, there is a need in Shadowrun to have stats for stuff in the books that the characters may not be meant to ever actually use. If the players come across a military unit, and they decide to attack a tank, the tank needs rules. Are the character ever supposed to have a tank? Probably not. Depending on the GM, and how they decide to gauge the power level of their campaign, perhaps Delta Grade ware is something that the players are never meant to have. Given how it has always been described, Deltaware isn't just simply a factor of being able to afford it. It's the factor of actually being able to get your hands on it. A group playing closer to the cuff with the canon, it may not matter how much money you have, because you'll never have access to cyberware that rare and closely protected, nor to the kinds of facilities and professionals with the ability to properly install it.

That's not poor game design. It's just how the universe of Shadowrun works.


Whether or not this causes balance problems with Shadowrun's ever-increasing power gap with magic is a different story. Deltaware being really rare isn't bad game design. The inability of Shadowrun to keep the magic users balanced and in check was bad game design, lol.

4e books have stressed that cybernetic augmentations are declining in popularity. It makes sense that the remaining manufacturers would have to break out of the high-margin boutique business at some point. You can view the 5e prices as being a better reflection of what they really cost to market and manufacture, especially considering most are practically identical to tech that is 25+ years old.

The balance being whack with magic is certainly a problem though. It sounds like this just papers over a more fundamental issue, especially as a party of all-mage shadowrunners is perfectly viable even if it seems wildly unlikely in the background.

Just as long as there is another whiz and unattainable thing to dream of now...

That's assuming that the joygirl works 24/7. No time for sleep, not time for cleaning up after each customer. Who would like to be the 2nd (or even worse the 10th) customer? Would you still pay 200 on day 5?

More likely the joygirl could have 5 customers a day, so she would earn 1000 a day, and thus it would take her just under 5 years to earn 1.75 millions.

Assuming that the joygirl has a low lifestyle (2000 each month), it will actually take her 5 years and 3 months to save up the 1.75 millions. But that's assuming her pimp doesn't take his share of her earning, or that she doesn't splash out with drugs, booze or other luxury items.

I still think I would rather play the shadowrunner.

Doesn't work, the augmented maximum is the characters current+4, no way around that.

That may be another problem of poor game vision. In an effort to pack more and more stuff into the setting, the longest lasting cyberpunk game is losing its cyber. Honestly, with any new edition, you have the opportunity to do an overhaul of the system, and the game world. I think Shadowrun has just hit a point of no return and the setting is irreversibly damaged. And I think Catalyst knows it too, lol. They're just too afraid to switch tracks for fear of breaking the product given that all the "modern" players of Shadowrun are used to how it is. Of course, I could be entirely wrong, and the top level guys at Catalyst have no idea the game world is broken, and that's why they chug along, oblivious to the fact. Neither paints an especially promising picture.

Either way, there are two real problems. First and foremost was the design team's inability to maintain balance in the system. "Magic" continued to get better, and worse, started to slowly supplant the "Machine" of the game. Not a problem if this was some other kind of game, but when the Street Samurai are reduced to the level of the cannon fodder bad guys, the game is no longer Shadowrun. The second glaring issues is with Shadowrun's tech progression, in that it can't seem to decide whether it is going to follow a "believable" advancement (a lot of this is skewed by the last thirty years of rapid advancement), or whether to maintain a level of forced normalcy to keep the game world intact. Considering that it is all fantastech, there was never any need to make things slowly get outdated. Maybe cyberware just hits a wall where it's just not going to be able to get any better just because it is limited by human capacity. Maybe it uses components that never really get any cheaper. Fixed costs and margins will always keep certain products expensive. Cyberware implants aren't (or don't have to be like) consumer electronics such TVs. Either way, it would have been extremely simple to keep cyberware's performance as a constant. Though, this problem is almost definitely linked to the decision to continue making Magic bigger and better (somebody must have had a hard on for mages at some point, lol). The funny part is, since Magic is entirely make believe, curtailing its power was probably the easiest thing possible had some planning and foresight been used.

is it still impossible for a troll to actually reach the augmented max ono body?

Looks that way. Hell of a design improvement, yes?

hai ._.

Since the augmented max is the same modifier for everyone, what?

Yes, but cheaper and more available high grade cyberware will help a lot.
And encourage frequent upgrades, fine tuning, and even customization of your cyberware loadout for a particular mission. Much more cyberpunk.


Seems like they have fine tuned/reworked a lot of structural issues with 4th, so I expect good things from SR5.

I run my campaign in 2056 so cyberware won't be that cheap for my game, but I like the direction.

I am tired of the being down on cyberware when the vast of majority of people are using it including most of the grandmas and grandpas (Data Jacks were dirt common in 2050 and it has been 25 years).
I'm hoping to see less of this in 5th.

But that is oppose to dealing with someone with so much cyberware he has no essence left.
Standing by someone who can fast a blink grab you by the neck and pop your head off with what looks like ZERO empathy is SCAREY.

Just going to be a couple of bumps in the road that will need to be house ruled away (like no skinlinks and a DNI link to gear not being able to activate it as a free action).

what ware gives +4 to body?
actually, you are right.
it got lowered for trolls and higher for everybody else, so technically all races can't hit the augmented maximum for body anymore, right?

Dunno. Presumably there's gear to get you there.

they have probably left room for expansions in the rule system. I would bet on there being something in the future that will get you there if it does not exist already.

No Cyberware or bioware gives body, actually, they only give dice.

Not really, just a little bit harder then for others as they need a higher force increase body(or what ever its name is) spell or higher rating adept power.

The thing is, not every character needs to have a mechanical benefit over anyone else. So, 'play what suits your concept' should be perfectly justified.

If I had to make a guess -- street samurai get a very nice 'up front' bonus, rather than paying karma, they pay nuyen to do what they do. They don't risk things like 'magic attribute loss' or 'drain' to get the job done, and they can be tailored to multiple roles as necessary. The elven bodyguard I made with cyberware went fairly well, and the troll bounty hunter was a bloody tank in 4E, and I expect he'll be even more of a holy terror in 5E.

i think the only thing giving a real body increase for all intents and purposes aside from virtual dice for damage reduction is the suprathoid gland.

So, again one less reason to go ware then and not magic . .

It's not like thats something new(i mean maxing body being only possible with magic)

Still, no idea why the hell they decided to make the bone stuff not give body any more.
i can kinda see it for the dermal stuff, but why the bone stuff?

If that is the case, then what is the justification for having all your gear/ware combat hackable by the Hacker? They took a character archetype that had more than enough things to keep him busy in combat, and then declared that he needed more love because he had no benefit in-game.

Probably because bonding metals and polymers to the bones didn't actually help the body resist disease, poisons, fatigue or improve your health in general, which is what the Body stat is supposed to do.

If someone stabbed me with a knife, having a shiny metal bone does zip for resisting the damage. About the only thing it would help with is resisting situations where the bone could be broken or hit early on (like the rib cage) upon weapon entry. does the bone lacing count as a + type armor or any thing?

Wolverine has (had? god knows the way they keep messing with him) adamantium laced bones. But they did zip for his health/damage resistance, except for cinematic situations where having unbreakable bones was actually useful, that was his healing factor bringing him back from the brink. Hell, they once ripped them all out and his healing factor improved, making one suspect the body was having to expend a certain amount of his healing ability toward whatever carrying around that much metal in a body does to your system.

Bridge too far.

They tried to bring the decker in to the main group/RW in SR4 with mixed success and decided they were going to do it this time no matter what.

I'm sure between house rules and later adjustments it will work out.

@Sendaz
It makes your Body WAY tougher though . . which is one of the things, the Body Attribute is supposed to describe i think . .

See Wolverine:
The Adamantium made him Immortal.
Without it, as soon as he is completely immolated to ashes, he can't heal back anymore.
The threw him through a sun once. They had him close to nuclear explosions.
And because his bones and the bone marrow were protected by the adamantium on/in his bones, he would regenerate from there and get up later.

The problem isn't metal in general, adamantium just happens to be highly poisonous, infact he would die from adamantium poisoning pretty fast if he didn't have that healing factor.

Stahlseele:As was mentioned Body also factors into resisting poisons and diseases, so giving an actual boost to body for something that only makes you bones stronger can't really be done.

Completely different argument - and one that as far as I've seen is not an issue, since hacking cyberware isn't going to be a regular thing or easy (and was possible in 4E, I've been reminded). I don't see it as a problem, myself.

max starting cash 475000, plus 20000 by spending karma vs SR4A 250000, so you're able to start with almost twice as much cash, pretty neat so far...


SR5 SR4


cerebral booster R x 0.2, R x 31500 vs SR4 R x 0.2, R x 10000
sleep regulator 0.1 12000 vs SR4 0.15, 10000
synaptic booster R x 0.5, R x 95000 vs SR4 R x 0.5, R x 80000

muscle aug R x 0.2, R x 31000 vs SR4 R x 0.4, R x 7000
muscle toners R x 0.2, R x 32000 vs SR4 R x 0.4, R x 8000
tailored pheromones R x 0.2, R x 31000 vs SR4 R x 0.2, R x 15000

wired 2 39000 SR4 2 11000
3 149000 SR4 3 32000
5 217000 SR4 5 100000
muscle replacement R x 1, R x 25000 SR4 R x 1 R x 5000
dermal plating R x 0.5 R x 3000 SR4 R x 0.5 R x 5000
skillwires R x 0.1 R x 20000 SR4 R x 0.2 R x 2000


So customizing cyberware is now cheaper (1.2 for alpha, 1.4 for beta, 2.5 for delta). It looks like most ware costs about 3 times as much now.

Interesting. One step forward, two (or 3) steps back

Yeah ... why play a cybered characters in SR5?



25 years of SR are upon us and muscle replacement is still useless? Is that a kind of running gag?

SYL