looking at it, i'm thinking it has to be a penalty based on current essence... because vampires, for example, can be magicians... with no penalty... which is hard to reconcile with the fact that, at some point, they had to go down to 0 essence (otherwise they wouldn't be a vampire).
so i'm thinking it can't be a permanent loss, and if you could get the essence back, then you would have your full magic attribute. that also fits with the concept of paying karma to boost your magic as if it was at your original rating, too.
Full Version: Essence loss and magic attribute at Char Gen..
Not exactly. You only lose Magic if your Essence is 6 or less and you lose Essence. A Vampire begins their life with a zero essence. They also frequently become magically active at that point. But they haven't actually lost any Essence since they picked up a magic attribute.
So long as they suck themselves up to an Essenceof 7+ before the next full moon, they're good to go. They'll never lose a single point of magic. However, if their Essence is 6 or less, their Magic is going to drop permanently.
Of course, this means that a Vampire begins its life with a Magic Attribute above the human maximum. But they are not humans, so presumably that's OK.
---
Of course, you are free to house rule vampires any way you want. I, for example, am houseruling back their "Enhanced Physical Characteristics" power for my home games. A vampire with a Strength of 3 is no vampire at all in my book. Shadowrun vampires have historically been able to lift and throw motorcycles, and that's the way I like it.
-Frank
So long as they suck themselves up to an Essenceof 7+ before the next full moon, they're good to go. They'll never lose a single point of magic. However, if their Essence is 6 or less, their Magic is going to drop permanently.
Of course, this means that a Vampire begins its life with a Magic Attribute above the human maximum. But they are not humans, so presumably that's OK.
---
Of course, you are free to house rule vampires any way you want. I, for example, am houseruling back their "Enhanced Physical Characteristics" power for my home games. A vampire with a Strength of 3 is no vampire at all in my book. Shadowrun vampires have historically been able to lift and throw motorcycles, and that's the way I like it.
-Frank
*smacks Frank with a dead mackerel*
no, actually, a vampire starts it's life with essence 1, as i recall.
furthermore, it doesn't actually start it's life as a vampire. vampires start their lives as humans, and then become a vampire when they are drained down to 0 essence by another vampire. a day later, they wake up with 1 essence.
so, unless vampires are limited to a magic rating of 1, (pre-initiation), then my point still stands. and that assumes they start with a magic rating of 6 before the essence loss, which i personally find a little iffy.
furthermore, it doesn't actually start it's life as a vampire. vampires start their lives as humans, and then become a vampire when they are drained down to 0 essence by another vampire. a day later, they wake up with 1 essence.
so, unless vampires are limited to a magic rating of 1, (pre-initiation), then my point still stands. and that assumes they start with a magic rating of 6 before the essence loss, which i personally find a little iffy.
| QUOTE (Jaid @ Oct 13 2005, 03:41 PM) |
| so, unless vampires are limited to a magic rating of 1, (pre-initiation), then my point still stands. and that assumes they start with a magic rating of 6 before the essence loss, which i personally find a little iffy. |
I recall that the connection between being awakened and infection is....muddled and nebulious. However (and this is going back pre-SR4, since there is very little under SR4 currently) a shaman and that became a Nosferatu either had to have change traditions or have lost their magician status. By canon Nosferatu can only be hermetics (and Wendigo shamans).
So that might explain that single zero state they reached BEFORE becoming a vampire. They lost their magic, and regained in a different form as part of the transformation.
| QUOTE |
| Critters with Essence Loss have no actual Essence of their own and must drain Essence from others in order to survive. Beings with Essence Loss lose 1 point of Essence every lunar cycle (1 month). As Essence decreases, Magic may also be affected (see p. 62). |
| QUOTE |
| Th e Infection power allows a critter with Essence Drain to infect any suitable creature it has drained to 0 Essence with the strain of the HMHVV virus it is carrying. |
| QUOTE |
| Under basic Shadowrun rules, characters can never have an Essence of 0 or less. If they do, they die. |
| QUOTE |
| Th e victim enters into a state of near-death, as the infection initiates physical, mental, and spiritual transformation. Within 24 hours the newly created critter revives at 1 Essence and must immediately drain Essence from another being. |
So you die. Then the vampire enters a state of "near-death", at which point it is awarded an Essence of 1 and a Magic Attribute of 3. But it's not a human, so the human maximum of magic attributes does not affect it.
Shadowrun Vampires are like Buffy Vampires. They are an evil critter that happens to have stolen the body and memories of a previously living person. The Shadowrun Vampire is as much "you" as an Insect Spirit is.
-Frank
hmmm... i suppose i could see that. i would still say that it's a penalty as opposed to permanently lost, but that's just me, so i guess that means i have to make it a houserule...
| QUOTE (Jaid @ Oct 13 2005, 04:17 PM) |
| hmmm... i suppose i could see that. i would still say that it's a penalty as opposed to permanently lost, but that's just me, so i guess that means i have to make it a houserule... |
Page 62 of the BBB says it is a penalty.
Also note that the BBB talks about characters, not critters.
ok, so now all the average street sammy needs to do is find a way to drain essence, and then say goodbye to the essence limitations of cyber =P
mind you, it's not like in SR4 they have that big of a problem with essence, from what i hear...
[edit] uhhh... that would be street samurai/mage, not just a street samurai... [/edit]
mind you, it's not like in SR4 they have that big of a problem with essence, from what i hear...
[edit] uhhh... that would be street samurai/mage, not just a street samurai... [/edit]
| QUOTE (Jaid @ Oct 13 2005, 04:21 PM) |
| ok, so now all the average street sammy needs to do is find a way to drain essence, and then say goodbye to the essence limitations of cyber =P mind you, it's not like in SR4 they have that big of a problem with essence, from what i hear... |
Someone lied.
To clarify, it isn't so much a problem if you've got the cash for wizz grades and/or the bioware option when you can, and you don't care about cyberlimbs. But without the cash you still bump up against it plenty, so much so that you'll pretty much gimp a starting character if you try to bring him up to the full 4 Init Passes using 'ware...assuming that your GM allows you Avail above 12 so you can try. Your choice is either 100,000
Wired 3 for 5 essense, 200,000 Wired 3 Alpha for 4 essense, or 240,000 for Synaptic Boosters for 1.5 essense (way better essense, yes but heavy on the cash).
| QUOTE (blakkie) |
Also note that the BBB talks about characters, not critters. |
So? In SR4, Critters are Characters.
| QUOTE (SR4 @ page 285) |
| Critters are always played as NPCs. |
NPC, of course, means "Non Player Characters". So it literally does state that all Critters are characters of a sort. More importantly:
| QUOTE |
| Like normal characters, critters possess a complete set of attributes. |
So the normal rules for attributes for characters apply to critters as well. Senseless hair splitting about the word "character" and "critter" are not relevent in SR4. The only meaningful rule that comes from something being a Critter is that you are not allowed to play one.
| QUOTE (blakkie) |
| Page 62 of the BBB says it is a penalty. |
No it does not. It says that those who lose Essence are subject to penalties. What it actually says about the hit to your Magic Attribute is:
| QUOTE (SR4 @ page 62) |
| For each point or partial point of Essence below 6, the character loses 1 full point from her Magic or Resonance and the maximum for that attribute is reduced by 1. |
So you lose a point of magic attribute. You are not "penalized in your attribute by 1", you lose a fragging point of magic attribute.
-Frank
i dunno... there may not be a difference between critters and characters per se, in SR4, but there sure as heck is a huge difference between PC and NPC. and i'm not talking RP differences or something, i'm talking mechanical differences. it hasn't gotten too bad in SR4 (yet, at least), but SR has a long history of doing things in their products and saying "oh, by the way, PCs can't do this. ever. no matter what. it's impossible for them, no matter how common it may be elsewhere."
for example, the ever popular "this character has no stats, because whatever the players try this character automatically negates their efforts to do stuff he/she/it doesn't want."
don't get me wrong, i'm completely in favor of their being NPCs that the players simply aren't able to stand up to... but just saying they're immune to everything the players try isn't the way of handling that, to me at least.
i mean, i don't mind if IEs happen to all be grade 40 initiates... i just mind that if i was a grade 40 initiate (regardless of how improbable that is) they would still be just as unstoppable as if i was almost a burnout mage, or if i was a grade 100 initiate.
for example, the ever popular "this character has no stats, because whatever the players try this character automatically negates their efforts to do stuff he/she/it doesn't want."
don't get me wrong, i'm completely in favor of their being NPCs that the players simply aren't able to stand up to... but just saying they're immune to everything the players try isn't the way of handling that, to me at least.
i mean, i don't mind if IEs happen to all be grade 40 initiates... i just mind that if i was a grade 40 initiate (regardless of how improbable that is) they would still be just as unstoppable as if i was almost a burnout mage, or if i was a grade 100 initiate.
Ohhh.. I made a monster..
| QUOTE (FrankTrollman @ Oct 13 2005, 04:43 PM) | ||
So you lose a point of magic attribute. You are not "penalized in your attribute by 1", you lose a fragging point of magic attribute. -Frank |
First off, critters do not always follow the exact same values for the rules given for characters. A quick check of dragons confirms this as they obviously do not follow the same skill or attribute cap, yet there is nowhere that this is explained explicitly.
Second you are again up to your old tricks of selective cut/paste. This time cutting out the line before:
| QUOTE |
| Characters with Magic or Resonance attributes are subject to penalties if they have an Essence lower than 6. |
A literal reading is that a vampire up to essense 6 or greater no longer has that penalty. But looking at it you see that it doesn't actually say that the Magic is gone forever, even though it effectively is for metahumans since they have no way to regain essense (unless transformed into one of the relavent critters).
Now you choosing to read that in a way that screws over vampires when there is an at least equally valid way to read [it in issolation] that doesn't completely screw the vampire mage (as hard) doesn't make sense. Why? Because the Vampire actually becomes support for it being a 'temporary' penalty as opposed to what you are saying.
Basically you are arguing backwards...again.
Blackie, Frank:
We all know that the end result once all the appropriate rules and erratta are printed will be as follows:
- Essence loss is permenant.
- Essence loss results in an equal (rounding up) decrease in the racial maximum for magic score.
- Essence loss results in magic loss, which means you actually have a lower magic attribute. This isn't suppression like Bioware used to cause.
- None of this applies to critters with the essence drain power.
right?
We all know that the end result once all the appropriate rules and erratta are printed will be as follows:
- Essence loss is permenant.
- Essence loss results in an equal (rounding up) decrease in the racial maximum for magic score.
- Essence loss results in magic loss, which means you actually have a lower magic attribute. This isn't suppression like Bioware used to cause.
- None of this applies to critters with the essence drain power.
right?
| QUOTE (Chandon) |
| Blackie, Frank: We all know that the end result once all the appropriate rules and erratta are printed will be as follows: - Essence loss is permenant. - Essence loss results in an equal (rounding up) decrease in the racial maximum for magic score. - Essence loss results in magic loss, which means you actually have a lower magic attribute. This isn't suppression like Bioware used to cause. - None of this applies to critters with the essence drain power. right? |
Except for the one I bolded, yes. It specifically does apply to creatures with the Essence Drain power, because it has a note in the description that their magic attributes fall.
There will probably be a special note that these creatures can use their Essence Drain to regain their magic attributes or something, but they probably are not going to just ignore the whole thing.
-Frank
| QUOTE (FrankTrollman) |
| It specifically does apply to creatures with the Essence Drain power, because it has a note in the description that their magic attributes fall. |
After taking a look, it does look like a vampire magician would need to keep his essence constantly above 6 or risk becoming a burnout. The problem is the wording of the essence loss weakness. In order to make things work the way I'd expect them to work, text like the following would need to be added to essence loss: "In critters with the essence drain power, any magic loss resulting from this weakness is temporary; these magic points will return when the creature's essence increases."
The existing rules are odd enough compared to previous editions that this might be worth mentioning in the erratta thread.
| QUOTE (Fortune) | ||
First edition, actually.  |
Holy moo moo! Really? Yeesh! We're getting on!
Tell me about it! 
scary thought
Ordo maximus + shedim + power swapping all forwarded to SR4
add karma drain to vampires "well you're gona die anyway... don't need this anymore"
Ordo maximus + shedim + power swapping all forwarded to SR4
add karma drain to vampires "well you're gona die anyway... don't need this anymore"
| QUOTE (Chandon @ Oct 13 2005, 08:51 PM) | ||
After taking a look, it does look like a vampire magician would need to keep his essence constantly above 6 or risk becoming a burnout. The problem is the wording of the essence loss weakness. In order to make things work the way I'd expect them to work, text like the following would need to be added to essence loss: "In critters with the essence drain power, any magic loss resulting from this weakness is temporary; these magic points will return when the creature's essence increases." The existing rules are odd enough compared to previous editions that this might be worth mentioning in the erratta thread. |
It's only a problem if you choose it to be. The text given is fine as long as you don't want them to not burn out. So basically you just need to kick the rules lawyering weenie in the happy-sac, use a little critical thinking to realise that vampires/wendigo actually show that the penalty is as temporary as the essense loss is (because the rules don't say it is permanent) and move on, only giving the ranting weenie the occational *dead mackerel smack* when he spouts his illogical, misleading drivel.
Which i shall now do.....
EDIT: Though having it clearer would be nice. SR3 actually was clearer since it was easy to describe Magic = Essense instead of the SR4 penalty applied to the innate Magic that all critters now have. Oddly Dragons still use Magic=Essense.
I'm so houseruling in the existence of Articulated Earlobes. Thanks, Azralon!
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