ok, other than the prices for the shop required, i'm not finding prices for making a focus. the karma cost is lower and i don't see any nuyen costs... what am i missing? someone willing to take the time can make godlike foci for less karma than it would take to bond even one of them.

The cost of the Enchanting skill, the cost of the thing you are enchanting such as a sword or a ring, the time that could be spent earning other income. The first bonding cost. The cost of radicals or orichalcum that is used to reduce TNs.

assuming you have all the skills to do it yourself, and the time to assume you succeed. what costs are you looking at? nowhere near 105,000 times force.

Depends on the Ref, that one roll may mean you lose a lot of karma and time. They also may at any point in the month of arcane research and ritual and component collection throw a run or two at the character to slow things down even further. They may also ask for a bonding ritual after creation is particularly cruel.

i'm creating a character after the start of a campain. with my 8 success' and the huge amounts of time he spent doing everything himself, it's a power focus 4, for 10 karma. what i'm trying to figure out is the nuyen cost. i hope its not free... otherwise the gm'll say no go. i guess i'll have to go over it with him.

Enchanting will be addressed in Street Magic.

Of course its free. You're doing it yourself. Have you ever paid yourself to do something before? If so, did paying yourself cause a net reduction in your available funds?

What isn't free is the materials used. The materials used can be very cheap unless you include alchemical radicals to reduce the enchanting TN. Even then, you can always mine your own minerals, convert them into radicals, and turn those into orichalcum. All that it costs you is time.

Cost of the object to be enchanted + cost of alchemical materials used in the enchantment. Here is a summary of the cheapest radicals you can use to get the three radical bonus on the enchanting roll.

Per Unit
Herbal 200
Crystals 400
Tin 120
Total 720 per focus rating point

The reality is that a character could make way more enchanting than shadowrunning. Here's a quick breakdown on refining gold which I have found to be quick and very profitable.

Assume an Intelligence of 6, Talismongering 6 and a knowledge skill like Metallurgy 6. The target number of 4 means on average 1/2 your dice are successes. That means 3 successes from the Metallurgy which convert at 2 for one into 1 extra success on the Talismonger roll. Talismongering 6 gives you 3 successes plus the extra for 4 successes. The base time for refining is 10 days divided by 4 successes yields 2.5 days to refine 6 units of gold. Gold costs 10,000 per unit for raw materials and sells for 20,000 per unit for a potential profit of 10,000 per unit. Since refining and selling gold is not illegal my GM has me pay a 10% commission to a commodities broker for the sale leaving 9,000 per unit profit or 54,000 profit in 2.5 days. That's 21,600 per day. Best of all it can be done between adventures. What this has meant in our campaign is our group goes on runs for karma not money. If a run won't pay enough my character kicks in money for the other characters. This has worked out well for my GM because he doesn't have to come up with a way to pay our group for every mission. We'll take on the toxic free spirit plaguing a Barrens neighborhood without him coming up with some pathetic story line forcing us to take a mission that won't pay anything. It works for us but we play a high powered campaign.

hmm... considering he took the time to do _everything_ himself, a power focus for merely the time spent. works for me:D he's going to make a zippo to be his focus.

Better start adding in those radicals. The TN for enchanting a manufactured object are high.

got the formula, or rather made one. made the radicals then oricalicum myself. got 8 successes on my enchanting roll due to the amount of radicals and oricalcum i used (3 radicals and a unit of orichalcum) all virgin materials i handmade myself etc. TN goes way down, and so does the karma cost due to the amount of success' i got. my skills are all magical for the most part, with lots of complimentary skills. i made sure this guy had focus. so no nuyen cost for the foci. sweet.

That would be an expendable anchoring focus, actually. Every time he eats it someone somewhere is taking drain.

Related question: If I make an expendable manaball grenade whose LOS counts for targeting? The grenade owner's, the initial target's, or the focus'?

Actually, manaball is one of the best spells to anchor in an anchoring focus because it doubles the magician's firepower. Casting a spell is a complex action. Throwing a focus is a simple action.

According to MitS it can only target itself and its holder unless it has a detetion spell attached to it. If it does that it can target anything it detects with that spell. The focus' LOS is what matters but it can establish LOS with clairvoyance or Detect (whatever). Detect (Not me) would be a great spell for this. The manaball would hit everyone who is not you and you'd still have a simple action to use.

This is wholely abusable by a creative character. Say, for example, that I'm a magician adept with Missile Mastery, 12 throwing dice, and anchoring. I make my dikoted cougar fineblades into a deathtouch anchoring focus activated by hitting someone. Not only does my target have to resist the absurd damage code of (STR+4)S he also has to resist the damage from the spell.

Related: Can I add more radical units than the focus's force? I have, in partner with a fellow PC, made a big ol' pile of orichalcum and would like to use it for one focus, if it is permitted but in all the examples I find the amount of radicals never seems to go beyond the force -- but says nothing of whether or not it _can_ go beyond. In the case of orichalcum, adding more makes the karma cost to bond cheaper; not so with other radicals.
Any ideas? Can I add more orichalcum units than the focus's force in order to reduce the karma cost to bond even further?

I have never seen a limit to the amount of orichalcum that could be added to a focus.

if you make a weapon focus, isn't it prudent to assume that if the weapon is say... a 1 kg sword then you can't use more than 1kg of orichalcum?

Double posts are pretty great.

Good for one Use, goes limp immediately after, puts wielder to sleep