It sure sounds from the description of the Essence Drain power that the drained character never gets the essence back. Am I correct?

The reason I ask is that I'm considering using Vampires (as well as Nosferatu in the non-villain role) in my campaign, and I'm not sure I want a vampire attack to be quite so devastating. I'm thinking of allowing drained essence to heal back at some sort rate. Awakened characters would eventually be able to use their powers at full power again. Perhaps there would be a chance that some of the lost essence is permanently gone. I'd have to whip up a mechanic for it. (perhaps permanent loss is equal to half the essence drained, minus the hits on a Body + Willpower test). Or, maybe something so potentially troublesome shouldn't be left to a die roll. Maybe a player can permanently burn Edge to cancel essence loss...

Read my next post about Vampires to see where I'm going with this.

Dread Polack

well, SR3 had two different essence drain possibilities.

one way caused you to permanently lose the attribute (the way used by vampires, iirc).

the other way you got the essence back at a rate of 1 point per minute iirc. this way was used by a few spirits i think.

i suppose you could make some level in between those two (since IMO 1/minute is way too fast for what i understand your purposes are).

seriously though, what's the big deal? just assume that there's enough people to drain that the vampire can spread it out if needed.

If they only lose 1 point per month, and there's only a few vamps in any big city, then yeah, that's enough. But, if you want vamps to play a big role in your campaign, and have them blow through essence (as per my other post), then it can be too much.

Dread Polack

Can't you change it so that they drain Condition Monitor boxes (i.e. cause Physical Damage) rather than points of Essence? That way, you already have detailed rules on how to get them back, and you have more points for your vampires to blow through.

Essence Drain is indeed permanent. However, EssenceDraining also takes a long time, any time you could do you could just kill your victim instead. Vampires are totally hard core and extremely scary. But not because they can permanently reduce your essence - because they can pump up their magic attribute by +6 and throw Force 10 spirits after you. That's brutal. The Essence Drain doesn't even really happen to PCs.

That eing said, if you are Essence Drained, there's no reason that you can't just get extra Cyberware to fill up the hole. Eseence Costs are dynamic in SR4, while the Essence attribute does not normally ever go up, it only goes down if the current cost of all cyberware implanted is more than the total lost Essence.

Of course, if you are really concerned, you can always make a Power Pact with a Blood Spirit and get access to Essence Drain yourself and pass on the lost Essence to someone else...

-Frank

The blood magic metamagic techniques in Street Magic are very similar to what you seem to want.

My bad. It was one of the other freelancers. And if they didn't write the section, it's just another opinion then.

What I will say is that the Essence Maximum increase from having Essence Drain is in fact a facet of the Essence Drain power. So if you lose the power, your maximum goes from 12 to 6.

Furthermore, the Essence reduction from cyberware is dynamic. So without the Essence Drain power, you can't keep your Essence up past your normal levels.

But there's nothing to stop you from bringing your Essence up to your normal levels, if for some reason it's lower than that.

-Frank