Does your penalty to Magic round up or down when you install cyberware? Can an adept, for example, have a 5.7 Essence without taking any penalties to Magic?

Your penalty to Magic rounds up.
Your penalty to healing rounds down.

-Frank

To be entirely accurate on magic, the BBB states you lose 1 point of magic per 1 point essence or part thereof. 0.3 essence is a part thereof, thus you lose 1 point magic. However you would stay at 5 magic until your essence dropped below 5.0, so you can add 0.7 essence more cyber or bio without further penalty to your magic.

On a related note.
The rules for cyber and magic are pretty ambiguous at char gen.
If you don't buy your full magic attribute at generation, sensible, then does cyber and bio still come out of it?
I would have said yes until street magic. But the ability to get a magic rating of 1 without being able to increase it seem to be redundant when you may need some small amount of cyber to cover your shortcomings, not a poke at dwarves.

My current ruling is that it reduces your max magic, and if essence drops below one, you lose the rest.

Anyone got any answers for their game, because otherwise i'm taking latent awakening for chars like that.

Street Magic is pretty clear about the 1 magic point the knack quality gives still being subject to essence loss rules. Its not a quality that would make you amazing, but it might make for an interesting character to play. Instead of allowing 'ware to not affect it maybe it would be better to house rule it so that their magic attribute can be raised to 3 in creation. But still use the normal magic loss rules.

Also on Latent Awakenings it says in Street Magic that a char who awakens via latent awakening will get a magic attribute of 1 reguardless of his essence. His max magic is still modified accordingly and i'd think any added cyberware after that would reduce the actual stat not just the stat max. The book also says that if his essence drops below 1, he gets no chance at all of awakening.

Edit-Yeah sorry I just woke up, wasn't sure exactly what you were wondering.

Not what I asked.
If you buy spell knack, you get magic 1. If you have any cyber/bio you lose it!
This is the problem.
At char gen do you lose magic 1 if you have any cyber/bio or does it reduce your max?
Cos if you latently awake you can still have magic 1 with some cyber/bio.

Edit: Your point is also true, anyone with less than 1 essence cannot ever have any magic.

I'm gonna rule that essence loss drops your max magic, not your current.
With the exception that going below 1 kill any magic in you.
It's a nod to the old-school partial burn out.
It seems the fairest for me.

My house-rule in laymans terms is: Max Magic = Essence(Rounded Down) + Initiation Grade.
Unless your Essence is below 1.

expect to see a lot more cybered magicians and adepts then.

Definately. Even the other way it usually works out best, even in the long run, for Adepts to get their extra IP from Synaptic Boosters rather than via Adept Powers. This would pretty much make that a lock as it would remove some of the longterm downside.

Indeed. As long as you can stomach the 32 bp to pay for them, Synaptic Boosters 2 are the best route for a Physad to go. The only reason not to pick them is if you want to start with 4 ip out of the gate, or you just can't find the bp.

Going Synaptic 1, Muscle Toner 1 and Muscle Augmentation 1, Platelet Factories is also very tempting, and has the same cost in Essence and Nuyen.

Cybereyes with vision mods are really tempting for a shadowrunning spellcaster, I think .

My mystic adept (infiltrator) was tempted by synaptic 1, muscle toner 1, cybereyes, cyberears and internal commlink (all but the synaptic as alphaware, 0,98 Essence).

Also a good mix.

Really, it's hard not to put 1 essence worth of ware in any mage. It's an acceptable loss, and the bennies are often huge. And yeah, a mage with cybereyes can do good stuff, since they're considered part of the body.

And that's with basic rules, I am wondering what augmentation will offer.

The knack power is pretty wrothless as written. Multiple knacks are completely useless (The Mystic Adept quality without any adept powers is far more efficient and versitile).

The best reason to take Knack is to convince your GM to let you take all otehr types of absurdities to compensate, such a Magic pact and a Power Pact: Regeneration.
But my biggest question is that, if you lose a magic point via essence loss and then get the essence back via Essence drain, do you get the Magic Point back, too?
I would like to rule yes since vampire magicians would be broken if it were not so. However, with the possibility of a PC making a Pwer Pact:Essence Drain with a Blood Spirit (perhaps even taking the prerequisite metamagics and intentionally creating a free blood spirit for such a purpose) it could be abused quite easily.

Knacks are awesome. Just not as a chargen powergaming tool.

Re: The question about Chargen/Essense loss and Magic.

Essense loss always reduces your current magic AND your max.

If at Chargen you took 1 level of Magic and 2 points of Essence loss your magic would be -1/4 current/Max.
If you use magic and take essence loss you will pay for it. No dodging. That isn't to say it won't be worth the cost, but you can't avoid the cost. If you manage it carefully you can theorectically get upto a total 1.32 essense worth of Cyber/Bioware for the cost/loss of each magic point.

Re: Synaptic Booster vs Adept Reaction increase.

When doing this equation you should note that Adept Reaction increase is the ONLY guaranteed legal way you can get 4 init passes at chargen. On the otherhand cyber/Bioware is good for cheaply increasing stats and doing a number of things that Adept powers don't do well.

Stephen

I always thought it would be funny to have a vampire pretending to be a cyberware surgeon who just drains a little and implants worthless cyberware so they can claim it didn't take and they won't question the essence loss!

Have your vampire actually put in real cyberware, just have him "botch" the operation a little, like in some of the previous editions.

If he does that only to gangers and other people who would not notice....

Why botch the operation at all? Just drain Essence firsty, and implant cyberware afterwards. Essence costs in 4th edition are dynamic, you opnly lose Essence from implanting new cyberware if the new total of Essence cost exceeds the difference between your starting Essence and your current Essence. So if there's Essence lost for any reason already, you can just implant cyberware in it and walk away clean.

A vampire cybersurgeon wouldn't ever have to leave any trace. In fact, it's something that a vampire could do that wouldn't even make me want to kill it, which is a first.

Vampire Cybersurgeons work in 4th edition for the same reason that if you have .5 points of Bioware and 1 point of Cyberware and you pick up .6 points of Bioware you only actually lose .35 Essence.

-Frank

[Nevermind.]

Since when is there a way to reliable measure your essence in game?