There's another option the person you quoted totally ignored, which is them removing a piece of the cyberware they currently have for the new 'ware.

FWIW, while I'd like to see some way of improving the upgradability of 'ware-heavy characters post-chargen, all of your proposals IMO go way too far. The biz should, in my opinion, involve trading your soul and never ever getting it back.

(As for other things that use Essence, Critter powers use it extensively, and Critters can have implanted 'ware as well.)

~J

That is often forgotten when ware is removed essence isn't restored but their is an essece hole that can be filled in before any new essence lost occurs from ware.

For example, my character had Rating 2 Wired Reflexs (alphaware) 2.4 essence cost.
This created a 2.4 essence hole.

Later he had them removed and replaced with Rating 2 synaptic boosters. 1.0 Essence cost.
So he had a 1.4 essence hole to fill with new ware before he'd incurr any new essence loss.

One possibility is to simply increase starting essence. As long as starting magic stays at 6 (SR3) or is paid for as normal (SR4), you don't power by cyber-mages/cyber-adepts too much, since they would still lose magic based on the ware they get. Of course, this has plenty of follow-on effects on game balance...

The follow-on effects are very difficult to show because the solution space (cyberware effectiveness + costs) are a complex problem.

One example is that upping starting essence is likely to lead to wired-3 being the new sam standard over wired-2. 3 points of essence left after wired 3 still leaves plenty of space left for useful upgrades. If starting essence is upped to 8, this leaves the same 3 points of essence left for all the upgrades available before, but you can have wired 3 instead of wired-2.

[edit]
The other thing to address is, what made you uncomfortable with just giving out a wad of instead?
[/edit]

Fat wads of are the industry standard.

Me, I like the idea that you can just buy Essense up normally. To hell with the fluff; a cap of 6 was an arbitrary number chosen was back in 1981 and it has never been thought of since.

You can explain it by saying that through intense meditation (or medication), and with therapy or dedication or whatever, all of which spends your Karma, you can increase the power of your soul. This will be appealing for mages because it will be an appealing alternative to Initiation, which has costs all of it's own - although it also has benefits, truth be told - but those who will benefit most will be Cybersammies.

Think about it. Mages and Adepts have had the ability to improve their 1337 past 6 since what, 3rd edition? 2nd? 1st? I'm not sure when Initiation came around.

But even with all Deltaware, 6 points of Essense only goes so far. The ability to buy it back in-game is appealing to me. And since they've never actually defined what Essense is... Why not?

There are two theories about Essense. The first, as I understand it, is that Essense is a stastical measure of your soul - the integrety of your Astral "self". I find the idea, then, that Essense could be destroyed by having bits of metal integrated into your wholely corporeal meatbod, to be patently ludicrous. You don't lose Essense for having bits of lead forcibly integrated into your meatbod, so why should you lose it for having very careful surgical proceedures done?


The second theory is that Essense is a stastical measure of the overall integrety of your central nervous system. While this seems more plausable on those grounds, I find it wholely ridiculous to believe that having bits of metal very carefully surgically integrated into your meatbod would then have a negative impact on your ability to channel the Astral and to use magic. Otherwise having bits of lead forcibly integrated into your body should likewise jeopardize your ability to cast, whereas without the use of OPTIONAL (and asinine) rules, it does not.


I'm not comfortable with either, really, since Essence was made as a balancing agent to ensure that Sammies coulden't just make a fortune and leave mages in the dust. But that long since fell by the wayside with the advent of Initiation, thus leading to Mages being able to spend Karma and Nuyen to go up in power with no upper limit beyond feasability and the point of diminishing returns, but leaving Sammies still capped. It's original purpose (preventing people from becoming so rich that they essentially become a cross between RoboCop and The Borg, and by so doing leaving Mages crying) has been rendered obsolete; something should be done to rectify this situation.


Me, personally? I'd allow Essense to be raised using the standard Karma cost for raising an attribute, with no cap. However, this would lead to the bookkeeping nessessity of "Absoloute Essense" and "Unused Essense", otherwise a Cybersammie would start with cyber that dropped him to something like 0.009 Essense, then buy a whole point of essense, and then buy a whole point worth of cyber.

Obviously, you pay towards Absoloute Essense, not Unused Essense. So your Absoloute Essense is 6, but your Unused Essense is 0.09: You pay 5*7 = 35 Karma to raise your Absoloute Essense to 7, and your Unused Essense to 1.09.

It costs an Adept 20 karma to buy PP under the basic rules, so I propose a 'Ware cost reduction standard based on that old rule.

At the time of instillation, a character may spend karma to reduce the Essence cost of implanted ware at a rate of [Essence reduction = (log20)karma spent].
To put it another way, [20^(essence reduction) = karma cost].
Round normally.

I like the logarithmic scale scale because the costs for tiny essence reductions are far less than the costs for large reductions. Unfortunately, it is a bit inconsistent and exploitable. The cost of a .2 reduction is 2 karma while a cost of a .9 essence reduction is 15 karma and the cost of a 1.8 essence reduction is 220 karma and the cost of a 2 point essence reduction is 400 karma. It is certainly more economical to reduce the cost of two pieces of 'ware by .9 than to reduce the cost of 1 piece of 'ware by 1.8.

To avoid this problem, one might want to use a linear scale, with a karma cost of 20 times the essence reduction and the essence reduction capped at half the grade-modified essence cost.

Erm... taking lots of Damage, towhit the forcible insertion of metal into the bodu does come with the risk of essence loss. Hence why Mages ect are Very careful about who treats them for injuries.

Essence is just that, Essence. It is what makes you Alive a combined factor or meatbod and astral presence/soul/spirit. Cyberware is unliving and so replacing a living portion of you body with an Unliving peice of machinery will rob the body of some of that `vital spark` or Essence.

Very true the number exists as a balance to Street sams vs mages, but if you want to go the way of full conversion borg body. Rifts is the way to go.

But then dont forget there are skills, none cyberware toys. All those flashy grades of ware (which are hell to get and although already mentioned you can get ahold of 11.999 pts of deltaware.... ever consider how much that really is? Plus another 3 , or more for cuiltured, Bioware...Before cybermancy if you have to go that far.)

Yon Adept or Mage also has to take soem time to do what they do. Cyberfreaks do it Now.... faster than that even with Move by Wire and Reaction enhancers.

It doesn't regenerate, but as mentioned it leaves a "hole" that new 'ware can be implanted into.

What I want, though, is for magic to start reflecting that digging-a-hole. Magic as it is now is the single best argument for Horrors in Shadowrun—it's just too god-damned safe.

~J

If you want to give your Sammy an archetype specific reward, then why not a new weapon (something very nice built with the firearm creation rules), or some free upgrades to his current weapons using the customization rules? And the ways sammies upgrade themselves throughout a game is with lots, and lots and lots of Nuyen. Once you have the money, you whip out your standard level 2 wires and chuck in some Delta level 3 wires, which are more effective and leave you with a more essence than you left off.

The way the game is built is that Magic characters are black holes for karma and sammies need less karma, but way more nuyen. Reflect this in your rewards.

Cyber attribute (replaces the Essence attribute)

The Cyber attribute starts at 1 and can not be upgraded with Build Points.

A character who acquires cyberwear for this character also acquires an amount of Cyber equal to the "essence cost" of the item being installed. It is possible for Cyber to raise in partial increments, so a Cyber 1 character acquiring an item with a listed essence cost of .2 now has Cyber 1.2. However, all tests and threshold that use the Cyber attribute always round up, so his 1.2 would be considered "2" for purposes of calculating thresholds and such.

-A character's Cyber attribute is deducted from any magical healing received.
-A character's Cyber attribute is used as a threshold to determine if he can be resuscitated by advanced medical means.
-Each time Cyber is increased, Magic is decreased by a proportional amount. (Round partial Magic scores down.)
-The character receives a penalty to healing checks equal to half his Cyber attribute.

Each time Cyber increases by 1 full point, the character may choose one of the following abilities:

*) Machine Mind. The character's Edge score is increased by 3, but he no longer has the ability to spend Edge points after a die roll.

*) Machine Heart. The character may add a number of dice equal to his Cyber attribute to resist any mind-control spell.

*) Machine Body. Any character attempting a First Aid test on the character may use their Hardware skill in place of First Aid.

*) Machine Soul. The character no longer has the aura of a living person, but instead has that of a machine, resembling a dull nearly-transparent gray haze.



etc. etc..
You guys can probably come up with better ideas.

As I understand it, this DM is running for SR4. Not only does it not have weapon build rules...

But the point of Essense was to balance Sammies versus mages. However, my whole point is that THAT IS ENTIRELY USELESS NOW! Mages can Initiate, albiet at high cost, but their Magic goes up AND they get very cool perks.

What do sammies get? Jack Shit!


Kage, maybe not everyone subscribes to the "No matter what you do, you're phucked, use cyber, trade your soul. Use magic, summon Horrors. Use neither, and get pasted by those who do" treatment.


I, for one, don't. Yes, the 6th world is shit. But maybe you can change that, if only for a select few around you.


And maybe, just maybe, we want to play a fun game, where ultra-cool cyberware dosen't make a Sammie blanch and say "I can't use it". Because let's face it - there are some things that non-Cyber just cannot do as well or as coolly as cyber.

The idea of expanding the initiation system is my favorite of the ones listed. It kind of explains the "samurai" notion, becoming something more through internal processes.

If you got rid of essense, then you would just end up with a group of cyberware enhanced mages and adepts called sammis.

If you want to mess up high-grade magicians, how about forcing an initiate to make an Essence Test with a TN equal to his (current magic rating+new grade-essence). Failure causes the magician to permanently lose a point of essence, which can't be filled with cyber but which be geased to avoid magic loss?

This severely limits cybered multi-initiate mages.

I'm just going to put this out there: You guys are freakin' me out, man!

Don't give free essence after chargen, that's crazy-talk. At most, allow for the PC to 'buy' essence at 20 karma a pop (or more) to a maximum of 6.

Alternatively, go the CP2020 way. Every piece of ware's essence cost is variable. So instead of it costing 1 essence, it costs 1d6 * .3 essence or something like. This means he has the chance to install new stuff, but he still feels like he's losing something.

Are you sure that Magic is bought based of the 'current' Value after losing through Cyber/ect and not 'total' value in 4th I could-of swore it was the other way around.

Oh well, that just makes burning a point of Magic for Cybereyes ect all that much more appealing because then you wouldn't have to pay 25 BPs for that final point of Magic...

Ok the way I understand it is this essance = soul.

You are homo sapiens

- sapiens (Human)
- nobilis (Elf)
- robustus (Ork)
- ingentis (Troll)
- pumillonis (Dwarf)

Reguardless of race you start with 6 essance. Reguardless of body size you start with 6 essance. Reguardless of age you start with 6 essance.

Now don't get me wrong I understand a need for a universal format for all races other wise if one race had a better starting essance then that is the race every street samurai character would be.

However the BBB does state average life spans for all races which I thought would work with the idea of more essance as you get older.

Now that would work like so:

0 - 1 = 1
1 - 3 = 2
3 - 6 = 3
6 - 10 = 4
10 - 14 = 5
14 - 18 = 6

Now you are considered to be full grown and an adult in most countries around the world. (I think even in Shadowrun Trolls need to reach at least 14 to be considered an adult.)

20 - 40 = 7
40 - 60 = 8 (beyond 60 most characters are either dead or retired)
60 - 100 = 9 (only few characters live beyond 100)
100 - 200+ = 10 (yep those dammed immortals get all the perks)

Yes I know it's not much but hey a little extra essance goes a long way even further if you have money to get the ever cool delta ware.

Just a rough layout I came up with back in 2nd edtion.

Shifters have essense of 8 and Harlequin at least responds to healing magic as if his essense is 8.

Since he's way over 60 years old, that presents a conflicting data point.

Your chart just gives another reason for a player to try to sneak that dark-ages spike-elf past the GM.

I'd never even seen someone get loaded up on alphaware, so I have not run into the need to get more essense.

Well, I returned to this thread after sleeping one night and it STILL seems like a dumb idea to somehow let sammies get unlimited cyberwear. Why does the Essence limit bother some people so much? The whole point of cyberwear is that you're trading in your essential native American hipsterism for something machine-like and unhealthy and therefore you lose your soul. It's kind of like becoming Darth Vader with all of his artificial systems. "Twisted inside, more machine than man..."

I could agree that the game world would be more kickass even if you were screwed by turning to magic, either by making Magic ultimately a Lovecraftian soul destroying process because you realize how humans are insignificant, or else by having some rule that when you cast a spell at X really high power or initiate past X really high rank there's a certain chance that Dread Iotas spawn in your soykaf or something.

But I don't really see how making cyberware more forgiving or less evil is cool at all.




Last thought: if you really want more cyberwear become a vampire and drink essence all the time. 11.9 points of delta, baby, plus regeneration!

It sounds like you want the "Cyber makes everyday life hell" rules as listed in Man and Machine. I don't remember them, but there are many gradual increases in trouble as you get more cyber and bio such that the essense .01 bio index 3 sammy can be killed by any natural health problem they didn't get cyber specifically to prevent.

lorechaser

Really? In that case why even have a rule about losing magic in the first place, why don't simply lower the max cap by one and as long as the Mage's magic is equal or lower then the cap nothing changes?

Hmm, I'll have to think about House-Ruling it one way or the other....

Because if a samurai is sufficiently weaker than his teammates, he won't have any opponents.

~J

You mean the ability to fight enemies and perform tasks that no other character can do? Because no one ever has to steal paydata from a secure system.

Or, for that matter, doing mortal (cyber)combat with your very own brand of Spirit that only you can fight? That the Sammie's guns are useless against, that the Magician's Great Form Force 6 Spirit can't combat? That the Rigger's Drones can't shoot?

Or, for that matter, doing cybercombat with another hacker, a Technomancer who's submerged, or just plain old Black IC?

When I first started playing, I think we overlooked the 6 point essence rule. I remember a full body replacement troll with maxxed body armor, suprathyroid gland, enhanced articulation, synaptic accelerators, adrenal pump, smartlink, internal air tank and titanium bone lacing. It was a player new to roleplaying that didn't want to die the first night, so a lot of stuff was defensive. He was quite the meat shield, but hardly invulnerable. Just treat him the way people would normally react to such a monstrosity when they saw him coming.

I think we had a human (or elf) sam too that was maxxed out for speed and gunplay. He was hardly gamebreaking.

Later, when we learned and applied the essence rules, we played a game where you could be any type of character or break/ignore 1 rule. We wound up with a dragon, a free spirit, and a guy that chose to ignore the essence rule. The guy who ignored the essence rule was far from the biggest problem in that game.

If I had a game where the Sammies were that unhappy or essence became an ongoing issue, I would ignore the rule. It is hardly going to break the game.

I would enforce the rule though, at least for a while, if the Sammie(s) in the group had been dominating playing time or the group in the early part of the campaign. I'd let the other characters that finally were hitting their stride have the spotlight for a while and the sammie could pout in the background, especially if they were hogs when they had the advantage. Hopefully they learn to share the spotlight, even if it means not exploiting every nuyen worth of gear they have bought.

An example from when we started playing and the troll meat shield. The guy never used his combat pool. I never noticed until he told me after a game one night. It helped even things out and made him a bit less effective and a bit more vulnerable. He just didn't want to die as the new/inexperienced guy. He had no desire to be the munchkin, even though his character pretty much was. Without the combat pool, he might inflict a Serious wound instead of eliminating a hostile target. This gave someone else a turn to join the fight. Not rolling combat pool when dodging means there is never a clean miss, so he rolled to stage down damage. So he seemed killable.

A Dragon, a free spirit, and a cybersammie.

That sounds like a fun game.

((Heh. I oughta set up that game some time. "Okay everybody. Make yourselves a Western Dragon!"))

After six initiations, a magician can afford to spend 5.9 points of essence on 'ware. A sufficiently high karma magician can be a samurai, too.