Because Invisibility is a single-sense illusion spell and astral perception is not a visual sense?

1. Matrix 2.0!
2. More Nanoware.
3. More Geneware.
4. Fusion between Deckers and Riggers might indeed be nice.
5. Finally reveal Otaku as Awakened. Come on, it's written on the wall... (If the Otaku survive the crash, that is. *ponders*)

Why would you need it to, unless you were an awakened being in which case you would be doing it for the increase in power. I suppose it should 'grow back' under certain circumstances, but most people who have any significant amount are most likely only taking cyber out to put better, more essence-friendly, cyber in (so that they can have even more cyber). There are already rules for reusing spent essence in the cyber-surgery rules. All I would like to see is for the use of spent essence to be automatic (or at least easier to obtain) rather than depending on a surgery roll. Of course it's been a while since I've read those rules.

A 'mundane' character doesn't advance through being able to fit more cyber in their bodies. They advance through being able to afford a better grade of cyber that uses up less essence so that they can stand to have larger amounts of cyber in their bodies and possibly by paying for top-notch surgeons who can possibly further reduce Essence costs. IMHO

And what if you want your character to change from all metal tomroe bioware?What if you have it removed by force? WHat if your charatcer wants to be more in tune with that free forum Loa that is fallowing him around... What if ....

It is not souly a matter of power, but reason. I want to change from combot monster to someone who can be healed with magic? I want to not turn into a cyberzombie..I want a lot of things.

In the end if you think that there is no reason for it for poeple to do, then your character do not need to do it.

By the way,I don't think that magic people would see this as a godsent,as magic dosen't can be lost form stimpachs,drugs and wounds.

No. it makes as much sense as a meat limb regrowing once you remove a cyberlimb.

But like mfb said, there are other more appropriate threads.

Well actually my idea was that the essence increase proceedure, whatever it is, would either have no effect on Magic or an opposite effect. Mages can take cyber pretty easily already; there's no reason to make it even easier.

Sure, now, yes, that's their only option. Maybe I want the cyber sams and the like to have more options as well. Mages get foci and initiation; sams can have higher grade 'ware and... whatever gene-therapy or whatever thing increases your Essence.

Hardly. The only way the Mundane Shapeshifter will ever get to fight back is either at hideously skewed odds or else when his opponent is a complete moron.

A spirit can simply hover 3 meters above the ground, stay safe in the astral plane from all the other characters, and bombard the poor shapeshifter all day long with it's spirit powers. Endgame for Mr. Shifty with 0 chance of fighting back.

The astral Magician can do the same with spells or, if he's worried about that physical drain, conjur forth swarms of low-level watchers as help for the melee combat test. But since Shapeshifters have 3 extra attributes most of the time the magician will have a higher attribute for astral combat anyway so he can likely win with no help at all. But if he can't, there's always the watcher swarm and all the shifter's friends can do is watch as he's torn apart.

Lastly Mr. Magician can just throw up some wards. Our Shapeshifting friend can try to fight them and alert everybody, or give up and go home. Either way the run is probably a bust just because he's dual-natured and can never, ever, learn masking or any other means of defense against all those astral baddies.

hey its sr, not babylon 5 or star wars (alltho given the magic you could have fooled me at times )...

You seem new and very right about things in general. I like you already.

One of the biggest mistakes of SR3 was disregarding two solid previous editions' insistence that one cannot travel astrally though living matter. The moment that was changed, people began to really hate mages. Which makes sense since 9 years of precedence over two editions was pretty solid and logical.

Changing it, however, was not.

One of the things that I truly hope is that niether Mike M nor Stephen Kenson have any hand in this book. They are the worst things to ever happen to SR.

Which is funny when you consider how much people hated Sargent & Gasgione. These two--the crappy SR3 version of Dowd & Findley, deserve to be shot into outer space.

Preach on brother. Hell, they could actually do to Computers what they did to Firearms in SR3, but breaking it up by proceedure instead of by tool. The hardware would be cheap; the wetware would be expensive.

The magically active have lots and lots of foci to buy, which really don't cost all that much in terms of karma but are really expensive in terms of cash, so that side is actually kinda taken care of already. The lack of an analogue to initiation for mundanes does indeed mean that they are kinda screwed in the karma department, which is why I suggested the whole idea of regaining Essence through surgery, assuming it would require Karma expenditure as well as lots o' cash.

WTF? When did that happen? Why wasn't I notified?

Seriously, you can pass through living matter? That's a change I never knew about. And frankly, I'm glad I didn't.

Heh, thanks. I've lurked on this forum on and off for a while, but only the SR4 announcement got me excited enough to post

Word!

I still get get shivers just thinking at Mike's dreaded "Gunz are keeeewl" foreword in Cannon Companion.
Or his weird "They shoot wild horses" adventure that presented a rather strange view of the SR world in general and shadowrunners in particular.

And Kenson's über-mage Talon...

That's definetely not my issue with this character.

He is single-handedly responsible for SURGE, a transgression which I will never forgive.

SR3, p. 173.

When it said, "Physical beings may sense when an astral form passes through them."

Why do you think FAB became dual-natured, and vine guards had to be "engineered" to stop or detect astral travel?

The Leeches, for crying out loud, are built around this new premise that one can travel through living beings, and the leeches can only detect and alert Deus, not physicall stop an astral intruder.

Same here. I think the fact that he actually writes (and no one dares utter the word "bullshit") in DotSW that he's had multiple opportunities to ask dragons about their magical system was the point when I lost all respect for the character. The fact that he's gay is also a non-issue especially to me since I play one as well (gay man, just to avoid the questions/comments).

My problem with Kenson goes primarily to his (lack of) effective writing skills. His writing is not well-structured. His rules descriptions are illogical, incoherent, disjointed, vague, and contradictory. If you can read MitS without wanting to commit a serious act of violence to yourself or Mr. Kenson, more power to you. I cannot, because reading his material is like reading posts by some non-native English-speaking DSers. The difference is that I can generally understand what the DSers are saying, and I don't feel compelled to correct them when speaking a language that isn't their first.

Kenson, OTOH, has been published multiple times. He's an English-speaker from New England. He should be held to at least a minimal standard of writing and grammar that I hold myself to when I post online, let alone professional writing. The fact that he doesn't, combined with the fact that Mike M put him in charge of writing whole sourcebooks (although some, like NS, were re-edited versions of old SBs by better authors) and being the go-to guy for magic for Mike M under SR2 and 3 would, IMO, require him to actually be capable of writing well.

My other major complaint has to do with factual errors that pop up throughout his books, which are wrong IRL or within the context of SR's history. I've had this argument before about how well-informed an author should be about what they're writing with Szeto, but the fact remains that when you put your name on something you should be held accountable for it. The editors deserve some of the blame, of course, as does Mike (and now Rob). And I do hold them accountable.

And like I said, he and Mike were the Nigel and Dowd of SR for the last ten years insofar as pretty much every major event that happened in SR was written in part or in whole by Kenson much as Findley wrote, and thus helped shape, the metaplot and overall atmosphere of SR. You remember when I railed against the idea of SoE last summer, but then I read it? The difference is that under Rob, and with Kenson gone, I realized what it was I hated about Shadowrun. I hated the atmosphere, the poor writing, and the general direction of the game. And the more I considered it, the more I realized that a lot of that hatred found its way to the same source: Kenson and Mulvihill.

Amen.

If I may borrow a movie quote that one of my bosses likes to throw out, Where have you been? Freeze-dried, or doing hard time?

May I vote for option three? That is to say, "Pickled, stewed, totally twisted."

Seriously, though... In 9 out of 10 games, I play the full magician. Since most of the individual games were in Shadowrun 2nd, and almost all of my time in Shadowrun 3rd has been in one ongoing game, I guess it just slipped by me.

Let me be the first (in this thread at least) to say ... Gods, I hope not!!!

And the beatings. Don't forget the beatings. Those are discouraging, or at least are meant to be.

Thank you.

2) Less dragons, less dragon metaplots, less worldspanning magical conspiracies, more cyberpunk/slipstream

3) prejustice against magic

I always thought the public would really freak out when a tiny percentage of people develop unknown powers. I wouldn't want anybody to mess with my mind, and I sure as heck wouldn't feel any safer if I knew my neighbour can summon a fire elemental. Where's the paranoia?

4) pictures, pictures, more pictures (guns, vehicles, equipment, panorama)

5) a consistent rules set for close combat (riddle of steel did a decent job for example) better decking rules (skill-based) new rules for auto-fire, more deadly combat system.

OK, it's a long list but the more I write the better the chance some of it gets true, non?

Maybe you just read the wrong books, or you're prone to overgeneralizations?