I am new to the forums here and this is my first post so I will start off by saying hello to you all. That being said, let's get down to business!

I am relatively new at the rules for SR4, and I'm having trouble figuring out the way magic is affected by essence loss. I realize that when you get a piece of cyber, your magic stat and the natural maximum drop by one point and you may continue to fill that one point with cyber, but once you dip into the next full point you drop those values again. What I am having trouble wrapping my head around is how that works exactly.

Example - Adept purchases rank 5 magic at chargen for 40 BP + 5 for Adept quality. Adept then picks up a synaptic booster for .5 essence cost. The adept now has an essence of 5.5 and a natural magic attribute maximum of 5. Does the purchase of this piece of 'ware consequently drop the adept's current magic attribute to 4 as well?

The text in the book seems fairly obvious that the adept would indeed have purchased a 5 in magic, but the purchase of the smartlink drops that value down to a 4.

However, I have seen some builds posted on these forums where that doesn't seem to be taken into account and no corrections have been brought up in any following posts. It also makes me question the usefulness of the Spell/Spirit Knack quality in Street Magic. If the adept were in fact to lose magic in this fashion, then the purchase of that quality would keep anyone from being a true awakened character and would also essentially be barred from ever getting 'ware.

I apologize if this has already been covered in this forum. I did try to read through any topic heading that looked as though the question may have been answered. Thank you to anyone that can provide help.

From what I understand, you are correct -- that Adept would pay for a 5 Magic, but would effectively have a 4 (due to some cyberware).

Thank you Critias. I guess that brings up the question, does the adept have the leeway during chargen to assign his build points in whichever order they choose. In other words, could the builder opt to purchase their magic attribute after they had already spent the build points on gear?

If that is indeed the case then would the adept in my example buy the ware first, then knowing they would lose the magic attribute, simply use their bp's to purchase the stat after the reduction of magic? I assume that if this was a legal choice then their natural attribute maximum would then be 5 so their 5th point spent would cost 25 bp's and not 10.

<gets his Baseball bat of munchinkin doom ready>


I'd have to say no to that, for three reasons. Despite the linearness of character creation. it's an abstraction. a CHARACTER doesnt go "ok, i have all of my cyber, NOW im going to squeeze real hard and become magically active. Secondly, No matter the order, the essence loss would be there, so it's like you're digging from a hole. Thirdly, even if you go linearly, i would follow the "line" in the book, which brings attributes prior to cyber/gear.

No. You buy the Magic rating, then it gets affected by the 'ware you put in your character. The speciific rule (on page 62, emphasis mine) states:

"For each point or partial point of Essense below 6, the character loses 1 full point from her Magic or Resonance and the maximum for that attribute is reduced by 1."

So you see, the Magic reduction and the lowering of the attribute maximum both happen, but the Magic reduction is separate - it doesn't just happen because your attribute maximum changed. It is in addition to it. You can't get 'ware, then buy up Magic with a new attribute maximum. You have to buy the points, then apply the reductions.

The witch-hunt for munchkinism is completely unnecessary. It doesn't take much to skew the discussion in a thread by immediately making assumptions and crying munchkin. I'm simply looking for rules qualifications and a discussion on how those rules should be handled. I could be the GM, I could be a player, I could be a huge power gamer that wants nothing more than to laugh at my friends at the table as I steal all the "gaming glory", or I could be someone that is sick of people doing that type of thing. In the end, my intent has no bearing on how the rules themselves should be interpreted. I am trying to make sure I word the questions I ask as neutral as possible to avoid any inference that may skew responses.

At any rate, looking back at the example I presented, if the adept were to purchase a magic rating of 5 then proceed to purchase 'ware that would drop their essence to 4, would that in turn cause the rating 5 magic purchase an illegal choice based on the newly established natural maximum of 4?

first of all, i ment the bat of doom as a tongue in cheek, sorry i forgot the ...



as for the new question.... i dont beleive so, because, while the purchased max you had was 5, i beleive you can purchase up to 6 pts in magic at chargen, so technically you could have a 5 in magic, even with the pt in essence gone, you would just have to PAY for 6 pts

At chargen, a character always awakens before essence loss is taken into account due to game balance issues. He could get a lot more bang for his buck if he Awakened after essence loss.

Characters who Awaken in-game (due to the Latent Awakening quality) start with a magic rating of 1 so long as they have at least 1 point of essence left, and previous Essence loss only reduces the maximum. This is slightly balanced by the necessary use of karma to advance magic instead of BP and by the fact that Latent Awakening is pure GM fiat.

I always viewed magic loss from essence loss as a simple mathematical formula.

Effective Magic = Base Magic - (6 - Essence)

No matter when any change occurs, you still pay for your essence loss, because it just updates the figures in the formula.

I doubt this will be popular, but I'll mention this for completeness' sake.

It doesn't matter what order you purchase them in. You don't lose Magic the instant cyber is installed, you have your magic rating lowered by your lowered essence.

Exactly, and if your Essence is lowered before you get your Magic Rating, then your Magic Rating gets a free pass and you save a great many build points.

It is, as AH stated, best used for characters with the Astral Sight Quality or the Knack Quality, because they're completely screwed otherwise.

Well personally I've started doing it that way in order to encourage even more people to take cyber.

Modifications from cyberware actually happen after your character is otherwise complete, as defined in "Finishing Touches" on page 86. Similarly, on page 84 it says explicitly:

Again, the rules on magic loss say nothing about timing. Unless you house rule it, essence loss causes magic loss no matter what order they happen in.

I had assumed the essence hit to magic was something to take into account after chargen was all said and done with. There were just some things on the boards that I saw that caused me to question this so I wasn't sure if I had missed a FAQ or an errata somewhere.

I still can't get the qualities out of my head that grant you a magic rating of one that cannot be raised during chargen or raised through karma. Those qualities don't seem worth the paper they are printed on.

Again hyz, you're trying to add timing to a rule that doesn't have it. If you hve no magic rating and get cyber, then later try to get a magic rating, pg. 62 still applies. You can house rule it to be otherwise if you want, but the rules themselves have no timing in them.

Of course the Latent Awakening rule applies because all Awakened characters previously had the Latent Awakening Quality before they Awakened. It just happens that chargen compresses his entire life history for the sake of simplicity and assumes a certain linear order to prevent abuses of the system.

The rules for Latent Awakening do not conflict with the general rule on page 62 and, in fact, clarify what happens when a character loses essence before Awakening.
The rule on page 62 states that a character loses 1 point of Magic for every point of Essence loss, but it also states that Magic starts at 0. It is quite impossible for a character with a Magic Rating of 0 to lose Magic, though his Magic maximum can still be reduced. If a mundane character loses 5 Essence, then his magic rating is still 0, not -5.

Chargen order assumes that you will buy an Awakened Quality before raising Magic and before installing cyberware. The former assumption is true due to the very nature of the universe. The latter assumption is merely made for the sake of uniformity, convenience, and preventing gross abuses. But, it is very easy to stretch the rules to allow people to take cyberware before Awakening, if this is a part of their background, and this is particularly useful in the case of the oterwise worthless Awakened Qualities, Astral Sight and Knack.

Page reference for your adding of timing and giving all awakened the Latent Awakening quality? Sounds like a decent house rule.

Consider:
Two characters start with Magic 1 and Essence 6.
Character 1 spends 60 karma to raise his Magic to 6, and then gets 5 essence worth of 'ware.
Character 2 raises magic to 2 (6 karma), gets 1 point of ware, raises magic (6 more karma), gets 'ware, .... ending with 5 essence worth of 'ware and a Magic attribute of 1, but only spent 30 karma to get there.

60 karma vs 30 karma for the exact same character, they just took different routes to get there.
So in Chargen, do they have to do it the expensive way, or could they do it the cheap way?

Not to mention the guy with latent awakening, who spend 0 karma to get his 5 essence worth of 'ware and 1 Magic, but didn't get to choose his abilities, but that's been addressed already.

1.) The last possible point of an attribute costs 25 BP. Which numerical value is assigned to said point is unimportant.

2.) At chargen, timeing plays no role. Regarding cost, the important point is that you only buy attributes ONCE. Therefore the order of buying gear vs. attributes does not affect costs (They caught the one about implanting cerebral boosters before determining knowledge skill points this time around).