hmmm... now where's that thread (i think it was AH who posted it) with the houserules for allowing mundanes to have limited use of magical skills (things like assensing skill but only usable when in astral shallows or otherwise able to astrally perceive via outside source, astral combat for same, binding but only when using to bind free spirits, etc...)

Right. It somehow didn't register that the character was actually gaining the Power, and not just use of or access to the Power. D'oh!

Although I don't have access to my books right now, I don't think mundanes being able to learn Assensing in an astral shallow is a house rule Jaid, I'm fairly sure Street Magic mentioned a school or something in Hong Kong that was teaching mundanes with way too much Nuyen and not enough sense.

that learning those things with astral shallows and the such has been there since at least 3rd ed o.O

Fair enough, for some reason it didn't stick with me in Third like it has in Fourth, oh well.

I think we have a houserule that finds a happy medium between sammies who can't progress and the obvious problem with eliminating essence: initiation increases your essence by one point. There's a bit of a flavor problem...I'm not wild about sammies who have to meditate to stuff in another chunk of ware, but it does allow sammies to progress like everyone else.

Whether this puts everyone on the same footing remains to be seen.

TC:
I dont think its necessary but my Idea was maybe to give mundane characters 1.5x more essence. Sorry if this has been said.

Not really reducing essence or adding essence but say reducing essence costs for mundance characters by 25% - 50% percent. Some damn thing like that.

Or maybe give mundanes and extra free point or two of essense before it starts subtracting from their standard. Essence 6(9). Which is the same thing as giving them a 25% reduction I guess. Oops

In game: Magical beings have more sensitive systems? Etc. etc.

I mean what the hell, I'm reaching.

What about making "whole" creatures and magically active creatures more "bright" i.e. easier to hit with spells (other than physical). While things with screwy/dead auras are harder to sling on. Nothing big (sort of like a fake +1 or +2 Will.)

( I'm not really up on magic rules...)

*shrugs* Aye, I could have swore it was allowed under Street Magic's rules, but I don't have access to my books right now to double check.

Oh well, if it isn't allowed under RAW then I'll happily house-rule it into my games.

it still isn't noted that characters other than magicians and mystic adepts can use it.

The rule states characters who can use astral perception, the parenthetical list does not matter and cannot be considered exhaustive. Therefore, it is explicitly permitted by the canon rules. Mundanes learning Assensing in astral shallows is not a house rule for this reason.

we're not 90% sociopaths . . 100% of the rest of the world is stark raving bonkers!

About the only fix is a massive increase in the difficulty of mind control spells, like required net hits on the opposed test = Willpower or even harsher changes.

I´m rather afraid of the chars my players would create if there was no essence.

I've considered assuming everyone is awakened by default, with a free magic of 1. Based on some ideas I've seen on pricing all the magical abilities similar to adept powers. You can choose to chrome up and ignore this, or not.

I'm all for this. It would allow importing in to SR the Cyberpunk 2020 Full Borg Conversions (see Chromebooks 1 to 4). Just use their Humanity rules instead of Essence as a hindering factor. Essence can stay for Mages, Adepts, and Technomancers (I don't care what anyone says, these guys are obviously magical to be able to do what they do so I count them as Awakened).

If getting augmented to superhuman speed and strength and intelligence could make a person aloof and incapable of connecting with "lesser" (slower, weaker, stupider) people, to the point of sociopathy or inability to control one's temper... then
a) how does that result in *death* after installing 6 Essence worth of augmentation
b) how is it that mages, who can also become superhumanly strong, smart and fast, and can also fly, throw lightning bolts, and control people's minds, do not also develop "god complex" issues?

Humans are usually flexible general-purpose entities, and overspecializing can have bad effects on self-perception, and turning one's self into a specialized killing machine could have psychological consequences. An unaugmented human who spends all day, every day, training to become an unstoppable killer might have issues too. I'm not saying that comes as a package deal with, say, spending time at a shooting range and a martial arts school; but I don't recommend doing so *to the exclusion* of connection with friends and community. Bruce Wayne is rarely portrayed as a fully mentally healthy person. He's made some unusual choices about what to do with his life, and they have some social costs.

I don't see how that's worse with augmentation. It's probably general to any form of becoming an unstoppable killing machine.

The veteran who can't stop checking for snipers even when he's at a shopping mall in Peoria, may have a worse problem than the one with the artificial arm. (Not that either of those veterans has God complex; the one who's stuck with battlefield anxiety has a very different problem.) If magic did return to a 1% Awakening level in 2011, I'd give the latter veteran better odds of attunning to magic, than the former.

If the only issue in your particular game is mind control, then make a change that's specifically about mind control. For example, target gets *double* willpower, because they instinctively resist with all they've got, a reaction not triggered by less invasive (even if lethal) forms of magic.

I have contemplated giving a free use of edge vs. mind control spells. Also, the removing from humanity part is just losing part of your body, which is part of your soul/essence/whatever in SR. The Sociopathy is that as good as the neural sensors are, they are just sensors. Cybereyes are supposed to be like watching everything through a camera. With a cyberlimb, you get sensation through it from sensors which you can turn off if something is unpleasant, and unless you program it in, you won't ever feel fatigue in that arm, something humans are just used to. I don't think it would be a big deal if you had it installed as a kid, or whatever, but if you are old enough to be used to your body, then having all these sensations that are just a little....off is going to be disassociating and the further you are from yourself the less likely you are to consider the consequences of your actions. I mean, if you had a real arm and you knew doing something would cause you intense pain, but you wanted to do it, you might not do it. If you had a cyberarm where you could turn off the sensors and just deal with a trip to the doc later or fix it yourself... probably you would do it. The more you indulge yourself the easier it is to further indulge you own urges. We all have the capability in ourselves to be horrible people, and in a lot of situations consequences are all that stop you. Please don't turn this into a moral debate, just explaining things the way I see it. If you have more faith in humanity, then it doesn't make much sense. Then again, applying faith in humanity to shadowrun just strikes me as wrong somehow.

Chris

Regardless of faith in humanity, that is a good explanation of a phenomenon that a) can lead to desensitization, and b) is particular to cyberware. However, it's particular to some kinds of augmentation, and does not apply so much to other forms of augmentation which still have essence cost. Why would, for example, an improved liver cause me to lose empathy or care for consequences? There are augmentations that if you did them on me, I might not even notice for a long time (tracheal filter, for example, since I generally don't inhale toxins much anyways).

If it's useful for game balance to limit augmentation, then immune system consequences and system shock strike me as the better route. Every time you remove an organ or limb, your body has a risk of things going wrong, and it adds up with repeated surgeries. Another way of limiting augmentation is to make it more expensive, and I figure that even with super future tech, removing your friggin' eyes and wiring replacements into the optic nerve ought to cost thousands of nuyen just for the surgery even if the hardware itself is cheap. If it costs karma to bond a focus, it could also cost karma to learn how to properly use cyberlimbs; they don't NEED to be "plug and play".

Imagine if learning skills only took time and training! People would exploitively learn skills to a game-breaking extent! But we don't require an essence cost for learning skills...

yeah, one of my main problems too . . a frigging torso takes away less of your essence than some wires along your spine and into your brain basically . .

The cybertorso is essentially a grafted exoskeleton designed to shore up physical weaknesses while providing as much "normal" sensory feedback and function as is possible; it's rare and most likely used for people who have undergone catastrophic injury and cannot afford things like say, a new sternum or intensive physical therapy to recover normal function but are still entitled to medical care. Wired reflexes is jacking virtually your entire nervous system straight into overdrive via incredibly invasive surgery that catapults you into a crazy inhuman adrenaline high; in this case it's the final result as much as the surgery that costs so much. You could still make an argument that the former is still worse than the latter, but I think your description's a bit needlessly reductive.

probably, but my opinion still stands, especiall when regarding the difference between a CYBORK(basically only Brain in Jar piloting own Body like drone and a Cyberzombie that has only Level 3 Wired Reflexes(5 Essence[SR3]) Smartlink(0,5 Essence[SR3] and a full package of Eye-Stuff(1,20Essence[SR3]) plus the now needed whatsitcalledthingie that lets you remember that you are YOU . . and such an Cyber-Zombie with that getup is at about -1 Essence . . while the Cybork retains 0,2 Essence if i am not mistaken . .
btw, i am using the SR3 essence costs because i can't for the life of me remember those for SR4 . .

Uh, your last post was a bit hard to understand, Stahlseele, so maybe I'm totally missing your point, but here goes.

There's a very fine line between a fatal injury and one that "merely" leaves you comatose and terribly injured, yet I believe it's fair to say that the end result is very different, considering that in some cases the latter can make a remarkable recovery. This isn't the Princess Bride where mostly dead means a little alive and a quick trip to Miracle Max pops you out as good as new (provided that you wait 15 minutes for full potency and don't go swimming for a good hour, of course). A brain-in-a-jar goes through minimal socialization and lives a completely diffent life than any of us; they have known virtually nothing but 100% artificial sensory information for their entire existence. A cyberzombie has literally been thrown across the brink between life and death only to be dragged back kicking and screaming. The big difference between a "cyberzombie" and disturbed "cybork" isn't the essence total so much as the fact that one is perhaps a disturbed individual suffering from a range of mental disorders (usually depersonalization and depression, most likely) while the other is a walking corpse held together by duct tape, Zulu ritual magic, self-destructive impulses and unfocused rage. I rather doubt that "topping off" their essence total somehow would suddenly be enough to make them love life a big huggy bunch.

Stahlsteele, it seems like the major problem you have is with particular essence costs. I don't think there are many people that will argue that Wired 3 costs an insane amount of essence. It is one of the few houserules I have. Wired 3 costs 3 Essence and 33,000 . Also keep in mind that while yes, you can be a cyberzombie with all second hand or just basic brand ware, it is generally assumed in the fluff that if you have the knowledge and resources to cyberzombie someone up, then you are going to stuff as much delta cyber and bio into someone as possible.

Chris

nah, i don't really mind the high costs of wired reflexes . . i have yet to build ONE character(aside from the proof of concept starting character with fixed reaction of 31 or something along the lines) that uses ANY form of wired reflexes . . okay, maybe one rigger had them but usually i like the boosted reflexes "cyber"ware more nd ususally don't need to go above level 2 as we are playing SR3 and in our group boosted is compatible with synaptic accellerator that one of course has to aqquire later in the game *g*
what i do mind is the fact that SR4 states that an all steel body piloted by a little bit of grey goo has more essence than a body that has about 90% of natural flesh left but has some wires stuck into it . . and of course i agree that when making a zombie you usually go the whole 9 yards with delta . .

yes, now you're thinking more along my trainwreck of thought *g*

It just doesn't bother me much because the rules for essence function fairly well outside some weird interactions like that. I would love to offer some comparable SR3 example, but it was sadly before my time.

Chris

Cranial Cyber-Decks or implanted Rigger-Stuff . . wired Reflexes, Titan Bone-Lacing . . it's kinda hard to do such things in SR3 because there IS nothing like the Cybork in SR3 *g*

actually, the SR4 CCU (that's the thing with the cyborg in it) is iirc about .5 meters long by .3 meters diameter iirc. it's small, sure, but certainly much larger than just your brain.

also, iirc it says that you could (potentially) install more 'ware, based on GM approval, without it costing any more essence.

if you put the ware into the non meat parts and they don't require a direct neural connection, of course.
if you were to add in any more cyber/bio that needs to be wired into the Brain(pretty much all that is left) then it costs essence as usual or am i wrong again?
0,3x0,5m? is about twice the size of a head i think without actually measuring anything . . so that's basically just about enough room for the brain, a bit of spinal cord and electronics/safety measures for the grey goo.