(note: sorry for the long post, but please read my whole explanation and reasoning before responding)

I was toying with the idea of a house rule where only Awakened characters have Essence and non-Awakened characters such as cyberronin, hackers, and maybe technomancers never have to worry about Essence, high-grade cyberwear, or delta clinics. This houserule is in response to claims that magicians are too powerful.

House Rule: Characters only gain an Essence attribute when they gain a Magic attribute.

Explanation: With this houserule, mundanes gain two advantages: they can buy cyberware for a lot cheaper (because they can go 100% standardware) and they can buy as much as they want without dieing from it.

Reasoning: I've always thought the philosophy that amputees and implant-recipients are somehow less than human is a very offensive idea. However, I can see why it would be useful to apply a limiting rule like that to Awakened characters, so that mundanes have a chance to be on the same playing field as magicians and adepts. Since several people on these boards have complained about magicians being too powerful, this would be a good way to give mundanes more power with a perfectly good explanation.

In-game explanation: Essence can be easily explained in Awakened characters because you can just say "they're made out of magic" or more technically "their biopatterns resonate with their Platonic Ideal Form that fuels their magical abilities and disrupting that biopattern interferes with those magical abilities." Mundane characters don't have a magical ideal form that needs to be maintained for any of their abilities, therefore they never gain an Essence attribute.

Ramifications (that I can see so far):
1) Cyberzombies become a whole lot less appealing. Cyberzombies can still be made, but they are only useful for mundane characters who really want to gain a Magic point, astral sight, and a nasty astral hazing field. They would no longer be necessary for gaining tons of cybergadgets.
2) Cyborgs (a.k.a. jarheads) are no longer a distinct species, just an extreme version of a mundane cyberronin.
3) If technomancers are given this houserule too, this puts them on the same playing field as hacker adepts and mundane adepts, and would put them on the pedestal as "uberhacker".
4) Delta clinics might become even more rare as their clientèle shrinks to at most 1% of the population. However, this may not be much of an effect, because magicians are probably a large percentage of the population that have lots of money and are willing to spend it on good cyberware.

Comments? Is this houserule even necessary? Does it help mundanes all that much? If it applies to technomancers, does it help them too much? Any ramifications I missed?

See, I don't think magicians are that much more powerful than a street sam now, at least out of the box. So, yeah, I don't see much of a need for this rule; I think its effect will be to make every non-magic combat-focused character break out 50BPs worth of 'ware.

If you do decide to go with this, make sure to rigorously enfore the Attribute caps, and I'd also ramp up the effects on social interactions and healing.

Quite. The nuyen costs and availabilities of bioware and cyberware are balanced against their essence costs. Without essence, a character can just load himself up on cheep cyberware and quickly max out attributes.

I've never seen the power problems with magic that most people seem to complain about and from what I've seen it generally results from using spirits of man and ally spirits to sustain a whole crapload of spells on you till you are near immortal. Now, possession magicians are very hardcore and I think a simple limiter for them is you can only channel a spirit with Force >= Magic. Or even half magic, but this doesn't actually make them powerful, just hard to mundanely kill so it hasn't been a big deal in my games. The only problem I see is you need a mage to counter mental manipulation spells and Stunbolt those are the two biggies. I can't ever personally see using this rule because while it would not change too much out of the box the sheer power creep of a character with this would be insane. All augmented physical caps would be hit and even beyond. A big problem would be that it doesn't actually address the problems, someone with unlimited cyber is still going to be doing everything I day when I Control Thoughts them, just they will be better at it. Or god forbid I possess them with a spirit and make them truly destroy the whole team. Just doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

Chris

I hadn't thought of that. An uber cyber ronin can easily become an uber cyber slave when under the effect of Mental Manipulation spells and the power scale goes right back to the mage.

I guess we still need some sort of anti-mind-magic houserule (with or without my houserule).

Maybe this would help: "Normally used to keep cyberzombies in the world of the living, the Invoked Memory Stimulator can be used by anyone to give them a free resistance test every turn versus Mental Manipulation spells." I don't know if that's the best idea, maybe there's better ideas for anti-mind-magic out there.

I think that magic is very powerful, and a mage is almost certainly more powerful than a street sammie, but I don't think the degree of separation is as big as you believe it is. That, plus I can really see this kind of thing getting way the hell out of hand. Now, me, I've never played with Street Magic. But when I was running a game over the summer one of my PC's (an adept) came in and was like, "Look, Street Magic, can I use it?" to which I enthusiastically replied, "Hell no!" I'm sure without even looking inside that there's options to make mages completely ridiculous, and since the rest of the party doesn't have their equivalent books yet, I just said...no. So at least if you stick to the BBB, mages are not so much more powerful than sammies.

Ugh, all the most interesting stuff is in Street Magic, I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I was suprised Augmentation didnt give cybersams more anti-magic abilities like Will boosters or something.

@Buster: If you really hate spellcasters that much, why not just not allow them as PCs, leave the Essence rules as they are, and use them as cackling bad guys? That'd seem to be the best way, rather than nerfing the guy in the team who'll fall over if a troll so much as looks at him, much less fires a gun at him.

Whoa, whoa who said I hate spellcasters? I always play wizards, no matter what the game system. After playing "stop punching yourself" with my mind mage against muggles one too many times, I thought there might be some sensible ways to give mundanes some teeth. Plus a few people here seemed to be complaining a lot that magicians were over powered, so I thought I'd throw out some ideas.

Buster, have you directly experienced the "overpowered" mage problem or are you basing your house rules on DS gossip?

I've never encountered a Mage/Sammie/Hacker/Rigger/TM/Adept is overpowered problem myself.

I have encountered problem players who need some special attention to deal with.

I'm going to emphatically disagree with you. Not because of your house rule or it's reasoning, but because you've used the word "muggles".

The flaw is that this only helps balance cyber-monster characters against mages (by making it very easy to max out every physical attribute). Guys whose focus lies outside physical prowess aren't helped. Again, I am of the mind that the balance is actually pretty good, because of the inherently risky nature of magic.

Here's another idea that makes resisting magic a little easier, which is a big problem for mundanes: Add Willpower to all spell resistance tests. Most mana spells would be resisted with Willpower x 2. Most physical spells would be resisted with Body + Willpower. Physical illusions would be resisted with Intuition + Willpower, etc. The catch is that counterspelling is more limited. A mage can spend a free action to add his counterspelling to all spell resistance tests for up to a number of targets equal to his Magic. This benefit lasts until his next action (when he must spend another free action if he wishes to continue the protection). This action is necessary even when protecting himself.

Like I said, I don't feel it necessary, but it's another way to go about it.

Alternately, don't halve the force when determing drain. That'll make the mages more careful about slinging spells willy-nilly.

Regarding maxing out physical attributes, mundanes can do that now with custom cyberlimbs from Augmentation. Mages can also do that now with possession spirits from Street Magic.

Yup. Frankly, I think he's making a ruling in the game to address his own perceptions of the fluff, which may or may not be accurate. Since that's the case, the rule would only be applicable if you held the same perceptions. I don't, so I won't be using it and I find it heavy-handed.

Although I disagree with the idea that Magic is overpowered in the Sixth World outside the odd thought experiment where a Mage is given neigh unlimited Karma and set loose upon the world, or those campaigns where the DM is afraid of magic or the Mage's player, personally I think I'd suggest tweaking the Drain Rules as opposed to giving Mundanes unlimited Essence.

Even if there were a major magician/sammy power gap, I don't think that eliminating Essence would be a good idea at all. For one thing, no Essence means no need for higher grades of cyber, and therefore, cyber becomes too cheap. Why wouldn't every non-awakened character just load on the chrome? You'd have a game full of Robocops in no time.

Also, remember that it's more difficult to heal low-Essence characters. I like that there are benefits to having more meat than metal. Without Essence loss as a deterrent to cybering up, then cybering up becomes the only viable strategy. Otherwise, you'll be the only meat sack on the block.

Shawn

I think removing essence entirely is a bad idea. A better one would be to keep essence, but make a house rule that cyberware alone cannot reduce essence below .1. It keeps the minor disadvantages of low essence, including:
*Reduced healing
*Negative Social modifiers
*Danger of dying due to essence drain powers

You could also make any character at .1 essence take a mental flaw from the back of the Augmentation book. That would make a lot of sense, since it is essentially what they did to make Jarheads. It also gives a reason for some characters like faces, covert opps specialists, techies and others to watch their essence. They rely on their social skills and mental acuity for their biz. Straight up street sams don't.

I have also toyed with the "No Essence for Muggles" concept.

I would love to see a robust treatment of a system that looks at the effects of enhancement from a psychological standpoint, not a metaphysical one. The White Wolf Aberrant line had some interesting thoughts on the psychology of a person who is super human. Being noticeably superior to your fellow man makes you prone to god complexes, or monster complexes.

Even a well-adjusted street sam will have occasional impulses to throw the lady in front of him across the stuffer shack rather than wait for her to remember her PIN. He may think "Why should I reason with normals, when I can just crush them." Hopefully he will keep coming up with an answer.

Perhaps rather than count the amount of meat replaced, count the number of stats boosted out of the normal range.

I think how the world looks at your enhancements would affect your psyche also. The owner of a Betaware Str3 arm might even forget it isn't his own meat, while the owner of a used, last generation, almost steampunk Str3 arm would be stared at everywhere he goes.

I guess it comes down to the effect of thinking you are above the John Q public, and/or John Q will never accept you. Why would you have any sympathy with their existence? Thus, enhancement (Cyber, bio, or even adept!) can lead to sociopathy.

The big problem you run into here is that there is a gap in one on one ability alot of the time, especially since mage spells are largely all or nothing(I know, not always, but the problem spells are) so really, there isn't a very big gap at ALL between "mages are teh pwn" and "mages are teh suck"The thing that I think would turn this around for most groups and I think is an entirely reasonable house rule as well as complying relatively well with the fluff is that drain on a spell can be soaked down to 1, not 0. So, for every spell you cast you always take at least 1S damage, no matter what. For spells with Force > than your Magic you can only soak it down to 1P damage. I mean you ARE channeling the fundamental forces of the universe through your body and soul. It would result in magicians who are much more cautious and reluctant to just throw magic around and increase the usefullness of the empathic healing and stun damage healing adept powers.

I wouldn't use it in my games because I made it clear to my players that I don't want them to break the game, so even if they might be able to they hang back a little in deference to the story and in fear of me. I keep swords in my apartment for a reason.

Chris

I still say if you are having mage problems then making sammies more powerful is just giving the mages more powerful toys, but that is just me.

Chris

True, but what about my idea of giving cybersams mental protection like the Invoked Memory Stimulator or other cyberware that gives them bonus dice to will resistance checks? That would kill people's complaints about mind mages and let non-essence cybersams keep their toys for themselves.

I'm cautiously onboard, I would be against making it Canon though. That is what counterspelling is for. However, if you had a group that didn't want to play a mage or hire one or whatever it wouldn't be a bad idea to incorporate something like that into the game or otherwise you might just have to leave magic out of the game entirely or make sure they can get the drop on opposing mages. However, if you added this to the game world period then with a mage also on the team you would have people with 12-16 dice to resist magic which would be similar to giving them 12-16 dice to dodge bullets with without reducing actions or anything like that. I don't have anything against the Invoked Memory Stimulater, however I would probably have it reduce the number of turns between resistance by it's rating instead of just always every turn, that way it is more like most of the rest of the augments, scalable. I would max it's rating at 4 or 6 though or make it expensive or something because if someone is willing to take the drain from a really high force spell, they do need to get SOMETHING from it.

Chris

I think I'd second being cautiously onboard, but I think I'd impose a "distraction mod" whenever the implant was turned on and restrict it to only working on the various Mindrape Spells.

Not for any real game balance reason mind you, I don't have access to my books for the time being so I'm looking at it from a "how might it work" angle.

All good points there. Mind control magic is always a devil to balance in any game system because it tends to come down to: "You failed your saving throw, you lose your character." Of course it isn't any worse than "You failed your dodge roll, your head explodes."

I'm not too concerned with anti-mind-control cyberware stacking with counterspelling because players really hate it when they have their characters taken away from them. And if the enemy team has a mage too, then it's fun fireball-vs-fireball action.

Well buster, I have to say I do agree magic can be WAY too powerful. Especially out of the box, considering that 4th pass is well within a starting mage's reach. It turned the mage of our game from Normal who is passable with guns to Badass.

Removing essence entirely from mundanes might lead to problems, sure. But then you can closer approach the Gunnm world (aka Battle Angel Alita). If thats the style of game you wanna run, Go For It! It certainly meshes up well if you wanted to run SR4 system further in the future.

It will, however make problems for Astral sight, and Dual Natured things, specifically Ghouls. And things that eat essence... Damn. Vamps just got hosed. Unless they can eat body instead.

As an alternate route, if you really feel characters can't cram enough cyber in, increase the amount of essence without changing any of the other rules. Maybe to 10. every point still loses the mage a point of magic, but NOW people can cram in a buttload more cyber.

hmm... I like that option alot more. 10 essence.

But where will everyone plug in at night?

I'm surprised that no one's mentioned the ramifications of second-hand ware. With no essence penalty, there's nothing stopping a starting character from loading up on all kinds of powerful implants for half-price. I know I could easily create a cyber monster under those conditions, one that'd easily break a game.

Mages are powerful, true. But I don't think they're *that* powerful, so they need to be balanced by turning everyone else into a cybermonster. Suddenly ever corp sec guard is as wired as a medium-grade street samurai. No-cyber mundane character concepts become even more pointless than they already are. Basically, under this condtion, everyone may as well become a full-conversion Borg.

In the wall outlet I'd imagine... or perhaps the Grid.

I'm going to start another thread to try and compile peoples poor experiences with magic being way too powerful out of the box. I've just never really seen it, but I play with a bunch of responsible guys who fear me and thus don't break my game.


Chris

why not just make essence be based on (natural)body+(natural)intelligence or some derivate there of?
the aura is being described as reflecting the union of body and soul . . so it would fit . .

The closest thing to this I could even remotely think of is a non-awakened:

Self-Realization:
Can not have: 'awakened' talents.

Each rank of this allows the non-awakened inviddual the ability to offset one point of essence loss do to body modification (cyberware, bioware, nanoware, genetech, etc).



Priced the same as initiating/submerising (plust the cost of buying the point of essence or make it a two step process).

I might consider allowing some kind of 'meta-mundane' features also.


The ONLY problem I have with magic/techno is the unlimtied growth versus very fixed growth of a pure mundane.

Though probably the majority of the campaigns this would never be a factor I would like to see some kind of 'unlimited' growth for a mundane.

I'd worry that, with essence removed as a consideration, all high-end mundane characters would end up looking the same. As it is I can't get every enhancement in the book - it won't all fit! In order to really excel at something I'll have to specialize and give up something else. But once essence is gone, I might as well get it all if I can afford it.

I wouldn't try to use this rule in a normal SR4 game. The perception that mages are too powerful is just that, a perception. As such, enacting a massive, sweeping house rule is not likely to fix anything that's broken, it's more likely to create huge new problems where none existed beforehand.

However, I think this would be a good way to go in a magic-free version of the SR4 setting. If you want to play a Cyberpunk 2020 style game, only using Shadowrun's vastly improved rules, taking away essence would be a fine idea.

There are still things you should deal with though: immune system weakening, cyberpsychocis, maintenance, slower healing... In short, even if you're going for an all-cyber-no-magic game, cyber should not be free. Even the most pro-cyber game would be boring if it didn't deal with the ramfications of heavy cyber. Even Ghost in the Shell, where people can replace their entire body on a whim, ascribes serious consequences to heavy cybering...

*nods at ixombie* From my experience, all the original house rule here would do is shift you power hungry morons from playing mages all the time because they are easier to break to playing non-awakened characters. It is almost all in the player, though if you to want to just tone down magic I still vote for my previous can't soak spell drain below 1.

Chris

Bloodzilla... fear...

The problem comes from games where players want their characters to be purposed for a specific ability, then realize that the other side of the magic/cyber fence deals with it better, and can do more.

I play in a "ultra future SR" game set in like 3576. Cyberware Ess. cost is balanced by our currency getting a 10:1 exchange. Could load to gills if our money was worth anything!

And you know what? I Still play a mage. Without cyber past a plug and being genecrafted for high g environments. Granted I'm so powerful I've offered to donate my karma to the party till they catch up. GM trusts me to not lord it over the party, and I've taken on more of a semi-NPC guide role.

Nothing's so intimidating as a wolf going Koolaid Smash through a plasteel wall

*shrug* Depends on what we are talking about, they are morons from a gaming perspective, but they are at least dedicated. I haven't done anything insane yet in SR, but I can up with some truly sick builds for DnD back when I used to play. So... I consider myself intelligent, I don't know what that says about other people, but the reason I said moron is because coming up with Bloodzilla or Pun-Pun takes alot of work and some intelligence, USING them in a game takes a certain amount of idiocy that more than cancels it out. I tend to stay in the background and command as my awesome characters to avoid breaking the game and killing the group by killing the fun.

Chris

I don't know who has become lazy lately, but about a year ago when I was around alot on CharOp, it took more like 12-24 hours to break the hell out of something in a new sourcebook.

Chris

I for one have always been wary of the imbalance that mages bring to the table. If not "out of the box" like everyone says here, then certainly at higher karma levels.

I think the most effective rule we've come up with has been to ignore all fluff about the "magus gene" or whatever pukatronic term they use for it. If you have the spirit of a wolf, Wolf will call you. Nitty gritty mechanic-wise, this means anyone can initiate, instead of classifying mages as some sort of master race that you have to be born into. I wouldn't actually recommend this, because everyone I've ever mentioned it to outside my own group (and also some members of my new group) has flipped out about the idea. The idea would be that you only let street sams initiate if they're RPing it well.

Another suggestion, that would also require some actual roleplaying, would be to just run the type of game where bad things happen to mages, especially if they do bad things. Certainly talk it over with your players to make sure it's cool with everyone beforehand, but it's perfectly reasonable to have a game world where mentor spirits don't approve of their gifts being used to brainally rape people. Maybe your mob mind spell is particularly likely to attract the wrong kinds of astral entities. Again, you gotta find out what your group is comfortable with. It doesn't necessarily need to be a modification of the game as much as a modification of the way you play the game.

I agree with you about disliking the magus gene master race thing, but how would letting mundanes initiate help? Initiation just augments magical abilities, it wouldnt give a mundane any extra powers or anti-magic abilities.

Well, there's the shielding metamagic (I'm still not entirely sure how all this 4th ed. stuff works). But mostly, it just makes the magic more egalitarian. People can complain less about brainal rape if suddenly their only excuse for not doing it themselves is that they're too lazy to spend the karma to initiate.

Mundanes can use counterspelling, if you get creative with Street Magic. A mundane can potentially summon any Free Spirit without effort and make a deal with it. Make a deal with one that has Magical Guard and the mundane faustian can obtain that power and, with it, the ability to learn and use Counterspelling so long as the pact is maintained.

Dude.
Hey.
That's genius.