You need a 'guy'. And 'this guy' should know 'people'. You should be able to get ahold of 'this guy' who will talk to some 'people' to who can get you 'what you need'. You likely know 'this guy' from some time spent in prison, and even though 'this guy' seems to have been in prison forever 'this guy' still knows alot of 'people' who can get you 'what you need'.

Ok, enough about that. I suggest a fence, a fixer, an info guy, and someone who can sell you various things. Like I personally will have some kind of crooked military arms master (sorta, but enough info for now). He is going to be my big point contact because I have highly illegal weapons (rockets are a pain to get). Then I'll have a black market fence, a small time fixer who I know well or a big time one that I barely know, then maybe someone who can make me a fake SIN, and then maybe a guy or two who knows 'stuff' (beat cop, joy girl, barkeep, whatever)

Isn't that 3 words? Coverage, Docwagon, Plat.

I know how you feel, I like tinkering too.

But no, as much as I'm fairly sure the rules are for a loss and not an augmentation, as I said in that thread, it is spesificly how it works out in the case of being given 300 free karma to start with, since you can circumvent that part where you have to run around with 1 magic.

This does however bring up a question for me: Is latent awakening allowed? And if so, how would you deal with it happening when you already have cyber? For instance if I had enough cyber to drop down to 1 essence before the awakening took place, would I be given a magic of 6(1) and have to spend 21 karma to raise it, or would I just start at 1 magic with a max of 1, and then spend 6 to raise it?

I'm curioius because I'm making another character because I got a bit bored and I've been toying back and forth with making him magic, but just barely, and I don't want to have to burn 100+ karma just to give him linguistics or something.

P.S. The other guy is mainly a hacker, and the magic stuff is really just to make him a bit more interesting then be particularly powerful, figured it would be useful since noone has said they're playing the hacker role (I hardly count someone using an agent program to do all their work as a hacker, no offence)

Yeah, but some would try and cheese it. I would with the character I'm making if he had to go adept right from the start, but that is because his magic is secondary to him and isn't as important to him as it is to a mage for example, or even an adept that relies on his powers to fight with. More along the lines of the social adept. Sure his powers help with what he does, but he can operate just fine without them.

I'll have to go back and read over your character. I've been on the busy side with school starting up and whatnot, but it is settling down now (Though going through my physics homework I feel like I've missed a lesson)

Basicly you are a mundane for all intents and purposes untill you properly awaken. I think (but am not sure) that a really high assense test may be able to spot the latent potental.

On to the other question, the magic stat doesn't work as an augmentation due to loss of essence, it is a simple loss, just like the essence itself. You have an essence of 4 or whatever, not an essence of 6(4), you have a magic of 3, not a magic of 5(3). Someone already posted a link in here to the thread discussing it. Latent awakening provides rather spesificly that it is a stat that is lost from essence and not augmented by it, because otherwise it would be impossable to have a latent awakening. The rules quite spesificly state that if your magic is ever dropped to 0 due to magic loss (ie essence loss) then your character loses all magic ability forever. Thus if you go by augmented stat and got so much as a cyber fingernail with latent awakening, you'd awaken to find that you'd already lost your magic ability forever.

Now, for this campaign spesificly (as has already been stated) we are using the augmented magic ruling spesificly to stop people min/maxing by leaving their magic at 2, adding a bit of cyber, dropping it to 1, then raising it back to 2 for only 6 karma, then getting more cyber, then repeating for really cheap magic to compensate getting cyber.

I don't see what problem there is with your player getting magic. He'll start at a magic of 1 (which isn't very good) and with no magic skills. He'll also have to pay a good deal of karma just to get his magic (20 for magician, 10 for mystic adept, none for adept, and you get to pick which of these he has). He'll also have a maximum magic of 3 before he needs to initiate. Personally I don't see a mage with magic 1, a single spell, and 0 spellcasting ability to be all that much trouble. He'll get to roll what? 0 dice to cast his spells? I don't see that doing much for him. And as you move down the line, sure he can build up his magic, but your looking at sending several dozen karma just to become passable in magic. In the mean time the true mage in the group will be far more powerful magicly, and the pure gunbunny will be far far better then him at actually shooting stuff. Honestly I don't see any problem with someone who can dabble in both.

Just for you to look at raising magic to 3 is 15 karma, raising spellcasting, counterspelling, and summoning to 3 is 14*3=42 and each spell costs him 5 karma, oh, and just being a mage cost him 20 karma. So sure, in about... oh 100 or so karma he can become mediocer as a mage while everyone else becomes exceptional in their chosen field. Honestly don't see much problem with that. Maybe a bit more trouble with him being an adept, but it still wouldn't be that bad.

Anyway, I think we should avoid going into that any more. I was just curious what our GM thought about rules for creating a character with latent awakening (Spesificly in his campaign, I know them by RAW, but since we have the jump start thing I wanted to know if he wanted them adjusted at all)

I never promissed I'd say anything about him afterwards did I?

Anyway, I don't know much about magic, at least not the more advanced stuff in street magic. Overall looks good.

Few things I did notice is that your skills seem a bit lacking, but I'm guessing that you'll rely on your spirits to make up for that, though if that is the case I'd suggest at least getting a better summoning skill. I'm not too good with ally spirits, does it have to possess someone (Maybe you) in order to do anything since your a possesion type?

I'll also guess your relying on your high initiation grade to help with various things (counterspelling and drain resistance high among them).

On to actual suggestions... You may want to raise your English skill a bit more, as unless we happen to have someone to translate for you, there may be trouble with getting the more advanced plans accros (GM's discression on how much he messes with you on that, hopefully not too much so you don't get hit hard for picking something besides english as your native tongue)

You may also want to put your smartlink and flare comp from your cybereyes into contacts or some such, that way you can save yourself a bit of essence for something else, or perhaps put things like vision magnification or enhancement into the actual eyes.

Daredrenaline may be a good thing to add (gives you +1 to all willpower tests including resisting drain) and it only costs .1 essence, so you might be able to swing it if you drop your eyes down a bit. (costs 25k, but oh well) And I'm sure you thought of these and decided against them, but trauma dampener and platelette factories are great for helpping resist drain, and just plain old normal damage in general.

Hmm, just noticed that you miscalculated your eseence (You forgot that cyberware only counts half if you have more essence worth of bioware and vice versa), you should have 5.14 as it stands, which is plenty for the daredrenaline or with dropping your eyes a bit and getting alpha you could manage platelette factories or trauma dampener. Crazy mages and their inability to use cyber/bioware properly.

Ok, that is all I can come up with for the moment, like I said, not the best at mages.

Yeah, I happened to notice that right after I put up my post.

And the anticipation builds.....