Now, tweaking ware to the very last .01 essence has long been a part of SR. But Ive been thinking, is it really necessary?

(Note: I am not referring to mages, as that would not be balanced)

its an abstract balanicng issue, otherwise make a street sam disregarding essence, see what you come up with...

No Essence, no Cyberzombies. That can't be good

..actually, at chargen there are still two limits as to how much you can install:

• Availbility
• Starting Resources

No, but to me it is much of the fun of building a samurai.

You're looking at a very different game if you get rid of them.
Immediate effects as they occur to me:
1) Everyone is a magician. If getting cyber doesn't have an essence cost, then there can't be magic loss due to cyber, therefore whether anyone bothers to invest in the skills and high magic rating, at the very least every character will get the magician quality and magic of 1, just to keep their options open.
2) All cyberware is better than delta, for the cost of basic. Obviously, the amount of cyber people get shoots through the roof. Normally cyberware acquisition slows down as people need to start buying better grades and replacing old stuff.
3) Lots of bioware disappears. Why get muscle toner or muscle augmentation when you get just get muscle replacement for a fraction of the price?
4) For that matter, why spent 10 BP on a point of agility and another 10 BP on a point of strength, when you can spend 1 BP on a point of muscle replacement and get both?
5) More initiative enhancement. Synaptic accelerator disappears, of course, and the only limit on wired reflexes is the cost, which isn't much. Expect everyone to have either 3 or 4 IPs if they're starting characters, and 4IPs once they've got a couple runs under their belt. Everyone.
6) For that matter, why bother with those pesky physical attributes at all when you get just as well get a full cyber body? It's not that expensive if you don't have to get it above standard grade. Even if it's not for everyone, expect it to be common.
1again) You haven't forgotten that all these cyber-monsters are magicians, have you?

It would be....a different game.

...dum...dum....dum...da..de..dum..da..de..dum...

<the sound of mechanically assisted breathing>

...Nathanross, I Am Your Father....

I do think there should be a way to buy extra essense points to spend on cyber/bio. If a Mage can get 10 magic I should be able to get 10 essence.

What would stop the Awakened types from boosting their essence too?

You can already almost gain 9 points of essence if you combine Cyber and Bio, Delta grade boosts this to 18...

And in the rare, extreme cases where even this isn't enough, you can still go zombie.
Or become a jarhead.

I'm imagining the OP wants to consider the effect of a quality like

'Mundane: You have unlimited essence' which is mutually exclusive from latent awakening, adept, magician, blah, blah, blah and costs 0 BP. 9You could even make it a 10-30 BP positive quality and call it 'tolerant' if you wanted, and it occupies the same box as 'magician' and 'technomancer'

Okay given that baseline, lets have a look at it.

I'm not sure it would be bad. If I wanted to balance it, I'd just make MAD scanners/cyberware scanners relatively common, and then the sammies are presented with a hard choice - go the obvious cyber route which is cheaper and more effective, but is actually illegal (as they will have fake licenses) and thus risky, or the subtle bioware route, which will never be detected, but is significantly more expensive.

That might be an interesting way to play.

It is sad that I just had a fanboy moment of glee on seeing that song written out in text, isn't it?


That aside, taking away essence or allowing more to be bought (even if some method is provided to restrain the uber cyber-mages out there) is something that would throw the entire money versus karma end game completely out the window. As it is, the magicals need karma in vast quantities, but continue growing more powerful through that karma, with money being almost incidental to them (which is why some people houserule cash to karma tricks for those sorts). In contrast, the street sam's karma is almost incidental when they're already a few dice away from cap at the beginning of the game really, but that quest for the vast sums of money they need to squeeze every last bit of deltaware they can gives them something to continue pursuing when they've maxed their core attributes and skills. Completely take away essence and, like some said, grades of ware become incidental and so in not so far along in the character, the sam could presumably have every piece of ware ever desired since he can get them in cheaply. Buying new points of essence has similar effect, though with an added bonus of a sink to dump excess karma into.

In short, it could be a fun sort of thing to do in the short game, but if the character's played for a significant period of time, it's going to get boring fast. Least in my opinion.

Of course, I always seem to play magicals with pipe dreams of someday actually having enough karma to spend on raising a skill instead of some mojo thing, so I always envied the cyber sorts who could spread their karma around and focus on saving money to get the latest upgrades.

Im glad so many are involved, first off, somethings to address:


I specifically wrote below the post that this should NOT apply to magicians due to balance issues.


This is the intended effect of eliminating essence. I like a game where chromed mothers are all over the place.


There are MANY reasons getting Bio as opposed to cyber, the most obvious being social interaction. I still dont see cyber as being for everyone, but I think we'd see more overt Street Sams, except for those who know to blend in is also important.


Hmmmm, yeah, ............ Jack up the price!


This after Magicians is the #1 concern. Afterall, Initiative bonuses have always been the most powerful ability in the game. (Deal 4x the ammount of damage in the same combat round? YES, PLEASE!)

The only way I see this being dealt with is a slight decrease in Synaptic Accelerator's price (70k or even 60k/level). And an increase in Wired Reflex's and Move-by-Wires price. I also think Synaptic could be compatible with Reflex Boosters.


Aside from the fact that they aren't magicians, I want to see more full cyber bodies. I dont think we should only encounter such things when going up against Jar-Heads or Zombies. I think that this is an aspect that needs to be brought back to the foreground. And as KK already noted, price is still a limitation.

Hmm, that was one of my worries too. I think that all games get to that point though. It then comes to the GM to figure out some way to challenge them. Hell you can always take it all away from them, give them HMHVV or something.

What I feel is the biggest concern is the characters reaching that point too fast. And that can usually be dealt with by not giving them as much money (which they need less of since they no longer are hoping for a deltaware/cyber zombie pipe dream).

Or dump additional IPs alltogether, making only reaction enhancement available.
Still, i see major balancing issues when you just take out a keystone concept of SR.




We don't have to.

Full body replacement -with the exception of the head- is easily possible at chargen.
We finally have an edition of SR where cyberlimbs are a mechanically sound choice.
With some ressources, i'd say,less than a million , one can build a respectable, fullbod chrome monster without any cybermantic or jarheady stuff involved.

Cyberfetishism and early stages of transhumanism are, at least in the sprawls, aspects of everyday life in SR4 and the rules already reflect that.

I also disagree with removing multiple IP's from SR. It is a truly fundamental to the way SR combat works. I would not wish to change that. Thus, the only things preventing Wired Reflexes 3 from having a drawback is either more money or higher availability.


Yes, full body replacement is possible without alphaware, but how does that cost? And what about other ware? If you go that route, you have already completely boned yourself and have only a sliver of life left. That is not cool.

You also say give me a million nuyen, but this isnt SR3 (at least its not what Im talking about). Players are stuck with MAX 250k at char gen, and unless your GM gives out more than 50k/person/run, it is still hard to realize.

FullBody non-Jarhead can be done fairly easy. The Cyber costs 120k and if you are nice you make it into a Cybersuite, drop Skull availability to 12 (or something) and the player doesn't even need to go alpha. He will lose a lot essence, though (5.63). If he goes Suite and alpha he will be a poor schmuk, but loses only 4.5 essence. That... wait, I need to write this down.

I think a lot of the mechanic stuff has been covered, but I always liked Essence and Essence loss for the flavor and rationale it provides... having a cybered out guy be less "artistic" and "human" was always a cool part to me. It's almost as if you're trading a part of your soul to become part machine and I like the flavor that provides in addition to the balance issues...

...but I've been told I'm crazy for this before, so who knows....

The biggest problem with this then is where do you fit youre Wired Reflexes? And since you dont have WR, do you still have the money to fully armor that body? Otherwise youre just a sitting duck. And when youve taken care of that, do you have the money still to upgrade those attributes?

Do you see what Im getting at? Even without the essence cap, you still only have a very limited amount of money, and shit still costs.


That is a nice piece of flavor, and it does fit with the shadowrun world's magical basis. It is a world where humans have a soul.

While that is great from a certain point of view, I dont like the importance that places on mages. While I love mages, I think that they almost live in a different world. As though there is a different reality that pertains to them that doesnt matter so much to the rest (except when it does of course). Instead of all of us being on the outside looking in, I feel that they should be more of an outside force, like an invading reality that only pertains to themselves and when they specifically desire it to apply to others. I hope Im not being too cryptic.

While I think that they should still see things as they always have, I think that we should not view the Astral plane always as the "Foundation" (if you will) of all the rest of reality.

I saw that even before, just chose to drop this little fact. You'll have to aim for custom limbs and lot's of bioware. Latter must be aquired in game. It's a money sink, it's not a combat build, but it can be done. That's all I wanted to point out.

Yeah, it's fascinating, isn't it?
It's enough to save up the essence needed for synaptic accelerators and that's all you need beyond those cyberlimbs.
Probably throw in some senseware for good measure and that's it.
With customized cyberlimbs, it's easy to bring up STR, AGI and CON to unaugmented maximum, then just add some bulk mod and all those shiny accessoires you can stuff in cyberlimbs and there you go.

It's a very good option for the next time you want to throw really nasty corpsec at your players, but if you plan for the long term and don't do too much at once, it's interesting for PCs, too.

Actually, i started developing this concept for a hacker character.
Dump STR, AGI and CON, put the saved points into mental attributes and REA and there you go.
Had a nice backstory, too, about some degenerative muscular disease that afflicted this poor corporate hacker and then he joins that transhumanist group and replaces his sickened body with cyber and so on.
Never statted him out, though.
But with a little karma and some cash, this could turn into a venerable hacking/killing machine.


You can max out more attributes with bioware, but it is much, much more expensive.