Greetings,

So I have a concept currently for an NPC in a game I'm running where an awakened character had his magic reduced to 0 by forcibly implanted cyberware. What happens? Is he:

1. Cut off from his power until he raises his magic to at least 1?
2. Unable to use most powers, still able to use some (astral perception or projection for example)?
3. Something else?

Also, does it matter whether or not it was a full point of magic loss or whether there'd be .9 or whatever essence left in that point of magic?

Thanks!

With a sweep of his...

Hat

Also, you round up Essence loss to calculate Magic loss...

Thanks.

essence=0 you die

Essence between 0.00000000000000000000001 and 0.99999999999999 the mage is a burnout, no magic ever again. Sorry.

Essence 0 or less, dead, unless you get cyberzombied.

Not if you initiated, then you can have 0 < Essence < 1 and still be able to cast, you'll just never be able to improve magic ever again...

Incorrect. Only if you initiated, and raised magic to 7. If you have magic 1. And get a datajack implanted. Goodbye magic forever.

if you have magic 7 and essence 0.0001 you have a magic of 1 and can still initiate and then improve your m rating.

Actually, if you have magic 7, and essence 0.0001, then you have initiated 7 times, and raised magic 7 times. But yes, once you initiate and raise magic to 7, you won't burnout due to implantation.

My other example was to illustrate that if you only had 1 magic, and get something implanted its gone. You can't initiate it and get it back, or raise it up.

The character is turned into a cyber zombie and loses all his magic forever.

Incorrect. It takes a lot of mojo to turn someone cyberzombie, and negative essence.

If magic goes to 0, he loses it permenantly.

you can't have zero Essence and still survive as a normal person. You need at least 0.01 to still be considered a living being. At zero you either become a cyberzombie or you die (pg 62 of the SR4 Core rule book: "Under basic Shadowrun rules, characters can never have an Essence of 0 or less. If they do, they die.")

Actually, you just need an essence greater than 0 to be a normal person. 0.001 is still fine.

True, I just don't know how you would get that low... not that I'm doubting you.

creative planning and the Biocompatibility and/or the genetech stuff.

We're talking about Magic, not Essence. Quoting a page number is cool and all, but it really doesn't have anything to do with what everyone else is talking about.

If your Magic goes to 0, you're burnt out and are no longer a mage/adept/whatever. Nothing to do with cyberzombies happens to you.

If your Essence goes to 0, your read page 62 of the SR4 core rulebook, and your character dies (unless someone has a good reason to pull your fat out of the fire via cybermancy, along with the capacity to do so).

True, I should have been clearer...

No you can't, you be initiation grade 1 and have magic 1, you'd need magic 2 to initiate, which you can't get because 1 is your max...

That depends on what edition you're playing.

Eh? You don't need magic 2 to initiate.

Mage starts life with magic 6.

Mage initiates and raises magic to 7.

Mage gets all sorts of ware and is now at 0.001 essence, his magic drops accordingly to 1.

Mage can then initiate to a grade 2 initiate, and raise magic to 2.

Your initiation score can never be higher than your magic score...
In this case, you initiate once (grade 1), you up your magic to 7, you implant 5.9 essence of whatever, your magic drops to 1 with a max of 1 and an initiation grade of 1...
Now, to reach initiation grade 2, you need magic 2...
To reach magic 2, you need initiation grade 2...
Explain to me how he does it then?

Quote? I checked the initiation section of SR4, and didn't spot it.

Right. If a magician's essence drops below 1 and he's initiated and not burned out, then his max magic and initiate grade are equal, thus no more improvement. You've got to keep essence above 1 if you want to continue the cycle of initiation and raising magic.

Thanks. I was pretty sure I remembered it, but couldn't find it when I went looking.

So, really, the way to do it is to either A) Keep essence above 1 to allow for unlimited improvement.
Or, B) Initiate as much as you are planning to before you get all your fancy implants.

From what I remember you round down on both magic and essence, so if you have an essence of 6 and you buy a commlink with an essence cost of 0.2 you don't drop to 5.8 points essence (excluding the purchase of additional equipment) you round down to 5. The same would apply to magic as well, so if you only have 1 magic point left and never bought that internal commlink and now you decide you want it you go from having 1 magic to 0 magic; meaning you are a burn out because you have to have at least have a full point of magic to cast a force 1 or higher spell, and since force 1 is the lowest force... Now the essence plays a bit different in that you would keep track of your essence until it hits zero, and then you die.

I understand essence to be a person’s life force or their soul, so what I don't understand is how can you loose a part of your essence by having an item implanted into your body or having a cyber arm attached to your body because you lost yours due to a freak accident? Anyway ...

Not quite. Magic is always rounded down, but Essence is not. If you only implant a Datajack, you would be at 5.9 Essence.

Well that's just not true, if you lose 0.1 essence, and you has 6, you now have 5.9...

While this is true, your given explanation isn't an explanation, it's an effect of having 0 magic...

It plays different in that you don't round down, like you do for magic, but you track both till you have 0...
In our above example, the mage would have lost a point of magic, but he could now install 0.9 essence worth of ware and not drop another point of magic...

I think it's a game balance thing more than anything else...

EDIT: Damn fortune and those damn quick fix answers...

Yes it's not true, but when you are dealing with things like healing? Yes then it is true. Your essence might only be 5.9, but when you try to cast magic on that character it does increase the threshold to succeed by 1. I think that might be where the wires are getting crossed.

Well, I'm curious to how you'd get a 1.9 threshold....

When dealing with essence loss then you round down when dealing with things like healing a character. That was all I meant to say.

A question on Essence Loss:

One of our 'harsher' GM's has expressed that *each time* you get cyberware or bioware, that counts as a seperate rounding. So, for example, if a mage gets a Datajack (0.25 Essence), his Essence drops from 6 to 5.75, and his Magic drops from 6 to 5. Then, if he later gets Cyber-ears (0.20 Essence), his Essence drops from 5.75 to 5.55, and his Magic drops from 5 to 4. Getting them installed as a 'package', though, would only drop Magic from 6 to 5, since the total Essence loss is only 0.45.

This doesn't seem right to me. It seems like all Magic loss from Essence should be calculated as a single lump sum, and then Magic loss from other sources should be applied.

Thats because it isn't right.

It is by RAW calculated as one lump amount, and rounded then subtracted from magic that way. Not each individual implantation.

You got that backwards. When you calculate modifiers for healing tests you use the Essence loss rounded down. A character with an Essence of 5.9 has an Essence loss of .1 which, rounded down, is 0. In SR4 you always round in favor of the character making the test.

Yep. This is the same kind of wording as used in calculating the Karma reduction for Initiations which include a Group and/or Ordeals.

The next time you see that GM, squirt lemon juice in his eye and tell him "NO! BAD! That's from Critias!" and then kick him in the junk, if you want to.

Yeah that GM obviously hates mages and the rules.

So it is no longer possible to take a Geas to protect a magic point from being lost?

According to Street Magic, you cannot take Geasa to offset Magic loss that is caused by Implantation, but Geasa can be used to offset some of the other causes of Magic loss.