Someone who understands it please explain to me how the hell this whole "my essence went down, and so my magic doesnt go down, then it does" thing works.

It might help if you specify your question a little bit, maybe an example of what confuses you, or something.

my apologies.

I was referring to the entry on page 77 of Runner's Companion entitled "Magic and Essence" that describes how an infected magician works along with the essence loss power. It just reads entirely wonky, pretty much along the lines of my previously posted statement.

I just wondered if anyone else had managed to figure out what was intended there.

Wasn't room for an example, sadly. Let's do a brief walkthrough.

Let us say your vampire has a Magic attribute of 3, a current Essence of 4, and is not an initiate. Their maximum Magic attribute is is their current Essence + their Initiate grade, or 4. Now, if your vampire loses a point of Essence (due to Essence Loss or anything else), the vampire does not automatically lose a point of Magic as a normal metahuman would, so your vampire would still have have Magic 3 and Essence 3.

Okay, so what happens if you lose another point of Essence? You still don't lose a Magic point from Essence loss, but your maximum Magic attribute (current Essence + Initiate grade) drops to 2. Since your maximum Magic (2) is lower than your current Magic (3), you lower your current Magic to your maximum Magic, i.e. your Magic drops to 2. This is a permanent Magic loss, and the lost point can only be bought back by Karma.

This is why vampires and other Infected with a high Magic attribute need to keep well fed.

Thanks, that does clear it up. Youre probobly going to need to sticky that in a FAQ or something soon as more and more people pick up the PDF.

What was the reasoning behind starting vamps off at essence 5 with a maximum magic of 5 instead of 6 and 6 respectively?

Partly balance, as the Infected's powers are directly based on their Magic (and by virtue of that, their Essence) rating, and partly because no one should suffer through becoming Infected unscathed.

good enough for me. Thanks!

If I'm reading this correctly, then you're saying that when a vampire gets low on Essence, they (assuming they are a magician), going to permanently impair themselves (barring re-purchasing with karma)?

That's going to mean any scenarios in which a PC vampire mage faces real hunger (I.e. fun situations for a GM to place a player in), is going to have long term and hugely negative effects on that character. It also means that Evil NPC Villain who you nearly kill, but fail because she's a vampire, is actually crippled by their near defeat. No coming back a few months later for revenge - they'll be busy licking their wounds for a couple of years. I suppose initiation counters that a bit, but it's a dramatic change.

It provides an interesting balance between magic using vamps and their mundane(ish) cousins because the latter will be free to spend their Essence to boost their abilities, whilst the former will be terrified to do so. But given that I can't see many players creating non-magical vampire characters (you might not want to be a mage, but who could give up Adept abilities?), it's going to be a non-issue for PCs.

Very closely related to that, it also prevents the scenario of the powerful vampire magician who boosts her Magic rating by spending Essence, doesn't it? They can add a couple of points, but no more jacking it up really high by spending lots of your Essence.

Hmmmm. Food for thought.

K.

Let me add further food for thought: every vampire, and indeed, every Infected character has a Magic rating by default.

So we got two different kinds of vampires now? The strong ones and those who read RC?

Fortunately, a vamp's magic is capped at 5 instead of the normal 6, which means you still have 7 points of essence to play with from a fully fed PC vamp. If my experiences playing the oWoD counts at all, most PCs will definitely go out of their way to be fully fed if theyre expecting combat.

Unfortunately, this also puts a hard endgame handicap on any magician infected, since once the initiation and extra magic points begin to add-up, the vampire has to stay closer and closer to being "topped off" on stored essence. Honestly, that sucks royal ass towards any sort of pc longevity.