Alrighty, so, I finally decided to build a Vampire Adept. I had to see what could happen with the tasty, tasty magic boosts. Also, being Halloween, I felt it appropriate.

Problem is, there's a few things I'm unclear on.





1. Adept Powers. Anything beyond the starting magic can get boosted up with Essence Drain. Would it be unreasonable to have a ''list'' of powers that he activates if his Magic is boosted high enough? Sort of like:

Basic Powers: Insert 5 points worth.
Magic 6: Add Critical Strike 1(.25), Penetrating Strike 3(.75)
Magic 7: Add Smashing Blow
Magic 8: Add Critical Strike 2, Combat Sense 1

and so on. Now, of course I know he can purchase Initiations and Magic up normally as well, but the Essence Attribute Boost is separate from this.

2. Now, in the book, you don't have to pay for race using the Karma method which we do; but Infected is a quality. So I pay the 100 karma as normal, correct?

3. At the same time, he's a Human base. Does he start with 2 edge as a human, or does the bloodsucker in him count him as ''infected'' racially and he starts with 1?

4. His Essence starts at 5, but the book says he can drain up to twice his natural maximum(from 6 to 12.) So his Essence actually has a 6 max, and he just starts with 5?

That should be it. I'm picking out skills, attributes, and regular qualities now, going very basic for the martial-arts type classic physad. I'll be able to have him up for critique after I found out these few things, which I seem to be blind and missing from the RC.

Are you building this as per PC starting character rules or is this going to be an NPC?

PC. 750 Karma from the RC book. We have our own house rules we use for a couple of things, but none of these would affect things like starting Edge and the like.

Want to know a truely scary thing about this halloween?
A professor has put me an exam that day, creepy.

You may change which Adept powers you gain each time you use increase your Magic through Essence Drain. What you are doing is just a shortcut - unless specified otherwise, those are what he gains.

Using Karma Generation, Vampire will cost 200 Karma (100 BP Quality). This is another reason why I think RAW Karma Generation is retarded - the metatypes do not have to pay, because the Karma cost for playing them comes in through increasing their attributes (which I have proven is not true, btw), but Infected, who suffer the same cost increase to raising attributes, have to pay for their "race"?

You are a Human. You get everything a Human would get normally, unless specified otherwise. On the Infected attribute modifiers template, it does not show vampires having -1 Edge, so they start with the normal 2.

Your Maximum Natural Essence is always 6. Loosing Essence due to Essence Loss or Essence Drain reduces your current Essence, but has no effect on your maximum. Loosing 1 point of Essence due to implants likewise reduces your current Essence, not maximum. This means you may have 4 Essence, natural maximum of 6 - you can use Essence Drain to increase it up to 12. This reaches some confusion regarding Essence Loss from implantation, however. Is your Essence now 12 (11.5), or can you effectively remove the .5 Essence Loss from implantation with the power? As far as I can tell, there is no RAW answer, but strongly support Essence Loss being a modifier applied to your current Essence (aka you can boost your current Essence up to 12, but you suffer a -2 from implants, so it is 12 (10) ).

I take it the this NPC will be met shortly after 'feeding'? ( )

Max essence for a vampire is 5 (RC pg 77). So you would lose that, but still keep the human edge bonus.

Personally, I would not allow adding new adept powers during that hour after feeding magic boost. The magic score increase would certainly affect the strength of spells and adept powers that feed off the attribute (like attribute boost; or even giving a boost to existing adept powers like mystic armor 2 can shoot up to mystic armor 4); but to spontaneously learn new powers goes counter to the idea that adepts learn and train.

Just my humble opinion though.

There is nothing in SR4, & nothing that I am aware of in earlier additions, that requires Adepts to learn &/or train. Magicians need to learn spells, but Adepts develop innate magical abilities - a number of Power Points worth equal to their Magic attribute. If anything decreases their Magic attribute, even temporarily, such as Background Count, they loose that many powers. If anything increases it, even temporarily, such as Background Count or Essence Drain, they gain that many powers.


A vampires starting Essence is 5. Their Natural Maximum is 6. Essence Drain can increase their Essence to up to twice the Natural Maximum, or in this case, 12.

On a final note, Fenrir is designing a PC, not NPC.

So he is... even less likely then that the 'magic boosting' will come into play.



I re-read, and yep. I guess this means infected are the rare things that can buy one point of essence with karma. (Or perhaps 25 BP if you are using that method). Seems like a waste of both, but technically, it appears you are correct.



I stand by my opinion on this one.

Sure, there is no specific 'adepts train and practice their power' in the adept description. It just says they "invest her power into physical abilities". But by the same token, it does mention training and such when getting initiate levels, even for adepts.

Also, when in an area of background count, your abilities are suppressed... but that does not necessarily equate to gaining spontaneous new abilities when you magic is some how boosted.

You magic is getting stronger, so abilities that the magic attribute fuels also get stronger.

And saying, "arrr, usually I cannot crush a beer can; but when I drain the essence of humans and boost my magic, then and only then can I punch through tanks" is a bit silly when you think about it. IMHO there should be some kind of fair(ish) scaling. But, as usual, this is a matter of GM preference.

Although it isn't canon, I also like the flavor of Powers increasing in strength as opposed to the gaining of totally new Powers when Essence (and hence Magic) is increased.

I am of the opinion that with essence draining characters, you need to specify what powers you have at what essences like the OP did in his post.

That's the way I always figured it worked, but I kinda like it. It's sorta like powering up in a way (drain, stronger hits...smashing blow....stronger hits yet again).

Well, 200 Karma is a pretty fair little investment, but I get a lot with it. They get good enough stat bonuses that I don't need to go too overboard there. I'm having fun tinkering with this in any case. Will have something soon.

No, vampires are rare things that can suck essence out of your neck along with your oozing lifeblood. Ghouls and wolfmen are just fucked.


Even more likely, actually. A PC can reasonably make time to grab and drain a dude twice a day, if the GM does that with a PC it'd just be cheap.

I am confused on how they are 'fucked'... they don't suffer essence loss like vampires (and other with essence drain) do.

Ghouls, for their cost/stats ratio and the fact that they can get 'cybered up', are pretty l33t IMHO.

... or am I missing something?

They aren't getting that lost point of Essence back. (Unless they use that cheese gene treatment from Augmentation).

Ahhh... yes, in that regard that's true.

Though, I wonder why vampires (and others with essence drain) 'natural maximum' is 6; and why other (non-essence drain) infected seem to cap at 5. Seems like both should have their natural max at 5; and vamps should be able to drain to 10 instead of 12.

Oh wells.

Ghouls and other infected don't have a natural max at 5, they're just assumed to have lost a point of essence during transformation. Vampires are assumed to have, at some point between infection and chargen, gained and lost Essence such that they have 5 points during the chargen phase.

Vampire Magicians get screwed horrible by the in-game Infection rules, while Ghoul and wolfman PCs who transform in game have a chance of coming out much better than average, or significantly worse.

So, could a ghoul get his sixth point of essence back via gene-therapy?

Yeah, vamp-mages have to be careful, they let their essence drop and they are just wasting karma.

I guess it would be better to be a nos-mage, at least you can give yourself a better buffer. 8P

No. The HMHVV Infected cannot use genetics. The virus actively prevents altering the characters DNA - you cannot get any genetic augmentations, you cannot genetically restore the character to any point, you cannot do anything that involves adjusting the DNA in any way.

I forget where exactly, but this is RAW, from the Runners Companion Infected section.


As for starting Essence of 5 - every Infected with the Essence Drain/Loss powers must be reduced to 0 Essence to become Infected. Over the course of Infection to Character Generation, as pointed out, it is assumed to have fluctuated Essence, & is currently 5.

For the Infected without Essence Drain/Loss, the Infection process reduces the characters Essence by 1. They do not loose any more, because they lack the Essence Loss, but they cannot increase it, because they cannot be affected by genetic treatments, & do not have Essence Drain.

An example of how this works is the Ghoul infection process - once infected, you must resist the disease 10 times before it ends. Each time you fail to resist it fully, you loose 0.1 Essence, but are otherwise unaffected. If you at any point loose a total of 1.0 Essence from the vampiric virus, the infection stops, & you turn into a ghoul, hence the 5 Essence.

By a close reading of the Magic and Essense section (Runner's Companion, pg. 77), it would appear that any Infected with Essence Drain have a natural maximum essence of 6, and are able to drain up to twice that (3x for Nosferatu). It gets a little fuzzy when it talks about them losing essence; I can't figure out if they mean you lose from your natural maximum, or your current maximum (drained amount). Either way, you'd be able to just suck up some more essence.

Personally, I'd say that Infected with Essence Drain are able to augment the same amount as other characters (stay within 6 essence worth). Of course, finding people to cyber/bio an Infected is always fun. And since you're running Vampire, you can only accept Delta-Grade, as per Runner's Companion. Also, the end of The Infected and Augmentation on page 78 Runner's Companion is where it talks about no gene therapies.

I actually just started playing a 400 BP Nosferatu on Tuesday. If you'd like, I can PM you his 400 BP stats. The concept was Prince Arthas, and to that end I have 3 Carrier negative qualities (naturally I have Nosferatu, picked up Dzoo-Noo-Qua, Banshee, and Ghoul). He's currently making an infected army in order to take over a part of the world. Prolly something like Antarctica or so, what with their 6 months of nighttime.

Its debatable whether cellular repair or revitalization would count as a "genetic augmentation" since they don't cost essence, and are listed under the heading Genetic Restoration.

Neraph, conquering antarctic with an army of essence/flesh/blood dependent soldiers may not work well.

Sure, you can conquer it... but I imagine during the six months of day light, penguin hunting will be very difficult. And heaven forbid if your vampires fall through the ice.

I never liked the Carrier negative quality with Ghouls. I mean, that just means if you so much as scratch someone, you've infected them. The other carrier qualities just mean you can create more than your type of infected