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Tachi
All this talk about cyberzombies and cybered mages/adepts has piqued my curiosity. Would it be feasible/advisable to make an awakened character with full body replacement. I read (Augmentation? I think) that it requires delta grade cybernetics, so you'd end up with 2+ essence. I know it'd be an extreme example, but how well would it work?
Stahlseele
Delta and Suit and one or two positive qualities and why not?
as long as you don't lose more Essence, you're fine . . with a Magic of 2, you can initiate and raise magic again, if you get the time/karma for it.
but if your essence ever goes below 2, you go back to a static magic of 2, because your real magic attribute of 1 would mean only one initiation
can stay with you . . i shudder to think of a mage carrying around a whole set of fully armored cyber-parts . . maybe possession tradition to boot
and that would be scary as hell x.x . .
Tachi
Definitely a possible "run for your lives" situation. Assault cannon in one hand, fireball in the other. biggrin.gif Not to mention the articulated arm.
Ravor
Unless I've missed something I don't think you actually lose your Grade-based Magic if your Essence drops to much, you just can no longer increase in power.
Tachi
Do you mean initiation grade? I thought you'd just lose all grades of initiation above your remaining magic level and probably wouldn't be able to get higher than Magic:2 Initiation:2
Ravor
I mean the whole deal, increased magic, metamagics, everything, I don't think you lose any of it, you just can't get anymore.
Hagga
You could just wait until you initiate a few times.
Ravor
Sure, but under my understanding of Tachi's theory the moment you drop to less then ( Essence 2 ) you lose everything above ( Grade 2 ).
Hagga
Only if you have magic less than 2 to begin with.

If I have magic 50 and initiation grade 44, and essence 6, then get myself 3.5 essence in implants, I end up with grade 44 and max magic and magic of 46. Nothing disappears except the extra magic.

If I am a starting character, get my magic to 6, get 3.5 essence of implants, I have 2 magic. I initiate once, I get another point of magic and continue along that way. As long as I don't get below 1 essence, I can continue to initiate. Once you get below 1 essence in any case, you're screwed because your only magic comes from your initiation grade.

Edit: The only time you lose the ability to initiate is if your essence goes below 2 and you have no grades at all.
Fortune
QUOTE (Shadowrun Core Rulebook pg. 189)
A character's initiate grade cannot exceed her Magic attribute. If a character's Magic is reduced below her initiate grade, she loses that level of initiation and the metamagic she gained with it.


QUOTE (Same Source pg. 189)
An initiate’s natural maximum for the Magic attribute is 6 + her grade of initiation.
Tachi
^^That's what I thought.^^ What do you think Fortune, how workable is it? Could it be a decent character?
Fortune
No reason at all why not. I have played a few awakened characters with 4 points of essence loss, and they were certainly viable. Admittedly none of them were full-body 'borgs, but Essence loss is Essence loss. As was mentioned (numerous times smile.gif), just be sure to keep that Essence at 2 or slightly above. Even the slightest drop below that 'magic' number would really suck.
masterofm
For the karma involved? Why bother. No... having a character use that essence for different purposes would be better. Platelet factories, and trauma dampeners, things that increase your will power and make you not take stun penalties. There is mage cyber/bio that is just hands down better for a caster then having a cyber body.
Fortune
It certainly isn't optimal, nor is it something I would do with one of my characters, but that doesn't mean it isn't a viable concept.
Stahlseele
depends on how you build those things . .
there's groups that only lower your MAXIMUM Magic on char gen, so you don't have to buy it up to 6 only to drop back to 2 . .
others do that in game too, so you don't have to pay karma for initiation and raising magic from 6 to 7 but only initiation and raising magic from 2 to 3 . . under those circumstances, it would not be so bad . . aside from you needing one hell of a lot of money to get a whole delta suite body, you would probably end up overpowered even . .
mog
I have a question :

If i have a Modulable cyberarm, with a drone hand modified with a camera, can i use my drone hand to lock a target for my spells?

Or can i do that with a drone eye?
Drogos
No, no casting through wireless link. Now if you ran a fiberoptic cable you could cast through that ala magesight goggles.
masterofm
The minute something leaves your body it is no longer part of your body. If you take out a cyber eye you cannot cast with it. Imagine that it basically creates that essence hole when you take it out and the minute you put it back into your body that essence hole is filled again.
ArkonC
QUOTE (Fortune @ Nov 17 2008, 04:06 PM) *
No reason at all why not. I have played a few awakened characters with 4 points of essence loss, and they were certainly viable. Admittedly none of them were full-body 'borgs, but Essence loss is Essence loss. As was mentioned (numerous times smile.gif), just be sure to keep that Essence at 2 or slightly above. Even the slightest drop below that 'magic' number would really suck.

Why 2? As long as you have an essence of 1+ you will always be able to initiate and raise magic...
Neraph
Let it be known there is no limit to initiation.

Example above: your Essence of 2 = Maximum Magic of 2. Initiate 2 times, your new Magic maximum is 4, which raises your maximum Initiation Grade to 4, not 2. Par infinitum.
Stahlseele
QUOTE (ArkonC @ Nov 17 2008, 05:00 PM) *
Why 2? As long as you have an essence of 1+ you will always be able to initiate and raise magic...

not true.
if your essence drops below 1, you burn out . . if you have an essence between 1 and 2, your magic is ONE and you can only initiate once
if your essence is between 2 and 3, your magic is at 2 and you can initiate twice
Uli
If your Magic drops due to 5 points of Essence loss to 1, you initiate once, raise magic to 2, initiate again, and so on. So Essence 1+ would be correct.

Interestingly the full body replacement is the final goal of my chaosmage. Just can't wait to initiate often enough to accept a beta-suite. grinbig.gif
Stahlseele
ok, i misunderstood then, my bad
Hagga
There's a thought. If you took the essence to 0.95, and then tossed on a power focus (preferably in the shape of a tattoo reading 'My player is an idiot' on the characters forehead) could you initiate further?
Fortune
In SR4, Power Foci do not add their Force (or anything) to the actual Magic Attribute. They merely add their Force in dice to any test in which that Attribute is involved.
Stahlseele
not in SR4 anymore, you can't
in SR3, power foci actually raised your magic attribute, while in SR4 they only add dice to any test made with the magic attribute . . and if your essence is less than one, you have no magic attribute any more and you lose connection to all of your foci as well i think . . i am not sure on the last bit though . . but all active magic skills get changed to knowledge skills so you can not use them anyway . . there was the spirit pact with one certain spirit that allowed burned out mages to get magic back though . . with that, all bets are off O.o . . wait, can a mage cyberzombie go into a spirit pact with that spirit for example?
WeaverMount
Random number cruch 2 arms, 2 legs, skull and torso at delta in a suite with the adapin or aspines or whatever that was comes out to 1.88 essence loss.
Stahlseele
meaning 4 points of magic left . . eeeviiil if one can actually achieve this . .
and i think you meant adapsin ^^
i would probably go without the skull though . . does not really give all that much bonus . .
Hagga
QUOTE (Stahlseele @ Nov 17 2008, 10:38 PM) *
not in SR4 anymore, you can't
in SR3, power foci actually raised your magic attribute, while in SR4 they only add dice to any test made with the magic attribute . . and if your essence is less than one, you have no magic attribute any more and you lose connection to all of your foci as well i think . . i am not sure on the last bit though . . but all active magic skills get changed to knowledge skills so you can not use them anyway . . there was the spirit pact with one certain spirit that allowed burned out mages to get magic back though . . with that, all bets are off O.o . . wait, can a mage cyberzombie go into a spirit pact with that spirit for example?


Below 0 essence you have no magic, but only if you have 0 grades of initiation. You can't initiate any further at that point, because your essence magic provides a buffer that allows you to initiate around that "No magic, no grades of initiation." rule.
Zaranthan
QUOTE (Stahlseele @ Nov 17 2008, 06:21 PM) *
meaning 4 points of magic left . . eeeviiil if one can actually achieve this . .
and i think you meant adapsin ^^
i would probably go without the skull though . . does not really give all that much bonus . .

Neither do the rest of the limbs. If I'm turning 90% of my body into cold steel, I want an armor-plated brainpan, too. And a chance to do the Terminator pose. You can't possibly pass on that.
WeaverMount
Thematically you NEED the skull. Mechanically, skulls are a horrible deal. Three quarters of an essence for a extra box of P and 2 capacity is highway robbery.

and yes I did adapsin. Words were not being my friends for that post...
Tachi
QUOTE (Neraph @ Nov 17 2008, 10:05 AM) *
Let it be known there is no limit to initiation.

Example above: your Essence of 2 = Maximum Magic of 2. Initiate 2 times, your new Magic maximum is 4, which raises your maximum Initiation Grade to 4, not 2. Par infinitum.



QUOTE (Uli @ Nov 17 2008, 10:29 AM) *
If your Magic drops due to 5 points of Essence loss to 1, you initiate once, raise magic to 2, initiate again, and so on. So Essence 1+ would be correct.

Interestingly the full body replacement is the final goal of my chaosmage. Just can't wait to initiate often enough to accept a beta-suite. grinbig.gif


I don't know, no offense, but, that seems kinda.... munchkinesque. I think it would destroy (as in stomp all over) balance. I interpreted it to mean you can only initiate a number of times equal to your natural (i.e. non-initiate) magic score.

As in:
Magic: 2
Initiate: 2
Total Magic: 4
And that's it.

But I may be wrong.
masterofm
Ack. If you have a magic of 2 and have initiated twice. This is how it would break down. You would have a magic of 2 and you could raise your magic stat to 4 (but does not give you a magic stat of 4.) Initiation never increases your magic stat, but lets you have the option of getting more points in your magic stat.

Now there are ways to balance the whole magic ordeal and that is when you implant cyber/bio it creates an essence hole and works kind of like burning edge. For instance you have a magic of six and you put 1 point of cyber/bio so your essence drops to 5/6 and your magic is also 5/6. So when you raise your magic by one point it is 6/7 (you would need 21 karma to raise your magic instead of 18 karma) it is nice because it prevents the mage blowing 5 essence into cyber/bio from the start and only having to spend 6 karma to raise his/her magic stat from 1 to 2 (when if you rule it the other way it would take 21 karma to raise it from 1/6 to 2/7.) Assuming you initiate to buy up the maximum magic from 6 to 7. <- this ruling I personally like because it makes mages less broken if they implant cyber/bio into their system.
Tachi
I see, so strip the magic, but make them pay for more of it as though it was still there. Hmm.
Uli
I thought it was well known and accepted (as opposed to liked) that awakened are, again, the only infinite characters. All others are limited by the fact they will inevitably reach maximum scores in all attributes and active skills, given enough time and karma. Awakened have their one unlimited attribute.

When you lose Magic due to Essence loss, it reduces your natural maximum together with the actual score, just like initiation does not. Latter raises the natural maximum, but you still need to raise your score seperately.
And I do not think that cybered, especially heavily cybered, mages are a threat to balancing - not a greater threat than mages are anyway, but the massively lower spell power rating hurt a lot. So no stun ball, power rating 10, blowing away a whole group of enemies; edge to drain resistance and we have got a winner. There are only a few spells that are one the hand useful and on the other remain that way when used with force 2 to 4.

[EDIT: That why my group has a no-awakened and an awakened-only round.]
Stahlseele
QUOTE (Zaranthan @ Nov 18 2008, 02:03 AM) *
Neither do the rest of the limbs. If I'm turning 90% of my body into cold steel, I want an armor-plated brainpan, too. And a chance to do the Terminator pose. You can't possibly pass on that.

ok, yes, you're right above the terminator ^^
other than that, SR4's limbs are actually quite nice compared to the earlier versions . . only thing i DON'T like about them is the way redlining works, even if i do understand that it has to be this way without stress points and for game balance reasons
Bobson
QUOTE (WeaverMount @ Nov 17 2008, 06:20 PM) *
Random number cruch 2 arms, 2 legs, skull and torso at delta in a suite with the adapin or aspines or whatever that was comes out to 1.88 essence loss.

You can also do it with all standard-grade if you're cyberware compatable. It's only 4.95 essence for everything except the skull at that point, and by the time you can buy the skull, you'll be able to initiate and raise your magic once so that you're still magical after accepting it. Of course, you're better off with a higher grade, but it is feasible at chargen.

Now, I've been inspired by this thread to create a full-body cybermage for the 800-bp thread. cyber.gif grinbig.gif
Rasumichin
Loosing less than two points of Essence for a fully cybernetic body may seem scary, but consider what a delta-grade full body replacement would cost you...a sufficiently twinked-out body will already range in the hundreds of thousands if it is standard ware.
I'm not saying that it is a bad deal to get maxed physical attributes, 4 additional boxes on the P track and a ton of capacity points, even if it costs several million nuyen.gif , but from a minmaxing point of view, i'd get 4 IPs, a Trauma Damper, a Platelet Factory, Skillwires, a Cerebral Booster and some tricked-out cybereyes first.

Of course, a sufficiently wealthy and experienced mage may think about getting all of that...but that is so deep in high-karma land that it doesn't bother me that much.
At a point where a mage can afford to pack that amount of ware without crippling his magical abilities, his teammates may be a cyberzombie, a jarhead with a T-Bird body, a TM submerged a dozen times and aided by a tricked-out pokêsprite giving him all CFs at 8 (before threading) and the group's face may just have become designated president of the UCAS by making appropriate use of his 60 dice for leadership tests.
Draco18s
QUOTE (Tachi @ Nov 18 2008, 02:18 AM) *
I don't know, no offense, but, that seems kinda.... munchkinesque. I think it would destroy (as in stomp all over) balance. I interpreted it to mean you can only initiate a number of times equal to your natural (i.e. non-initiate) magic score.

As in:
Magic: 2
Initiate: 2
Total Magic: 4
And that's it.

But I may be wrong.


And now you have a Magic stat of 4, which means you can get two more initiations, raising your Max Magic to 6.

You have to BUY each point of magic in order to initiate again, but you just need to have the actual stat be higher than or equal to your initiation grade.

Which means, in theory, one could have a cyberzombie caster.

It'd be freaking scary.

They initiate enough times to have a Max Magic 6 higher than their actual magic, and have enough actual magic such that when reduced below 1 essence they keep at least 1 point of magic. As long as they go through the surgery AFTER initiating, it could be done.
PlatonicPimp
Actually, no, the cyberzombie rules state that the cyberzombie has a magic score of 1, which cannot be raised by any means. At all. Nothing. It can initiate once, assuming it had some magician quality, but it cannot raise it's magic score at all.
Stahlseele
and as the text clearly states, it does not lose and agin another point of magic, but the magic is being reduced to a permanent score of one . . so technically, cybermancy makes sure a magician can never ever burn out?
darthmord
QUOTE
Fortune wrote:
QUOTE
(Shadowrun Core Rulebook pg. 189)
A character's initiate grade cannot exceed her Magic attribute. If a character's Magic is reduced below her initiate grade, she loses that level of initiation and the metamagic she gained with it.




QUOTE
(Same Source pg. 189)
An initiate’s natural maximum for the Magic attribute is 6 + her grade of initiation.


Actually, there is a bit more to this...

The natural maximum for Magic is equal to Essence (round down) + Initiation Grade.

Initiation Grade cannot exceed Magic.

Thus if you had Magic 20 and Initiation 20 and lost a point of Magic for any reason, your new stats would be Magic 19 & Initiation 19 and you'd lose that metamagic.

This means you can go as low as 1 Essence and still be a fully functioning and ever improving Mage. Here's how:

CODE
Essence: 1
Initiation: 0
Magic Max: 1
Magic Attribute: 1


Going from the above numbers, your Initiation Grade (henceforth called IG) is 0. This is less than Magic. So you can Initiate. You do so and now have:

CODE
Essence: 1
Initiation: 1
Magic Max: 2
Magic Attribute: 1


You cannot Initiate any further UNTIL you raise your Magic Attribute from 1 to 2. You do that and it changes to the following:

CODE
Essence: 1
Initiation: 1
Magic Max: 2
Magic Attribute: 2


Now you can Initiate again. Repeat the last two steps ad infinitum and you have all the twinkage you can cram in via cyber & bioware AND be a kickass mage after the expenditure of some serious ass Karma.

The big thing is you must have the following attributes at these values or better...

CODE
Essence: 1
Initiation: 0
Magic Max: 1
Magic Attribute: 1
Rasumichin
QUOTE (Stahlseele @ Nov 24 2008, 11:27 PM) *
and as the text clearly states, it does not lose and agin another point of magic, but the magic is being reduced to a permanent score of one . . so technically, cybermancy makes sure a magician can never ever burn out?


Well, it at least makes shure you can stay in a state of near-burnout until you die (for real this time).
You can also install additional 'ware without losing your one point of Magic (at least until you reach the yet-to-be-breached treshold of -6 Essence...not that it's damn difficult and a hell of bookkeeping to find enough interesting delta grade implants to cram into 12 points of Essence...).
For some, this might be an alternative...it could also mean that a burned-out mage could regain at least some of his ability by undergoing cybermancy, though the rules on cybermancy do not state what happpens if you where already burned out before undergoing the procedure..
Stahlseele
you gain one point of magic back.
but as you bruned out, all your magical skills became knowledge skills so no spellcasting/summoning for you anymore, even if you're now a magic 1 dual natured being . .
Rasumichin
QUOTE (Stahlseele @ Nov 25 2008, 08:49 PM) *
you gain one point of magic back.
but as you bruned out, all your magical skills became knowledge skills so no spellcasting/summoning for you anymore, even if you're now a magic 1 dual natured being . .


I would've handled it otherwise, making the knowledge skills become active again after zombification (i just love the concept of a character going for cybermancy because of burnout), but the face of a character who has just discovered that his plan of regaining magic by killing himself and unnaturally tieying his spirit to his body and screwing himself up completely in the process simply doesn't work this way- that would be priceless...
Stahlseele
that's the way it does work . .
i am still not sure if the magician who still had his magic and only dropped TO one instead of going up to one from zero again could use the spirit pact of the aleph society to gain more magic
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