Trying to do so leads me to http://www.wiredreflexes.com/sr/control/sh...alker/index.php and a standard "not found" ("The requested URL /sr/control/shadowtalk/register_shadowtalker/index.php was not found on this server") screen; I can send you a shot if you really want.

~J

In alot of cases dyslexia is accompanied by an above average to genius IQ.

I wouldn't mind seeing some kind of documentation to back up this statement.

Nor I.

Of course, I know a few dyslexics who are very smart. But I also know a few dyslexics who are incredibly stupid.

Don't get me wrong. I've met both as well. I'm not saying that nobody with a learning disability can be intelligent. I would just like the quote 'in a lot of cases' backed up with facts.

That's what I mean. I've seen more unintelligent ones than intelligent ones, though.

Oh, and as a note of reference Joker: IQ has nothing to do with real smarts. IQ actually decreases with age (Frag if I remember my source, sorry) and it only deals with your ability to learn, not how much you really do know.

Yeah, but a supply and demand curve has two axes. The supply is limited, but so is the demand - very few people can actually use it for anything, and all of the few people who have a demand for it can make it themselves, so the supply's not really all that limited for them.

How much is 28 days worth to you? Let me put it another way... if a Johnson offered you 300,000¥ to sit on your ass at home for a month, would you tell him to keep his money? (Assume that you have reason to believe that there's no hidden catch here.)

Exactly my point. Not everybody Enchants. To people who don't, or can't, Enchant, orichalcum is nothing but a curiosity. People who can and do Enchant, and to whom orichalcum is therefore useful, can make it themselves.

And if you're trying to live on what you can earn in the shadows, buying expensive things that you can make yourself more cost-effectively is not exactly the best strategy.

That just shoves the question back a step further. Why are metal radicals so expensive? Again, the only thing they're good for is Enchanting, and anyone who can Enchant can make them themselves. Yes, there's some value in the metal itself, but given that any alchemist worthy of the name (figure Enchanting 3) can turn 10k¥ of raw gold into 100k¥ of gold radicals given five weeks or so to work, there's some serious cost inflation going on even before it gets made into orichalcum.

What's that you say? It's because you're paying for the rare and highly skilled labor of the alchemist?

Nope, think again. Take a look at the table of Enchanting Service Costs on p.170 of MitS. Making Radicals? Now, I'm not sure whether the "per unit" there is per unit of refined materials or per unit of radicals, but if we're pessimistic and assume the latter, you can hire an Enchanting 6 alchemist to turn two units of refined materials into ten units of radicals (on average) for a mere 9,600¥. Given 40,000¥ for materials, that leaves 350,400¥ of pure profit that's going into someone's pocket.

You want to exploit the Enchanting rules for profit? Forget making orichalcum. Hire someone to make gold radicals. The profit's just about the same, and - here's the best part - it's not even your own time you're wasting. You can go out shadowrunning or whatever you do for fun while your wagemage mints money for you.

MitS, which has detailed rules for making foci that I consider to overrule the passing mention in the corebook, doesn't require weapon foci to contain orichalcum. That's beside the point, though, because they're so difficult and Karma-expensive to make that you'd be a fool not to use it to reduce those problems, required or no.

More to the point, anyone who can make weapon foci can make orichalcum.

On top of that, if you use a significant amount of the stuff, you might very well end up losing money on the final sale of the focus if you're buying the orichalcum.

Adding in the price of the enchanting shop is a bit disingenuous, because not only is it a one-time expense, but you have to have one anyway in order to do anything with orichalcum other than sell it or sit it on your mantle so everyone knows how leet you are.

I think I found and fixed the problem you ran in to, Kagentenshi.

First off, the Foci creation rules does not contradict the statement in SR3. Weapon foci still needs orichalcum. The creation rules does not say you do not require orichalcum for weapon foci.

Anyone who is making weapon foci may not have the skill to smelt the gold/silver from ore. I do not know how mercury is refined from its natural form but I doubt more than a handful of people are going to know either. Exposure to mercury is poisonous and yet if you do not refine it personally, you can kiss your virgin telesma goodbye.

Better yet is a question to ask, why do gun makers buy steel from steel mills? Surely they have the expertise to get it themselves.

The payload must be alive and you need to be able to show some proof that it is a blood mage. (if the GM is being nice, then as long as the blood mage still has a magic rating, the Draco foundation will know in a week and send you a check)

If steel could be produced just as well on the same equipment as that found in a gunsmiths shop, then I have no doubts that they would get it themselves.

It's not cost effective. The conditions that allow for high quality steel are cheaper per pound of output to produce in a large factory setting. If the time and costs needed to make the steel for a clip of bullets could be spent on buying the steel for a clip of bullets and doing the rest of the work, it is a better choice to buy the steel.

[short form, hard to read]
If (steel ingredients cost)*(time to refine steel)+(other bullet material costs)*(time to make bullets) < (all bullet materials)*(time to make bullets) for any number of bullets, then it is cheaper to make your own steel. It usualy isn't.
[/short form]

Yes, but how much time does it take to make the radicals of everything else? If you want to really make a killing, you've got to do it all yourself. No bought radicals, no bought beginning items. Everything must be found by you and used only by you to make that load of orichalcum.

So, all in all, from start to end, if you only generate one success for each test and only refine/radicalize one item at a time...

10 days collecting one raw unit of gold.
10 days collecting one raw unit of silver.
10 days collecting one raw unit of copper.
10 days collecting one raw unit of mercury.
10 days refining one unit of gold.
10 days refining one unit of silver.
10 days refining one unit of copper.
10 days refining one unit of mercury.
28 days radicalizing one unit of gold.
28 days radicalizing one unit of silver.
28 days radicalizing one unit of copper.
28 days radicalizing one unit of mercury.
28 days combining the four radicals into orichalcum.

So that's, all in all...

220 days. Over half a year just to produce one unit of orichalcum.

See why it's hardly cost-efficient?

Why? There's a canon price structure in place for buying components; why are you arbitrarily barring our would-be alchemist from making use of it?

If it's because those prices are wildly out of line with the actual costs involved in making the materials, then that's my fragging point.

Both of those are unlikely, even for an "average" Enchanting 3/Magic 6 alchemist.

But, yes, if you look at the entire process from start to end, with a fairly average alchemist, things look much less broken. But that's only because radicals are broken in both directions, which hides the effects. This does not mean that the system works. It means that the system is broken in multiple ways.

Gold radicals are far more expensive than they should be, given the actual costs involved in making them, but copper is much cheaper than it should be, and anyone trying to make a living off refining herbs, crystals, or the various base metals is going to starve in short order. So make gold radicals. Mercury and silver are borderline... depends on how good you are and how much you think your time is worth. Buy the copper; make someone else eat the loss on its manufacture. And if you're objecting, "Where are you going to buy it? No one is going to waste their time making it, so there'll be nowhere to buy it," then you're starting to get my point.

Why get it all yourself? Virgin telesma, friend... You can then throw the orichalcum in a weapon focus and further lower the TN for making it because it was made with virgin telesma.

Isn't worth it. You're better off making one more unit of orichalcum from non-virgin materials and skipping all the leadup. That gives you the same TN modifier (the difference between handmade and virgin, anyway), takes much less time, and reduces the Karma cost to bond it to boot.

edit: And it doesn't even address the point of why orichalcum costs so much, because if you're buying it from someone else, you lose that modifier anyway.

What part of "only Enchanters can actually make use of orichalcum, and only Enchanters can create orichalcum" are you just not getting?

What's your point? What possible use do all those other magicians have for orichalcum? Only Enchanters need orichalcum and only Enchanters create orichalcum. For everyone else, it's nothing but another pretty metal. It's probably not even as useful for other endeavors like gold and copper are.

since orcalicum reduces karma cost of bonding focui by 1 and the last I time I checked it was more than just enchanters that bound focui. i think that every magically actuve individual that wanted to bind a focus would have a big need for it.

Well if you can knock him out it's just a matter of hooking up some gear to monitor his vitals and a keeping a box of Tranq Patch [8] handy.

Best thing to do is implement quality control. I can think of three ways:

• Require that all submitted characters include complete answers to the 20 questions. This should cut way down on frivolous submissions.
  
  
• Use a voting and/or comments module for the submitted characters so that people can diss bad characters and promote good ones.
  
  
• Warn people right up front that if you don't like their character for any reason you can and will delete it without warning. Use a big font and inform them that if they can't handle this possibility then they shouldn't submit. If you're feeling really nice you can give some general criteria, but keep it general.
  

A "printable" view of the characters would be cool so people could use them for NPCs or what-not. Maybe like what the NSRCG outputs...