Right, so the assertion that getting a bleeding cut means you lose essence doesn't hold water. It needs to be a lot of blood (losing a limb may cause some essence loss if it was unintentional), or mess with your internal mechanics (aka adding wires to nerves).

Which leaves us with "it's perfectly valid for a magician to implant himself with fetishes at no (essence) cost."

just as it leaves us with everybody can have all vision mods in contact lenses at no essence cost, including smartlink, the hacker can have his complete equipment outside his body, at no essence cost, the face can up his pretty at no essence cost etc. etc. etc.
and fetishes ain't all that much powerfull, i would be more worried about FOCUSES being done like that . .

Though I have to admit that the idea of a Tattoo Focus (say for summoning or counterspelling, or even a Power Focus) is an interesting idea, and has a lot of potential for story... I would never allow (pretty sure about that, but if a good story game of it, who knows) a Weapon Focus to be made into a Tattoo, however.

Brings to mind a group I played with way back in the Early 1990's, whose female mage had a powerful Power Focus made into a set of Ben-Wa Balls...

Creepy... and very disturbing...

Anyway, My Two Cents

Who would use tattoos as a weapon-focus?
the only people who would be able to use it effectively would be adepts.
and those can achieve the same effect easier through adept powers O.o

OK, the Ben-Wa-Balls are an . . interesting . . idea . .
gives a whole new meaning to FETISH Implants too . .

No! Bad Stahlseele!

whaaat? =^.^=
i am bad, but i am good at being bad ^^

It was pretty bad... and they were pretty..... Creepy...
Of course that was when you could ground spells through Foci... what an uncomfortable case of flaming crotch that would have been...

*snickers* oi vey ^^

Exactly...

Certainly expands the uses of that Shock Hand...

As pointed out above you can have a device not implanted and it will cost no essence. But the second you want an internal comlink you will have to sacrifice essence to do it. It is the whole point of paying the price on having something foreign in your body. From a strictly game balance point of view I would demand an essence loss for any implant in order to maintain a bonus to your character (like having a power focus always touching you). This will stop mage characters from lining their skins with tons of fetishes, foci, and other magical equipment.

Not really. How many foci (etc) do you think a mage has? At 0.1 essence per a mage could implant several if he's willing to give up any essence at all (many mages are).

Furthermore, there's Focus Addiction to dissuade them from this.

There's also Implant Addiction. So what's your point?

IIRC implant addiction can not be dumped on you by your GM. Nor dose it keep on increasing till you burn out..

Well, TECHNICALLY it works like every other addiction, and if you can't get rid of the addiction before you get to 0 essence from implants or whatever, you have certainly been burned out.

Which definitely sucks

Yet another reason to not implant fetishes into your mage character.