Could someone actually involved with the line explain to me the logic of having ways for an awakened character to Permanently LOSE Karma?!?! Or how about setting things up so that buying the same set of improvements in different orders changes the karma cost of them?!?

Seriously, I don't understand. I can understand having to pay karma to attune to a focus, but permanently losing the karma you spent if you ever decide to upgrade, or if the focus is destroyed makes no sense. The system as written discourages the use of foci until you can afford to get one at the maximum possible rating, because if you get a small one, then the karma spent on it is a damned waste when you upgrade. It's like making the party gun bunny pay karma to be allowed to fire that pistol, and then not letting it apply to using any other pistol. Oh, and also taking the karma away permanently if that pistol is destroyed.


Another Awakened character karma FUBAR, why is it that raising an attribute that's been affected by the improved attribute adept power costs an amount of karma that is relative to the augmented attribute? this doesn't happen when you use bioware attribute augmentations, so why is the improved attribute power so gimped? For example.

Say an adept has an agility of 4, before any augmentations or Karma expenditure.

If they raise their agility with karma, and then with improved agility, they pay 25 karma, and .75 power points.
If the raise their agility with improved agility, and then with karma, they pay .75 power points, and 30 karma.

Ok, now lets use a character with bioware augmentations, still 4 agility before any changes.

muscle toner, and then raise agility with karma, 25 karma, 8,000
raise agility with karma, and then muscle toner, 25 karma, 8,000

Wait a minute, I bought the same two things both ways, but depending on which order I buy them in the karma cost varies. But only for the adept power. This is BS.

Well let's slow down here a sec. (First of all, to clarify, I am not an official spokesperson for Shadowrun).

But, yeah. Paying karma is how it works in the game. For everything. If you pay karma to raise your quickness, and then fall and break your back and become paralyzed, you don't get your karma back. Magical Foci are very powerful, so yes, if you lose it you can always try to get it back. And yes, just like everything else you pay karma for, the karma should be gone after you use it. If you buy a gun with money and then lose it, the store is not going to refund your money.

Though, most importantly. Stop for a moment and breathe. Take a second to realize that if a game mechanic that has been in the game for 20 years is still in the game, there must be a good reason for it. If it were as awful as you imply, the game probably wouldn't be quite as popular.

Now, I'm willing to try to explain in more depth about why spending karma on Foci is not a loss on your part, or you can wait to see if anyone official responds.

And, to everyone else who reads this, Let's try not to make this into a big yelling match like alot of threads ^-^

but you can get your quickness back through the expenditure of



But you can sell the gun and use the money to buy another gun. Hell, if you're a good negotiator you may be able to sell the gun at a profit. (not likely, but possible)



Ok, so what about the crap with making it so that the order in which you buy things changes the total karma cost?

I gotta admit, when first I read this I thought you were bitching about Energy Drain (Karma).


This situation does not call for multiple punctuation. Enhance your calm.


For the benefit foci provide, there are three immediate and tangible drawbacks: 1) cost to purchase or enchant, 2) cost to bond, 3) the fact that they're physical objects that can be taken from you and, yes, destroyed. Let me put this in perspective: dice pool are generally limited by skill and attribute, both of which have caps. Foci are a way to substantially increase your dice pool at a lower cost in Karma, with the caveat that your investment may be rendered inoperative or unavailable. This is why magicians cherish their foci.

As far as the upgrade situation: chillax. Nothing in the rules says you cannot upgrade foci. There are some finer points of upgrading foci I would like to see print one day, once we iron out a couple small but rather integral mechanics. Just because we haven't published rules for it yet does not mean they will never be published. Would you like me to suggest a get-you-buy house rule?


I'm tempted to say "because magic is different," but I doubt that would make you happy. That's the gist of it though: implants can be purchased, installed, upgraded or switched out, and removed based entirely on your whims, nuyen, and what the character can handle. Adept powers are permanent and intrinsic additions to the character. If you want to talk about opportunity cost, here's how it breaks down: the price you pay for holistic integrity (i.e. no Essence loss) and not needing to pay nuyen for your attribute increase is 0.75 power points (1.5 when over your natural maximum, up to your augmented maximum). That is important to all Awakened characters, because any Essence loss costs them Magic points. Players that decide to "take the hit" and mix magic and augmentations have to find a balancing act they're comfortable with - most of the players I've met decide that if they're going to lose a point of Magic by getting an implant, they're going to get their nuyen's worth out of the deal and buy everything else they can squeeze in too.

Slippery slope from there to burnout, but sometimes it's the best option available for given character.

Did I mention adept powers work in whatever form they're in, and that a shapeshifter adept with Improved Attribute can be scary?


One part relic rule from previous editions, one part reigning-in-the-inner munchkin.

Except that this particular rule is unnecessary & overly-complicated, and even if it was a standard +1 augmentation to the attribute, at .75 cost, it is generally worthless. Basically, it is retarded.


Shadowrun 4 has an excellent system, and generally speaking, is fairly well balanced. There are some things, however, that are fucking poor design & balance. This is one of those.

A very simple houserule to address the issue of Improved Physical Attribute is to simply pay 0.75 points/level to get an augmented rating (up to augmented maximum). Now it's functionally identical to bioware/cyberware enhancements, including the karma costs to raise the natural score.

:Zen:



That would be wonderful.



Um... "Reigning in the inner munchkin"? Having the cost of things change depending on the order in which you buy them encourages munchkining. I'd suggest a better way to handle this would be to simply state that the effect of improved attribute is derived from the number of points in it, rather than deriving the number of points from the effect. ie...

say I am human, have agility 4 and I have invested 1.5 power points into improved agility, so I have AGI 4(6). Now I decide to spend karma to raise the un augmented attribute by 2 points. that would cost (with my suggestion) 25+30 karma (4-5 and 5-6). at this point I now would have agility 6 and 1.5 power points invested in improved agility, so I have AGI 6(7). This produces the same cost in karma and power points regardless of which order you buy things in. Which would have the effect of cutting the munchkins off at the pass because there is no longer a 'Right' and 'Wrong' order in which to buy them.



I guess that part of my problem with the loss of karma as opposed to the loss of is that when something you buy with money is destroyed/lost on a run, that can come out of expenses, and thus can be distributed evenly throughout the team. If you lose something you bought with karma there is no possible way to share that burden with the rest of the team. Seriously, if the trolls MMG gets destroyed on the run then you can replace that before you divvy up the payment, while if the mages focus gets destroyed, the entire crippling cost is on the mage alone. This means that if the mage loses a focus, they are thereafter PERMANENTLY weaker than the rest of the team. If it happens more than once you may as well kill off the character and make a new one, because it is now impossible for you to pull your own weight.

Well, I suppose there is a way to redistribute the karma, but it's really difficult. You need to find a free spirit with both Power pact and Life pact. Swap one of your spells with Life pact, place the pact on your team mate, flambe your team mate. Rather more difficult than transferring from one credstick to another.

i use the money/karma exchange. with that in place this problem has a lot less impact.

Make an availability test for the focus at the new Force. Pay the difference in nuyen and karma between the cost of the focus at the old Force and the new Force. Basic, doesn't address a couple little points (like enchanting it yourself), but basically workable.


Nein. Consider: the cost of the power doubles when you exceed your natural maximum. If the power did not modify the Karma cost, then you could effectively start the game with, say, Strength 1, Magic 6, and Improved Attribute (Strength 6), and then during the course of the regular grade upgrade your Strength from 1 to 2 at the regular cost (5 x new attribute rating, or 10 Karma) for an effective Strength 8. Granted, you can do similar tricks with augmentations (especially cyberlimbs these days), but the only effective limit on Improved Attribute is your Magic rating in levels.


Hah. Sorry, that's hilarious. Most of the games I've run, if the hacker accidentally gets his commlink shot he's on his own to buy a new one, even if it's to the team's benefit to have a pimped-out hacker.


This is generally true. Which is another reason, and I like to reiterate this, that you pay special attention to protecting the things that matter most to you. In effect, the Karma cost encourages a degree of roleplaying.


Pfft. If your entire character concept is built around a single toy, be it a focus, or a katana, or that really-bad-ass implant, then getting it taken away from you is a legitimate concern for your character - and it will very likely happen unless you take extreme steps to deal with it. I hate to call it a trope, but that's the way it works. That being said, unless your focus is really, exceptionally powerful ("Never bind anything bigger than your head.") and your other skills and attributes are woefully underdeveloped in comparison, the loss should not take you out of the game completely. You may well end up in a situation of having to play smarter rather than blasting all your enemies into little piles of goo.

If it's really, really got you down, consider taking a page from Threats 2: the remains of your focus can be utilized in the ritual to enchant a new focus, reducing the cost of the new focus by the Force of the old one. That way you at least have an incentive to pick up the broken bits of the old focus.

Think about all the karma I lose when my characters head gets cut off! It's just awful. And my head is far more important then a focus.

The what now?



I suppose that works.



See my suggestion in my last post on a way to handle this that actually makes sense.



Well, I suppose if that's the way you usually do it, then your team is less effective. The group I usually play with normally keeps a slush fund for things that are benefit to the group, and for replacing equipment damaged through things other than asshattery on the part of the one who's equipment was damaged.



"If you don't like it the way it is then you're a bad roleplayer." Yeah, thanks.



If your GM allows the houserule that you can upgrade foci, then great. Otherwise binding foci that aren't bigger than your head isn't worth the karma.

Also, as written foci other than power, sustaining, weapon, centering, shielding, and possibly masking, are pointless. It's cheaper (in both karma and ) to get a power focus than it is to get 3 or more spellcasting/binding/summoning foci, and it can stand in for any of them.

And augmented maximums.

Regardless, doing this comes at significant cost to other abilities, & is not viable if you do not want a gimped character.


I run it at 0.5 per level, following standard augmented attribute rules, & have been for some time. Guess what - it's actually a valid choice now, although still nowhere near munchkin/powergame territory.



As written, the power is crap. Assuming the fucking retarded rule of affecting Karma costs and the increase in price above augmented maximum are removed, at 0.75, the power is still crap.

1) counterspelling foci don't require a metamagic technique
2) they are cheaper, and more specialised. that isn't useless, that's situationally useful; if all i am worried about counterspelling is combat spells, or if i can only summon one kind of spirit effectively anyways (some magicians suffer -4 outside of various categories, and recover some BP/karma for it) then it's a good buy, costing less nuyen and karma to bind (and easier to find, possible to get at a higher rating at chargen when dealing with the availability cap, etc). for example, if your magician only ever uses manipulation and illusion spells, and has no interest in health, combat, or detection spells, then it is better to pick up specific foci, rather than the generalised power focus. maybe you're a free spirit, and only know a handful of spells from focused categories, and can't summon, in addition to not having a lot of spare BP/karma to throw into a power focus. maybe your magician actually has a history as a non-shadowrunner, and it makes no sense for them to have stunball, heal, and detect enemies regardless of how great they are for shadowrunners. and once again, you can get a spellcasting focus at rating 3 in chargen, power focus at only 2. if you intend to largely ignore or are otherwise restricted in certain areas, it's a much better buy. not being the best choice for the character you are currently playing does not mean it is never the best choice. yours is not the only character that will ever be created, and options need not be useful for your character to be conisdered useful overall.
3) i suggest you remove the errata that made spellcasting foci unable to be added to drain dice. back when you could apply the focus to a different pool (note the limitation is 1 focus per pool, not 1 per action) it was possible to use a spellcasting focus to resist drain on a spell that you cast using the power focus. this evidently really bothers you, and being able to use a focus to add drain dice for spellcasting or summoning would help. this will of course power up your magicians somewhat (and i can't say that i've ever felt they really needed that), but that's your problem to deal with not mine, so go nuts. heck, for all i care, just allow your magicians to enchant themselves as any kind of focus at a rating equal to their magic rating, as well as using it as a fetish, all at once. i promise you, if the gaming police kick in your door, you can just get off with a slap on the wrist if you act like you didn't know you were doing anything wrong (or if you're a minor).

IIRC, the Centering focus is now the only Focus that adds to Drain resistance, and the Shielding Focus is better than any single Counterspelling Focus because it applies to all Spell Categories (and, AFAIK, Power Focus doesn't add to spell defense).

That's why it's on my list of foci that aren't ripoffs



You'll note that the shielding focus made my worthwhile list, while the counterspelling foci didn't.

Sorry, I somehow misread your list to say that those were the bad ones. Looking over it, I'm not sure how I misread so badly...

Do you allow it to be compined with ware still, as it's an augmentation now.

I wouldn't really call it crap, as there are some nice tricks you can do with it at chargen, like softmaxing an atribute and then maxing it with only 0.75 powerpoints.
And then you can take it over the max with ware.
Doing it this way it doesn't matter that it affacts the karma cost as the atribute can't be raised with karma anyway.

Logically, the best way to handle it would be to have the adept lose a level of IA until the power point difference is paid. There already exists a mechanic for Adepts to lose powers when they are no longer able to cover the PP cost for one reason or another (usually magic loss or background count) and it wouldn't take much effort to apply that mechanic in the aforementioned case. Doing so also has the advantage of not being an exception to the core attribute mechanics.

bwahahah ^^

No, he´s absolutely right. The power IS still crap and this will never change. But we have to be honest about some things before we lead this discussion to an neverending story:

Problem no.1: The fraction of people that want to play magically active characters, complain that the system is not balanced out since the beginning of shadowrun 20 years ago. (yeah, i know other parties complain, too, but their point of view is not the topic here)

Fact no.1: the system has never been balanced out. If it would be otherwise, we wouldn´t have so many SR-discussion-forums in the internet. Even the developers know that they make a bad job and if SOMETHING is absolutely clear, then that they have not thought about everything so detailed as we expected them to do. I know, everybody is going to disagree now with me, but hey chummers: We have 4 versions of the game in 20 years, and now (what is really an impudence) they already published another version, only very few years after the all-so-balanced-and-new Version 4. If ONE game-system on the world isn´t balanced out, than it is our SR-baby.

Problem no.2: people play adepts because they don´t feel comfortable with the concept of putting cyber in your body. This is IMHO the reason we got adepts in the game. So an adept should be nothing else than a magic version of a streetsam.

Fact no.2: But is he capable to do so? No! His powers are too expensive and not variable enough. Of course theoretically he got no limit in develeopment, but practically spending hundreds points of karma while another char. can reach augmentations alone from his starting nuyen IS quite a limit, don´t you think? Just make yourself the fun and calculate an adept which equals an starting samurai or even one that already started playing (lets say 50 karma, 100.000 nuyen and some new cyber- or bioware). You would problably need a high-class initiate and HOW realistic is this? This is as unrealistic as starting a sam and saying: in some years, i will have all implants delta-grade. (which is still an advantage. I think it is more likely to get all implants and multi-million-nuyen surgery that finding a level 5 initiate)

So where are we now? We cannot depend on the developers to fit all our needs and I am not going to wait until the see where the mistakes are (at least they lowered the costs of some adept-powers, so they finally realized that there was something wrong....after 20 years....ouch) So houserule or do whatever you want. But stop to complain. It´s useless. It will not change.

And before somebody asks me why i play SR if i don´t like the system at all and think that the developers are incompetent? I can tell you: because of the setting. I love the world they created, but this doesn´t imply that the rules are good.

in sr3,believe its mr johnsons little black book. there is a rule that allows a person to trade money for karma and vice versa. currently my going rate is 5k/1. ive had no problems come up. also if you ever start making your own foci and you get a good amount of orichalcum you can create and bind focuses on the cheap.

Edit: Noticed you where talking about SR3. Nevermind

once again, counterspelling foci do not require a metamagic technique. they are available at chargen, and are not a bad choice.



you got any actual statistics to back this up? i haven't seen that many people complaining that magic, or even adepts, are underpowered. a handful of specific powers, perhaps, but adepts in general? no. NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO BE EXACTLY HOW YOU WANT IT TO BE USEFUL.


Fact: SR4A is not a new edition. Fact: no system is ever perfectly balanced out. shadowrun works fine because not everyone can do everything, and not everything is directly comparable, but it works fine. it is not perfectly balanced, but neither is it so horribly bad as you are painting it. a handful of specific powers or choices that do not fit your personal wants does not make the whole thing bad. and since you don't seem to have gotten it the first time i said it a few posts back, (and you may not have gotten it when i said it just above), JUST BECAUSE IT IS NOT WHAT YOU SPECIFICALLY WANT FOR YOUR CURRENT CHARACTER DOES NOT MEAN IT IS USELESS.


Fact: people play cybered adepts. people recommend cybered adepts to other players. and adepts are not just street sams with magic instead of cyber. they do different things. there are detective adepts, and musician adepts, and face adepts, and rigger adepts, and sports adepts, and just about every other kind of adept you can imagine (in SR4, there are even hacker adepts) some things cyber does better, some things magic/adept powers does better, and that's OK. adepts shouldn't be carbon copies of the street sam, otherwise there wouldn't be any need for both archetypes to exist. or, alternately, show me the cyberware that matches combat reflexes. or improved ability rating 3. what piece of cyberware do i get to initiate and pick up centering, or attune(item)? how about astral perception, where do i get that? or power throw, or any number of other adept powers? simply put: these are not available to street sams who are not also adepts. and that's OK, because the adept can't get an internal commlink or skillwires without taking some cyber, and they are not meant to be identical. YOU play them as identical. that does NOT mean that everyone else does. and just because YOU don't intend to do something, that STILL doesn't mean it isn't useful to SOMEONE.


so, let's see... you have so far found what... maybe 10 things that you don't like about the rules? and therefore they're garbage? perhaps the problem is not that the rules are bad, but simply that you don't like them. you are entitled to say "I don't like these rules" and i'm fine with that. but don't go around presenting as fact that I feel one way or another about certain rules without asking me. if you're going to go out and say "Everyone thinks exactly the same as me" then maybe you should first do something crazy like actually asking people what they think, rather than just going off on a tirade about how something is horribly wrong just because you don't like it. heck, you're even free to stand up and say "i personally don't like rules X, Y, and Z, has anyone else modified them in some way and would be willing to share their houserules?" or even "i don't like rules X, Y, and Z and i've changed them in these ways for my game, what do the rest of you think?" and i'm ok with that, because at that point you aren't telling me what I should think, and you're not telling me that i'm playing the game wrong just because i happen to play it differently.

but don't tell me that just because this game is not custom designed for you, that it's completely wrong and needs to be rewritten into exactly what you want. don't tell me that i should think exactly like you. you don't represent me, so stop acting like you do.

Actually, my gun bunny adept is buying that power, at the 1.5PP cost...
I could buy improved skill for pistols, rifles and unarmed combat, or I could get improved attribute agility for the same price ant get a boost to all agility linked tests...
Because of this, I now roll 11 dice with a bow even though I've never even touched one...
The power is not crap...
The point costs are kinda off, why are combat skills more expensive? If improved skills cost .25 for all skills and improved attribute cost 1 I believe they would be in balance with each other...

One of the house rules that has been in effect in my group for years is being able to unbond foci. We allow a mage to unbond a focus that he is bonded to (and has in his possession) using the same ritual that bonds foci to the user. The mage gets his karma back, however, it is placed in a pool for future foci bonding, like an essence hole.
This keeps the threat of loosing foci a serious issue, which it should be. But allows for upgrades when available.

Heh, most of the time in our games we have problems with Adepts (and Mages) being ridiculously overpowered compared to everyone else. Street Sams are usually tougher to kill, but adepts usually hit much harder, no matter what weapon you want to hand them. Which makes sense, seeing as some martial artists might be able to break a brick with their hand, but drop if you hit them in the head with the same brick.

Adepts are not meant to be "Street sams for people who don't want cyberware". They fill a much different niche.

Back on topic...


Karma and nuyen are both a function of time. The more runs you do, the more of both you have. Thus spending nuyen and karma are, to some degree, the same thing. Ask any street samurai who just got his custom made firearm that took his fixer 3 months to get and cost him 2 - 4 times the normal nuyen cost if he would be okay with losing it. Street sams also suffer the upgrade woes, often having to pay multiple times for the same 'ware to get a better grade, only so they have more essence to spend on other random upgrades.

Most GMs will let you do a few extra runs / whatever to get extra nuyen if you ask, and most will let you do the same type of activities for more karma, if you ask. I've never thought of it before b/c it never came up, but I could see throwing together a run for charity / saving a local orphanage / whatever that doesn't pay nuyen but has a high karma payout to help out the mage if he loses a foci.

There's still the problem with the fact that that custom gun could potentially be replaced out of a team slush fund, while the karma for the focus can't. (well, barring free-spirit-binding-cheese)

Or you could, at the cost of 1PP & 32,000:nuyen: get a +4 Agility, with room left over for additional augmentation.

The cost for Improved Attribute is absurd. Even at my revised 0.5, it is not an optimal choice, but at least it can be used without destroying your character compared to other options.

The only overpowering Adept I have ever seen is the Pornomancer & varients, & that is due only partially to the character being an Adept.

Adepts, as written, have 2 or 3 potentially overpowering options (none of which are significant, while a good 50% of options are absolute crap, & the rest are okay. Put simply, Adepts, as written, suck, & Improved Attribute is by far the worst of their shitty options.

Actually, I barely consider the pornomancer overpowering.

I was thinking, specifically, of the throwing adept. A man who can, after an initiation grade, pass as a perfectly normal man, with no cyberware or magical abilities (I love masking), get through any form of security scan b/c he honestly isn't carrying a weapon, and then kill his target with a pen from the mans desk. With enough dice to make sure it happens.

Or, if he is in a situation where subtlety isn't called for, can use the same abilities to throw grenades with pinpoint accuracy. (Can you still upgrade grenade damage with successes? If you can, combine that with close quarters and you can take out small mobs every action.)

In short, Adepts are very good at one specific focus, which is the point. The only way you develop those abilities, is with focus. You have to dedicate to one thing and strive to be the best at that to get access to the adept powers in the first place.

Vecna's Head, anyone?

-paws