Ever since encountering Maria Mercurial, my Phoenix shaman PC has had a continuing quest to discover a way of undoing 'ware damage and restoring Essence. (Call it a "cleansing fire", within her Weltanschauung.) As she sees it, this would not be a one-time special thing but a continuing ability, to be invoked as she sees fit. (For what it's worth in our game, she would only ever use it within situations where the person had 'ware installed and/or Essence stolen in situations beyond their control: where they were certainly not willing parties thereto.) It is entirely likely to remain a driving goal for the remainder of the game - however many years that will take.

Some issues which arise include questions of game balance (how does it alter the traditional and continuing 'ware trade-off equation among PCs?) and overturning a core concept of the SR world (how would such knowledge affect the greater SR world?).

Should a method to restore Essence ever exist within a game? Is it something feasible and/or reasonable to exist within the SR world? Would it make a difference whether it were a one-time deal or a continuing ability?

If you have such a method and have managed to make it work, how? What limitations did you assign? What complications have you encountered?

If I were to allow it (That's a big if there), it would be as little as one point per year, or if I was feeling really, really nice, one point per month.

Cyberware really screws up the person's aura/soul, this is why you lose Essence. It's not like your aura/soul suddenly goes "Oh, he's back to normal now!" and go straight back to 6 Essence.

A character in one of my games lost a point of essence when he became a partial ghoul, he eventually managed to cure, circumvent or otherwise get around most of the side effects through gene-therapy, drugs and the like but the essence point was a stickler.

He got his chance though in the metaplanes... the characters went on a metaplanar quest and one of the planes had a healing fountain in it, rumoured to cure all ills - during the final confrontation on that plane he saw his chance and raced toward the fountain (would've worked to!) at which point one of the other PC's involved in the confusing battle accidently scored a missile hit on it blowing it and our part-ghoul PC into tiny salsa sized pieces!

Many years ago, when I first started playing SR, my GM at the time simply allowed players to buy back essence with karma, one level at a time, at a cost of 3xdesired level. If I remember correctly, as far has he was concerned you didnt even have to remove the 'ware. You were still limited in the amount of cyberware, in total, you could recieve by your starting essence, but the increased essence would negate penalties to social situations, make magical healing easier, reduce the risks of essence drain -- basically offset the penalties to the character that result from a low essence score. The reason he did it was because he felt the game would be more fun if the penalties to characters for their decisions were fewer and less harsh, and, above all, the point of playing the game is to have fun.

Was this perfectly balanced? No. I would never allow this, specifically, in my games. I do consider his point to be a valid one, though. As such, while I've never really encountered the request, I would personally allow a player to undergo a treatment (either magical or genetic) to restore essence lost. I would be more inclined to be lenient in this regard in your particular case, since the player doesnt seem to just be whining that there isnt a way, but, rather, has taken an active interest in the game.

Obviously it makes a difference in the overall power of the treatment whether its a one-time thing or a repeatable process. The only thing I have to say here is that your decision should depend on what you think would be best for your group. If you think the group would abuse the ability (getting ware installed for a specific mission, then removing it when the mission ends and regaining the essence would be an example of such abuse) then make it one-time. Since this doesnt seem to be the case from what youve said, I see no other reason to make it a one-time deal unless you just want it to be more dramatic.

One interesting take that I just thought of would be that a portion of the karma required to regain lost essence has to come from someone else... I kinda like that.

I have allowed it in my game.

It works like this. The only way of regaining essence lost to cyberware is if you remove all cyber. When all cyber is removed the persons aura and his body begin to "heal" and slowly you regain essence. Since I haven't had any player take me up on this I haven't decided how fast, but I was thinking somewhere between 0.1-0.5 essence gained each month.

i've allowed it... I just had the guy initiate and tied magic and essence together (yes this means they had to initiate more than once to get 1 point)

Well,I do it this way.One whenever cyberware is removed you still have the lost points,you can replace with other cyberware,up on witch if the cyberware is more than the old ,you lose more.If not you have nothing to fear,as you'll regain the Essence in time.

The time scale changes from game to game,but it is almost always one tenth of your current Essence a weak.

And so far,aside from upgrading stuff,and prison/jail only players doing it for IC reasons have bothered doing it.Well,and three magic types.

No one got waer for a run,then removed for new waer the next run.

I won't allow lost essence to be recovered.

I have to agree.

You damage the flow of magic, you do it for good.

I only allow recovery of essense during SURGE. For example, the partial Awakening SURGE Edge gives you 1 Magic, if your Essense is less than 1, it is brought up to 1.

I've never allowed Essense to be regained in my games, and my players would be hard-pressed to convince me that it is a good idea to start.

To come at it from the other side, what difference is it really going to make to let the PCs gain essence back? Will it unbalance them with the rest of the world (who would also get essence back)? not really. Would it unbalance PCs vs each other? Probably not.

So what difference does it really make.

The real questions should be: how will this affect game balance if I do things this way? Will it make some players unhappy? Are there any unintended side effects? Will this require changing other sections of the game world (see my earlier post about the pricing of cybernetics)?

A simple 'no, I wouldn't allow that' (because of canon) is not really helpful for those of us who have left canon behind long ago.

The thing I can think of off the top of my head are: those things that drain essence become much less 'nasty' when essence grows back. If you want to keep them nasty, maybe add some other feeding conditions (like they much kill to get any essence).

Most ware is too expensive to just 'pop-in'/'pop-out' While letting your .01 essence sam decrease his magical healing TN by 1 after upgrading his ware may seem a bit cheesy, I've found that long hospital times for characters can be equally bad for the game, do you want they player to sit out?

The largest change that this seems to bring to the game world is mostly a metaphysical change rather than a 'rules' change. Depending on which plot threads you are using, this may change how certain things work. Also you may want to consider how this change effect astral space (reducing/increasing background count, etc).

Depending on how you want to do the regenration (as a 'natural, everyday' process; as a 'hero's journey/shamic quest, or whatever) will also affect how it is used in the game. If it is a natural process, then you can just sit in from of the trid drinking beer while your essence grows back. If it is a hero's journey you have to descent into the underworld...

I havent really considered any other essence loss, than that through cyberware.

I kinda view it as an inhibitor rather than stealing/killing essence. Recently a player in my group got a rather nice favor from Novatech and decided to cash in by getting Wired Reflexes 3 (alpha)

His remaining essence was not enough to pay for this, obviously, so we put him in hospital and cut off his cyber arm, regrew an organic one and yanked out his old Wired 2 (standard) and stitched him up with the new ware installed.
Only thing I had to calculate on was how long he had to spend in bed.

This cost him, well nothing nuyen wise (cept for the arm), but he lost about 2 or 3 months in game time (missing about 3 runs).
On the plus side of that he got to try some new chars and skills

If one never gets any essence back or if it regrows slooow, then how would one ever be able to upgrade cyberware. Usually the sams have less than 1 essence and usually far less If the sam in question would like to upgrade his, lets say, cyber eyes with alphaware would he in effect be paying for both orginal and the new ones (essence wise). Doesn't seem fair to me

edit damn spelling

BewilderedGM, the rules cover upgrading cyberware, where taking out the old leaves an "essence hole" that the new cyberware uses up before taking away any more.

You did the right thing for the character who got the Wired Reflexes 3.

Edit: Here's an old thread on essence loss. Filling the essence hole (79 replies)

One point per year sounds good. I think essence should be able to regenerate naturally. Maybe meditation or something could make it work faster. I think that essence loss doesn't mean that your soul is being damaged, but rather that the conection between your soul and body is being weakened. Since the soul itself is fine, it should be able to re-establish that conection when the offending cyberware is gone.

I think I'd go for the middle-ground: You might not be able to regain essence, but just so long as you have a sufficient essence gap from the last lot of cyberware you just had ripped out, you don't lose anymore essence from a new implant, just so long as you don't overfill that gap.

I have allowed the regaining of essence in my games. I used the cost chart from Initiation, required that you remove an equal amount of cyberware, and had to be under the care of a healing mage.

Healing mages who know how to restore essence are very few and far between. Finding one is a very difficult process, and requires alot of roleplaying. This is not something that is done with dice rolls.

It also requires lots of time. I think I went with 2 months per point, plus 1 month for each point below natural max. IE, a player with a 2 point essence would take 6 months to gain 1 point back, 5 months for the next, 4 months for the third, 3 months for the fourth. 18 months total.

Massive injury will greatly disrupt the task. Also I think the one time I had a player take me up on this I required them to also spend Karma to learn the meditation skill, to reflect the soul searching that they were going through.

I think it should be allowed because it represents Redemption, which is always a good theme. However, it should never be done lightly. It's a major story arc, and just finding a mage who can do this should require several gaming sessions of intense roleplaying. At no point should a player be allowed to roll dice or revert to skills. If the player wants this for their character, the /player/ has to earn it.

I think it should be a given that Essence can't be regenerated until the offending cyberware is removed: when the component is gone, then healing can begin. It strikes me as a gross violation of the spirit of the game to have someone walking around with, say Wired Reflexes 3 (basic grade) and an Essence stat of 3 or 4.

I've never objected to the idea of regaining lost essence, as long as the cause of the essence loss has been corrected.

As Vel suggested, if a character has 5 points of essence sacrificed to getting Wired 3 implanted, essence cannot be regained until the offending ware is somehow modified to require less essence:

1) Remove the system
2) Upgrade the quality -> standard to alpha, for example

I draw a parallel to the human body and essence --> you can't gain more essence than you had initially and you can't pack on more essence when you have something impeding the essence you started with.

For a character to regain essence, I would require cloned replacements implanted to repair the damage.

And the clonal method of replacing Essence will not return lost magic points -- once those are gone, they're gone for good.

Just my credstick's worth.

-Siege

I allow it as follows:

The human body is capable of limited repair, sure.

But if you're yanking out 5 points of Essence-eating cyberware, it's not gonna happen.

For removing cyberware, I assume the doctor will patch or implant enough biological matter to keep the character from expiring immediately, but it's not the same as the original tissue. Mechanically speaking, your body is still suffering from a massive wound -- not unlike a physical injury. From my essence point of view, anyway.

To repair such a massive, gaping wound, a band-aid isn't going to do it.

People today can get lifelong injuries that never fully heal. In 2060, I doubt there are too many wounds that fall into the "irrepairable" category, given enough time and money.

Repairing essence is much the same, but the entire balance of the biological system has to be restored which I require cloned tissue to patch.

I don't know if this is making sense...

-Siege

Agreed to the given: that to even consider this, the cause of Essence loss must be first removed completely, regardless of other factors. (Incidentally, that is another part of the quest mentioned in the first post: to be able to safely remove cyberware which could not normally be removed without causing further damage, owing to the way in which it was installed.)

I've always worked that the rules applying to the PCs also apply to the rest of the world - and this is one of those cases which definitely could alter game balance, depending upon details of interpretation.

If the PCs can get their Essence potentially restored simply by removing the offending cyber and waiting however long for it to regenerate (and then being able to install an entirely new and upgraded system without all those nasty Essence holes and pieces of forever-lost in-between-systems Essence!) - well, that applies to the corps' best company men too. After all, restoring Essence has always been one of the holy grails of corporate 'ware research. In this specific case, why wouldn't the corp invest the time to optain optimal results in their best human resources? Corps aren't nearly as limited as the PCs themselves in the number of people they have available to do a given job.

So perhaps, as well as removing the cause for Essence loss (which in extreme examples could and maybe should result in permanent impairments - consider it the "price" which needs to be paid, while simple clonal regrowth of a limb to replace would not be adequate in and of itself), the reason for such loss should also be relevant as to whether a possibility might exist for its return.

ie. Voluntary

* voluntary cyberware (and consequences)
* voluntary addiction to potentially Essence-lowering substances (before having kicked the habit - and invested appropriate karma, if a Flaw)

Involuntary

* cyberware installed in an unwilling person who would have it immediately undone if the means existed
* some Essence-draining critters
* Essence-lowering actions taken while under mind-altering magic or drugs, which would not otherwise have been taken
* other?

As long as the Essence lost wasn't from Cyber Implants, I'd allow Essence to be regained.

Sphynx

Just as a side, if one were to fully heal and restore Mercurial, wouldn't that sort of take away the very things that make her music so powerful? I mean, in a way, the inspiration for her songs comes from those tragic circumstances in her life and that sense of loss that she deals with every day. If you were to take that loss away, you would end up taking away the very heart and soul of her music.

In her case, definitely possible. If it could even be done, she would have to choose whether she would want it done. (Been thinking about that.)

But she was not the first one off that doctor's scalpel, I'm virtually certain most of the others also would not have chosen to become what they were made into, and I truly doubt many (if any) of them managed to find outlets as she did.

[wince] [/wince]

There's an argument to allow people to simply gain essence without losing old cyberware. I'll lay down the premises of that argument.

1. Shadowrun is about having fun.

2. For many if not most people, a lot of that fun comes in the form of working together with others in the group to solve one or more problems, Ie complete a run.

3. To be able to contribute, your existence must allow the group to do things it could not do before or do things better than someone else. This could be anything - It could be talking, it could be fighting, it could be decking, it could be anything. It could also include being as good as another character at some schtick and allowing the group to take on bigger challenges of that type, Ie Being the second street samurai in the group and contributing more firepower.

4. All characters ultimately fall into one of two categories - Karma-based and Nuyen-based.

5. Karma-based characters power primairily is rests on their raw skills, attributes, and/or magic. Adepts, otaku, full mages, and characters like the Weapons Expert in the book fall into this category. That isn't to say all characters don't benefit from karma - But these characters primairily define their capabilities based on their karma.

6. For those characters, there's essentially no absolute limit to their power. Adepts and full mages can initiate forever to any level they want, otaku can submerge, and weapons expert-type characters can improve their skills into infinity.

7. Nuyen-baesd characters power rests primairily on stuff they can buy. This includes deckers, rigger, and street samurai. Deckers can always buy or make a bigger, better deck, a rigger can always find a better vehicle or a new drone, and street samurai...er...Well, they can become cyberzombies and suck ass.

That is the problem. The street samurai, the character who tries to kick ass based on getting more and more cyberware, has a power cap. Once he gets tricked out on deltaware, he either becomes a cyberzombie(And be essentially forced to totally change his character)...or he stops advancing nuyenly.

Part of the beauty of Shadowrun is that it is reasonably well balanced. Sure, there's some screw ups(It can be difficult to integrate Riggers into open combats without them overshadowing the other characters), but as a general rule it's good. You can make pretty much whatever character you like and contribute to the group so long as you make an effort to be able to. The problem is, the street samurai, the guy who tricks himself out with wired reflexes, dermal sheathes and smart links to keep up with the magic adepts throw down and the vehicles a Rigger can pull out of his ass, stops advancing how he wants to up to a point. That is WRONG.

Any other character concept can continually advance without fucking up their characters personality. A Rigger doesn't need to become some sort of uber-rigger who speaks only in machine in order to use a bunch of drones and the only people who know how to make you a machine live in the heart of Cambodia and require you sacrifice your first born son in order to learn their secrets. A Decker doesn't need to implant an AI into his brain in order to use high-end programs and decks and the only people that can implant AIs are True AIs and the only way to get one to help you is to defeat another AI in open combat and prove it to them and you have to do it on a Turtle machine. An Adept doesn't need to kick the ass of the worlds greatest adept in order to be allowed to Init more than 10 times and he must do it with one hand tied behind his back. In order for a street samurai to continue to get more cyberware, he has to become a cyberzombie and become an inhuman monster that gets penalties out the ass.

Who sees the problem?

Sure, the street samurai doesn't get WORSE. But when the Mages are abe to thrown down Force 12 spells of whatever kind they can imagine, the adept is throwing 20+ dice on whatever tests he decides to be good at, and the Rigger has enough artillery on his drones to take over a small country...What's the Samurai doing? He's still shooting his Ares Alpha, which probably isn't any more tricked out than when he first got it, maybe he fires mini-IPE grenades and APDS rounds now instead of mini-offensive grenades and ex-explosive rounds. Maybe he's using a custom gun from the CC now.

Few ways to go about it.

A. Create new, high-priced high-effectiveness cyberware(But not neccessairily high-essence). Doesn't require any setting changes really, just this new stuff is on the street and gives sammys something new to shoot for. It's not a perfect solution as it would require you think up more and more things as time went on.

B. Create new, higher-grade cyberware that gets to be so good it doesn't lower your essence at all. This requires something of a paradigm shift in how SR deals with that sort of thing as canon says Delta is a good as it gets and the last thign we want is Epsilon Clinics that are even MORE secretive and require you to get tentacle raped to get the cyberware isntalled.

C. Let characters buy back essence with Karma WITHOUT uninstalling stuff. Again, a paradigm shift. The usefulness of beta and deltaware would be significantly downgraded, perhaps all of the higher-grade stuff could go the way of the dodo. My gut says to let people buy back essence at the same costs as a Mage that initiates, but if you can initiate, the costs are cumulative for balance reasons(IE Grade 3 initiate want to buy back a point of Essence, pay for Grade 4, if he initiates again he pays as if for Grade 5), but I haven't thought that through much

D. Just start a new game before it gets to this point. No explanation needed.

I'd think these solutions over myself, but my current project is creating a new vehicle creation system that is flexible and balanced. Maybe someone else out there with an excessive amount of time could work on one of these possible solutions or think up another one.

Just one question, Modesitt (is that name from the author btw?):

Modesitt, Nice analysis! Good description of the problem and your proposed solutions. An alternate solution is to not have the runners get so much money. With less money the Samurai aren't getting to Betaware so quickly.

In our campaign we limit the Karma awards and the Nuyen awards so that Magicians and Samurai both have things to look forward to. We may actually overdo it, because our Samuri still don't have much Beta stuff by the time the magicians are getting up to around 300 earned Karma (about 800 hours of roleplaying). Also, I feel our rate of pay wouldn't keep a rigger very happy, due to his cost of drone replacements.

Talia: (sorry, was late seing your post)

What are the ramifications of having essence holes?

Besides magical healing, not much. So if your rank-and-file walk around with Essence holes, odds are they'll never notice or complain about it.

From a role-playing aspect, how many people really understand what their "Essence" is and how it affects their daily lives?

Regaining essence isn't cheap -- depending on your interpretation of the concept. However, while a corp could afford to invest that kind of money, there just isn't any need to by game canon. It's not like Empathy or Humanity in CP.

-Siege

Again, and again, and again, I attempt to point this out: Street Samurai are not just metallic nuyen-sinkholes only good for killing. Sure, once they run out of spots for 'ware, they slow down, but they can do other things too. They can start learning how to deck, how to rig, how to talk to people, so on and so forth. They only thing they can't do once they get below 1 Essence is become magically active. (At least, there is no canon evidence to convince me otherwise. If it SURGEd, it'd be there, and before (s)he knew it, it would be gone because of the lack of Essence). Other than that, they can do anything. Take an onslaught of skills, learn languages, develop contacts into buddies, and buddies into friends for life.

The Street Samurai can increase his/her skills just as infinitely as the Weapon Specialist. Except the Street Samurai might prefer one type to using everything like a Weapon Specialist would. So that means, in time, he can have Pistols 12, Unarmed Combat 12, and Edged Weapons 12. Sure, it'd cost him mucho karma if he didn't have the related stats just as high (Impossible but through cyberware) as the skill. But he can do it.

Or, you could do something unheard of: Limit initiations to the highest level being equal to one less than the highest level in the group. After that they have to do it outside of the group. If they already do that, try to limit it further by (if you allow it) disallowing karma-for-cash/cash-for-karma and your rewards.

However, there has to be a balance. I once read that an L4 initiate is rare among the people (Dragons and IEs don't count, obviously). So those L10s you've got dropping bombs among your group are gonna be rare, and people are gonna want to study under them to figure out how to channel that much raw power without blowing themselves up first (or risking focus addiction).

You can take toys away. You can get into magical fights and lose a Quickening or two. That would easily even out the difference between Street Sammies and mages. You can depower a mage by killing off his Quickened spells, his Tattooed spells, et cetera. You can only depower a Street Sammie filled with 'ware by ripping the 'ware out of him or killing him.

Basically, the Sammie is always on full. He doesn't have to worry about a Free Spirit coming by and going "I don't like you" then promptly shunting his Quickened/Tattoed spells to nothingness.

Sure, it limits his growth in his "specialization." However, I don't view Sammies as just looking for more and more 'ware. I just see them as trying to make the world a safer place and trying to teach wanna-be sammies what a real Street Samurai is.

Something else to keep in mind in this Sam vs Magic/Others debate is this: While to a certain extent the Sam's cyber/bioware may incur stress and fail, it can almost as easily be fixed(just go for surgery). Also the higher grade the cyber, the more difficult it is to fail/get stressed.

However, the problem for mages/awakened is that the minute you get Deadly, you are rolling for Magic loss. The higher you are initiated, the easier it is to lose Magic.

So I think the two sides are balanced. One has a "cap" but the other(Awakened) isn't much better off.

Did you read my post?

How is limiting via some canoninical reference (The higher initiate level you are, the rarer you're going to be) "screwing" a PC? It's saying with very good reasoning: "Your group holds no Initiates of the level you're looking to achieve. They can't help you along in this one." Thus the PC must pay karma as per initiating by him/herself. Then he starts getting fanmail or its kin about how they want to study under him.

Is that "screwing" them over? No, it's giving them what they want. And the effects of getting what they want.

It's like the speech I heard about how if something is rare, somebody else is going to want it.

As an example: The ever-so-elusive milspec armor. Sure. Joe Samurai might own a suit. Doesn't mean everybody's gonna want it. Some people will, and they'll do anything they can to get it, even if it means killing him in his sleep.

There are ups and downs to having good stuff. Everybody adores you, yet envies you. So your high-level initiate is going to get both fanmail and hatemail, kids asking to be trained, and very possibly the cops watching him astrally everywhere he goes.

Having good stuff doesn't automatically make you famous. Hell, some of the Nobel prize winners are people I've never heard of. But are they good? Damn sure they're.

For the magic users, the solution of making them initiate themselves via self-initiation is flawed. The group does not help the initiate by training him but it helps by making a magical link and contacting a spirit avatar.

The magic user need not ADVERTISE. If you want to ADVERTISE, it is your damn problem. The most successful criminals are the ones you never hear about. And shadowrunners are criminals.

Personally, I think the problem is how Modesitt is defining a Street Sam's overall goals. I don't believe for a minute that his main aim is to stuff as much cyberware into his body as is (meta)humanly possible. I think his goal is to be as good a Street Warrior as he can be, which means using augmentations when needed, but also includes constantly improving, and even adding to his skill set.

Hm... Must be another of those ancient SR2 relics I keep mushing around my brain.

Yes, the good ones are the ones you don't know about. However, usually the forerunners are the ones everybody knows about.

That's why I've always advocated being good but not best, especially at higher levels. You may be the fastest sprinter on Earth but number two is no slouch either.

Ask anyone who's competed at the highest levels, they 'll tell you that on another day, it might just have been Mr Two who had won.

Perfect is often the enemy of good.

now, i do it like this....
WHENEVER cyberware is removed, the essence is fully restored in about a week
if one wants essence restored with the ware still installed you'll have to ask a initiated mage using a meta technique i call "Restoration" (ooh, smart of me huh?)
it's simple, they roll their Magic against 8, for every two successes the character restored gets one essence back, the restoration takes about a month during which neither character can do very much but go on with the restoration ritual

modifiers to the restoration TN are
If the characters are attached (Great friends, lovers, etc): -2
If the characters dislike each other (Enemies): +2 (can be possible if the mage is forced to restore the sammy)
If double the time is taken (2 months): -1
If half the time is taken (15 days): +2

Thanks for the (skill v. equipment limits based upon mindset) answers (if I understood them correctly, that is).

Sheer curiosity at this point:

So what makes one kind of limitation any more valid than another kind? Because that is what most of you are getting at, here:

* limitations based upon mindset, v.
* limitations based upon raw Essence, v.
* limitations based upon having been Awakened / otaku and/or degree thereof, v.
* limitations based upon potential initiatory levels, v.
* limitations based upon perceived skill level need, v.
* limitations based upon equipment levels, v.
* limitations based upon the PC's forced time out of active play (due to healing), v.
* limitations based upon the PC's time out of active play (due to 'ware upgrades), v.
* limitations based upon the PC's time out of active play (due to task work or other forms of learning).