With the advent of the new edition (and the 20th anniversary on the way) I'm coming across the same problem that I had back in the days of 2e which I played near constantly; mages always are dedicating karma into anything they create well beyond that of other groups.

To be more specific, I want to enchant something from scratch it costs a ton of karma. Back in 2e I could use alchemy to brew up a ton of oricalcum, but that rule no longer exists in SR4. I was toying with the idea of having a mage with an ally spirit in a vessel (a sword) stacked with a weapon focus. But even at low levels this would have an impossibly high karma cost.

So my problem is while everyone else would be getting better at skills, attributes, or upgrades I'd be twittling my thumbs saying, "One day I'll be awesome in the shadows--you'll see!" In the past characters like that die the next day of achieving their goals! Don't want to go down that route.

Now, to show I'm not just whining, I have brought a few ideas to the table to aid in this problem. First, a meta-planar quest to gain insight and reduced karma cost of the formula. This would be reduced by 1 point per initiate grade as they have gained an insight to the work. Also makes following a formula built with such insight more valuable (good shadowrun adventure seed there).

Bring back lower karma cost with oricalcum rule! This one made sense to me; if I pour more effort and nuyen into the focus it'd be easier on the karma bank account. The mage who spent his month off recovering from that last bad run in the basement cooking up metallurgy should have a bonus instead of bar hopping with his fellow chummers, showing off their scars to the local floozies and having some sort of actual life outside the shadows (jerks!).

Have a geasa applied to your formula. This would be a built in problem for those who don't have a geasa normally and another problem for those who do. If a spell or focus needed to have a proper incantation used, it'd be more difficult to come into game play. What would happen if it could only be used at night (or worse, during the day)? Doesn't work inside the city would be another great restriction all of which seem appropriate to lower karma.

Steal karma already invested in someone else's foci! Hey, they weren't using it...anymore...after I shot him with a narcojet to the back of the neck...and he died with horrible nightmarish diareia... The cosmic energies held within a focus could be used to power someone else's focus. I wouldn't allow this for ally spirits or spells, but focus seems fine to me. More shadowrun adventure seeds with this as players go around stealing rivals' foci--or getting their own back after theirs is stolen!

And lastly, sacrifice innocients to harness their energies to gain more karma! What? Aztlan mages need to enchant stuff too! They'd get 1 karma for each point of essense, and 1 for each point of magic. Makes sense that they'd want to slaughter a school house fool of orphans and nuns to make foci dirt cheap. Can anyone else smell the shadowruning ideas here?

These are just a few suggestions I'm throwing around. What does everyone else think?

Sign--

Wacky

Or even better yet you can always remember this simple rule.

>>> A good mage can kill you with a single thought, but a GREAT mage has the wisdom to use his trusty predator instead. <<<

Ask your GM to look into the old cash-for-karma rules. Ta-da.

I've never liked those rules, they never quite seemed balanced to me.

The cash-for-Karma rule seems like your best bet, but if you don't like them, try your other ideas past your GM.

The Karma-for-orichacum rule/trade also is a good theory on paper (for what paper's worth in 2070), but you also run the risk of flooding the local market for orichacum. Not to mention the off-chance you actually create a version of 'fool's-gold' orichalcum.
Which will definately tick-off your local talismonger.....

Stealing-Karma-from-another's-foci? Tricky. Even if you succeed, you risk tainting your own foci with the astral residue of the previous owner's Karma.....and if that person did in fact come to an untimely, particularly nasty end....

Sacrificing innocents? Not a good idea, unless you're a Toxic. Too many kids (even the SINless ones) can draw unwanted attention.....

I feel your best bet (aside for the above Cash-For-Karma) would be the Metaplanar Quest one.

What ever happend to doing Karma-generating good deeds? Yes, you'd have to perform a rather large number of them, but still....

God, i love the idea. Think of all the mages, hunting and killing each other just for power. A completely new way of playing and running comes to mind. Focus-hunting...great. You could say that you need a special initiation-ability for it. "Karma-steal" like the power drain (karma) of some ghosts. Oh lord...i´m cummin´....powergaming rules....arghhhhhllll..

One of the ways my GM and I have been lowering Karma costs is by
(A) Certain enchantments do not kost Karma, usually the minor unique ones, like a magical flashlight
and
(B) in the case of Ally Spirits, if some base abilities, such as locomotion, are removed, reduce the cost.
An exmaple of this is that my most recent Ally Spirit inhabits a skull and cannot move, so I got a Karma reduction for it.

Or the GM can hand out more karma.

Oh yea...More Karma works too. I think the Core Book states that average Karma for a run is around 5 or 6. But my GM tends to award upwards of 10 or 11, a lot of which is from roleplaying or from general comic relief/humor. Essentially, if we make the GM laugh really hard, we get lots of Karma...It's great, cuz we're all pretty clever and we're all a bunch of jokesters...

I was talking with Kingboy, my group's Mystic Adept, and he said he has his next 75 or so Karma spoken for just with magical stuff. Assuming nothing comes up between now and then to make him change his plans, that is.

Which really isn't that bad considering the group has been earning about 8 karma per adventure since when started used the SR4A karma rewards.

-paws

If you're going to do cash-for-karma, then you ought to do equivalent karma-for-cash so the mundane characters can drum up some extra funds for any enhancements they might be interested in.

But really, I don't think the magic rules are unbalanced. It shouldn't be cheap in karma for a magician to get super-powered stuff. Maybe if it doesn't work for your group you could tweak the karma cost, but making more karma available to magicians doesn't seem like the right answer.

I've been considering doing cash for karma and karma for cash, what are the general exchange rates?

Not trying to be sarcastic, but it really depends on how poor you want the characters to be.

Also...

Another option is the "amoral" campaign, where karma doesn't exist. You award cash and the players choose where or not to put it toward training or more material things.

No worries, I did a few more searches and managed to find a discussion on it and it varies from 2500 up to 15000 per karma point and depending on GM the frequency players can do it varies.

I'm actually considering something like an amoral version after reading that.

Thanks.

I may actually ask my GM about the Karma for Money idea...I have thousands of nuYen that are going nowhere fast because there isn't much I really need or want to buy. Karma, however, I use up almost immediately, or I need to save it for later on.

We allow a 20% discount for metaplanar quests and for guild resources. This extends to metamagics bought outside initiation and enchanting. Does not apply to spirits or bonding foci.

here is another,very different, way to handle it.somewhere, i think the old ds archive, there was a page that had the rules for the avatar focus. someone in the group had to complete an astral quest at a rating equal to the number of members. if more than six members then multiple quests were needed.the reward of the quest was the formula for the focus and it cost 4 times the number of members to bond in karma. after the group as a whole or the leader bonds with it it gathers karma at a rate of 1/member of the group a week. the karma could only be used for learning spells,binding spirits, foci,and enchanting. when used in this manner every member of the group learned the spell or had access to the spirit or focus. whoever originally bonded with the avatar focus had control over how the points where spent. we used this twice in a magic heavy game. the only guy that had complaints was the unawakened decker. but we figured out something for him later.

That was a quick estimate based on what I remembered from bashing out a plan the day before. The actual total is more along the lines of 113 Karma, and that's not including the 35 Karma it'd take me after the first successful initiation to raise my sorcery related Magic to a more useful rating of 3 (or 7 magic total), or any new spells. Nor does it include any sort of non-Magic related skills whatsoever. Thank goodness I chose a Posession tradition with Task spirits is all I can say...


The thing about this is, I feel like we get a decent amount of Karma at our table. And my character is an elf, so while I as a player may have the desire for new toys on a more regular basis (thank goodness for the parity that can be bought through gear in SR4 in many areas), the character has a very long term view of things. As long as he doesn't run afoul of the stupid Vory, he'll eventually get where he's going, magically and otherwise.

It's not the rate at which Karma comes in that is my problem, it's the rate at which it pours out for the Awakened that sometimes rubs me the wrong way.

For magical characters, karma buys power. For mundane characters, nuyen buys power. It all balances out.

WOW! First post ever on the forums and I get 18 replies in one day. Well, let's start!



While I would never do this, it would make for a good double cross on players--they buy oricalcum thinking that it was genuine when in reality it was fake (teach 'em for not using enchanting when purchasing products).

Furthermore, it takes 28 days just to make a batch of oricalcum. Assuming you have all the other regents ready, you're still working forever at it with the hopes of getting a few units out of the deal. If you think about it, this isn't as hard hitting as it looks on your AR display.



Again, another great idea for this line of thinking--your focus now has a mentality or even a personal background count from using the wrong focus to make something new. For my example my Ally/weapon stacked focus was made from a dead mage's masking focus and won't power up in crowds since now it doesn't want to be noticed. "Just feels wrong sir..."



Of course this is a bad idea! But I throw in the easy but evil stuff to give the game more powerful villians. Aztlan loves me for this sort of stuff!



Again it takes a long time and I am loosing my edge in the power curve versus other archetypes.



I was think something alongs those lines, but I'm glad you said it first. It'd make sense to have an inanimate sword cost less karma if it can't move about.



Assuming you mean that I pay other (meta)humans to offer up karma ala spirit donation to power my magical swag seems a fair trade. I could use that.



I disagree with the rules not being unbalanced, or more to the point the game concept. Karma helps everyone! You can increase stats, skills, and maybe even positive qualities (or get rid of those negative ones). My problem stems from the fact while I'm saving up to power up my enchantment, my fellows are doing this with Karma and powering up with cyberware all the same. So if we go into a more deadly adventure, I don't have the same chances of survival.

Furthermore, I'm not asking for it to be easy--just give me more options to obtain it. Each one that I listed had nasty consequences--and that's not even counting the ones you guys made up! I don't want to come across as obsessive over my point, its just hard to put your standing into practice when you're asking me to be the patient one.




Back in SR2, you could have someone enchant something for you and it'd be pre-bonded to your aura not theirs. This cost 5,000 nuyen per karma point. I'd use that as a starting point depending on how you spend the karma (ie you use it to feed an orphanage or save a poor SINless's life by buying them the surgery they needed). For negotiations if you're buying someone else's karma I'd start at the same and go -/+ 500 per hit scored.

Sign--

Wacky

Sorry, but thats bulls***t. Your average karma-donation is about 6 karma for an equally average run, and is maxed out at probably 12 for an absolutely killer-run. But the salary you get for it, ranges drastically from 1.000 Nuyen jobs at the beginning, to several-ten or even hundreds of thousands of nuyen when you have established your team. I don´t even see something that looks vaguely like "balance" when one type of char has to depend on just one single source to get enhancements (mage only needs karma), while the other one gets two of them (karma and nuyen) and the second one is ways easier to get. If you see the balance, please show me.

Magic does stuff you can't do with cyberware or weapons, and is arguably more powerful. I just don't think the character advancement rules are all that unbalanced that awakened characters need extra karma to compete.

Well for starters you are dead wrong with several of your base assumptions. Firstly mages CAN and SHOULD benefit from nuyen just as much as any other character provided your DM is at all completent at his/her job. Secondly it can be easily be argued that mages gain more when spending their karma then mundanes do, and lets never forget, that although I personally hate the agrument, it is true that awakened characters are the only ones that in theory have unlimited advancement.


All-in-all if there is imbalance in the rewards, it is in favor of Mages/Adepts.

So Ravor,
What exactly would a Mage spend nuyen on that doesn't require karma to use?

Why the exact same things that their mundane counterparts are; GUNS, GEAR, CONTACTS and WARE.

Muahahah...yeah. I would spend nuyen for guns if i had KARMA to purchase physical attributes and active-non-magical-combat-skills, or if i wanted to screw my magical abilities by putting cyber in my body that lowers my magic that already cost me BP to raise. Cool idea...but maybe you misunderstood the point. It´s about playing a mage, not a burned out loser.^^ And as soon as i find useful gear for a mage, i will let you know. Nothing that comes to my mind is so expensive, that it would take me more than 5 runs to gain the money for it. And then? I collect money and play the old sex-drugs-and rock n roll game? Pfffffffffffffttt...^^

Oh I see, you are one of the idiots who believe that a "pure" Mage who uses nothing but magic is a viable concept if your DM actually runs his world in a semi-reasonable manner and assumes that corp security experts aren't utter and complete morons.

No, i´m one of the idiots who is capable of calculating. Mixing magic with cyber is a short-profit but longterm-disadvantage solution that is not acceptable. And if one thing is for sure when you have a magical char., then it is that you never have enough karma to do all the things you need. The basic need of this "raw-material" is much too high to fulfill all your needs and if you have a artificial created shortage for such an commodity while the other players can dip out of 2 sources, the "balance" is somehow f***d up. But maybe in your little world 2 equals 1? Who knows?

Nice try, but you really should either double check your "calculations" or find a decent DM if you honestly believe that remaining "pure" as a Mage is somehow superior to using cyber/bioware to boost your abilities. Not to mention that out of all of the "one trick ponies" magical abilities is the easiest of all to completely negate so without mundane skills to fall back on you are worse than dead weight.

That wasn´t a "nice try", this was a logical-finishing-move. You are just in a shock-condition and didn´t realize that you are beaten.^^ The only thing you produce when you spend points on active-combat skills, physical attributes and the like, is a mage that sucks on both sides of the spectrum. You are lousy at fighting and a lousy mage. You don´t earn enough karma to excell on both. And about bioware: you spend 10BP for one point of magic, this 10BP are for the dumpster when you put ´ware in and then you haven´t even calculated the points for the money the ware costs. Go back to kindergarten, start maths from the beginning and then we can go on with our discussion, ok?

Ouch.


<insert Evil GM Laughter sound byte>


Yeah, its never been easy cheap easy being a magician in Shadowrun. Karma has always been a problem.

-paws

Yea...and not that I want to really take part in the heated exchange up a bove, but they do bring up some good points. My favorite is that if you spend Kram to make the mage better in Mundane combat, then your magic suffers from lack of attention/growth. Kind of like the jack of all trades, master of none argument.

But, I have to say that Mages are probably one of the most powerful archetypes out there, so I gess the devs just want you to work that much harder at it.
Thank god for Houserules!

Well, this probably the most bitter and sniping conversation I've ever seen between "I really like a little chrome on my mages" versus "pure purity pure pure is the way to go." And it devolved fast, too.

You guys goin' for a record or something?

probably best to not get involved with it....
but I suppose I would be one for the Pure purity pure pure faction...just becasue it's how I want to play. But if you like chrome, cyber-mage would be interesting.

Compromise too: In street magic there is technology that actually works with Magic, mayber there is some sort of Magic channeling cyberware or Magically powered implants, like being a half-golem kind of thing.

There are several precedents for enchanted implants, particularly weapon focus spurs.

-paws

I figured there would be...and with a bit of creativity...you might be able to add to that somewhat...there are examples of Manatech in Street magic after all...that's what I love about PnP RPGs over Videogames, you can edit the rule as you see fit to conform to your own playstyle. Can't say the same for videogames though...

Cash for Karma:

If I was to use some sort of rule for this I would keep it simple.

"donate" 75% of your earned money per run to self improvement for +1 Karma.

You may want to rethink that exchange rate a bit, unless you're seriously suggesting that a mage who's just risked his life to earn 100,000 on a run would really want to pay 75,000 of it for a single point of karma. If you're going to do cash for karma, you need a fixed exchange rate. Your method just screws over mages and other karma-hungry types (like technomancers) more for making more money.

I've never bought the hype to see karma as...well...karma. I still think of it as experience points, period. So to me cash/karma transactions don't come by donating anything, but by spending the money in a semi-realistic fashion to cultivate the experience points you'd like to earn from it.

It could be tuition to a night class at MIT&T, taking a few classes on Advanced Hermetic Theory. It could be money you throw at a local gym to get your Strength or Stamina up. Maybe it's the nuyen you spent to get a friendly decker to score you some UCAS Army demolition manuals, or it's the expensive parts and tools you got to tinker with your car and get your mechanic skill up.

I've never seen it as "you donate money to a local metahuman orphanage, and get your Agility increased as fortune smiles on you for your generosity."

Cash for karma is one more chance to make someone think about the downtime, to dig a little deeper into their character, and to explore the game world while you ask -- reasonably -- for a justification of what they're doing and how.

THis makes a whole lot more sense actually...since "Karma" is gained usually from the shadowruns...which are kind of illegal, and probably not good for your karma (in the non-experience points sense). Doing bad things doesn't give good Karma...runs often qualify as "bad things".

As I understand it, what's good for your karma will vary based on your dharma.

Anyway...

I think either version - "yay! cosmic bonus!" or "paid training" - is reasonable, depending on the character.

-paws

As far as i know, karma only means "movement" in sanskrit or whatever language they had at these days. So the destiny only wants you to actually DO something, it doesnt judge in which direction you moved. I thought about that in earlier days and always wondered myself how lame university professors get their karma just by sitting behind desks.^^

Uh-huh, and the end result of your "genius" is a character that the corps can virtually negate unless the DM humors your foolishness by playing them like morons.

Guys, guys, GUYS! This is an intellectual discussion not an opinon farm. You can disagree with whatever someone else says but don't start yelling at the other guy and insulting them 'cause they choose to see it from a different point of view! Also, bring only arguments with examples and not just Cyberware bad; its more useful than magic! In my own group virtually every mage has given up one point of essence to cyberware so they could do some cool stuff with it without being shackled with geasa. Just how we choose to roll. Nothing wrong with it, and if you don't like it you don't have to make a character that way.

The reason I posted in the first place was to find ways to lower the cost of bonding foci or conjuring an ally spirit. I'm not asking for SR4 to be changed to make it free; just offer me other options that don't require so much karma. Like a geasa at initiation, it'd have some sort of drawbacks, but I can live with that if I'm giving up stuff that I don't use (I'd buy a new car without air conditioning to save a buck since I like rolling down my windows instead; same sort of thing).

If you don't like where this thread is going, please, post a valid argument with game based example or just don't read it. We all have an opinon, and its fine if you don't agree with mine.

Toolbox does bring up a good point for technomancers; are there any suggestions to lowering the cost for sprites and such; like programing part of it the old fashion way and giving it the "spark" of, er, technomancy goodness (I'm sorry I don't know what to call that).

Sign--

Wacky

For Technos, it's not spirtes that have huge costs, it's complex forms. Buying a rating 5 complex form up to 6 in character gen costs 1 bp. In play, 6 karma. Thats a huge difference, and that's for all the complex forms that the techno has.

I was thinking about reducing the cost of improving a CF down to a flat rate of 2 karma per increase.

Exactly. Apart from purely external stuff like drones, everything related to a technomancer's schtick costs karma (aside from sprites, actually, since they're free). Even their focus equivalents - widgets - are free in terms of nuyen but require an Echo (bought with karma after submerging, which also costs karma). Skills, attributes (which act as system and OS ratings), complex forms, yada yada yada.


That could work; it'd mean TMs could afford to diversify a bit in chargen rather than having to pour huge amounts of BP into CFs if they're even remotely concerned with build efficiency. Isn't there also an optional rule in Unwired to make CFs act more like spells, in that they're unrated at purchase and you choose the rating on the fly? I haven't actually looked at the karma cost changes, though.

With regards to cash for karma/karma for cash rules, the rule I always use (bearing in mind I run SR3 so this will need tweaking) is 1000 nuyen times karma pool buys 1 karma. 1 karma buys 500 nuyen times karma pool. You can only buy karma equal to the amount you've earned and you can only spend half your earned karma on nuyen.

Hey Wacky. You don´t have to fear our discussion. Even if we bash our heads, we are still good ´ol runners and we have to stick together. Sometimes you have to accept, that the "intended" purpose of a discussion is changing during the time and finally nothing is left...humiliated...but still alive somehow. Fear the curse of the internet. ^^ *insert spooky noise*

And for once we agree Machiavelli.

Come to the dark side...MUAHAHAHAHAHA....we have cookies.^^