Genetic Heritage: AUG pg. 20
"Though genetweaking isn’t yet widespread, the technology to successfully modify a metahuman genome has been around for well over three decades. It is thus possible that children have inherited genetically-modified genes from one or both progenitors. Such an inheritance means the character can start play with one genetic modification (see p. 72) for free. Such characters also possess an unusually high tolerance to the introduction of foreign code into their genome. As a result, the nuyen costs of transgenic genetic enhancements for the character are reduced by 20 percent."

Transgenic Alteration: AUG pg. 93
"Most of the functional changes available through biotech (p. 61) are also possible through transgenic alteration for comparable Essence and nuyen costs but longer treatment times (typically several months)."

Hi. My name (isn't really) McAllister, and I'd like to talk to you, Dumpshock, about RAW. Specifically, I'd like to discuss two points that relate to Genetic Heritage, and to get your opinions.

First, as far as I can tell, deltaware Synaptic Boosters rating 3 are "functional changes through biotech," and therefore "also possible through transgenic alteration..." Obviously, this would be such a gross return on investment (2,400,000 nuyen for 10 bp) that even I, in the deepest depths of "just trying it for fun" could never conscience doing it. But where is the line? For one thing, I'd imagine any transgenic alteration would count (in cost and Essence use) as deltaware, because matching it with your DNA is superlatively customized; however, that's somewhere between fluff and crunch. What if I just used it to have a rating 1 synaptic booster?

The second point I'll raise is a bit more nebulous. RAW, a person with Genetic Heritage is born with less than 6 essence. I have no problem with this; even with to-day's technology we spliced primate genes with jellyfish ones, and made a glow-in-the-dark monkey. I've seen pictures of it; it does not have 6 essence, and never did. There are also warforms, which never appear in print explicitly but are mentioned in Augmentation (they're custom-engineered organisms to use as combat biodrones). Those would never have 6 essence even if two of them were able to procreate, because of all the alteration. However, if I'm born with 5.8 essence from built-in genetweaking, Awaken, raise my magic to 4 and then add another .8 essence worth of 'ware, would I take a magic hit? IIRC magic only goes down a point when essence goes down a point, and that wouldn't happen until I got under 5 essence. So why couldn't a chargen magician take the Genetic Heritage quality, fill out that first point of Essence with other 'ware, and suffer no penalty to magic (except having to initiate earlier to raise the cap)?

Please note that by "opinions" I had in mind something like "well, here's why it would/wouldn't work" and not so much like "you clearly eat your own young, I hope you get sick and die."

1) I was under the assumption that Genetic Heritage was expressly reserved for Genetech, not Bioware in general. This helps to cut the probability of people saying "well, both my parents had Synaptic Booster 3" while someone else goes "I only got vegsin..."

2) I would have to agree with you. You wouldn't lose another point of Magic maximum until you lose that last 0.8 Essence. Although there are plenty of chargen mage builds that incorporate ~1 point of bio/cyber.

Few points:
1.Geneware has no grades their allways only basic grade.
2.your quoting transgenic alteration out of contects, it specifically talking about animal features(i.e functional cat eyes etc.)

Negative. To calculate Magic/Resonance loss you take any essence loss and round it up to the nearest whole number, then take that away from your current Magic/Resonance.



Basically anything other than an essence of 6 (For your normal character atleast) results in an immediate loss of Magic/Resonance. At least that is my opinion on it. I cannot see anything that would indicate otherwise.

And on your other point, that is quite interesting... hmm... I guess something that would help is whether or not Genetic Heritage is effected by availability. If not, It seems that you could, potentially, start with some stupidly expensive bioware at chargen.

Let me rephrase my post...

1) I believe that Genetic Heritage was not meant to incorporate bioware equivalents of genetic modifications, IE: no using Transgenetic Alteration to get Synaptic Boosters or Muscle Toner. I believe that it was meant primarily for Genetech only, but I could see using transgenetic to gain minor (read: not major boosts) things, such as troll eyes, cat eyes, and maybe a reflex recorder.

2) Your maximum Magic rating would be a 5, but you wouldn't lose any more magic until you dropped your Essence below a 5.

EDIT: I missread that. Ignore this post if you saw what it contained before.

Hmm. I disagree with your interpretation of Magic/Resonance loss. If that were so, the following could happen: I have Magic 4. I get cybereyes rating 4. Losing .5 Essence rounds up to 1, so I lose 1 Magic, and have 5.5 Essence. I go back and get reflex recorders (blades). Losing .05 Essence (halving the lower of bioware/cyberware) rounds up to 1, so I lose 1 Magic, and have 5.35 Essence.

I think the key is this sentence, page 67 of SR4A: " When Essence declines, Magic and Resonance decline by the same amount."

Since Essence usually declines by fractions and Magic can't, I'm not positive how to interpret that. However, RAW, Codebreaker (and my example above) look correct. Dang. EDIT: I just saw your edit, but now I'm not sure which way it works. Huh.

Also, limiting it by availability makes sense, because then you'd at least have to take Restricted Gear for the stupidly powerful stuff.

@Max: first, you're right. Geneware has no grades. However, wouldn't it make sense, since all geneware is expensive (10,000+) and all of it has low Essence costs (.4 or less) that it's the equivalent of deltaware? I say this because deltaware is more Essence friendly (and I can't for the life of me find text in a rulebook to quote) on account of it's designed for and customized to the body of the intended recipient... as geneware would NECESSARILY be. Does that make sense?

And second, again, you're right. I found the quote under the subheader "Animal Features," but it was still in the section entitled "Transgenic Alteration," which is the term used in the quote. For all those who don't have their books in front of them, the full paragraph reads as follows: emphasis added.

"Animal Features: Animal features can include any phenotypic modification drawn from normal animal lifeforms. These might include shaggy lion manes, rabbit’s ears, quills instead of hair, tails, claws, and other animal characteristics. Note that such physical alterations do not automatically imbue the subject with animal-like senses or abilities, remaining primarily cosmetic. Full functionality requires much more profound metabolic alterations. Most of the functional changes available through biotech (p. 61) are also possible through transgenic alteration for comparable Essence and nuyen costs but longer treatment times (typically several months)."

"Animal features can include any phenotypic modification drawn from normal animal lifeforms" directly contradicts "Most of the functional changes available through biotech are also possible..." So I guess we just have to cope with the ambiguity.

I'm all for min/maxing, but as the magic loss rule is stated you lose the point as soon as your essence drops not once a threshold is crossed. More specifically what Codebreaker was saying was that if your mage has 5.8 essence and then you put in a mod for even .01 essence loss (thus putting you at 5.79 essence) you lose a full point of Magic Stat. HOWEVER! the rule also stats that you will NOT lose any more Magic Stat until you have lost a full point of essence (thus you would only lose another point if you lowered your essence to 5.7...using the previous example)
So to sum up, you lose your point not matter how small the change is...since you round up the loss...but if then creates a "void" allowing the rest of the point to be filled before any more loss occurs

Aye, basically you lose a Magic point at 0.1-1 Essense Loss, another at 1.1-2 Essense Loss, and so on and so on.

I was under the impression that you lose Magic per point of total Essence loss, not per instance of Essence loss. Can you quote a rule in your favor?

Re: Warforms--Hmm, genetically modified Critters...Running Wild, a book fully devoted to Critters and you...methinks there may be a connection.

Transgenic Alteration--There are several Biotech implants that come from animals. This would include: Cat's eyes, Thermosense Organs, Quills, etc. The point of the transgenic alteration was to say that instead of going under the knife and having tissue implanted in your body, you've undergone genetic modification. This has the added benefit of modifying your DNA, which means that you may be able to pass it on to your offspring. (I had a long chat with our resident Freelancer geneticist on how exactly it all works, positive reinforcement etc) Transgenic Alterations are effectively making you a chimeric individual, no longer fully human. Depending on how the code enters, it may disrupt reproduction rendering you sterile, or it may leave you able to have offspring. As the RAW don't make you sterile, Transgenic Alterations on metahumans seem to not have any sterility issues.

I am obviously straying from the subject at hand, so in a nutshell, Transgenic Alterations are designed to give you animalistic qualities (that would normally be implants) as a naturally expressing part of your DNA. Thus those modifications will not show up when Assensed, and would require extensive Genetic testing to detect. I'd suggest reading the Changeling Plague by Synne Mitchell if you want to get some ideas about how this would look and work.

Magic Loss--If born at an Essence of 5.8, I as a GM would rule that your maximum Magic would be a 5, the same as if you had .2 Essence worth of implants. Fluff-wise, you are paying for the sins of the father. Your parent's genetics made it so that your body's ability to perform magic was hampered. Mechanically, I don't want to introduce new "exceptions to the rule," which this would do and to be perfectly honest, you, the player, chose to have the Essence loss, knowing that it would lower your Magic. Coming up with fluff around why it shouldn't feels like stretching to hold on to you cake after eating. Note: If I, as the GM, forced the player to take Genetic Modifications, due to the campaign structure, then I would make the exception.

I don't really have any sort of ruling for McAllister, just a bunch of rambling ideas. I would tend to say for any of my players that attempted to do this i would first limit it by availibility of course, and also to only the genetech that are already listed in the books.

On the other hand I would still allow just about any Bioware to be gained via genetech instead, AFTER play starts. Since bioware is already customized vat grown meat, I don't see any reason that it couldn't be made to grow in the body, including synaptic boosters. And on that note, if your players wanted to start with anything like that, and you would allow that, you would have to take the timeline into consideration...have they had the capability to create genetech bioware for 30 years like they did with the other genetech? maybe its more of a recent breakthrough so its not possible to start with any Bio-genetech, unless your character is starting off gameplay at the age of 2. Or if it has been around for a while, maybe not to full extent, or maybe synaptic boosters 20-30 years ago weren't all that hot. So players wouldn't be able to start out with anything higher than rating 1. I'm not sure of what was available in older editions in the bioware department, but maybe you could limit it that way.

On a final note is something from Runner's companion.
Metagenic Qualities pg 110
"Non-magical metagenic qualities that do not have a bioware or cyberware equivalent may be introduced into the gave via Transgenic Alteration geneware (p. 92 augmentation) at GM's discretion. Since these would be rare and new transgenic treatments they would cost at least .1 essence and an absolute BP value x 25,000 nuyen cost. Bonuses from metagenic qualities that mimic certain cyber or bio-implants or vice versa are never cumulative."

so according to that reading, being "rare and new" you could not have a character start with any sort of transgeneic alteration.

But I'm a huge fan of the Metagenetic Improvement (raises both minimum and maximum by 1 and stacks with exceptional attribute and genetic optimization). unfortunately, with a BP cost of 20, even with genecrafted and genetic heritage, it would still cost about 300k at charater creation if you were buying it.

Very nice find ZeroPoint, with genetic heritage you could get it for free though.

"No, I don't have a disease, the little bumps and rills are natural. Dad had a phenotype adjustment. Unfortunately, that's about all mom can tell me about him. She was pretty far into Ale'i Menatis at the time."

Sorry Ancient History, I didn't get your joke completely. Does anyone want to explain it? Maybe that will ruin it though.

I wanted to bring up that you can only get transgenic alterations of non-magical metagenetic qualities. Is metagenetic improvement magical? Aside from negative metagenetic qualities, the only magical metagenetic quality I could find that I was magical is arcane arrester. Are there any others?

Also I assume if you got metagenetic improvement (attribute1) and paid for the transgenic alteration of metagenetic improvement (attribute1) they wouldn't stack, even though this isn't explicitly prevented by the rules. It doesn't quite make sense. Similarly how exceptional attribute and genetic optimization are stackable doesn't make sense either, because genetic optimization is an isolation of the genes in exceptional attribute. Any clarifications?

Something to consider is that Sixth World Magical Theory and Essence Loss makes one hell of alot more sense if you apply Pattern Magic and True Naming to it, basically even if you are born with altered DNA the Strings of Magical Energy that you consist of doesn't fit with what a human is supposed to be, so you get Essence and Magic loss just from being born.

It also provides a "hard cap" in what genetically engineered monsters the corps can cook up in their labs, but considering just how far 6.0 Essence can go it isn't really that much of an issue.

*EDIT*

Kindof makes you wonder how close the corps are to rediscovering the power of True Naming, after all, as metahumans we are the Namegivers.

As for the metagentic improvements, I'm all for them as geneware. I charge 25,000 nuyen and 0.1 Essence Cost per 5 BP of the sum of (positive Qualities) - (negative Qualities). This means that Metagenetic Improvement is 500,000 nuyen and 0.4 Essence Cost is taken without any negative Qualities. If the character had taken it along with Impaired (perhaps strong but dumb or weak-willed) then it would drop to 375,000 nuyen and 0.3 Essence Cost. Taking negative Qualities can only reduce the BP value to a minimum of half the value of the positive Qualities (so taking Metagentic Improvement for 20 BP can only benefit in cost and Essence Cost reduction from a maximum of 10 BP of negative Qualities). To get this reduction, the negative Qualities must be placed concurrently with the positive Qualities, and any attempt to remove any associated Qualities removes all of them. I allow the Genecrafted Quality to grant one treatment package (the associated positive Qualities and negative Qualities) of up to 10 BP value (so, if you want it for Metagentic Improvement, you'll still be taking 10 BP of negative Qualities) at no nuyen cost. The Essence Cost is still paid as usual.

If I were to allow bioware to be taken as geneware - and I'm not really keen on the idea - I would stick to the guideline that there are no grades of geneware. So while you could get a Synaptic Booster as geneware, you'd pay for it at the full standard Essence Cost. The only advantage with the current levels of genecrafting is that the benefits could be passed onto offspring and it is very hard to detect geneware. I would still impose availability restrictions for those wanting to start with such genetic tampering via Genecrafted.

I actually had a question about something similarly related: If you have genetweaks and you get cloned, your clones have all the same 'tweaks, right? I mean, it seems logical, but I was wondering about it. For instance, playing an Escaped Clone of a 'tweaker, thus having the Genetic Heritage quality.

Sure, why not? It's a minor alteration to the fluff, but the reasoning behind it fully sound and it doesn't screw with mechanics in any way so go for it. The only thing it does is increase the apparent age of someone that Genetweaked (so they don't have to be kids since it's such a new tech) and that's a good thing.

bumped?

maybe I should make a separate thread

I don't think metagenetic improvement is magical. as for other magical qualities, I thought Glamour (which isn't in alphabetical order for some reason, its right before E) sounded magical. there are also some magical negative metegenetic qualities.

as for the improvement stacking with itself, I would say no. While it doesn't say so directily, I think we can infer as much with Metagenetic improvement's statement that it can only be taken once (whether with you payed BP or Nuyen, doesn't say so I don't think it matters.)

glamour is paranormal, is that the same thing as magical?

well I'm pretty sure you wouldn't buy negative metagenetic qualities... so we can leave those cases out for now

I'd normally argue that metagenetic improvement and the transgenic alteration that is based on metagenetic improvement (let's coin it transgenic improvement cause it sounds awesome) cannot be stacked, because most things do not stack.

But here's my argument in favor of stacking: Genetic optimization is based off of analysis of savants and whiz kids and such. Clearly in order to have increased abilities, these people must have taken exceptional attribute (maybe too much of a stretch). Hence exceptional attribute and genetic optimization form a pair similar to metagenetic improvement and transgenic improvement. Since exceptional attribute and genetic optimization stack, then so should metagenetic improvement and transgenic improvement.

I've always defined essence loss as how far you are deviating from the platonic form of your metatype

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Forms

That helps explain people born with less than full essense.

On that topic, I failed to bring up this:

Genetic Heritage of something that costs essence and genecrafted and buying stuff that costs essence should preclude you from awakening. Why? When people awaken they gain a magic attribute of 1, hence if they ever have a sub 6 essence they will immediately be burned out and incapable of magic. Thus they can't train their magic and raise the attribute any further.

Do you agree?

Maybe you're allowed to be a little bit wishy washy on this topic, because it hasn't been described in either genetic heritage or genecrafted that this would be the case. You aren't born awakened, it occurs sometimes after birth, which means that essence losses due to genetic heritage and genecrafting occur before awakening.

There is no limitation to this at character creation by RAW, but does it make sense? Character creation is a way to "pop" into existence, should we not care about the time evolution of the individual (sometimes it matters: like when adepts walk into a background count)? Or is there an explanation for how genetic heritage/genecrafted can mix with adept/mystic adept/magician?

Can you train magic after burning out? Maybe if you resided on an aspected domain while you were awakening and thus didn't immediately lose that 1 magic to essence losses?

People don't usually Awaken until they are ready to hit puberity, although there are alot of exceptions. And remember, you don't necessarily actually Awakened with ( Magic 1 ), that is just a rules construct at char gen.

Well, I suppose Latent Awakening throws some mud on the theory of Awakening with more than ( Magic 1 ), but most of the stories we have of people Awakening would call for more than a single point of magic as well.