The SR4A book is pretty clear about how to handle magic loss from essence loss via bio/cyberware. This is especially clear after character generation.

However, some questions have come up in my game group about magic loss during character generation. The way our group has traditionally handled it is you buy your magic stat first, up to a maximum of 6. If you have any magic loss, then it takes you down to wherever you end up. So if you take 1.5 essence worth of cyberware and started off with a magic of 6, you end up with a magic of 4. Pretty straight forward.

But, one player asked why not be able to buy up from there? So for example, you buy a magic of 5, take 1.5 essence worth of cyberware and it brings you down to 3. Could you then buy up to 5 or 6 at the regular costs at that point? The logic is that you aren't exceeding your maximum stat so why not?

A similar question asked is could you explain your character background in terms of you got cyberware first and awakened later (still during char gen, not using latent awakening)? Example, you take the 1.5 essence worth of cyberware and then take the mage or adept advantage and buy up your magic from there (and avoiding spending BP on lost magic)?

Both of those were ruled as big fat no's in my group, and I think reasonably so, but there is no straight forward rule regarding this in either case other than citing general play balance issues. If you follow the advice for new players in SR4A pg 80, it recommends you build your character in discrete steps in an order that would have qualities before stats with tech being spent later. This would solve the problem in that first you get the adept or mage advantage, then buy up your magic, then get any cyberware you need and reduce your essence accordingly. But other than this suggestion for new players, I couldn't find a rule on point prohibiting either of the two scenarios above.

So my question to the forums is have these questions came up in your group, how did you deal with them, and did you find any textual support for your reasoning?

essence loss reduces both your maximum and current magic ratings.

there is nothing explicitly requiring you to purchase magic, then calculate lost magic due to essence, however, you are correct in that. if it helps, consider that you lower your magic to a negative value; you can't have a negative value of course, but until the character is finished, they don't actually have any magic value at all. once you finish making the character, you figure out what rating you bought, and then account for essence loss.

the other way could work too, but will lead to a lot more power for cybered up awakened/emerged characters.

This is about the size of it.


This is generally why we suggest you do things in order. That said, if your gamemaster approves and everybody feels comfortable going out-of-order on some things, have fun. If not (like in your group), sorry.

It is something of a balance issue, to keep someone from (for example) buying 5 Essence worth of implants, calculating Essence, and then buying a Magic-granting quality - saving yourself a substantial number of BPs over buying the Magic up first and then the implants.

The balance gets even more out of hand when you use Karma gen, as the costs are lower for lower magic ratings.

Honestly, in my group, the only house rule we use is: If you are doing a Mage, you get Essence reducing stuff before you buy your magic, and you just use your Essence(rounded down) as the Maximum Value. This is just something we all agreed on, because it was alot fairer to us then buying your magic up, and then losing it..(our view is: you pay the points for something, you should get to use it..) However, we also pretty much expect that, if you put Cyber in, you are going to hard cap that Magic, as well..

Yeah, the whole "You pay for magic you don't ever get if you elect to get cyber" aspect to SR4 was one of hte few things I never liked about the change in systems from SR3.   It never seemed fair or balanced to me. So, in the group I ran (and the campaign one of my players infrequently ran that allowed me, the normal GM, to play) we just ignored it and pretty much imitated the old SR3 way.  Whatever Essence you had left after cybering was your "cap" for your magic attribute. You slap together an adept and throw in a point worth of cyber, your adept will only have to pay for 5 points of magic to have a Magic 5.  If, down the road, you add cyber and your Essence drops to say 4.02, then your Magic drops to 4 and you lose some of your Adept abilities because you lost that 5th Power point.  

If you created a character, took a point worth of cyber and only paid for a Magic of 4, then later you could, of course pick up a point of Magic to your cap of 5 at normal costs. 

We played pretty extensively under this houserule and it never ever seemed unbalanced.  I am really unsure why the devs set up the whole magic purchase system the way they did for SR4.  It seems to unnecessarily gimp those that want to mix magic and tech in their characters which for me, is sorta what SR is and has always been about. Of course, the key thing to remember is that a magic character developed for our games will be unsuitable to be played at most other tables.

The other major thing I didn't like was the new Initiative system, but I created a very minor tweak to the system that brought back some of hte old flavor for that.  It essentially uses a threshold system:

Roll your Initiative as normal: Roll X Init dice and add the successes to your Init score. This is your actual Initiative.

Then compare the number of hits you had on the roll to the below chart to determine Passes:

* 0-1 hit, you don't get your 2nd (or 3rd) pass.

* 2 hits , you get your 2nd pass (if you have the appropriate gear/spells for it)

* 3 hits, you get your 3rd and 4th (if you have the appropriate gear/spells for them)

and then to jsut shake things up and make it fun:

* 4+ hits on your test, you gain a second pass (if you are unwired/unspelled.)

A non-wired/non-spelled guy is probably tossing around 6-7 dice on average for Init, so 4+ hits won't come up that often, but when it does, it will give them that nice lucky shot. And, he is still only picking up a second pass occasionally.

A wired guy is probably tossing around 8-11 dice, so he is more than likely to always make his threshold for his multiple passes... but sometimes not. A little give in the system. A little "let's see how the dice play out."




The only other major change I can think is that I houseruled into SR4 is allowing a system of using Knowledge skills as complimentary skills for active skill tests in certain circumstances, again similar to what was done in SR3.  Roll your Knowledge test (Logic or Intuition+skill) and hten for every two successes add a die to your actual Active skill test. This is on GM whim of course and I usually allow it more for extended tests and non time relevent type of rolls and dedicated Perception type tests. 

Sorry, I know the OP was actually asking about Magic and I sorta went off on a tangent within my post, but I wanted the OP to see that it is possible to run the game the way you want, provided you know the RAW first and really try to moderate your tinkering to keep the game balanced (and FUN) for your table. It is your game and no SR police are going to burst through your door while you are playing with houserules and force you to stop.



Vlad

the problem with buying magic after cybering up is that you don't really pay for the combination of cyber and magic, which is significantly more powerful than magic or cyber alone, if you know what you're doing. especially in the long run.

also, it punishes people who cyber up after chargen, by making them pay more for their cyber. not a huge fan of that.

I agree 100% with Jaid. Adepts with bioware, especially, already have an edge up on their non-augmented brethren. And keep in mind, I'm usually on the awakened side in all of these "gimp the awakened characters" threads.

Small point... the magic rating is capped at 6-(essence loss)+initiate grade.

For the player to buy cyber, then raise magic up doesn't work, especially if he wants rating 5 or 6 and save BP.

IF the players magic score ever goes to 0, he is rendered mundane and can never access his magic again. For the player to cyber, then buy the attribute is to reduce his magic to 0, then raise it back up.


If the player really wanted to play it that way, (cyber themselves up, buy magic after the fact) there is a path for that, it's latent awakening in street magic (5BP positive quality). At some point long after chargen, the GM decides that they awaken, they get 1 point of magic and have to spend karma to turn themselves into whatever kind of awakened the GM decides (none of this is up to the player, you're at the GM's mercy). Then they can buy up magical stats and skills normally using karma earned in play.

However, this path you can see outright stops the powergaming abuse of buying up a high magic stat after chargen and saving all the karma expenditure after the fact.

The exception (and I have pointed this one out before) is if you and your GM agree for you to take "Latent Awakening" as a qualiy during the "notional" build, and agree that you can spend X% of your points before your "late" Awakening, then you have the rest to spend on your final development, including any left-over costs associated with the switch from Latent Awakening (5 BP / 10 Karma) to Mystic Adept (10 BP / 20 Karma) or Magician (15 BP / 30 Karma). A way to help control things a bit might be to "encourage" the player to take the Aspected negative quality (which they could work to buy off later) to both help defray the costs and to explain less-than-complete training (since a regular Magician would have Awakened earlier and been able to get full training properly, whereas you were already on your way in another "career" when magic appeared in your life). The other half of such a build is that the character should't have any magical skill over 4, and not be allowed to buy magical skill groups (representing structured broad-based training) at creation, which helps make up for some of the "saved" BP costs for doing things this way and keeps their level of magical training reasonable for the idea of "came to it late in life". For pure Adepts, it's harder to balance because they don't have magical skills to limit or anything like that, and their Magic Points are pure power. Still, taking a large amount of chrome limits what powers they can have access to without initiation, so it's not quite as critical, but a GM allowing this for pure Adepts should exercise caution and work extra-closely with the player.

WTF? In every edition of Shadowrun, if you cyber your magic-user during chargen "you pay for magic you don't ever get". It's just that in SR1-SR3 you were automatically buying 6 points of magic attribute, no questions asked.