Hey do engraved cost no essence? I was using that awesome shadowrun spreadsheet and I found that an engraved datajack was entered as 0 essence......is that right? I thought an engraved data jack was an extra 200 nuyen for something cosmetic.

Maybe a bug in your spreadsheet: the engraving is a datajack option. It has no Essence cost by itself, but you cannot get it without a datajack.

no I mean a datajack costs .1 but if you get it engraved it costs 0, did the writer make a mistake?

Most definitely. That's what Traul said too.

It's probably a typo. Or it's meant to be taken as an upgrade to a Datajack, hence costing no Essence in the spreadsheet.

It is most certainly an upgrade to a datajack.

If you want a 0 Essence datajack, add it to an existing cyberlimb.

Engraving a datajack is a cosmetic option, not a separate item. Just like the cosmetic sculpting you can get on dermal armor or the casemods you can get for cyberlimbs. The cosmetics don't cost essence, but the base item to be customized does.

You could also just plug stuff into your commlink instead of your head. Use skinlink on the 'link and the trodes and you do not need to sacrifice any essence.

BTW who wants a datajack anyway. That's so 2050.

For the same exact reasons that people want to use a remote to interact with their electronic equipment as opposed to getting up and doing it manually. And that is even ignoring the fact that 'jacks give you access to whatever mental skill or language you could possibly want, all for the low, low price of 0.1 Essence.

Oh, and lets not forget that Betagrade 'jacks make for some really wiz deathtraps when it comes to protecting your cyber from being hacked by some random Decker.

Could you please tell me what the datajack does that the skinlink setup can't for zero essence loss?

By logic, better bandwidth better fidelity.

By rules in this "Oh all magic users should be able to also be hackers and theres no point to cyberware anymore" rules-set? Not much.

Bitter much?

If you're a GM, then don't allow an Awakened character to have the kind of hacking skills that would make him supersede a dyed-in-the-wool hacker. If you feel learning and maintaining magic is a demanding hobby (and it IS), then don't allow your players to create magician characters with large amounts of hacking skills or programs that are above and beyond the average hacker-wannabe type and don't allow them to spend too much karma to buy or improve said skills. Minor hacking is fine (I mean, you can't always have your hacker buddy pirating Speed Coma tracks for you), but magicians should be spending the bulk of their karma on upgrading their Magic attribute, initiating, conjuring/improving their ally spirit, bonding new foci, quickening spells, etc. And if you think your Awakened character is neglecting their Talent by depending too much on technology, penalize them a point of Magic or two (and inflict a stern talking to by their mentor spirit) until they've had time to get back to their studies/meditation/etc.

Also, how has SR4 made cyberware pointless? Last time I checked, a retractable spur to the gut STILL hurts like a motherfragger.

I agree with you. If the mage has enough karma to improve his hacking skills he must be getting too much, as weird as that sounds for such a karma sink, and the hacker must be doing something else with his karma. If either wants to play a generalist and not a specialist in one field, the GM should plan accordingly.

True a retractable spur hurts, but so do forearm snap blades, or axes.

The main thing the datajack does in contrast to the no-essence kludge is to always be available for use and to be very difficult to take away from you. With the latter, you have to have the extra equipment with you: the commlink+skinlink at the minimum and some sort of headwear containing the trode net or a fairly recently applied painted set - the first two bits can be taken/broken, and the latter can be simply wiped off. About the only counter to a datajack is a stopper. But given you can just switch it to wireless, even that isn't guaranteed effective - if the opposition even happens to have any jackstoppers, given how relatively uncommon the implants are supposed to be in 2070.

The engraved Datajack won`t cost any additional Essence !



In the Twenty-Seventies ,nobody ,but everybody until 2063 (Under SR3 Rules a Datajack was better than a trodenet and was very usefull for any Kind of Driver).It was a Common Item so everybody who was Born until 2050-2055 could/should quit possibly have one

with a common Dance
Medicineman

Shadowrun is not a class-based system. You can have a street samurai drone rigger, a sniper who is also the group's face, a mage who hacks, or any other combo you want. Some are more expensive or impractical than others, and can spread a character too thin. A mage hacker will already be behind a "pure" mage or hacker. If I was playing a mage, and a GM arbitrarily took away Magic points for not spending enough on my "class" skills, I would leave that campaign in a heartbeat. Would you drop the sammie's pistols skill by a few points, because he's spending "too much" on social skills? Seriously, it's a bad idea.

Right. If one PC is all-in-one person, that means he is weaker than any specialist - player's choice. Besides, even in SR4 sample characters we have Occult Investigator (mage/detective) or Smuggler (rigger/hacker/some more things).

Aye, what TonkaTuff said, plus it gives you an excellent chokepoint for any outside access you might want for your cyber. No so useful if you also have an implanted 'link PLUS an implanted sim -module, but I see those as being more uncommon due to the increased costs.

Remember that people are lazy and will snap at any time and effort saver they can, so I don't buy the idea that real people as opposed to mere collections of numbers would rather rely on trodes/glasses/ect over cyber when their implants are simply there and don't need to be recharged, turned on, synced to talk with each other, and placed on one's person everytime you want to use them.

Why would having an implanted commlink & SIM module make a datajack "not so useful"?

The way I figure it, cluster all your cyber except the commlink and the datajack. Slave the resulting cluster to your commlink and then have your datajack subscribe to the commlink. The datajack acts like the gatekeeper, but you have your commlink with IC backing it up.

Class-based system or not, I believe in game balance.

In my opinion, if a PC has the Magic-related skills groups and the Hacking-related skill groups all at max-character-creation rating, with a Magic attribute of 6 (which is pretty easily doable in character creation), then this character is unbalanced because it smacks of min-maxing to me: a character realizing he can do two powerful things at once with minimal effort.

There's nothing wrong with a magician learning some computer skills. In fact, the average wagemage back in the day had a datajack and a Computer skill of 2 or 3, at the very least. However, if your magicker is doing better at hacking than your hacker is, you have a problem, and if a character (magician or otherwise) seems to be taking over too many important duties, then the other PCs will get annoyed and claim that character is too powerful. On the other end of the spectrum, if the team relies TOO MUCH on this character, if he gets geeked on a run, the rest of the team is completely fragged without his help.

I've been reading SR magic-based fluff since 2nd edition, and every time it harps on magic being a very time-consuming profession. SR has done a pretty good job of making magickers (especially mages) come across as incredible nerds when it comes to their profession, almost to the point of obsession. And magic, like any muscle or skill, will atrophy if ignored. Sure you can create a magic character, but if they're spending too much time trying to flex their hacking skills, this is less time they can devote to practicing their magic. Before too long they might not remember their spell correctly in the heat of battle or the spell might fizzle or be less effective simply because it's been MONTHS since they reviewed the spell formula.

I'm not against players branching off into territory in which their "archetype" doesn't normally go, so long as it's within reason. After all, PCs are people and not stereotypes. But there has to be a level of realism involved as well. For example, I know a guy who is a genius when it comes to computers; he can build complicated servers and program them from the ground up. BUT THAT'S ALL HE DOES. He has a few other hobbies, but tinkering with computers is where he spends the vast majority of his time, and that's why he's so good at it. If he were to step away from a computer for a few months, odds are he'll have forgotten a thing or two.

However, if your magicker is doing better at hacking than your hacker is, you have a problem,
Yes ,the problem is with the Hacker that sux !
Because if the Mage is better at hacking than the Hacker,he (the Hacker) is doing something wrong !

Hough !
Medicineman

Seconded.

The other possibility would be that the characters are build with way too many BPs, so the hacker probably has a couple of other fields of expertise. Consequently he should not be named hacker but jack of all/many trades, master of none.

If someone manages to max everything that has to do with magic and everything in the hacking trade, that character surely has deficits in other areas (probably attributes). Let the world react accordingly to him and he will be in trouble.

If this is more of a problem between the players, if one tries to hog all the spotlight time, talk to the players don't penalize the characters.

Min/maxing is just what any shadowrunner would do, because that increases his chances to be hired. No Johnson would hire a team of inept people, just because they have such a sobstory for background. AFAIK there is no affirmative action program in the shadows.

Agreed. The mage can't go full VR because he lacks simsense, the mage can't get an enchephalon because he can't spare any essence. The mage can't afford a stack of rating 6 hacking programs because he has to buy his lucky charms.

A mage certainly can be a good hacker, but if he is out preforming your dedicated hacker, it is because the dedicated hacker is messing up, not because the mage has 1337 H4x0R 5KI11z. Also keep in mind that if he wants to remain a good hacker, he'll have to burn karma into hacking skills, resources into bigger and badder programs, which he won't be spending on more lucky charms, initiation, new spells, etc.

All archetypes are self enforced as being time consuming because you have to put karma and resources into them. Do this, take your hacker/mage and compare him to a dedicated hacker and a dedicated mage. I bet you he won't be able to beat either in their dedicated field, but in exchange for that level of power, he has a higher level of flexibility. There is really no reason to set up arbitrary rules that stop characters from having more than one focus. The RAW already do a fine job of balancing out flexibility for raw power.

That's going in my sig

Except that it takes a lot more than a couple skill points to be an effective Hacker and Mage at the same time (and that for you to smack people down for taking skill groups is kind of funny, since they're pretty points-inefficient). How are their other attributes? How much money do they have for Foci and Hacking gear at the same time? How good a Hacker are they, really, without any headware for that extra oomph? How effective will they stay later in the campaign while they try to spread themselves that thin, and decide where to spend their karma and incoming nuyen?


Yeah, it means you need to talk to the group's primary Hacker and try to figure out how he's such a screw up.

Do you do this same sort of thing if more than one character has combat skills (force the Rigger to drop his Gunnery because he's stepping on the Street Sam's toes, and guns are supposed to be someone else's job)? Or is it just the magic and technology overlapping that gives you the willies?


Wow, all the way since 2nd edition? (*snicker*)

Yeah, it's almost like it requires your attention by demanding you shell out massive amounts of karma points for Initiation and skills you only use for casting spells and stuff. Funny how that works out, huh?


You mean like those Tir combat mages, Hart and some from Laverty's crew, right there in the first few Shadowrun novels, who were top-notch Mages and very skilled personal combatants with stealth, athletics, unarmed combat, and firearms? Or maybe Sam Verner himself, for that matter, from the same books -- the original Decker/Shaman?


If you pulled junk like that at a game I was playing, I'd just pack up and leave. There are no rules for muscles and skills atrophying. How often do you make a Street Sammy's athletics or unarmed combat lose half a die pool because they've only been spending karma on shooting stuff? When was the last time you had a Rigger's drone casually ignore him because he's been spending so much time working on cars? If you've got known and established (and fair) house rules in place and mentioned in advance to your players about every skill set being penalized like this, fine...but if it's just a curveball you're going to wing at the mages because it's the only way you can manage to run a balanced game, that's bullshit.


No, I think you've shown pretty clearly that you are against players branching off into territory outside of the tiny little box you pigeonhole them into. When magic is taught at college universities, it's only your stereotypes that are keeping players at your table limited to the D&D class you've assigned them.

Very well put.

I got my first 2nd ed. book in 1994, so I was trying to point out the fact that I'm not exactly new at this. New to 4th ed, yes, but not new to the workings of SR in general. When it comes to SR magic, over the years I've gone through the Grimoire, Magic in the Shadows, Street Magic, and just about any SR novel I can get my hands on (Burning Bright is probably one of my favorite magic-centric ones).


Twist certainly didn't start out as a shaman, and even after he had a handle on his Awakened Talent (almost 3 whole books after first discovering it), Dodger could still run circles around him in the Matrix.



I can't remember where it is (pretty sure it's not in SR4 but either in a previous edition or in an old sourcebook), but I vaguely recall a mention somewhere about skills needing upkeep, in the sense that, how can you justify a Firearms 6+ skill if it's been six months since you even fired off a live round? In other words, even Robin Hood still needs to practice his bow/arrow skill every once in a great while. At any rate I'm pretty sure that was either a GM discretion thing or an optional/house rule.

The reason I singled out Magic is because Magic is completely different than other skill sets. Magic isn't a rock-solid profession, and a lot of an Awakened character's Talent depends on faith -- faith in themselves and in the workings of mana itself. For example, according to the rules, a magician can have a crisis of confidence and temporarily lose a point of Magic until things fall back into equilibrium, upon which the Magic point is restored (SM, pg. 30). If the crisis continues long enough, or the Magician doesn't care enough to fix it, their Magic point reduction becomes permanent. So, in a sense, if a magician doesn't maintain faith in their abilities, they will lose them, become a burnout or eventually join the ranks of the mundane. This sort of thing is in the RAW. So in this sense, if a magician hasn't been spending any time on their magical profession in a long while, and their first spell or two either fails to work right, glitches, etc., I'd rule that as a crisis of confidence and go from there. And to be completely honest, I'd probably apply similar rules to the Resonance rating of technomancers who never did anything in the Matrix, but the likelihood of that happening is almost nil, since TMs feel off-kilter if they're cut off from Matrix traffic.


For the record, there's a big difference between a character wandering off the beaten path a bit and a player abusing the system just because the rules allow it. And also for the record, the only labels I give characters are magicians and TMs/hackers/riggers, because those skills are SPECIAL (i.e. a mundane cannot learn how to be a magician, and a non-TM has to use AR or a datajack just like the rest of us). Everyone else is just a runner to me, regardless of their skill sets.

You still rather ignored the point that the hacker/mage won't be as good of a hacker as a full hacker or as good of a mage as a full mage.

I've got to say that a crisis of confidence sounds like it should be something alot more than not having advanced your magic skill in a while. It sounds like it should be something along the lines of a Christian going 'You know, maybe those Jews have it right after all.' or a shaman going 'You know, those hermetic mages make a good point, maybe magic can be explained by a bunch of complex formula.' I don't see it as being 'Oh no, I just fughed that spell, everything I believe in must be WRONG!'

You have to remember that just because karma isn't being spent on improving a skill doesn't mean that the character is completely ignoring it, it doesn't even mean that they aren't working hard at practicing it. I mean, what happens when your character has a skill at 6? Should the fact that he is never spending any karma to advance it higher mean that he is obviously completely ignoring it and it should thus be decreased back down to 5 every few months?

I don't see any abuse to the mage picking up the cracking skillgroup for 40 BP (That's a good chunk) and buying a good commlink and all the high rating hacking programs (Which it should be noted is going to cost something like 15 BP in resources) because the mage is spending 60ish BP to be able to hack halfway decently. That's 60 BP that he -won't- be spending on improving his magic, on allowing him to fire a gun in a backup situation, on allowing him to be stealthy, or on being otherwise competent. And he -still- won't be as good at hacking as the hacker (Unless you have a very sub-par hacker).

From what I gather, you don't seem to have any problem with the mage picking up some gun skills, or some stealth skills, or some other various skills which steps on the toes of other archetypes, so what is your big problem with mages learning to hack?

I didn't say advancing a character's magic skill. I said a character not using magic at all for a while. Say you're a really great tennis player, and you run into some tough situations where you don't have enough time to play as you used to. Few months later, you play an exhibition game and don't have much time to practice beforehand, and you REALLY botch the game. With people watching. With the future of your career at stake. And you have a bit of a breakdown. That's more like what a magician's crisis of confidence is like. Not, "OMG, I've lost faith!" More like, "WTF did I do wrong? Why is it not WORKING?!!!!" And when a character has far too many of these moments, they're going to start developing some issues.



Because hacking has the potential of being a very powerful tool. Depending on the job and the threat, some teams live or die based on their primary hacker's skills. And a magician character already has a powerful skill that no one else can have (unless they paid for it in char-gen). Granted some teams live or die by their magicians as well (depending on what spells/spirits they have and how they use them), but in terms of the success of a run, unless you're out in the Salish wilderness without a sat-uplink, your hacker is probably going to be one of the more important characters in terms of breaching security and such.

The only thing I'd really have a problem with is if a magician completely replaces the team's character with the highest hacking skills (i.e. there is no other character on the team that has any significant hacking skills). It's one thing if the hacker takes a bullet and is being supported by another teammate while his viscera is hanging out and the magician is the only one capable of trying to open the maglocked door they need to escape with whatever hacking skills he has. It's another thing if the magician is the only one with useful enough hacking skills. I mean, a magician can't be casting spells AND playing with the Matrix at the same time, at least, not with any reliability. He's gotta ignore one or the other, unless he's simply maintaining a sustained spell. But even that would give him a -2 dice poll modifier on all of his Matrix actions. And, for the sake of argument, say he's got a trode-net or datajack: is is even possible to sustain a spell while in full VR? Or does switching from AR to VR automatically break your sustained spell?

Which kind of brings me back to my point. What is the problem with a mage being a hacker as well? He can't do both at the same time. He can't hack and cast spells, so what is the problem with him having the -option- to do either one? You also keep talking about how the mage is going to outshine the hacker. I really want to see you try this. If the mage is outshining the hacker, you have a problem of your hacker sucking. You -also- have a problem of your mage being a sub-par mage because he is burning all his karma on hacking skills instead of magic.

I don't see any reason at all to enforce extra rules to punish a mage for trying to branch out when the rules as they are already are provide penalties for spreading out from your specialties.

And yeah, your right, the tennis player would suck in that game, but they would know why, they wouldn't go "How can I be losing? I've been eating potato chips as fast as I can and sitting as often as possible, how can not practicing tennis for six months have affected my game?" just like a mage who hadn't cast a spell in six months would botch and would go "Oh, gee, I guess I'm out of practice."

I love it when very set veiw points collide, you should try the old wizards bord. (To this day 3.x vs 4.0 arguments make me want to run and hide)
PS: Do you realise this topic started out about a simple quistion with a faulty spreadsheat. God I love dumpshock

I take full fault and credit for this devolvement.

The point I was making in my original much maligned post is this. There should never be pointless piece of cyberware, if the more casual means of access and replication of cyberware abilities get better then cyberware should likewise improve. Since there are trodes that replicate the mechanical effects of a datajack through the human skull there should be something extra spiffy about how datajacks work. This and the rediculousness that is the power level of some of the physical adept/spellcaster abilities raises the question of why would one bother to play a cybered character anymore. This is further compounded, in my opinion wrongly, by the latest conclusion that only a very tiny minority of the population is cybered when in actuality since the technology has been around nearly 50 years now I must conclude that the very opposite is the case. The only people that shouldn't be cybered are the magically active, who are themselves a very tiny portion of the population.

Hehe, yeah, I kinda thought this was a different thread

I take full advantage of LurkerOutThere taking the blame for all of this

But did the OP actually manage to get answered before the sidetrack happened? Engraved datajack doesn't include the datajack itself, just the engraving part, so it costs no essence, but you can't get it without getting the datajack first, which does cost essence.

Meh, even the Awakened should be cybered as well, at least cybereyes, datajack, and bioreflexes...

"But why ever would you get cyber eyes and a datajack if trodes and goggles do the same thing with no essence lost."

*twitches a little to himself just for having said that*

I will bite...

Because then you could use your augmented senses to target spells with, unlike like the goggles or glasses that the mundane magician is forced to use...

Anyway, I have to agree with teh large number of people here... there is no reason to penalize a magician that wants to delve into the Matrix... he will neither be as powerful as a straight magician nor a straight Hacker with equivalent Karma expenditures... Period...

Keep the Faith

I remember in the pre-SR4 days trodes DID have disadvantages over datajacks, but at the same time, a Black IC couldn't flatline you with biofeedback. Based on the SR4 rules way of explaining Matrix tech, the way a "crown of thorns" worked back then was they were the equivalent of running cold sim since there wasn't a direct wire-to-brain interface; sure you could troll the Matrix, but you'd never be a drek-hot decker unless you shove a wire directly into your brain. So, unless I missed something, trodes are actually capable of hot sim now? Did ASIST technology improve while I was busy ignoring SR3 rules?

At any rate, hot sim or cold sim aside, I'd think the real disadvantage of a set of trodes is you have to actually situate the crown of thorns on your head (or apply it, in the case of nanopaste). What would that be, a Complex Action (putting on trodes) vs. a Simple Action (just plugging a wire into your skull)? Can't recall if the rules actually cover these two actions without the rulebook at hand...

Tymeaus Jalynsfein summed up the reasons for cybereyes in a nut shell, but the reason for installing a 'jack is for pretty much the same reasons everyone else should, which I've already touched upon.