Sure, a little datajack or internal commlink is not uncommon and not game-breaking, the problem is when you pick an adept with move-by-wire, dermal plate, bone lacing and whatever mixed up with killing hand, critical strike, combat sense, etc... You are no longer an adept you are a freaking urban samurai and that's where I have issues. And yes, I think the quote Garou made is such an example of abuse the GM could and should prevent.

yeah, I think we will have to agree on disagree. If an adept begins to have as much ware as a samurai, I think something is very wrong, but if you guys think this is ok, well, whatever makes you happy, right?

Thing is, the Essence-healing treatments you can get don't state they can heal your reduced Maximum Magic. So it really depends on how you interpret the rules as to whether or not those treatments also restore your Maximum Magic.

But the way it works...

Essence + Initiation Ranks = Maximum Magic
Maximum Initiation Ranks = Current Magic

So if you are at Magic 1 / Essence 6 / Initiation 0, you have a max magic of 6 & max initiation ranks of 1. You can progress up to Magic 6 and any number of ranks of Initiation up to your Current Magic attribute.

Now let's say you have Magic 5 / Essence 1 / Initiation 4. You CANNOT raise your Magic any further until you Initiate again. E + I = 5 which makes your Current Magic = Maximum Magic.

Let's take that one step further... Magic 5 / Essence 0.5 / Initiation 5. You cannot raise your Magic any further. E + I = 5.5 (round down) or 5. E + I = 5 which makes your Current Magic = Maximum Magic. Unlike the previous example, you have no further room to grow.

Here's why... For every partial - full point of Essence Loss you ALSO incur an equal loss of Magic. Thus going from Essence 6 to 5.5 makes your Magic 6 drop to Magic 5. It stays that way until you lose another 0.51 or more Essence. See this chart:

Essence...Magic
6.0............6
5.99-5.0....5
4.99-4.0....4
3.99-3.0....3
2.99-2.0....2
1.99-1.0....1
0.99-0.0....0

Now remember, Max Magic = Essence + Initiation Ranks. Without ranks of Initiation, once you drop below 1 point of Essence, any magical ability you had is burnt out. With initiation ranks, you retain Magical power equal to your ranks of Initiation... IF you kept your Magic => Initiation. Otherwise, due to Magic loss from Essence loss, you'll run into a revolving circle of continuing losses due to Initiation Ranks > Current Magic which means you lose a rank which can in turn cost you a point of Magic if your Current Magic is higher than your Max Magic.

Only because you quoted it twice...

Someone out there spent 2 years of training [your fluff, not mine] for astral perception and lost it when they upgraded sight and hearing. Two years. Gone. I wonder if they were as blasé about the operation.

That would be an unbalancing combo, if it was feasible. But an adept who gets all of that 'ware will have to hard-max his magic to have as much as a single point of Magic left - which means he spent 70 points (adept quality and hard-maxing Magic) to have a single power point of abilities, compared to a straight-up samurai. You're envisioning something that most players simply wouldn't do. Most mages and adepts will get about one or two points of Essense in 'ware.

Yeah, I have seen a mage go as High as 3 points of Essence Loss, but anything higher is just sorta crazy in my opinion... Most of the rest settle in around 1 to 2 points as Glyph stated...

Keep the Faith

so there is a problem with someone throwing away a couple pts worth of magic to buy cyber? because the stuff works together really well? am I missing something did SR4 break something bad enough for this amount of complaint? if so I'm glad I'm still using sr3.

If anything, it was far, far easier for awakened characters, especially mages, to go hog wild on cyberware. Initiation raised the Magic attribute automatically, you could take geasa for Magic loss, power foci raised your effective Magic attribute for determining whether drain was physical or not, and Magic rating was a much less important component of spellcasting. In SR3, having a mage with 4 or 5 points of 'ware was very feasible; such a character would be severely disadvantaged in SR4.

Adepts are likelier to be augmented in SR4, because bioware is more available, very Essence-friendly, and gives boosts in areas that are expensive to improve with power points (namely, Attribute and initiative increases). Pure adepts are still viable, though - mystic armor and combat sense are a lot more powerful, magical initiative keeps up with augmented initiative a lot better, powers cost less (especially with SR4A's changes), and smartlinks can be in contacts now.

Think through the effect of the treatment.

If I move from a Standard Synaptic Boost 3 (1.5 essence) to a Delta-grade SB3 (0.75 essence) I have a 0.75 essence gap that can be filled with other 'ware. As far as I understood, the essence-healing would restore that gap so that instead of being at 4.5 essence, you're at 5.25 essence. What purpose does this serve to a mundane? Nothing, except for increasing his essence score for genetic transfusions.

Further, the rule for essence on magic cap is as follows, bolded for emphasis.

"For each point or partial point of Essence below 6, the character loses 1 full point of Magic point from her Magic or Resonance and the maximum for that attribute is reduced by 1."

If both effects were permanent, there would be no need to differentiate between them. You can lose potential (which is what maximum magic stands for), but reducing doesn't imply permanency. All-in-all, if the treatment to restore essence doesn't also restore max magic, then the treatment is worthless, and in fact becomes punitive to mages by causing them to lose more magic if they drop their essence score again, ie the max a magic a mage could lose without the treatment is 6 points and retain magic ability, 5 points and retain the ability to grow in it. With the ability, the magic can technically lose an infinite number of magic points, and the possibility of burnout can occur even at an essence of 6.

I'll ask my friend to give me the character sheet of a Troll cybered-adept he had created and post it here. As far as I remember, it was extremely broken (the kind of thing where almost or all his physical attributes were at maximum augmentation level).

Sort of. In SR4 bioware gives so much more comparative bang for your buck its too the point I think its poorly designed. It almost forces the hand of any min/maxer into getting at least synaptic boosters and if an adept muscle aug of some kind.

Given the ability to see auras and the damage cyber/bioware does to your aura and mojo, I think even non-technophobes should and would be leery of implants. I prefer thematically the magic/techno divide of previous editions including the penalties for awakened on the intrawebs.

It is interesting how many people think that mages/adepts would not (or should not) get cyber. I am pretty close to being legaly blind... If I had magic and cyber existed I would get cybereyes without even flinching... Hell, I would get my ears done too. As tricked out as I could get them to boot. Would I get anything else... I am not sure. On a personal note, probably not... well, maybe a datajack. Much more secure than trodes. If you as a player think that you as a character would get cyber if you where magical than there are characters in the SR universe that would. It is that simple. If an individual has a flaw (percieved or real) they will usually attempt to fix it if the cost for the fix is within their "budget."

I wonder how many of the naysayers to this are smokers, drinkers or drug-users*? Smoking has been proven countless time to be bad for you and yet you still smoke. Drinking has its own dangers and drug-use* has manny problems. Yet people still do it.

*Drug use being illegal drugs or the abuse of legal drugs.

I'm not saying that mages/adepts shouldn't get cyber (well, maybe adepts), what I'm talking about is where should one draw the line for an adept to mix his cyber with his adept powers. Hell, if cyber-eyes were available I would definitely get one and I hope for the day that sleep regulators is developed. BUT, if I had magical powers AND ware was "nocive" to said powers, I would definitely be careful of how much I "defile" my body, I would probably stop just on the cyber-eyes and sleep regulator.

Ah... But you can get the equivalent to a sleep regulator in adept powers. It is a cost vs. reward scenario. I will agree with you to a point. The mages/adepts I have played in the past have been purists. However, the technomancer I play now has 2 points of cyber. But I see the other side of the coin on this. If you can get something that is more powerful/efficient/economical why would you not do it? I do think it is a bit ridiculous for bioware to do something more efficiently than magic. Since magic is making your synapses faster on a biological level it should be the same... But that is a different discussion.

I think it is different when you can flip to the astral and see the corrupted dead spots in your own soul. Sure I can see it in some cases especially when fixing a disability of some kind, but in most cases I'd think magical types would say no way in hell.

On a side note you can "see" on the astral when blind, so flipping to the astral would give you decent vision without needing to get cyber.

"Hey, guys? Is that a drone or a pile of bricks?"
Also... there is a -2 to all physical tests when perceiving. Add that to the -2 distracted penalty for perception and you wouldn't know bad things where happening until you where leaking vital fluids from your body.

Yea, there might be dead spots in my "soul" but I only care about that when I am dead.

I'm offering 3,99 poins.

Very Nice...

Was all that 'ware at character creation, or as the character has progressed (I assume as he has progressed)... he appears to have a fair amount of Shadow work under his belt...

Keep the Faith

He saw a lot of development and changes under SR3 and was recreated for SR4 some time ago. He went through 91 runs during the last 6 1/2 years of real life and nearly a decade in-game. Originaly he started with 2 points of essece lost and a bioindex of 3 plus a gesture geas which meant Magic 2(3). The idea was to merge the Wise Warrior (=Odin) shaman and his code of honor with a street sam and mix it with a dash of back to the roots as my very first character was the combat mage archetyp from SR1 followed by a shaman and a sam. You can see my main source of inspiration if you have a look at my avatar.

Very Nice Indeed...

Keep the Faith