I have a player who is pondering becoming Infected but he has a Magic rating of 6. In the disease summary, it says an Infected's Magic and Essence is reduced to 1.

Now does that mean if he becomes Infected, his Magic will drop from 6 to 1 or remain unchanged?

It seems to me that Infection causes a Magic drop...but I may be missing something that others are aware of. Any input?

Becoming infected during play is career suicide for the awakened. You'll effectively burn out due to the essence drain process and wake up infected and stuck at magic 1 because you can't gain any karma.

Now it has been proposed here several times as a house rule that pcs will wake up with as much magic as they had prior to infection. This would allow that pc awakened that get infected remain playable.

And that much more able to get "Dinner" when hungry. There are a number of HMHVV types that are powerhouses with magic, after all.

Depends on the kind of infected. Most infected (like ghouls) simply lose one essence as part of the process. This would reduce the mage's magic by 1 just like losing 1 essence to ware.

If you're talking about a vampire or something else that uses essence drain to infect, then yes, the person would lose all 6 points of essence (and thus all 6 points of magic), and then go back up to 1 essence and 1 magic when they finish being infected.

So yeah, becoming infected during play generally sucks for an awakened, becoming a vampire during play for an awakened means they practically have to start over.

On the bright side, being a Ghoul means never having to say, "I'm sorry"...

For eating your brain.

And yes, I'm thinking of ways to make that not so damaging to magic. Makes no sense to me, really, since so many vampires are, in fact, magicians...and sick-crazy-powerful ones, too. No ETA for that, though, so don't hold your breath.

The player in question is a Dryad who will become a Banshee

OK, I'll bite: why can't Infected PCs gain karma?

Because IIRC, by RAW, the PC has to pay the karma cost for the infection, which is about 200 before they can devote any karma to other things. I find the notion of charging the PC because he was attacked and eaten by a vampire to be 'odd' but I don't don't make the rules.

I suppose the reasoning is that previously, PCs who had been thusly attacked became NPCs. So now for all the nice bonuses your character receives after being so unfortunate, you must pay to continue playing your character.

Yeah, the rules on karmic debt are terrible. If you're willing to houserule it, just take half of their karma income until its paid off.

Combine needing to pay 200 karma for the 'quality' with needing to pay 100 Karma to get your magic back to 6, and ya, you're pretty much screwed for a good long while.

300 karma later when the other players are virtual gods, you'll have finally caught up to where you were before the vampire attack. Yeah, I'd call that reasonably unplayable as well.

One option for awakened especially is taking disadvantages

Say Geasa for some of the points, but you can also work in mental portions as well (mania/phobia, delusions)

As is the ability to take psychosomatic allergies to things (like a vampire taking one to crosses)


The change isn't just poof you're a vampire, it's something that can leave mental scars and wounds on a character too.

So you're only 100 karma in the hole for your magic and have 100 BP worth of negative qualities, still sounds rather harsh.

Life is harsh, the counter is most infected no longer need worry about old age not that many runners do anyway


But yes it's harsh starting out infected, but you got a long time to rebuild and amass power.

All the super strong ones, are not new infected. They are older and have been busy.

Each feeding for a vampire/banshee actually earns Karma in a way. It's a hunt, a short run to get food which means planning, surviving the combat, etc.. and cleaning up afterwards

feeding isn't as hard as you might think, just need any spirit that can imbue, and you can give anything with blood sapience to feed from.

Which is super cheesey. Its really not all that difficult to maintain or even abuse your essence drain power during the course of a run on the intended targets.

Just a small note... 300 Karma does not make you a virtual god... Hell, with 302 Karma, I still only have 3 skills above a 3 (One at 4, and two at 5)...

Just Sayin'

Well, depends on the character. I'd imagine a mage could do alot with 300 karma. Like initiate a half dozen times and raise magic a good 4 points and bind several high grade foci, and have quite a few new spells

I figure a mage with 10 magic, 6 initiations, some rating (I don't know, lets say 6) foci, and basically every spell they want is going to be exceedingly powerful. Maybe not quite a virtual god, but still...

Well, I had a Bio Adept at 387 Karma, and he had all skills at 3 (And 3 points of Bio/Cyber)... Put almost all of his points into magic and initiation for 8 Initiations and an additional 8 magic (Of course that was when it was New Stat x 3, and he was powerful, but not what you might expect for an Adept with Magic 11 and Grade 8 Initiate...

A Full on Mage could indeed be impressive, but at 20 Spells per 100 Karma, as well as the costs for Magic Attributes now (Assuming you started at 6 Magic), you would not get all that high I do not think (+3 MAgic Points for 120 Karma Spent, bringing you to a 9 Magic Rating; 3 Initiations Sans Group/Ordeals at another 48 Karma) that you will be where you might think you will be... for a cost of 268 Points, you are only at +20 Spells, +3 Grades Initiated with Metamagic, and +3 Magic... Impressive to be sure, but not a whole lot better than when you started (+3 Dice pools, +3 Greater range for casting/overcasting and 20 more choices for Spells)... statistically, you will likely be one of the more/most powerful Mages in the city, and you will definitely be a Shadowrunner with a lot of Influence (Assuming your table increments your Contacxts throughout the game as you gained the Karma).

Our current Mage has just at 280 Karma or so, and he has 5 Grades of Initiation and a Magic Rating of 6 (Max of 8, he raised it by +3), he has 3 points of Cyber/Bio, and a fairly decent array of spells... really, not a whole lot better than he was before (Those +3 Dice again), but he has some impressive Metamagic abilities, and his counterspelling is pretty good as well... and when he really needs to overcast, well, he does not always take drain from it, though usually he takes a bit...

By Contrast, I am Not currently playing a Mage, but my Cyberlogician is pretty impressive at 302 Karma... He has 4 Skill Groups with either a Rank 1 or 2, all broken because of Specializations. 2 Groups at 3, both broken with specializations and a Skill advanced to a 5 in the Cracking Group (Electronic Warfare), Dodge 2 (Specialized), Perception 5 (Specialized), Navigation 1, Pilot Aircraft (Specialized), Pilot Groundgraft 2, Pilot Watercraft 1, Demolitions 2 (Speicalized), Thrown Weapons 2 (Specialized), Unarmed Combat 4 (Specialized), Cybertech 1 (Specialized), Forgery 3 (Specialized), Intimidation 2 (Specialized), Parachuting 1 (Specialized), Diving 1 (Specialized), Aero Mechanic (Specialized), and Auto Mechanic (Specialized)... I have a slew of Knowledge Skills ranging from 1-3 (All with Speicalizations), and I have Enough Delta Grade Cyberware, Normal Bioware, and some Geneware to reduce me to 0.045 Essence Remaining. I have 220 Combined points of Contacts throughout the Asian Rergion (We operates out of Hong Kong)... He is a very influential and powerful character, there is no doubt. But I still only throw 9 Dice for Hacking; and my combat pools are around 12-14 Dice before any bonuses for Tactical Network... In a pinch, he can control a massive amount of Drones, or Subscriptions while accompanying the team, or even more if in his Command Vehicle (Got to Love High End Nexi...). I tend to program my own software, generally rush jobs (17 Dice/19 for ARE Programs) with an Environment for /4 Time frames. He is powerful, but definitely not a Hacking God as you can see... But man is he a LOT of fun to play.

300 Karma Can change the game that much, but in the end, unless you design your character with that 300 Karma from the Start, you will notice that the organic nature of incremental builds does not turn out the same as the Spend it all at once character build does. There is always something else that you end up needing...

Anyways...

Yeah, that's likely the biggest difference right there. It is easy to make a 400BP + 300 karma character that is really powerful, it is somewhat harder to make a 400BP character that has gained 300 karma quite as powerful (Though the gap won't be massive). I can already feel it in my bones with a TM that I've just started playing. I keep thinking "Oh, first thing I want to do with my karma is submerge a couple more times and raise resonance another point." but then I look over my character sheet and go "Right after I pick up influence group, and another rating in my electronics group, and maybe my hacking group... and another point of agi and rea wouldn't hurt for physical stuff.." and very quickly that resonance upgrade gets pushed back to when I've gotten 100+ karma.

Indeed... that is the most telling difference in my experience... Ther is ALWAYS something else to buy and I'll just get that resonance upgrade NEXT time.

Especially since by the time you have enough karma for the resonance upgrade, you have enough karma for about a half dozen other upgrades. Oh, speaking of which, I also have plenty of specs I need to buy

Yeah... I can't tell you how many times I was saving for a big purchase to have that Karma disappear when something more important came along...

Specilaizations are an always important bit for differentiating a character I think... your choices of Specialization really make you stand out (whether the choices are optimized or not) in my opinion.

Imagine a mage who's allowed a 400bp + 300 karma character a generation, and drops a hefty chunk of that Karma on an ally spirit?

No doubt about that... it is a recurring nightmare...

Thread-necro here, but this is only a month old and third highest on the search function. This seems to mean that the following is relevant.
My copy of Running Wild lists infection as this:

Is this superceeded by Runner's Companion, or have people missed it?

I think that the Ghoul Virus (HMHVV III) is the worst offender, as by RAW it is passed by Touch alone...

Er, well, yeah. I mean, that's possibly the biggest b*itch in the world. But that's not what I was trying to ask/point out.
I was pointing to the stated fact that Mages/Shamans/Adepts/etc kept their Magic rating after transformation, and that I hadn't seen that mentioned in any of the three most-recently-updated threads on Infection. Therefore, I wondered if the whole community had missed it, or if it had been changed somewhere.
If not, you might houserule that all Infected character have the 'Infertile' Negative Quality - otherwise you (might) have one character starting out as a Vampire, spend no points on cash because the team covers him, then Infect everyone else right after the first mission. Because 1 Essence for all those bonus' rates at GOOD THING, and as for waiting something 20 missions (assuming the Karma cost isn't higher than the BP and at least 4 Karma per run) till you can advance your skills, well.....start min-max'd on a skills-over-cash way, and pick up Skillwires. Obviously not all groups would want to miss out on that much karma, but it is an option.

Okay... Gotcha...
And yeah, going 100 Karma (or so) without actually receiving any of that Karma would suck immensely in my opinion... But I try to avoid the infected at all costs anyways...

Well, if it's only 100 karma I'd be fine with it. With 100 you could raise 3 skills/stats from 5 to 6, add a R1-skill and maybe some Specializations.
Vampire is +2 to Agility, Reaction and Charisma, +1 to Intuition and Willpower, plus a whole bunch of Powers, of which the leading few are: Regeneration, Astral Perception, Mist Form and Essence Drain. Oh, and the stat bonus' add to your Max ratings as well.
Seems better to me, even at 200 karma I might go for it..

There is that I guess... But having that Inflicted upon a Character who did nto want it is pretty harsh in my opinion...

Oh, of course. I'd probably lobby for Burning Edge to come out of it alive but un-Infected. It's at the very least a character-concept killer, although if you could work around it you'd be a better player for it. Anything other than a mindless species wouldn't be a complete, utter ruin IMO, but I'm fairly obviously in it's favour.
And the point was these people wanting to become infected. I mean, I can see people deciding 100 BP is worth more than 200 Karma and start looking for a Vampire to Infect them as soon as they leave character creation.

Wait-wait-wait. Since when are we paying or receiving Karma for GM-assigned qualities?

Since many people on these boards believe that's how it should go - it is a Positive Quality after all. These are the same people though that don't award karma for Negative Qualities that they give players.

I'm not in that camp. You don't gain karma for Negative Qualities and you don't pay for some of the Positive Qualities you gain, such as Infected ones.

You know, I honestly never thought much of it as any other way - at least for Negative Qualities. A lot of them are vague, and might have their bonus' added in without looking at the rules. I mean, if the run-down for every job is 'Breach door with tank', then your GM is likely going to make your life harder, in the same way that adding Distinctive Style and/or Enemies would. A second reason is that it almost rewards players for bad actions in some cases. A third is that the Karma bonus you get is half the Karma required to buy it off, which could get into some kind of twisted add-remove escalation game of Player vs GM. It would limit their Karma-gain for a while, and is an effective RAW way of saying "You are an asshole, Karma turns away from you until you attone."
I did consider minor Positive Qualities getting handed out. but due to the fact that (as far as I remember) no rules/suggestions were made about this and they were for allowing Quality-buying in play, it kinda slipped my mind as a possibilty.

Plus it's the attitude difference between -
GM: You have been Infected.
Player One: Woo-hoo! Par-tay!
Player Two: Urgh, *BLAM*.

P1 characters may go looking for Infected even without it being a free quality, so you have drawbacks to increase the cost beyond Legwork to get Infected. P2's may re-roll for either ruined character concept or planning, or both.
Even though the point is a good one, I only really wanted to know if
- people knew about keeping your current Magic
- it had been erratta'd out
- if that changed the viable-ness of Infection in play, which is what threads like these discussed.

The problem with being infected during play is how it happens.
It kinda works out like this:
Mage A has essence 6 Magic 6, and is human
Vampire B successfully uses his Essence Drain power on Mage A, and Mage A loses 1 essence (and accompanying 1 magic)
Repeat those two steps until the Mage is reduced to 0 essence, and 0 magic (burned out). Vampire chooses to use his infection power on freshly drained 0 essence dying former mage.
Mage A wakes up as a vampire with 1 magic, but since he had the magician quality, he retains the ability to cast spells, but with a seriously neutered magic rating.

*edit*
the only complication to the process is when youre dealing with an initiate mage who has a magic rating 7 or greater, BUT reaching essence 0 is supposed to make you burn out anyway.

Aaaahmm...question. MY version of the runners companion does NOT contain the last part of the last sentence that says "...and has an Essence of 1 and Magic of 1 (or retains her own Magic attribute, if higher)." But this sentence IS part of any other form of HMHVV, but not the version I that we all love so much.

Besides that, i DON´T see it in the description, that you loose your complete essence. You wake up with essence 1, but it is not said that you reached 0 before. And if you didn´t "burn out" completely, it would be absolutely adequate for a mage to become infected as long as you are initate of grade 5 at last.

Ditto. As established a month ago in this thread, it looks like vampires/etc. specifically have Essence 1/Magic 1, period. Ghouls/loup-garou/whatever have no forced Essence number (beyond definitely losing 1, for the Infected max of 5), and specifically get Magic 1 *or* previous Magic (-1 from Essence loss).

This seems fine with me. Vampires/ilk are strong enough already. If you're Awakened, be a ghoul.

The disease description in Running Wild is more recent, and is considered to supersede Runner's Companion in those instances where there is conflict (unless someone in a position of power somewhere has trumped me, the most recent version of a thing is the one that's run with...and I wouldn't put it past someone to have trumped me).

While I didn't achieve nearly the success I wanted to, I was trying to fix a couple of things in RW.

Ah, I see what you're saying. Okay, then *that* settles it: Essence 1 and *keep* your Magic if it's higher than 1 for wendigo/vampire/etc. Done and done.

A player in one of my games became a Banshee and how he coped with the magic loss was temporarily boosting his Magic with Essence Drain. That allowed him to get all the way back to his normal Magic. The only downide was that he had to have breakfast and dinner - killing two metas a day through Essence Drain.

This would be a good but very risky solution. Not very playable i think.^^

Especially if the opinion of the rest of your team mates matters to you in any regard.

Depends on your team, doesn't it. They might just really not care. Considering the death toll of some games and background fluff, an extra 2 bums "disappeared" every day the job takes doesn't always matter.

I don't agree with losing Magic from the Essence-loss pre-Infection. Maybe it makes sense in fluff, as well as game-balance, but I dislike it. Besides, getting Infected in-game is by RAW definition houseruled. Look up Infection in the 4a rulebook; Player characters transformed through the Infection power automatically become NPCs upon their “death” and are controlled by the gamemaster from that point forward. It doesn't mention RC provides alternate rules, like the Wireless Word section does Unwired. If we're going by strict RAW, that's your biggest stumbling block.

The team he was in was forming into the generals for an Infected army. So I guess his decision with his elf kinda made sense.

Ya, its sounds like one of those "When in Rome" situations, except in this case Rome happens to be John Carpenter movie.