I reckon this topic has possibly been touched on a few times but I am still unsure of how to run this.

The rules say that when you lose essence you also lose magic and your magic stat maximum is also reduced. But what if you don't have a magic stat at the time you lost the essence but (thanks to qualities such as Latent Awakening) gained a magic stat at a later date?

I can see 2 options here.

Either the essence loss has no effect on your non-existent magic and you later awaken with a magic stat of 1 and a max magic of 6 as normal.

Or you will never awaken since your magic stat has been pre-emptively been reduced to 0.

Is there anything in the novels that support either conclusion?

You will awaken with one magic as long as you have an essence of 1 or higher. Your MAXIMUM however will be lower if you have not full essence though.

So you are saying neither option but somewhere in between. But why would the essence loss pre-emptively reduce your maximum magic but not your actual magic? Is this canon?

The Latent Awakening description covers it pretty thoroughly. Max magic is always Essence (rounded down) + levels of initiation, Latent Awakening always gives you one point of magic when it triggers; unless your essence is less than 1, in which case you don't get to Awaken.

Yes, AFAIK it's always been this way. It's the same for people who already have Magic, it's just that they *also* lose Magic with Essence. If that's unfair, you can always houserule it, but augmented Awakened characters are powerful enough already IMO.

Only in respect of covering two fields of application, but a pure specialist will always surpass them in one field.

Right: powerful enough already.

Consider, without this in effect, you'll have players going So...I'm going to be practically a cyberzombie, but I get to awaken and get to have the full range of powers and magic of a mage!

Only if the have the karma needed to buy all the magic/skills/initiations to be any good

I think you'd find plenty of takers for that 'hardship'.

Augmented adepts are actually the opposite of that. Buying Magic and high resources means they are less well-rounded, but things like synaptic boosters and muscle toner make them brutally effective at combat. It is the same for faces, since they can combine kinesics with tailored pheromones to be extremely good at social skills.

Just saying its a karma sink until you get enough skill, initiation, and magic to be useful. Not saying once you have that skill it isn't worth it, its just hard to put away that much when you need 'other' skills to actually get the karma needed to become a decent mage.

That's true. But, the idea is that you're a full sam to start, right? That should serve you well enough to get going on mage, and every little bit helps along the way. You don't need Magic 4 with metamagic before you can do some pretty useful things.

No, but you need a magic of 3, at least.

Hehe. I don't think you do.

I can't think of many spells which are useful with less then 3 hits.

I know Adepts can be plenty nasty with just a few power points. Mages, maybe not so much...but Adepts? Sure. Lots of pretty handy stuff costs just .25 or so, and for "tools in the toolbox" they can be pretty nasty.

As was stated, your Max Magic is 6-Essence (plus Initiation Grades).

So a character with some cyber and has an essence of three awakens... He starts with a 1 Magic rating, and a Max Magic of 3. The path of the Burnout has always been a long, tall hill to climb and overcome.

Bull

Mordinvan: Well, you can start off by enjoying Astral Superman-vision, foci use, and the ability to now leave your body and fly through mana-land for at least an hour. If you're a MysAd, 1 PP can do some handy little things indeed. What else… I think you could probably use Mindlink with Magic 1, and some of the self-buffs (a minor +1, but better than a kick in the teeth if you've got a cheap Sustaining Focus). My point is that you don't get *nothing*, and you'll only get stronger from there.

I think you've got a typo there, Bull, but we all know what you mean.

Levitation
Control thoughts/emotions/body
Any combat spell
Heal
Invisibility
Eyes of the pack
Any stat boost spell
Fashion
Healthy Glow

And of course you're not accounting for the fact that you can overcast, and with all the boosts from cyber/bio, you should be able to handle the drain without issue, so a magic 3 can actually get you 6 hits, magic 2 can easily give you 4 hits.

There aren't a heck of alot of spells that wouldn't be useful by the time you hit 2 magic to allow you to overcast to 4, and there are several that have potential at only 1 magic.

Edit: I agree with the other posters here. You'd start at 1 magic, because that's what the quality says, and you'd have a maximum magic of Essence (round down) + initiation, because that's what the books say.

Indeed. I'm not sure about *all* of those, though. But the point is that Magic 1's far from useless.

All of those are for magic 3, which means force 6 spells. I don't think any of those are weak at force 6. You know, except for indirect combat spells, but those are always weak.

Oh, sorry. I was still in 'Magic 1 is useful' mode, because he said 'you need Magic 3 at least'. Nevermind!

This one 'could' be ok, didn't realize it was 200 KG/hit, thought it was less then that.


As this is an opposed test.. no it is pretty much useless.


Again, an opposed test, so this is going to fail much of the time, far to often to be relied upon for any useful purpose.


I do see some utility here for minor wounds, or preventing bleed outs.


Won't hide you from most guards, any cameras or any drones.


I can't even remember what this does....


Only if that stat is less then 3 to begin with.


Cute but not very 'mechanically' useful.



As the drain is handled by physical stats, there isn't a lot of cyber to boost that.


This is where we will have to simply disagree. To be 'useful' you're asking the caster to resist physical damage for every spell. It would be akin to handing a carpenter a hammer he has to hit himself in the knees with every time he goes to use it, can calling that 'useful'.

*shrug* The fact is that you can do magic, and that other guy can't. It's undeniably 'useful'; that's not to say 'all the time, for everything'. You start with minor (useful) tricks, and work up to better ones, in a nice progression. I'd always leap at that, except we're talking about a counterfactual; we know the rules don't do this anyway, alas.

An opposed test against a single stat, the single hardest stat in the game to raise I might add, I don't see how 3 hits against a DP of around 3 is going to fail 'much of the time', and of course if you're talking about overcasting, then you're looking at 6 hits against the same DP. Far from useless.


Force 6, heal up to 6 boxes, which is about 60% of most people's track, and since damage is based on the target instead of force of the spell, no reason not to overcast.


Actually it'll hide you from nearly all guards, but yes, no cameras/drones.

A mildly handy 'people can see what others see' spell. A good way to share vision (or other senses) if your group is paranoid about having a wireless signal.

Once again, or 6 with overcasting, which would be most stats. And even at 3, that can still be potentially useful.
True, not very mechanically useful, but a large number of people get spells like this that aren't very 'mechanically' useful. Fashion in particular is great for making your body armor look like... not body armor.

Dareadrin, trauma damper, platelet factory, cerebral booster, and that leech thing. That's a potential +5 drain DP and a flat 2 less damage on the drain. Yeah, cyber can give a serious boost to drain.

Plenty of people overcast all the time, and it isn't like you're being asked to overcast on a high force spell. A force 6 spell has a base DV of 3, modified by the spell itself, usually anywhere from -1 to +1 on average, which means a whopping 4 damage. Heck, I'd be happy to take that with the cyber above alone, not even counting the actual stats involved in the drain, which if you include could easily make it a DP of 15, or higher if you really want.

So yeah, plenty of stuff you can do with a magic of 3. And 2. And even 1 has a handful of useful spells, you just have to be smarter about them.

So following on from that, it would be ok for a player to build his magician with an pre-made essence hole from before he awakened? Thus allowing some implants later on without impacting his magic stat (obviously doesn't benefit characters with maxed magic)

I think AH said it was possible to install ware, then buy magic during character gen, but I only had 3 hrs sleep, so don't quote me.

While the fluff and rules suggest this could be donne, it is not explicitely allowed so I strongly advise you to discuss the matter with of your GM before trying to pull this kind of stunt.

Well, the issue is that Latent Awakening doesn't determine what kind of Awakened character you turn into. So you could awaken with something useless like Spell Knack: Shape Jello. If Latent Awakening let you "pre-determine" what type of awakened character you would become (or, at the very least, restricted it to Adept, Mystic Adept, or Magician) it would be really good, as it is, I don't really like it because of the large possibility of awakening into something worthless.

If I'm not mistaken, what Zoot suggest is not to have the character awaken during play, but to create an Awakened character who happens to have got a few cyberbits stuffed into him before his awakening so that he does not have to pay karma/BP for the magic points that would have been lost if the implantation was post-awakening, and has some wiggle room to stuff an extra goodies or two without loosing magic later in play, when he has earned enough money/favors for them.

[edit] Double post, sorry [/edit]

Hmm. I'm pretty sure doing it *during* chargen requires GM-fiat. Attributes come first in the process, then 'ware; if you want to pull this trick (and that's what it is), you just have to convince the GM that it's fair.

That is pretty much same as trying to claim that "My character got this Synaptic Booster 3 as a gift, so i shouldn't need to pay for it at chargen"
Characters background has nothing to do with the chargen cost of stuff.

Don't forget the +1 willpower from an activated Pain Editor.

Pain Editor: what stun track?

EDIT: Never Mind, My replies were Already covered above...

Which is why you would discuss such things with your GM... there is no chart to roll to determine the outcome, it is GM fiat... seems to me a conversation would eliminate the silly stuff you do not want...

Indeed. If your GM screwed you like that… fight time.

It would definitely be an annoyance I would think...