SR4A Page 342, last sentence in the wired reflexes description


That pretty much rules out Drugs, Spells, or Powers.

But having read The Improved Reflexes, and then looked at the drugs.
It might be legit. It depends wether you cound a Drug as a Technological enhancement. You are using technology, in this case, chemistry, to create the drug.

As far as me and my group has been doing, drugs that grant extra IP stack with adept power, spells and augmentations that grant extra IP.

Hmm, I'd say that combat drugs are technological.

Similar applies to Synaptic Booster (SR4A, pg. 347):

But there is no specific rule that says IPs generally never stack, so the "Increase Reflexes" adept power + drugs is legitimate, as is stacking drugs.

Edit: this was a reply to sabs, I just took to long to post, cuz I was looking things up. I think if Catalyst had meant drugs to be counted as "technological", they would have given Increase Reflexes the same "cannot be combined with any other form of Initiative enhancement" as the -ware.

Wired Reflexes prohibits stacking with other sources of initiative enhancement.

However, amusingly enough, it seems that the spell doesn't have that wording. So (by the RAW) you can stack drugs with the spell. IMHO this is not the intent of the rules -- the description for Cram even says "Characters may decide to use cram if they cannot afford cyberware or bioware", which to me indicates it's meant to be obsoleted by 'ware.

IMHO the intent of the rules is that IP bonuses don't stack. For everything else, I guess they count on augmented maximums to keep things vaguely balanced.

The descriptions of those various augmentations are annoyingly ambiguous. It looks a lot like they were all intended to work the same, but they used subtly different wordings.

IIRC, the spell didn't grant additional Reaction though, which does make it different from the other enhancement methods (which tend to couple IP and Reaction increases).

I may have named the wrong spell, I meant the one that grants extra IPs.

Stimulants are only a threshold 2 to avoid addiction, and presumably that's the likely category for most combat drugs. Only Novacoke (and presumably Nitro which includes novacoke) are singled out as being highly addictive within in its description. Jazz is historically also fairly bad, but only if you go by previous edition fluff. Cram, Snuff, Kamikaze, NoPaint and Woad shouldn't be hooking people in one go, and frankly I'd argue that even Betameth probably isn't -that- addictive. Methamphetamine is crazy addictive, sure, but it's not quite up there with heroin, although I would term it a threshold 3. And frankly, people should keep in mind that what makes many drugs "powerfully addictive" isn't how quickly you develop a dependency but how tough the dependency is to shake once it has set in.

Don't want to lose Essence to Immortal Flower?

Bear shapeshifters equipped with K-10 and power foci.
Just saying.

Yes, Increase Reflexes. It grants +(1-3) IPs and +(1-3) to Initiative. But most of the other ways of gaining IPs achieve the bonus to Initiative by increasing Reaction. So the spell is quite different.

Well all of these are very valid points, but even then they don't completely rule out the viability of combat drugs to me. If a mage wants to be able to cast more than one spell a combat phase he'll either have to use one of those phases to cast the spell to increase his initiative passes, or he can use a free or simple action to apply the drug, either letting him also cast a spell that pass, or at least perform another simple action. I agree that for a wired character they might not be all that useful, but for pretty much any other character I still and probably always will see them as a viable option. Even with their setbacks. And while the stun damage can be nasty, especially for a spellslinger, that's what Jazz is for.

The fluff for Jazz has always been that it's horrific, though.

True as that may be, they really dumbed it down for 4th ed, making it viable for any character to use.

I generally allow any stat boosts to stack EXCEPT for IP enhancements, which never stack.

Most of my characters have a Mild (or in one case Moderate) addiction to SOMETHING. If they don't start with IP-boosting 'Ware, it's usually Cram; if not, it's generally Betameth, Psyche, or the like, depending on their role. Occasionally I'll give someone two addictions, but not often. I make sure to have decent (3 minimum, usually 4+) willpower and body on anyone with an addiction.

Also, you can always pay someone to magically detox you or alleviate your cravings if you bomb too many rolls.

Yeah, roleplaying Jazz as a terrible drug requires you to rely upon information which simply isn't presented in the current edition. At my table "Jazz has always been terrible" turned into "Until recently Jazz was terrible" and eventually evolved into "Wait, Jazz sounds like it was worse than Kamikaze back then. What was the point?".

Why doesn't he just have Increase Initiative SUSTAINED on a SUSTAINING FOCUS?

Based on fluff going back to Stim Patches in 1st Edition, I got the impression that drugs would be really, really bad for your Magic rating. (Yes I was the guy just talking about the drug adept.)

I like putting a dose of Nitro in a hollow tooth for the pain resistance. Very handy when you need to run like hell and can't afford a huge penalty to your Athletics tests.

Because saying that is detrimental to my argument
But on a more serious note becuase I had over looked that and the mage would be required to have the spell. And while that shouldn't be much of a problem, a starting character might forego it for the time being in favour of something else.

I love combat drugs and they are currently part of both the game I'm PCing and the game I'm GMing. But I would not recommend a mage who is supposed to be 'optimized' ('optimized' being the ideal state between inefficient and powergamed) choosing not to have a sustaining focus with Increase Initiative sustained on it.

The mages in my game run with a sustaining focus with increased reflexes cast into it.

I like this theory, although exact definitions will vary. For one game in which PR-5s are the basics, an optomized PC would be a powergamed one in a game of PR-2s. But yes, I like that theoretical definition.

So adept improved reflexes III and K-10 stacks to give you 7 IP ?

Technically it would only give you 5IP max. (See the rules on IP that say that 5IP is the max)

As far as I'm concerned, 4 IP is the meat-max; the current edition is a little vague on that limit, though.

A little?
It specifically says: Limit is 5, but most people will only ever get to 4
Stupid Catalyst

Well, I thought 4 was the maximum, with one exeption somewhere that could get you to 5 (though I don't remember where that 5 limit is written)

Okay, yes: *incredibly vague*.

You can definitely get 5 Matrix IPs, but even then only with one or two specific things.

You used to be correct.

But in 4a they changed the wording to this:
Page 68 SR4a


stupid Catalyst

Oh my god. This means my Jaguar shapeshifter can get to 5 IP's using Jazz or Cram? Gotta have to raise my BOD and WILL stats ASAP

Technically yes
Depending on what power your Jaguar is using before jazz/cram.

Move by Wire and Wired Reflexes both say nothing stacks with them (except reaction enhancers)
Synaptic boosters say they don't stack with anything at all.

Improved Reflexes say it doesn't stack with any magical or technological IP boosters.
Increased Reflexes is interesting


Stupid Catalyst.

How does that override what is written in Unwired? To my knowledge, the Advanced Overclocking description is the only place in all the SR4 books where an exception is specifically made to the 4 IP rule -

.

Straight from my hardcopy of Unwired, pg 147.
So 4A says that a few characters can now reach 5 IPs. That doesn't mean that a non-technomancer can get 5 IP's, it's just mentioning the single exception given to the 4 IP rule, which applies only to technomancers with Advanced Overclocking.

And Hacker with the right implants.

And it over-rides it because it's printed well after Unwired, and it doesn't say.. max 4 except for 5 in vr. it says max is 5.
If that's what they meant it really needs to be re-written.

What the book says is: Max IP is 5.
Not Max Matrix IP is 5 and Physical IP is 4.

Mmm, that's a good candidate for the broken rules thread.

Um afaik the max is still 4?

What the book also says is that most character types can only ever achieve 4. Since the only exception to the 4 IP rule mentioned in the books relates to the Matrix, it's not a far leap at all to say that technomancers and maybe hackers are the only character types capable of reaching 5, with the others ("most character types" by definition) capped at 4. So barring some crazy unidentified magic or something (although, as hinted by Vasdenjas in the Earthdawn Dragons book, 5+ IP's might be possible with draconic ritual sorcery), you cannot have a Matrix-incompetent character with 5 IP's, and you certainly cannot do something like this (regarding the silliness of 7 IP or more).