Something has always bothered me in shadowrun games... the need to be as close as you can be to a cyberzombie...

For instance, my players who make cyberized characters only have .1 essence left. How do you roleplay that?!

From the book, I am guessing that would make you an emotionless husk, with no sense of a job well done, or the terrible feeling after losing a comrade... just 1 and 0.

Did we complete this operation? What is the next operation?

In the BBB's initial description of Essence,the effect is primarily described as a physical one, rather than an emotional or mental one. Now, the effect on Magic and Resonance ratings suggests there are emotional and mental aspects as well. But I think the PC would not necessarily be 'soulless', but maybe 'disconnected', 'disillusioned', 'depressed', or maybe even desperately seeking some meaning or emotional connection.

That's what the cyber psychosis flaw is there for.
If they don't take it, they are not affected.
Their characters simply deal really well with it.
Remaking their body in their own image.
Overcoming their own limitations.
Becoming Superhuman in the process.
And it WILL show in their behaviour sooner or later.
At least, if they realize that they can stand there
and take a beating from a troll without flinching.
Then they will realize that they can take an HPist
or Shotgun. TO THE FACE. Without flinching.
And they will start acting accordingly. I hope.

Pretty much this, a person suffering from disconnect, depression and those sorts of emotional rifts might actually try to overcompensate though, there is a whole range of responses that make for great story telling and yu should discuss them with your players. This is why I play 20 questions with my group during character creation and veto any ideas that a plaer refuses to explore or take seriously.

I know that this topic was a question, but I agree with this topic. I have often wondered about this too.

Also, 20 questions is a great idea and one I should do more often.



I would like to see this roleplayed more as well. Characters with heavy cyber who feel terrible after over-exerting themselves, who are constantly popping immuno-suppressants to keep their body from rejecting the implants. Obviously this would be more emphasized with cyberware than with bioware.

Honestly, I wouldn't worry about it unless the player takes one of the appropriate flaws. Essence is mainly a game balance thing.

That said, how a character feels about his implants, and deals with them, should be part of the backstory, just as an awakened character's relationship with his magic should be. It doesn't have to be all gloom and doom, though. Most people would find gaining superhuman abilities to be an improvement.

It can add to the roleplaying, definitely. And not just the Essence level, but what kind of implants you have, and what they can do. One of my characters, cybered up to the max, disliked his mnemonic enhancers the most of all - I figured that if you do violent and sometimes unsavory things for a living, perfect recall can be a curse at times.

my Char "Cyb Ork" has 0.02 Essence left over
the Disadvantage Callous
and Intimidation (spezial. Callous)
I play him like Schwarzeneggers Terminator and its not easy playing someone without any Emotions


Not necesserily .There is no Rule that forces You to become an emotional Wrack. It is perfectly OK and makes a lot of Sense ,but its quite voluntarily only


He who Dances with Emotions
Medicineman

From a purely mechanical perspective, Ive come to treat essence as a limitation to provide some degree of balance. From my own POV...it makes absolutely no bloody sense whatsoever without invoking magic as a fundamental force to living beings, awakened or no. If you duplicate the signals a natural hand would send to your brain, then the brain`ll treat the source of those signals as a hand. If your eyes make the world look differently, it likely would be interpreted by the brain as if you were on some kind of hallucinogenic bender all the time and eventually become something you just got used to as normal became redefined.

But since there IS magic then its a disruption of life-force, of chi, and the closer ye get the less and more human you feel. Ironically you'd feel less 'real' and more 'mundane', flat and dull probably.

Except there are recognized psychological effects to both inasive and non-invasive surgeries Teryon, that is a very real part of the thinking behind cyber bases neurosis, the subconscious realization of body alteration and equating it with the loss of humanity. You actually sometimes see this in plastic surgery, reconstructive surgery, and other fields....

Exactly. Enforced mental disabilities due to cyberware is Cyberpunk 2020 but not SR.
I remember a novel where one of the characters (Jaywalker) is a genuine sociopath, he is also heavily cybered. It however does not become clear whether the disorder comes from the ware or if he was ill even before he replaced his meat with metal. I think blaming it on the 'ware is a bit too easy.

But they are not a certainty just something that can happen.



I'f it was a tone of combat ware I'll guess prior sociopathy.

i still say magic should be treated like high loss of cyber.
none of the two is natural. not to the human mind.

What completly ignored by the rules but with soem quailitys you can take for flavour. Though one could argue the magic is natral to humans just not in a down cycle.

A character with .1 essence is going to have serious trouble as soon as they get sick or get shot. Someone takes off your arm with a shotgun and you've just lost 1 essence. -.9 essence now. You're dead.

Oh, I agree Dumori, my whole point is that the mechanics for how it is handled in game are fine, any problem tends to be with players and gm's not thoroughly discussing it to get on the same page. There are a number of reasons augmentation may or may not affect a specific individual's psyche and exploring that is part of the fun of playing a cybered up character.

Wrong.
You don't lose Essence when you lost body parts.
You do lose essence when you replace them with something that was not completely directly cloned of your own tissue.

So you don't replace the arm? Either way the character is retired.

If you replace the arm with a simple cloned arm or regrow it, then you do NOT lose essence.

I liked the old (SR3) way better: major injury loses essence. Yes, that's not how it works any longer.

I won't lie. I often get the two mixed up.

Well... with theoptional stress rules... you can pretty much make something up. Why not essence loss? Or if someone is addicted to some crap... you can just take a bit after some time.

To an extent, I can agree with this.. my mouth has never felt quite right since I had corrective surgery.... and there is a spot on my knee that still doesn't have sensation 10-years after my ACL repair.

I can only imaging what getting a cyberarm would do to you.

So, that being said, shouldn't there be essence loss if you take massive damage, and have to have reconstructive surgery? Probably, but it doesn't really add much to the game. Really, you get used to it... it is always there, but you adjust, just like any other physical ailments or injuries.

Ah, yes, the critical damage rules . . which were, as most things, basically a huge slap in the face for the mundane cyber-user . .
a magic user probably has less chance of getting hurt like that because he is less likely to be out in the open in a fight for one . .
and on the other hand, he is less likely to die from this, if it ever SHOULD happen to him to begin with, because he still has most
if not all of his original essence left usually, because he needs that for his magic to work at an optimal rate to begin with again . .
If he gets it, he loses one essence and one magic. and can go on to become an initiate and get his magic, if not his essence, back.
While the cybered up to the gills samurai? Simply dies. Again machine is getting the short stick. Or was. However you look at it . .

I don't think the magic user had less chance of being hurt, but god forbid replacing most of your body with invasive technology have penalties.

Given the advances in medical technology, I don't see the viability of losing Essence simply from being wounded. Not when they can grow you a brand new lung, or eye, or whatever else. Not when they have nanites to stitch you back up. Honestly, I don't miss those old optional SR3 rules, any more than I miss mages risking Magic loss every time they took a serious wound. To me, those rules added grating annoyance to the game, not gritty realism.

I think that losing magic when wounded is 100% realistic. (edit: )

*shrug* There're Essence restoration treatments, right?

It'd be nice if the sole purpose of Essence weren't '(arbitrarily) limit augmentations'. I think that's an important purpose, but it's so game-y and mechanical by itself.

That's why I liked it better when more things could affect your Essence, not because it's punitive or annoying. I'm not saying the old rules were great, just that I liked it when other things affected Essence. The big problem, perhaps, is the permanence ('oops, you just lost a whole Magic point', 'oops, your cyber-body dies', etc.), so allowing restoration can offset that a little.

Yeah, except all those same effects apply to a mage or physical adept... maybe even in worse ways. People with combat augmentations typically get them as adults; magical talent tends to manifest in adolescents, just when the personality is most unstable. Gee, your 15 and you suddenly find out you can turn invisible, throw flam bolts, summon up spirits and send them to harass people...
Yeah, that's gonna end well.

Low essence characters aren't crazy for the same reason high magic characters aren't toxic mages. Because they are PCs. You want cyberpsycho NPC's, go at it- they (and their AI friends, etc) can make great bad guys! I actually worked up an idea for a cult of sorts that used cybernetic mind-linking I was gonna pitch to FASA... and then got some questions about NDA's, because this was just before "Arcology Shutdown" came out and introduced Deus.

In SR2, I actually played a character who had 0.0 essence. The wording in the book made it legal under that edition. I could have avoided it by upgrading some cheap cyber to alphaware, but wanted all basic cyber for flavor.
He wasn't what you'd call empathic, and was certainly violent, but was no worse than the other PC's. He did however end up with some (GM inflicted) health issues...

I should try re-making him under 4.0, although really there's not much point. All the cyber he had would fit EASILY under the new rules (though the bioware would not).

It's not that I can't see high magic making people… weird. That's definitely a fun option, and 'fair'.

I forget how this was handled in other editions, but how about a little Social Modifier for low Essence? Not a negative reaction from others from seeing the augmentation (that's a cultural thing that we know is continuing to disappear), but an 'internal' penalty for the classic 'lack of humanity'. It needn't be insanely punitive: -1 for Essence under 3 (≥2), -2 for Essence under 2 (≥1), and -3 for Essence under 1? And, of course, only apply it to appropriate Tests: Judge Intentions = yes, resist being Conned = no. Hell, give a bonus for some things: invert the penalty for resisting Seduction, etc.?

Well, that's the problem if there is no inherent balance in the system, so they needed to invent a mechanism. Basically you could balance EVERYTHING with money, then it would be the GMs fault if his players have too much cyber. As of now... there is a balance mechanism, but you can still override it with obscene amounts of money. So there is really nothing gained at all. Turning the balance issue into a feature doesn't make it better at all, IMHO.

If there were no essence cost, how would the game look? (Well, magic would be yet WORSE, but....?)

Yeah, it takes a very "special" mindset to permanently make yourself over into an illegal murder-machine.

Magic above 3 = -1 Dice, Magic above 4 = -2 dice, Magic above 5 = -3 Dice, Magic above 6 = -4 dice.
Fair is fair.

IF I'd be doing a Houserule....it might look like this(because I like simple Houserules)

Essence 6-3 Normal
Magic 1-4 (and only 1-3 Foki) Normal
Essence 3-1 -1 Dice
Magic 5-8 (and 3-6 Foki) -1
Essence <1 -2 Dice
Magic 9+ (and >6 Foki) -2 Dice

and ist Streamlined with the Rule that the GM can give Situational Modifiers of up to +-3 Dice

He who might Dance
Medicineman

One or two dice penalty based on essence loss seems OK. I wouldn't penalize magic- leave that as negative qualities taken by individual mages who are a bit flakey, or even totally off the rails (plus they can just neglect all social skills, even take incompetence). Magic is supposed to connect you to the world, including humanity- there are spirits of man, ancestor spirits, and even mentor spirits that give bonuses to social dice.
Besides, if you do that, you'd have to do something to technomancers as well.

Why can mages ignore social skills more than other classes? I hope you are not talking about the heavy-handed approach of using mental manipulation instead of social skills.
Still being able to through fireballs and summon spirits alienates you at least as much from the general populace as being able to stop bullets with your chest and jump buildings.
True. I think it is unnecessary to mandatorily penalize characters for getting upgrades. Do you penalize skill monsters for having more than X skills? If people want to play cybered/magic/technomantic nut cases, that's fine there are many qualities that simulate such illnesses, if not that's fine as well.

Technomancers are fundamentally crazy, so don't say it like it's a bad thing that you'd 'have to do something to them'.

We're just discussing a house rule that reflects the 'humanity' theme of lost Essence, and being a magical superbeing.

I wonder how the attitudes of the SR4 developers toward transhumanism/post-humanism, I'm mostly thinking of Rob Boyle here, affected the SR4 rules regarding Essence Loss. My take on it was that the effect was subtle but detectable. Big fans of transhumanism are going to shy away from rules that emphasize the "dehumanizing" effect of augmentation. Essence was left in the game as a balancing mechanism but I don't get the feeling that Mr Boyle, et al, liked the idea that augmentation was inherently dehumanizing. Can it be? Sure, but that's what the Negative Qualities are for. Instead, augmentation can make a person "more than human" but is that the same as "less human?" It gets a bit subtle there and is therefore probably best left to a GM and player to work something out together if a player wants to emphasize the psychological impact of massive augmentation.

As an aside, let's follow to its logical conclusion the following argument.

Everyone that goblinizes into an Ork or Troll, or becomes a Changeling, should suffer Essence loss.

Maybe they should. No one would bother including goblinization in their backgrounds any more though.

Augmentation actually touches upon this. SR4 does have a special social modifier for augmentations. Its basically a sliding scale of 1-2 dice reflecting ' he has a fake arm, ew' to 'oh god, a terminator is chatting me up, do not waaaannt'. The thing I like about the rule is that the dice aren't a penalty - you occasionally get them as a bonus if, say, you're trying to intimidate someone, or in social situations where you're dealing with people that accept and encourage cybermodding. In general, though, its a downside, but you can get around it by wearing gloves over your cyberhand.

A little later in the book, Biosculpting for good looks takes that mechanic and turns it around so that you get a few bonus dice in social situations where looking good is important. Its mostly an upside, but, like obvious augmentation, makes you a bit more distinctive than joe average.

You can find the details in Aug21; Body Mods and Social Interactions, and aug61 sidebar; biosculpting social effects.

This is the environment reacting to the augmented character. The rules above would give no modifiers for someone with internal 'ware e.g. MBW 3 and Muscle toner 4 for 5.4 essence. The discussion is about the character reacting to the installed 'ware.

Right, it's about losing empathy, etc. (Again, *only* as an optional rule if your group wants that theme in the setting, of course). As Stahlseele mentioned (repeatedly ), you can do the same for high Magic; I think his suggested mods need tweaking, but basically the same thing.

i'm just easy to piss off with this kinda shit <.<
why should those who are allready kinda limited by their essence in what they can do be even more penalized because they use the essence for the one thing it is there for, with an mundane?

It's not fair? Did their girlfriend cut off her toe?

I'm not saying you're wrong (on the contrary), but you're also right that it's personal and emotion (always bad). In any case, both sides are right: lost humanity for cyberware is a classic theme, *and* transhumanism (minor/no penalty to humanity) is another equally valid theme. People should pick which kind they want at the time.

If you want to mix them in the same game, you should maybe allow those Negative Qualities to exceed the normal limit. After all, the transhumanist can take the easy NQs, but the robocop would spend his NQ limit toward the pretty brutal mental penalty NQs. Obviously, this is a situation for the GM to talk with the players and work out what's fair and appropriate.

The Magicrun is strong in this thread.

I make it a point not to tell people, especially in Shadowrun that they are playing their characters wrong. It is decidedly not fun and not terribly well backed up in the setting, or in the highly overrated real life.

Socially Penalizing people for cybering up would A) Further make cyber inferior, which it already is B) Self defeat some builds (the cybered face,wohoo world full of pornomancers!) C) Not be fitting with the setting.

To be perfectly frank Shadowrun is a game who's very setting concept involves a duality between magic and cyber epitomized by professional criminals. We could get into a large scale discussion of the moral and ethical implications of those who would enhance their bodies with technology but then we'd have to weigh into account how screwed up the shadowrun world already is. This is a place where peoples commute home is regularly disrupted by running go gang battles on the interstate and paranormal creatures living in the sewers trying to steal and eat people is a known and accepted part of life. In that kind of world view for Joe human not playing the Magicrun side of the fence cybering up actually sounds pretty sane, rational even.

Personally I think there are lots of things in the setting that could rob you of your empathy and ability to interact with others, many are already spelled out in disadvantages. I cannot, especially with the benefit of 50+ years of game time where cyberware has been available in main stream continue to see any reason for this duality.

Lastly I very much hope that with the next time line jump they completely drop the mainstream resistance to cyber augmentation. It just doesn't make any sense any more and every time it was brought up it gives some credence to the Gibsonites alleging that Shadowrun doesn't have any new ideas, rather then explore transhuman themes we get furries.

That's not really fair. I think the discussion is very balanced, and the choice depends on one's taste.

There's no non-game reason that mundane and magic should be balanced in the first place, and Stahl and I have specifically suggested options to that end anyway.

That's the point a few other posters and I are making. If you want to play someone suffering empathy loss or other mental problems from excessive 'ware, there are already qualities to simulate it. Otherwise, I see no reason to bitch-slap an augmented character with penalties whether the character has adjusted well to his cyberware or not. Keep in mind that cyberware has been around for awhile now, and people will be more used to it.

By the way, while I don't like the lost Essence for serious wounds rule, it is in SR4 as an optional rule, too - pg. 23 of Augmentation, under A Dangerous World.

Again, suggesting a house rule for a group to choose to use is hardly 'bitch-slapping' anyone. Tweaking the setting is what every group always does, unless it's something like Missions.

<shrug> So you don't like the term. I find it appropriate for a penalty that only affects one class of characters. Note that I would feel the same way about a game where background counts of 1-3 were everywhere.

But house rules aren't bad - as long as the players know them in advance, so they know better than to bring a low-Essence sammie to a game where they are penalized on social skills, or to bring an awakened character to a game where their main stat will be down 1-3 points all the time.

In my opinion a slight penalty for low essence score is appropriate. Joe average will probably think somethign like 'why does that guy need that much chrome for ?' - and depending on the sort of cyberware the answers can be very disquieting to him. Seeing some guy with his eye replaced by a wide-angle multispectrum camera, an arm that looks like it's been pilfered from a demoliton drone and enough dermal plating to outfit a vault door, odds are he'll freak out. Just like he would spotting some decked out in heavy military armor and armed to the teeth...

But providing rules for that sort of things is difficult, since there's a huge lot of variation in possibile cybered fighter builds.

Actually there are already rules to cover social penalties for obvious excessive cyberware as has already ben pointed out in this thread.