I've been looking, but didn't see anything. Tough as Nails adds one box to your physical damage track per level, up to three, for ten points a level. Is there a similar option to raise your stun track?

There is a Physical Adept Power that will let you do that... Cannot remember the Power's name though, and I do not have access to my books currently...

Not helpful for the application I was most concerned with - withstanding stun damage from drain... Unless I went mystic adept, I suppose, but for just the one power, it would be counter to the intention of the mystic adept quality...

You want a Trauma Damper, from Augmentation.

When you start to look at it, a point of ware for adepts is amazing.

Pain editors are pretty sweet too.

Yeah, but for a mage, if I'm going to waste a point of magic, I'm saving up for Synaptic Boosters 2. I'm looking for something that I can just buy with BP or Karma.

Well, ask the GM for a Stun version of the quality… and then ask him to let you purchase a quality after chargen. Offer bribes.

Tough As Nails is 10 points per level.

For the same price, just pick up Focused Concentration. Yes, it may be bad/not worth the price, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Then again, thats 20 karma to acquire in play. For each level of the quality.
Fuck that. For that price, just initiate and grab Centering.

Focused Concentration is one of those late blooming qualities, yes centering is better, but after a while initiation will become more expensive than the 40 karma to get Focused Concentration 2.

Center also requires a free actions, and hell it stacks with focused concentration.

Focused concentration is a really really good advantage, due to how hard it is to get a higher drain resist. My only problem is that you can't have magician, a mentor spirits, and two levels of the quality.

Why use a super-expensive Synaptic Booster, when a mage has the easiest way to get Initiative boosts with a Sustaining Focus (granted Reaction boost costs extra, but still, a F4 Sustaining Focus will grant the full +3 Ini / +3 IP already)?



Get higher Willpower (which also increases the number of Stun boxes every two steps) and Logic, or whatever the other Drain attribute is. Also make those higher drain spells limited (fetish required).

Exceptional Attribute. SURGE (Metagenetic Improvement). Then add Genetic Improvement on top, and get that Trauma Damper.

Also apart from Focused Concentration, there is Focus Will (Martial Arts Maneuver); not always useful, but nice, if you have the time.

Bye
Thanee

If you're gonna get synaptic boosters, go all the way. Take off 1 point of magic to get R3 cybereyes, R3 reception enhancers (Works with assenssing!), and a trauma damper to start. Then lose 1 more for the boosters.


But really, focused concentration and centering are probably your best bets.


Funny thing about bear mentor. That resistance test bonus against physical damage works on (physical) drain too.

Its expensive, but an Adrenaline Pump boosts willpower by its rating. If you could swing the essence drain, maybe if you had that quality which makes bioware equivalent to deltaware for you but it is likely not worth it as the essence loss is massive.

Synaptic boosters have not-inconsiderable benefits.
They don't go away in background count
They can't be counterspelled
They don't leave astral signatures
They aren't a foci that can be astrally tracked back to you
They boost you Reaction attribute. The spell does not.(only Init and passes, not reaction and passes like most other IP boosters)
They don't stop working if you let go, like sustaining foci.
Any they don't cause foci/magic addiction, like keeping an increase reflexes spell up constantly might.
Compared to magic, you only suffer the drain once(installation surgery) instead of every time you 'turn it on'(cast increase reflexes)

synaptic boosters are still rather expensive, but in general, it makes your passes harder to take away, and its harder to detect.




Thats actually a really good point. If you're indulging in a lot of overcasting, then Platelet Factories/Trauma Damper are an even better combo then they usually are.

Force 9 Stunbolt? No problem!

You'll also get better, and cheaper mileage out of augmentation's Dareadrenaline. Both in essence, and nuyen.

You are kidding, right?

That would be a reeeeaaal short term benefit with the Stun damage, considering the APs own (unresisted) "Drain".



Certainly, but is that worth the high expense and the Essence loss compared to the much cheaper focus? I rather doubt it.

Bye
Thanee

Yeah, adrenaline pumps are hilariously bad.

Says who? Any GM I was playing with would laugh at me if I suggested that.

*shrug*. Why not? People use Trauma Dampers and Platelet Factories against Drain damage. Same difference.

Good stuff here. I've never had a mage in a game long enough to get enough Karma to initiate, so I missed Centering as an option.

I've never played a mage who took on cyber/bio/whatever at the cost of his essence and magic, for the sole purpose of being better at magic. Burnouts, sure, but not cold hard calculation. So that's an avenue I'll consider.

Taking resricted gear quality and using it for Cerebral Booster 3 is a pretty good investment for all logic tradition mages.

Hey mate for what purpose did your mages take ware if not for being better at magic or do you mean to say that you have never played a mage who got wared up.

I've not played a cybered mage in ages. In fact, the last time was SR1, using the Burned Out Mage archetype. He'd taken his ware because he started thinking that magic was just not going to cut it. He was burning out, and decided to try the cyber pathway.

We played the Food Fight scenario in that book and inside the first six seconds or so, I'd knocked myself out from drain.

Oh man, what where your drain stats and what where you casting to manage that.
On a normal combat, a good combat mage should on average take 0 damage from drain during the fight.

Couldn't tell ya. It's been over 20 years, and we might well have been doing it wrong.

I'm not that big of a fan of Synaptic Boosters on magicians either due to the sheer opportunity cost-- and that's even if you rule out the magical alternatives. That's because one of the primary benefits of being a combat mage is the ability to heavily front-load the impact you have on combat via multi-casting and/or over-casting high impact spells. You won't necessarily need as need as many passes to tip the scales as someone armed with a pistol or their bare hands might, so in general, I'd rather go first than go many times as a Magician. Synaptic Boosters help you do both, but at a very high cost.

On a combat mage I'd rather go with Cybereyes or Reaction Enhancer 2 and then combine them with a Pain Editor and Platelet Factories combo plus filler. Typically such combos clock in somewhere under 30 build points even after Restricted Gear for the Pain Editor compared to the 32 gear BPs a Synaptic Booster 2 costs. And personally, I tend to view the 5 BP hit on your Quality cap to at least be a wash compared to taking an extra 5 point chunk out of your Gear BP cap, particularly since 5 bp goes quite a long way towards buying a shiny new focus.

I thought you where talking about 4th edition, missed the part about it being the SR 1 Food fight, disregard what i said.