So, while discussing the Chummer Character Generator the question arose what exactly happens if you lose your Magic rating through Essence loss.

AFAIS there are two possible options.

a) You rating is simply lowered in every regard. Thus, if you get the chance to raise it again you have to pay the karma cost of the new rating.

Example?
You have magic 4. It gets lowered to 3 as you got some augmentations implanted. Next time you want to raise Magic back to 4 you have to pay 20 Karma. (New Rating * 5)


or


b) Your "effective" rating is lowered while the rating for karma cost calculations stays the same. If you want to raise it again you have to pay the karma cost for raising your "old" rating.

Example?
You have magic 4. It gets lowered to 3 as you got some augmentations implanted. Next time you want to raise Magic back to 4 you have to pay 25 Karma. Without Essence loss you would have gotten a rating of 5 so it would be 5 * 5 Karma.


What's now the ruling on that? Which of those two options is the right one? Is there any clear ruling on that?

Version 1 my friend. Rules can be found at "improving your character" section "raising attributes". You raise from 3 to 4, you pay rating 4. If not otherwise noted (e.g the adept power "increased attributes") this rules applies for everything else.

That's what I thought too. Is there any proof in the rules for that besides the interpretation for that "you lose magic if your essence get lowered" passage?

ähm...see above. Edited it too slow.^^

Sounds reasonable. Yet it seems like Magic and Resonance are the only attributes something like a "negative stat rating modification through lowering of another stat" applies to. Its a special case not handled explicitely in the rules. I'd go with option a) for that too.

Magic/Resonance aren't "inhibited" by Essence loss; they're simply "lost". That makes buying it back cheaper, but it also means that it doesn't automagically grow back if you were to regain that Essence.

Indeed... Though it makes sense, I had not actually thought of it THAT way...

It makes sense to do both or neither.. you could run with an alternate rule where you get the Magic/Res back if you regain Essence, but raising it is always at the cost of the whole (uninhibited) rating. That might not even be a bad rule variant. It solves some exploits with the order in which you buy Magic and 'ware during KarmaGen; basically the order doesn't matter anymore.

Yeah well... the thing that Essence loss is a bit of a kick in the balls of every awakened character was always a nice balancing idea for me. If you'd Essence make able to reraise your MaxMagicRating the whole "you either mix and live with it or stay true" paradigm would go south. And it would push "Magicrun" as adding ware to an awakened character wouldn't mean an as steep choice as it is now.

Still nice to see that I'm not totally off with the ruling.

I don't think we're getting what the other is saying...

I think you pick either:

A) [which is RAW]: losing Essence permanently lowers your Magic, and if you later increase Magic, it costs what it would normally cost to go to the new rating, not new rating +1.

B) If you lose Essence, you lose access to a point of Magic. But raising Magic costs as if you still had that point (more expensive). If you regain the Essence, you regain the Magic.

The nice thing about (B) is that it doesn't matter anymore in which order you increase Magic and lose Essence from 'ware.

Whereas with (A) it's cheaper to keep Magic low (not so low as to burn out) until you're done losing Essence, and then buy it up, because that's cheaper than the other way around.

That tactic might technically be cheaper, but it will put you far behind the power curve of someone who bought their Magic up at char-gen, whether they got implants or not. Because while they may not be as well-rounded in their secondary specialties, they are hitting the starting gate running in their core area. The mage trying to save points, meanwhile, has a piddly Magic, and a bit of 'ware, then raises his Magic by one, then gets another point of 'ware - all while the guy who had the high Magic to start with is pulling ahead of him even more.

There are a lot of things in the game that may not be optimal from a points perspective, but are optimal from a power perspective. An adept with a hard-maxed Magic and two points of bioware is horribly expensive, but can be a devastatingly effective character. Elves lose a net 10 points compared to humans, but they are still worth it because they give you higher maximums for two of the most important stats in the game.

Yeah. I don't worry too much about the potential twinkery in the vein of 'keep Magic really low while adding ware incrementally'… it's just not feasible in real play.

I kinda liked the way Bioware interacted differently with magic than Cyber did in SR3, though.

I mentioned it because we've had several discussions about buying 'ware first, then Magic during Karmagen.

Anyways, it was just a passing thought.

@Glyph
For a mage? Yes, indeed. An adept is quite a different story.
An adept is just spending adpet(10Karma), raising magic to 3(25Karma) for having magic one and some ware. (The ware has to be bought by other characters too!)
This puts the adept behind around 35 Karma. Two points of ware are not much, but it is also not increadible/unplayable low)
Getting ware would move around stuff you would not need to get rid of soon and stuff which ain't that expensive.
Initiativ passes pose the only problem here. But there is always cram, if you need it.
So fit in some cheap second hand muscle toner, reflex recorder etc.
Give him a few bonus dices for persuasion and you got yourself a weak social adept. Not throwing 20 dices, but I guess around 12 with a bit of infiltration skill. Get some good contacts and you are ready to go...

@Ascalaphus

Like that you may just have both, right. But I guess, nobody would allow it.

@StevenAngier

Plain wrong. You may rechose, but this does not change anything, since the player may forsee character development. If your GM does not tend to force implant awakend characters there is NO advantage in the second possibility for awakend characters. Essence loss is even a worse kick in the nuts, because it stays with you can't ignore it after paying some Karma. The toll is getting higher and higher as you advance!
(Yeah, you might get your ware out and regain your Magic, but what do you win by this? You only spend money on getting ware in and out. You have only LOST)

Well it leads to detaching from your character at least for me, as things like his "power" if he is awakened and/or the nature of his augmentations are part of the character concept. If I get to handle them as arbitrary, the character himself gets arbitrary. That's why I prefer that Essence induced Magic loss stays at it's level. It's something of a cardinal point in an awakened characters developement for me. Especially since Initiation to regain Magic would become a lot less interesting (besides gaining one additional die per grade Gaining metamagic techniques is a whole different thing)

@StevenAngier
I do not get your argumentation. If you get ware, it stays with you both ways.
(It even is more of a turning point if you go with the second interpretation)

The only different thing would be, that if a mage got hit with essence loss through wounds or something, he could regain his lost point of magic through treatment.


The only thing I get, is the second part to this I have to say:
Yes, it makes mages weaker, thats true. But on the other hand thats the hole point of it.

We could make a pro/con list for both but I guess it would be quite one sided.

Except that there is no exploit, the order in which you do thinks in chargen never ever matters.

@Mäx
If I first get 4 Points of ware and afterwards the adept quality I would end up with one point of magic and 4Points of ware for 10Karma + cost of ware.
If I get the adept quality first and afterwards the ware I need(in order to keep beeing an adept) raise may magic to 5. So I pay 10 Karma +75 Karma cost of ware.
This makes a differance of 75 Points of karma. I guess that is something.

So how does order not matter?

No you would end up as a burned-out adept as you have less then 1 magic.

@Mäx
Why?
The latent XXX qualities state, that you just need 1 Point of essence.
The second you have taken adept you start at magic one. RAW.
Your attribute is not increase by one it is set to one. After that point, you do not lose any essence so you have NO magic loss.

@Max:

* Buy Adept
* Buy Magic 2 (10)
* Buy 1 Essence ware
* Buy Magic 2 again (10)
* Buy another 1 Essence ware
* Buy Magic 3 (10+15)
Total: 45

vs.

* Buy Adept
* Buy Magic 5 (10+15+20+25)
* Buy 2 Essence ware
Total: 70

Neither method risks Burnout, but the difference in Karma spent is pretty big. So you now need fixed-order rules during KarmaGen to avoid this exploit, but those rules no longer work when play starts. (Although it takes a while to reach high magical power; but you can buy all the non-magical stuff you ever intend to get, and then only spend karma on magic for the rest of the game. And after a couple of missions, you'll be at an advantage.)

My argument is: While B) solves the possible "cheat" regarding chargen order it also lowers the importance of Essence because... regardless of how you lost it, IF YOU WANT you can get it back and thus your full magic rating. I don't like the idea that by that the only price you have to pay is money. Essence always was more than just some wobbly stuff I fuel my magic rating with. It is some sort of holistic self-awareness you need to cast magic and stay alive. Regaining Essence back is fine as long as there are still drawbacks for awakened characters. By removing the drawback it's ONLY a matter of money then if you augment for that big-number-promising mission to make it easier and afterwards spend some of the money you got into Revitalization thus augmenting becomes... arbitrary AND it furthers "Magicrun". Every awakened character could become augmented - try it, see if it works - and if not pays the money to get "all natural" again. I just don't like this approach to Magic and Essence.

And while A) looks like it allows to cheat in Karmagen (which you could prevent by enforcing a build order) cheating during the career is a lot less likely. Karma is scarce and most players I've encountered either planned at chargen to augment in the character's career thus bought Magic high enough to achieve the target mark OR didn't plan to augment in the first place. It's not that of an issue to really push B) ahead of A) while B) carries some house rules with it I PERSONALLY don't like as mentioned before.

The latent xxx qualities have their own special rules and have nothing to do with chargen.
There is no before or after in chargen, if you decide at some point to take one of the awakened qualities you have Magic of 1 minus any loss from essence loss.

Going with this nonsense of order mattering, i could take the born rich quality and the full 300k in resources, spent those to get all kinds of awesome gear and then go back and remove the quality and all karma spend on resources and then according to you and Ascalaphus i would have 300K worth of gear for a high cost of 0 karma, doing that a second time would net me 600k worth of gear

Like I said, Ascalaphus: that can't happen in chargen, and it's too slow and unlikely in play.

@Mäx

No, you could not. Because money does not work like essence loss.
The hole interpretation is based on the fact that your ESSENCE does not matter only if you lose ESSENCE WHILE HAVING A MAGIC ATTRIBUTE.
If you spend 50BP on cash you have spend 50BP on cash.
The quality only sets the upper limit. If you remove the quality the upper limit drops again. Here it does NOT matter in which order you do it.

Spend 75BP on cash ->You have spend too much on cash->get born rich->character fine.
Get born rich->spend 75BP on cash->character fine.
Get born rich->spend 75BP on cash->drop born rich->character not valid->take born rich or drop cash.

The only thing beeing questionable qould be the improved attribute feat in BP gen.
But not really since it does not matter how you calculate it. Because the 25 BP are a mali for taking the last point, so the have to be payed/repayed by dropping/taking the quality.

The only thing which actually rule wise works this screwed up is essence loss.

You dont get it, there is no befores and afters in chargen.
Your character either is awekened ot he's not, if he is then you lose magic for every point of essence loss.

This... So This... ^^^

Well, under B), if a character took a .4 Essence implant for a mission, then got it out again and tried to heal the Essence hole in order to get Magic back, he'd have to
* pay 155,000 (75K+20K per month)
* spend 4 months in a gene therapy vat (1 month per 0.1 Essence)

That hardly qualifies as MagicRun to me.

Except this is completely overlooking the Finishing Touches: Final Statistics step of character creation (SR4A 88) where all modifiers to a character's Attributes (including modifiers to ESS as well as MAG/RES hits from ESS Loss) are applied at the very end of character development. Modifiers are applied to the character in one broad stroke, meaning you cannot load up with 'ware, then take the Adept/Magician Quality to try and avoid the MAG penalty. This would instead be treated as you take a bunch of 'ware, take the Adept Quality, and set your MAG to 1. Once you're done adding stuff, setting Attributes, etc., you finish up your character by applying all modifiers/penalties, which would immediately burn you out.

You are neglecting to account for one limiting factor of using B...

For every point (or partial) of essence loss you incur, you also lower your MAX Magic by 1 point. See the chart below

Essence.....Max Magic*
6.0................6
5.99-5.00.......5
4.99-4.00.......4
3.99-3.00.......3
2.99-2.00.......2
1.99-1.00.......1

*Initiation also raises the Max Magic by +1 per rank of Initiation. It is subject to the rule that you cannot have more ranks of Initiation than your Current Magic attribute.

So as your Essence declines, so does your Max Magic. That is why you have to initiate in order to raise that max up again. Because you also cannot have more Initiations than your Magic.

Going with version B means that if my Magic 6 is dropped to Magic 4 due to Essence loss and I want to raise it by +1, I have to pay for it as though I was still at Magic 6. Given that Essence loss also lowers my Max Magic, I had best have 1 or more ranks of Initiation under my belt or else I would have to Initiate before I could raise Magic due to being at my Max Magic already.

When I played SR1 & 2, version B was the way we played. It made our Mage players very risk averse when it came to Deadly damage, Stim Patches, Medical care, and Cyberware.