just thought I would get some opinions on the above combinations.

Same as with anything Quickening: depending on how the GM runs the world, you'll have trouble with wards and things.

Plus, as soon as it gets dispelled your Karma is gone.

I'm one of those who finds Quickening on a whole to be broken. And it goes back to first or second edition, when it first showed up. I view Quickening as something for NPCs villains. I would never want to burn my karma on something that could be destroyed like that. Money, sure, but not karma.

Yeah, especially since you can just use a Sustaining Focus to do the same thing.

It probably costs more Karma to bond, but that Karma doesn't go away if the spell somehow gets knocked out.



-k

But if the foci got destroyed or rebond to someone else, you would lost the those karma and have to find a new one to bond it again.

That really depends on how much karma and money you get per run. With the rates I've been seeing, spending a bit of Karma doesn't seem all that catastrophic.

:/ It does if it's just going up in smoke. Almost any amount is a problem if you're *losing* it for a temporary gain.

I've seen various Quickening 'fix' ideas. I liked the ones where it was for-real permanent: when dispelled/etc., it came back after an appropriate length of time. Depending on the suggester, this time was anything from Turns to Weeks. Personally, I'd be okay with at least a few days, but it all depends on the game. Similarly, some allowed the mage to voluntarily disable them (for wards and things), with again some 'recharge' penalty to make it fair.

It's a lot harder for that to happen, though.

With a quickened spell, you walk into a ward by accident and POP there goes the karma.




-k

My biggest problem with Quickening beyond the potential karma loss is that its not subtle, unless you initiate a few times and get Masking and extended masking. If you could suppress the spell when you don't want to it would be much more valuable.

So...no-foci-sustaining-foci?

Eh, you can easily lose money similarly, does that trouble you equally? Do you never, I don't know, buy vehicles and upgrade them - there's a fair chance for them to be stolen, after all?

I actually specifically mentioned that in my own post. Money isn't as hard to get your hands on as karma, especially if you're the criminal equivalent of a commando. Karma, however, cannot be gained by grabbing some extra pay data or fencing any number of items you've picked up. You can negotiate better deals with your Johnson, but those dice rolls aren't going to sway your GM.

I hate to repeat myself, but I have to: that really depends on how much karma and money you get per run. Whether your GM gives you enough Karma, or lets you bargain for higher pay, or what have you, is entirely up to him. Thus, your experience (money is more easy to get than Karma) can vastly differ from mine (Karma is no less available than cash), but neither is universally true (which you seem to presume about yours).

Sure, YMMV, but how about this: money is intended to be used to exchange for material goods or temporary services. With the sole exception of Quickening, karma expenditures are permanent. Yes, you can have the changes that karma buys you undone (lose stats due to a horrible injury or have your weapon focus destroyed by a villain for instance), but that is the exception, not the rule.

I don't think this debate has as much to do with GM styles as our personal view of the reward system in place. And if your GM isn't allowing you to fence various things you've liberated from their owners for additional money, you should have a talk with him or her about that. It is a standard thing since the game began for runners to make some extra cash while on the job. GMs usually love this aspect because it gives them an excuse to let the actions bite the characters in the back-end from time to time. In a game where the characters are supposed to be barely keeping their head above water, then you're not wrong, but even then I still wouldn't waste karma just because my money is hard to come by too.

Actually, in addition to the ways you've mentioned, there's quite a few more, the most obvious being respecializing in a skill. So Karma is in no way more permanent than money, really: with both you can buy things that stay with you, and with both you can have nice more or less temp boosts.

It's strange how you assume there are only two possible ways to go about it: either money's more available than Karma, or they are both scarcely available.

Besides, stealing "a little something extra" is extremely unprofessional behaviour, and leads to notoriety, ruined Johnson's plans, lack of will to hire the runners other than for brute wetwork, and runners being traced back through the buyers. While I don't think anyone explicitly bans it, it's more often than not a bad idea, and building your long-term strategy on it can only really work in pretty pink mohawk games.

Well, yeah, but I cut my teeth on first edition! I don't find it unprofessional in the least to take things off of the goon squad that came after you post-run, though I do find it highly unprofessional to take things during the core run without it being explicitly ordered to do so or otherwise green-lit by Mr. Johnson (not uncommon in wanting to cover your tracks, make it look like you were there for something else).

And yes, there is a third option: Monty Haul GMs who give liberal amounts of both karma and cash. I tend to be in that category if only because I like to see advancement and hate as a player to sit on 30-something karma and looking at saving up another 10 points to max out some attribute or what have you. Even if being given buckets full of karma, I don't find Quickening to be worth it. Its a fragile bubble that can burst without warning and without much resistance. I guess it is a little easier in 4E since karma doesn't double as Edge and Exps...

Also, I have yet to see anyone respecialize, so I find that easy to overlook.

Fatum, I dunno what game you're playing, but my SR vehicles do not get stolen. And you can steal them back. A GM that gives you enough karma that you're burning it is a GM giving too much karma.

Speed Wraith, sort of, except you have to choose the spell/Force forever. But yes, the point of Quickening has always been exactly no-foci sustaining.

Quickening is great for any character who is dual natured to begin with. One great example are free spirit. (Yeah, you probably have to translate all the spells into "mana-spells", but since you have no physical body you probably need to do this anyway if you want to affect yourself with it...)

And quickend spells are quite hard to destroy. It is just that most groups do not destroy or steal the foci of a mage.
(Or they would go up in flames if you are hit with a fireball)

Yeah, you do not quickend force 4 spells. But allready a force 8 spell has 24 dice to resist...

So I guess the best way to protect the quickening is to quicken it with high enough force to make it near impossible to counterspell it and maybe have a quickened Detect Magic/Ward spell at all time to avoid ward while having some anti-ward spell like shattershield to deal with unavoidable ward?

Edit: Of course, if the gm really wants to kill your quickening/foci, there's really nothing that can stop them.

Free spirits do have a physical body when they are Materialized, or Possess a vessel. The problem with Quickening for FS characters is that most spells you want to Quicken are physical spells, and don't carry into the astral when the FS wants to use one of its most powerful tools, the ability to nearly "teleport" just about anywhere.



Yes, one of the advantages of Quickening over foci is that one can Quicken a spell of any Force, whereas a focus limits the Force of the spell to its own Force.

Any astral awareness provides some of this detection already.


One can replace "quickening/focus" with "PC" in this statement. Hopefully, the GM is not in competition with the PCs.

Like I said, use the rules in Streetmagic to make them mana spells. And at least for materialized spirits it is questionable if physical "buff" spells do work. They still consist of mana. And to manipulate mana you need mana-spells.... (Anyhow: You can make nearly all "health-spells" mana-based without braking any rule... (And it would stop the theoretical possibility to cast them on drones...)
And to make it even worse: It is not even said, that physical spells do not carry over to the astral plane. They can't be cast on the astral plane, true.



And it does not count against the limit of bound foci.

It's more like I don't buy vehicles made out of delicate, fragile, and enormously expensive glass that will shatter into a thousand pieces if I ever run a red light.

You realize destroying any vehicle takes about as much GM effort (one event, one turn) and corp money as destroying a quickened spell?

The point is, while it is possible for a runner to have a focus lost, stolen, or destroyed, the frequency of that happening is GOING to be FAR less than the same runner walking into a ward or other magic barrier.

By the 2070s wards are all over the damn place.




-k

No, this is just wrong. Wards alone are a huge problem.

Wards you have to pay for regularly, machine guns and grenade launchers are forever.
Which do you think you're more likely to encounter? I'd say about the same.

You'd say wrong. Wards are a normal thing all over the place: at the club, your hotel, the shops, whatever. Grenade launchers are heavy weapons.

@Fatum
Low force wards are kind of cheap. You probably have teams of 3 mages assemble them to get enough ground covered. Well, for Privat contractors one mage will probably do.
You need to consider, that probably only "non-public" areas will be warded. To ward everything is to expensive by a long shot. So yes, for example a bank would probably not ward the customer area. But the offices were consultation is done or behind the counters, those areas would be warded. Same with anything else. You probably do not ward the trashcans...

But yes, keeping a force 6 ward covering more than 100 m² up is kind of expensive.

Many places a runner is likely to be entering are likely to have wards.

To pop a focus requires it to be accessible. Most casters I see have them safely tucked and hidden away. Usually the only way you lose them is by being captured/knocked out and have your equipment stripped. Not going to happen that often in most games.

To pop a quicken spell, you just have to walk into the wrong place. In a world filled with those 'wrong places'.

Yes, a high Force quickened spell is harder to to pop. But if you're having to make that test regularly, well, losing it just becomes a statistical inevitability.



-k

Even if your spell survives, it's raising all kinds of flags.