So, I'm considering allowing my (theoretical) players (for my at-this-point theoretical game) to help some Mega or other come out with a new type of 'ware. I'm laying the groundwork for it in the background of their runs - rumors, speculation, unexplained requests - and eventually they'll play a major role in deciding which corp, if any, gets the benefit of bringing them to market. The 'wares in question would be 'wares for Awakened characters - constructed from orichalcum and other such magical materials, they cost significantly more, both nuyen and essence, but they do not reduce the character's Magic.

What I'm wondering would be what level of cost increase would be appropriate for such an advancement? Would four times the nuyen cost and twice the essence cost be suitable? Would that make it too high a cost/benefit ratio? Too low?

What about Technomancers? I'm halfway considering letting them take 'wares without losing Resonance, but at a doubled essence cost anyway, but I'm not really sure what effect it would have on gameplay.

I recognize that this will make awakened characters (and Technomancers) even more attractive, but I think it'd be a fun idea to play around with.

Anyways, thanks for your consideration.

- Essence does nothing for the mundane
- Samurai compete by having (more) ware than the awakened
-- Magic ware at *2 essence gives 3 points of "free" implants to the mage.
-- Given the SOTA nature of this, look at deltaware as baseline (say price*10, custom made, seen with 1 net hit on the assensing test)

- If it hits essence, why doesn´t it hit magic? Corruption? Blood Magic?

Ask yourself: do mages and technomancers, who already have potentially unlimited advancement, really need 'ware on top of that? Especially considering that mages already have magical alternatives to 'ware (increase reflexes and increase Attribute spells with sustaining foci, detection spells), and that both can initiate/submerge and then raise Magic/Resonance to offset Essence loss already. This makes augmentation something that they can take, but which they have to carefully consider.

It depends on how such characters are working out in actual play. Both are harder to optimize and tend to be "squishier" than their mundane counterparts, and complaints about how overpowered they can be tend to involve specific tactics and builds that average players may not use/be aware of. So if in your game, mages and technomancers need the boost, go for it. Otherwise, I wouldn't mess with the game mechanics to give a further boost to the character types that already have the most potential at higher karma levels.

It seems you are aware how such a new technology would skew game balance even more in the favour of awakened characters, but here's my 2 nuyen.

1) As for cost, I agree with Ryu in that you should think deltaware (10X cost) at the very least. After all orcharidium ain't cheap.

2) Lose Essence (your "life force" or whatever new age descriptor you want) and you lose Magic/Resonance. I understand what you are trying to do here, but I am wondering if "non-Magic reducing Essence loss" is the way to go. I would probably do something else, such as say for reasons the boffins aren't sure, you can't pack more than 1 Essence-worth of this new tech 'ware without starting to impact on your Essence (i.e. 1 free "Essence point's worth" of ware, but no more), but YMMV.

For Lost Essence With These New Implants, I would consider not flat out saying they don't lose magic....

but changing the essence loss/magic loss rules so that you only lose a point of magic AFTER losing a full point of essence. Instead of the current system, where you lose a fraction of a point and take the hit immediately.

Advanced in technology let the corps expand 'ware to a 'try before you buy' type program for mages, where they can reel in a previously hesitant userbase with promises of 'only a little metal'.

Edit: I would also make this new ware technique have a few pieces of older, common, everyday-use cybermodels available to buy that are made with this new technique. Orichalium-enhanced datajacks to start, maybe cybereyes.

Mages are already powerful. If I were GM, I would not allow this cyberware.

Now if you want something that will "draw in the mages", then say this special cyber will save 10% on the Essence cost above and beyond the cyberware grade Essence cost, but it costs X amount of Karma (don't what would be fair) to bind it to the mage.

Also make it easy to "integrate" foci into the cyber. This means that the foci is part of the cyber and therefore harder to find and remove.

I'm with Udoshi's theory on this. If you're determined to go ahead with Awakened-OK implants, don't say that they mysteriously fail to drop Magic, yet do cost a shitload of Essence, to which Magic is tied.


What I would suggest is (first off) you implement my house rule that your Magic only goes down if your cap falls below current - IE, if you have one 6 Essence, Magic 1, and get a piece of cyberware, you're not an immediate burnout because your magic cap is still 5, not six, and your Magic of 1 is untouched.


Second, that having been said, if every (and I do mean every) aug that goes into the mage is this super-expensive magical material augmentation, their Magic maximum rounds up to the nearest whole number, not down. So if you get .99 points of Awakened-OK cyberware, and have 5.01 points of Essence left, your Magic cap is still 6, not 5.

And when I said every point of augmentations, I mean it. Since there's no known way to make a biological aug with magic materials - let alone genetic tweaking with magical materials - then getting even a single bioware implant or gene-tweak jack-boogers the whole shebang and puts you back to the normal rules, with the addendum that your steaming corpse is now worth more to a talismonger than to Tamanous, which is saying something.

I imagine this was a very, very painful lesson for the first mage to think "Ooooh, I'll get me that Adapsin treatment stuff, so I can make my allotment go further."

Of course, because one of the things you could get with this is a big old honking nanohive, you're perfectly free to have all the nanoware you can support.