Hey

After some searches I failed to find any good information on this. What stacks?

Wired Reflexes is said not to stack with other initative boosters
Reaction Enhancers is said to stack.
Synaptic booster... doesen't stack.


So what qualifies as initative booster? Anything that increases your initative directly or indirectly? In which case, what does Reaction Enhancers stack with really?

Please quote rules or FAQs explaining this.

Generally, nothing that grants extra IP stacks.

Bye
Thanee

Im talking about actual Initiative score, not IPs. I know IPs generally do not stack (barring drugs possibly?)

But what about Reaction Enhancers and Wired Reflexes?

Both are initiative enhancements unfortunately, but that combination actually works. The wording of the rules however makes nearly any other combination with reaction enhanceres impossible.

So no reaction enhancers with Improved Reflexes or Synaptic Boosters. Only the MBW (which pobably won't need it) is compatible with reaction enhancers
Given that reaction enhancers only increase REA but still are classified as Initiative Enhancement, one has to wonder how other implants/powers that only increase REA (or by extension INT) are supposed to be treated. One could easily argue that the Suprathyroid Gland, Improved Physical Attribute or the Increase REA/INT spell should not be compatible with any stuff that grants extra IPs.

IMO, what they should do is declare anything that solely affects Reaction (or Int) to be 'not an Initiative enhancer', saving that status for things that specifically add IPs. But that's just 'should'.

The question of stacking cyber, bio, drugs, and/or various magic is left as an exercise to the reader.

It's fairly obvious that it's meant to be describing initiative passes and not the derived initiative score. The wording is ludicrously vague and basically could be interpreted that someone with Reaction Enhancers, Wired Reflexes, or Synaptic Boosters cannot gain the benefit of a bonus to initiative from a tacnet.

reaction enhancers are simpyl a case of bad copy and past from SR3.
reaction enhancers stack(ed) with everything and only stuff that gave +xd6 initiative did not stack.
and there was one exception to the rule, which was boosted reflexes and synaptic accellerator.

The problem is that the RAW actually is not vague but pretty clear. We just don't like the consequences. The rule I quoted earlier clearly states that Reaction Enhancers are a form of Initiative Enhancement. As such they do not stack with most stuff that grants extra IPs. It also tells us that something that only indirectly increases the Initiative Score is a form of Initiative Enhancement. Now either this is an extraordinary quality of Reaction Enhancers and everything else is safe, or every other implant/power/spell should be treated equally. This however is not what we expect or want.

QFT.

It's true, Stahl, that's where the problem comes from. But if people are going to follow the RAW (dunno why), they're stuck with that obvious error until they fix it in errata.

Wasn't it fixed in 4A? I could swear my Wired Reflexes and Synaptic Booster state they are compatible with reaction enhancers.

I don't know. I have a PDF copy and a printed copy. The PDF copy is definitely not correct.

Reaction enhancers are incompatible with most other Initiative-boosters.
Wired reflexes cannot be combined with any other form of Initiative enhancement, except Reaction Enhancers.
The synaptic booster cannot be combined with any other form of Initiative enhancement

Wired Reflexes and MBW where always compatible with Reaction Enhancers. The problem is that the rules for the aforementioned implants classify Reaction Enhancers as a form of initiave Enhancement and thus making them incompatible with anything else that increases IPs. This has not been changed yet.

Alright, thanks for your responses. It seems fairly clear to me that:

Reaction Enhancers works with Wired Reflexes and MBW, but not Synaptic Boosters. It's unclear whether it stacks with Improved Reflexes spell, as that does not improve Reaction (and thus not combined).

Drugs is still a mystery. Still, I got my answer at least, even if it opened up other questions.

I believe that MBW being compatible with RE is a copy/pasta typo from the description of Wired Reflexes, but that's just me.

Right, MBW wasn't compatble with Reaction Enhancers under SR3 Rules either, but that did not matter much, because MBW was RUBBISH back then.
Nobody EVER used it. The only Level you could get it at was Level 1 for a starting character and there it was plain WORSE than BOTH WR and BR.

TLE-x sucks.

THAT and the fact that it was more expensive in both essence and money than what you would need to get those numbers using other cyber and bioware . .

The only question with drugs is, whether you can use multiple doses (or multiple drugs) to stack initiative bonuses (I don't think so).

They are definitely not combatible with any of the cyberware/bioware/magic initiative boosters (since those all says that they are incompatible).

Bye
Thanee

Would you mind pointing me to to sections that says this? Except of course the line about "cannot be combined with any other form of Initiative enhancement,"

I kind of like the idea of Drugs "redlining" your system, mainly because it has some great drawbacks, and some awesome story seeds, if you use them. *shrug*

I find people usually ignore/avoid the drawbacks. If they actually do require a sacrifice, that'd be cool.

Sadly True...

As in "each time a character uses a drug, he instantly loses 0.01 points of essence"?

Burnout here we come.

Honestly, something *like* that might be good. Edge test to avoid it? (Keyed to the level of addiction, the dose, etc.) Ideally the chance would be significant, but not overwhelming. There's always genetic renewal treatments, anyway.

Make the 0.01 essence a penalty and not a loss. Make it a penalty that only applies when you haven't recently taken the drug so taking the drug doesn't kill you as long as you don't actively overdose. Raise it to at least 0.05 essence (0.01 is just way too low for this). Whether you can install augmentations is based on your modified essence values (Essence Score - Drug Penalty). Reduce the penalty by 0.5 for every period of time a user goes without the drug (1 week for example).

This generates three noticeable effects.

1. Awakened characters who use drugs will find that their magical abilities are lessened when sober (temporary essence penalty will cause a hit to magic that is only erased when on the drug).
2. If you have a mundane that augments and drugs up, his free essence may not be sufficient while sober to get the augmentation installed. This means he must be administered the drug while undergoing surgery (and thus upping his essence penalty) to get the augmentation.
3. A chassis is there for addiction rather than relying on random rolls.

Just an idea, of course.

That would mean crippling nerf for magicians and possible death if your essence drops below 0 because you sobered up . .

That's why I listed it as a penalty and not an essence loss.

There is no general rule about it, AFAIK, but every piece of cyberware/bioware/magic has that line (technically, the spell only says it cannot be stacked with itself), so you cannot use drugs with them.

Bye
Thanee

Nah, StealthSigma, the point is for the drug to hurt you, not sobriety. But Stahl, screw mages!

Yah, i am with you there regarding mages.
But if i cyber down to 0,04 essence and i sober up and i keel over dead, i don't like it

Yeah, I agreed with your other comments. I'd have to test it out, but I still feel like a small-but-significant chance of a small-but-significant Essence loss each time you take something might be interesting.

One issue is drugs vs. toxins, or even 'normal' uses of drugs (like OTC stuff, or prescribed medicines). I guess we can ignore that and just say, 'we know we're talking about SR4 Drugs', and it's a balance rule, not a fluff reality. In one sense, it's just an alternate instantiation of the burnout-Essence-loss phenomenon that already exists?

isn't there already an addiction rule that does something like this?

That's my point, though. There kinda is, except it never actually comes into play. The addiction tests seem pretty trivial for people to avoid/ignore in practice, and the Essence Loss doesn't even appear at all until the super burnout level, IIRC. I'll check. Xenefungus' idea front-loads the effect and makes it a sort of persistent (but low-level) sacrifice.

Yeah, upon review: for one thing, it's all up to the GM whim. The addiction tests are GM whim, and (at the burnout stage) the penalties 'may' include Essence Loss, at GM whim. (Some nasty stuff in there, too: attribute loss, 'free' NQs, permanent Stun…)

Drugs hurt you because of the effects caused when sober, not while on the drug. Really, the big problem is that I only provide the addiction chassis but not any withdrawal penalties penalties.

So the chassis (penalty) essentially tells you what your essence is considered for everything but death or permanent burnout. So you get an increased penalty each time you use the drug and the penalty comes once you've gone without using the drug for a certain period of time.

As far as it being a big mage nerf, yeah. It is. It means the mage has to constantly be on the drug. to keep their essence up high enough to not overly burden their magic score. It means that the mage is addicted and dependent on the drug, which is one of the common aspects of drug addiction. That means that yes, there could be mages that are completely incapable of casting a spell if they're sober if they've used drugs long enough.

Like I said, it's still a chassis. It only really has effects on things that are reliant on essence. However, since it is a numeric chassis to represent addiction you can easily say "When your total addiction essence penalty reaches 0.5 the characters starts taking a <penalty> when sober."