May use? Haha. With me that's a guaranteed use

Not even jumping on the main discussion yet, (no book) but this bears some comment.

GM may use background count? That's like saying IF a GM decides to count ammo, or the GM may count essence loss.

Background Count is one of the easier tools to use against balancing awakened. Take a look at the previous editions. 4th ed, in this case; Lagos. General background count of 2 over the entire city. Now your mage with a 6 magic is 1/3 less powerful (-2 magic for all intents and purposes and +2 to drain on top of that. Take the mage with nifty cyberware. Even less capable.

SR has had mechanics in play to help balance mages since 1ed. Magic Loss (only an option in 4th), which is all but guaranteed after initiation. Higher difficulty in seeking medical attention (+2 TN in older editions, -2 DP in 4th). Just to name a couple. Now, I'm not sure if these will be mainline rules or options or even included in 5th, but following Jason Hardy's logic of "everything has a price" I would be very surprised if they, or something more severe, were included.

As for comparing things, IMHO, the only thing the 5th core books should really be compared to is other core books. It's already at 480 pages and $60 (US). They can't condense the entirety of Shadowrun rules into one book. Then it would look like the Hero system tome and have to be about as quality (coloring book paper).

Personally, once the book is generally available for all to see, truly informed opinions can be made. I may agree 100% at that time, but right now it just seems like "Hey! I've got the book, I don't like this, you shouldn't either! I've seen it!" and "hey! you didn't add something for me! boo hoo". Some of the posts I have read on 5th sound exactly like that. Not all, but more than enough.

Most of us are seeing thing completely and totally out of context. Seeing only previews and other peoples opinions on something that can't be seen by all right now leads itself to biased opinions before opinions should be formed. (look at how dangerous this same action gets when discussing many religious/philosophy texts).

Ok, that helps balance it out.

Thanks!


Course I'm running a 2055 campaign so I may have to house rule it some.

Per the rules it is just as hard to work on a heavily implanted character (anyone who has implants) as it is to work on a mage.

So because they have other new goodies to spend money on they don't have money to spend on inferior ware? That's the argument we're going with?

I think the general idea is that for a Mage to be a good Mage they'll have to have a lot of Mage equipment and there's a lot more Mage equipment for Mages to buy in order to remain competitive Mages.

Comparably, cybered characters will be able to install a whole lot more cyberware since high-grade stuff is cheaper.

If that's how you chose to read my post, I think it says more about you than it does about much else.

so, is beta/delta allowed in chargen?
is it still as impossible to procure in game?

I beg your pardon? Is that the official rule? Because in SR234 it was the other way around, most of the adults have cyberware (minor one, but still ...). Did SR5 really changed that in a world, where 8-10 megacorps have all cyberware/bioware/geneware/nanoware as one of their main areas (some more than others) for the last 5 decades?

SYL

Betaware has never been impossible to aquire in my games; deltaware would have been very hard, but also not impossible to get. Don't turn experiences from your games into universal rules.

If the mage has 8 hits (overcasting?) and can sustain the spell (sustaining foci, spirit, positive quality etc). And I assume that getting 8 hits in SR5 is not that easy without any consequences or heavy investments.

SYL

deltware was fairly easy to get. It has no availabilty increase for the ware itself, only you had to find the clinic and make an appointment. It's a 24/1week extended test (AU 122), which you can hire a fixer to do for you.

The availability of implants and clinics, as well as the prices involved, made anything better than alpha very well out of the reach of the runners with the usual reward guidelines (a few thousand to a couple dozen thousand nuyen per run for each runner).


Also, briefly back to the topic: why limit the discussion to cyberware at all? What can an augmented mundane do better than a (mystic) adept or a mage at all? Soak damage, is that it?

Is that from the book? Someone else said that +4 init was the cap on that spell. They could also raise their Reaction and Intuition, though, giving a maximum bonus of +12. Is that right?

So now I have to ask: Did you change the rules for essence loss or can a mage/adept still get away with just paying a liitle bit of Karma for every point of lost essence?
This was it, what made the well build adept so much superior to the pure SAM. In the end he got both 5 points of "magic goodies" and around 4.5 Points of ware, while the SAM had maybe around 120 Karma more to spend and 5.5 Points of ware.

I guess that really depends on what you mean but "a little bit of Karma," here. If you think, like, buying Magic from 5 to 6 over and over again is some really cheap thing, in addition to the Karma required to initiate over and over again -- or whatever apparent rules loop you're referring to? -- I'm not sure what to say. If 120 karma is "a little bit" in your campaigns, it sounds like we're playing very different Shadowrun games, personally.

In quickstart the spell description mentioned max +4 init, someone mentioned it just took 1 hit per plus versus needing two hits to get +1 dice (the way it read sounded like both require 2 hits per bonus step, but will see what the final version says). So even if you don't get all the extra dice, you will have a good chance of having the +4 to add plus whatever dice you scrape together.

No, I am talking about taking about taking a D priority for an adept. Getting a first point of second hand ware and maybe rebuying that point at the end of chargen with karma. Repeating that little game (probably ingame) until I got the ware I wanted...


(The 120 are for an adept who is basically a full sam two. Considering the gain, thats little. Or how many Karma do you guess have chars with about 5-6 Initiations... It is not like it would not work with smaller values)

I have only read part of the book - however, I very much doubt that Street Samurai are "no longer viable." Based only on the stuff I have read: pure toughness.

I'm not saying this is the only thing SS can do well, but it is at least a thing.

Here's how it works:

1. Stick-n-shock got nerfed into the ground.

2. Narrow Bursts got removed.

3. Base weapon damage went up - but not enough to compensate for Narrow Bursts at the top end.

So while "average" damage (how much a goon with a Ares Predator and normal bullets can do) went up, the top end went down. If you have 40 soak dice - which is possible if you are specialized in it - you can actually shrug off assault rifles now, whereas it used to be the case that narrow bursts of SnS would drop you quickly.

Meanwhile, cyberlimb armor got buffed for anyone without a cybertorso (it's now 1 capacity per armor rather than 2 capacity per armor). Cybertorsos do suck now, but they were pretty essence-unfriendly already. You can get half-limb replacements and a cyberskull (which doesn't totally suck now, due to Armor being less capacity it's an OK investment), still have enough left over for initiative enhancement, and then run around with enough armor that you can soak up quite a lot of gunfire.

As a bonus - Direct combat spells got nerfed so hard, and Indirect spells now have flat AP, so mages can't oneshot you either.

If I understand you right:

You make an adept, give said adept som cyberware, he looses Essence (and magic), then you rebuy the lost magic?

You can't do that, since magic can't be higher than Essence, unless you initiate, and you can't initiate during character gereration.

No. You make an adept with Magic 2. Then you take 1 essence of ware, so he now has Magic 1 and Essence 5. Then you pay 10 karma to go up to Magic 2. You now have Magic 2 and Essence 5. You start play like that.

After gameplay starts, you continue the "cycle" of buying 1 more essence of ware (going from Magic 2 to Magic 1) and then paying 10 karma to raise it to Magic 2, until you do this one last time and are at Magic 1 and Essence 1 with 5 points of cyberware. Now you stop buying more cyberware (or rather, stick to boosting the grade) and from this point you initiate in order to raise magic.

This was a thing in SR4 as well. It's probably a little better in SR5 due to Priority - it lets you take Priority D talent so you are freeing up your higher priorities. However, it still has the same drawback - you definitely are better down the road, but you still start out weak. At chargen, you have 2 magic and 1 ware, so 50% of your soul isn't being used.

Also, in SR5, mundanes now do care about karma as skills can exceed 6.

I have not gone through the Adept rules in enough detail to be able to tell if they still suck or not so I am reserving judgement on that one.

A no-brainer house rule I use is to say that Magic Rating is bought up from 1 but is not effected by Essence Level unless Essence dips below the Magic Rating (i.e. you buy your Magic at 2, get 1 point of cyber to drop your Essence to 5, and your magic stays at 2). That prevents the dumb number-crunching RAW rules you listed above and makes a lot more sense overall.

Does that mean we also get Epsilon as the new mythic stuff unattainable by normal runners?

how is this a buff?
armor capacity got halved.

He's writing it wrong, what he's trying to say is that capacity cost of cyber armor went from 2 per point of armor to 1 per point of armor.
And i think someone mentioned that the new per piece armor limit is 3 as opposed to SR4:s 4.

And the Availability is "pretty steep", whatever that means...
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?act=...amp;pid=1235683

Right, but you needed a cybertorso for 4 armor (and it ate 8 capacity). Now you can skip the cybertorso, and put 3 armor on everything, while still having plenty of space left over.

I did get that backwards - it's 1 capacity per armor. Editing.

Fluff wise? Because sammies are cheap and disposable now. Remember, 1% of total population is magically active at all, but you can cram cyber into any dumb punk.

The rules do not reflect this, of course

It's 5 * rating (and not R or F). So you can start with 2, and quickly upgrade to 3 (as it's still pretty cheap).

Isn't that the same as in 4th? I kinda expected more...

Since when? There are Mall Shops where you can go to get augmented during Lunch (Like getting a tattoo or piercing). That tells me that a very large part of the population actually has ware. Up until 5th Edition anyways.

Damn near every wageslave who isn't magically active has at least a datajack, as well.

Not to forget that there is a lot of common cyberware which is not visible at a glance.

Freakware like KS legs, offensive ware like activated cyberwapons etc should give you a social penalty. Not simply "he has wired reflexes (deactivated with a trigger) = I should hate, fear and avoid him".

SYL

The way it seems, many archetypes got shafted in some way:
-Riggers/Hackers were split, and the latter are now called Deckers (the term always makes me think of TCGs).
-Sams are now vulnerable to hacking if they want 100% performance.
-Mages are subject to a massive increase in (now non-healable) Drain while losing the magical equivalent to full narrow bursts (direct combat spells received a massive nerf).

OTOH, everyone gained something too. So let's wait till July before we judge further.

Don't I know it...

I like the fact that cyberware has an impact on social behaviour. In my world it is not because other people fear you or think you are a freak (at least thats not the primary reason), but because you get disconnected from your body/soul and the social world and are losing empathy. Thats really very much core cyberpunk.

In my system, cyberware is directly reducing charisma.

Don't forget, some of the original 'Ware penalty concept was loosing your humanity (Essence). Not having seen the current ruleset I have no idea how it's implemented (besides the Essence effects social cap) but that was the big thing about it back in Shadowtech and Street Samurai Catalog. Didn't matter as much what was visible (that was a modifiable social penalty or bonus) but more the fact you had the same degree of Empathy as a Car once you were down to the really low Essence and made mostly of Chrome. You look at things as a machine does because of the LifeForce you've given up to have the Edge, It's numbers, Objectives and statistics, emotion and feeling (which is a social corner stone) can go hang.

Sure there's alot of 'ware out there but most folks have used up only a point of essence if that, so they are not as massively effected as the Razorguy who's basically a terminator or robocop. In fact Arnie in T2 is a good example of what the old idea was, as is Robocop (cyberzombie basis in many ways) and more recently look at Dr Manhattan in Watchmen (No 'Ware but an utterly analytical, process driven and inhuman mindset). Essence was always more than just a number slot for war or a magic limiter.

Things have changed over the years and the Cyberware theme seems to have become ubiquitous while leaving behind the "mystical Life force" damage it does outside of limiting mages and adepts and interfering with healing. Heck, once upon a time one of the suggested RP options for Wired Reflexes was almost the same as the guidelines for Rage in WtA.

Holy Hera!

We see eye to eye on this one Serbitar!

The change is that the capacity costs got halved, and that armor is comparatively better because the most common armor reducing/ignoring effects (SnS and Direct spells) both got nerfed.

EDIT: maybe I misunderstood. If you mean you expected the availability to be more - it is indeed the same as in 4th.

so . . what happens when you hit 0 charisma?

People view you as a walking toaster.

Completely different system and mechanics. Direct reduction by division not by subtraction so you cannot reach 0. Effectively your charisma gets smaller and smaller which is influencing your social skills to a degree where you will have to roll on things normal people do not have to because they "auto succeed" or at least "do not fail horribly" like basic judgemnt of people, basic social interaction, judgement of a social situation and so on.

It starts by not being able to "read between the lines" in a physical conversation, not getting the intention delivered by the empathic non-verbal component, not having anything to say to fellow humans and is ending in unwillingly insulting other people, extreme missinterpretation of human intentions (this guy wanted to blame me/ insult me/ kill me) , paranoia and phobia.

So, since every attribute above 0 must be 1, it makes charisma back into a dumpstat then?
because why would i raise an attribute that i lose by getting stuff i need to be good at what i want the character to do?
Especially as an Ork or Troll, who both start with a lower MAXIMUM Charisma than they have Essence to spend.

And if your eyes need adjustment (What we would call needing glasses), why wouldn't you drop a few thousand and get cybereyes.?

No need for shades or AR goggles, no stumbling in the dark, no worries about getting dust in the eyes.
And you can snap a quick picture or display the base ball scores at a thought.

And no need to have to go back every five to ten years to have it redone.

Between the people with headware, the ex military, people who suffered serious injuries, and the wage slaves with skill wires, I'd be seriously surprise if the 100% natural wouldn't be in the minority.

On the other hand I see the point that someone who is nearly all machine is going to be scary.
So maybe he doesn't "connect" as well socially, but he sure has an easy time convincing people not to drek with him.

One reason to play a street samurai in SR4 was skill wires especially since you probably super focused on one of the attributes that is linked with lots of skills. You use to be able to reliably throw 11+ in just about every skill you could want. Someone who has the SR5 book can confirm if this is still the case.

Downloadable versatility. 40,000 for the equivalent of 22 karma. 50,000 for the equivalent of 32 karma. Seemed like a good deal to me. Again though, not sure how this will compare in SR5, especially with the new skill ratings.

The essence cost of skill wires is generally too high for a mage looking to just drop one essence unless they forgo the other attractive cyber/bio options and the initial cost is low enough that a sam can throw it in pretty easily without completely wrecking their build.

As I said. Completely different system. Base attribute value is 30 not 3 (and actually you can have fractional values if needed).
And charisma is definitely not a dumpstat. The more charisma you have, the more ware you can implant before being a total social maniac.

Trolls do not get such a severe charisma malus like they get in sr4 (because, they are actually only ugly, but charisma is more like empathy in shadowrun anyway). Orcs do, because they actually are more agressive and "anti social" (at least in my world).
This prefectly balances with the fact that Orcs/Trolls are combat monsters to begin with (I should also mention that I split agility into agility and coordination, the latter of which is governing fine tuned moevement and hand eye coordination like when using guns while the former is for gymnastics and stuff like that. this helps getting rid of agility as the uber-stat.)

I should also mention that it is an online system where your character sheet is displayed in a website and the computer does all the complex calculations and can afford much more complex formulae to calculate dependencies on attributes and stuff.

But the main point is still: I like the effect of cyberware on social behaviour.

I don't even need glasses, but if I could buy Shadowrun Cyber-eyes (the natural looking ones) they'd have been installed already. To know that I won't go blind from age, or age related diseases (like diabetes)? awesomesauce. The fact that I could put thermographic and low-light vision into them? Why wouldn't I? I'd chip in for a smartlink because I want to be a better shot at paintball and Airsoft.

With my players, they all wanted to be awaken.


One of the major perks for non awaken was skill wires and activesoft, plus Knowsofts and linguasoft.
Especially if you had Move By Wires.

With Activesofts costing only 3K per rating point you could have some skill in almost any thing for a modest investment.

That fact that you couldn't specialize, use Edge, or get it above a rating 4 kept it from being a problem.

It was more so you could cover the skill if the team didn't have the skills or pass yourself off as someone who did have the skills.

Very nice perk to the non awaken.


Then they nerfed it by making the cost for an active soft at 10K per rating point.
And still failed to address why some skills that don't change much would cost that much.
I would think after thirty or forty years there would be a large domain of public skillsofts (likely not available at the highest rating but still).

Amen to that.

Speaking as someone who has never worn glasses but has had to go get reading glasses recently (which are a real pain), I'd love to be able to snap a picture at a thought.
Would certainly help with some of the other issues that come with age.

"Now what was the name of that wine, she wanted me to pick up another bottle of?"

"What was the name of that guy at the reunion?"

"Does this part match the one I need to replace?"

Hell, what about knowing what time it was before you opened your eyes?

Shutting down your eyes when you want to sleep, no matter how light it is.
Watching TV without anybody being the wiser while at work.