Some games are short. Other games span months. MUSHs are notorious for characters who last years. And years.

With that backdrop, the issue of Mundane vs. Awakened has always been a game balance concern of mine throughout the various editions of Shadowrun. Particularly as a player who has primarily played Street Samurai. And has seen PCs amass sometimes upwards of 500+ karma.

So.

I'm trying to consider subtle, non-obtrusive ways of maintaining 99% compatibility with the core SR 5 release, with no drastic overhauls of really anything, that help maintain some small incentives for non-awakened players.

One thought was the notion of restricting the Exceptional Attribute quality to Mundane Characters only. This seems to help accomplish that goal on three fronts: 1) It prevents Magic: 7 characters from leaving Chargen which, to my admittedly kneejerk reaction, seem problematic. 2) It allows some initial min/maxing in favor of the Mundane, that builds a small but noteworthy advantage. 3) It appears very simple to implement, with players easily gauging the impact, and the quality itself actually has 'With Gamemaster Approval' in the context of its treatment of the Magic Attribute.

Thoughts?

Note: If you vote "indifferent", your proposals are welcome. The criteria of a valid proposal is: Simple to implement, no drastic overhaul, operates inside of existing framework, minimal risk of unintended consequences.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

How would this be handled in cases such as Latent Awakenings and the like?

~Umi

With respect to latent awakenings, I anticipate allowing as close to the number zero as possible.

However, in the event that a player coordinates with staff ahead of time, and selects their priorities to appropriately provide a Magic Attribute, it may be possible to 'delay' that Magic Attribute until such a time as they've RP'd out their awakening.

That would likely need to be handled as a special case exception, and I find that the larger the playerbase, the more important it becomes to make 'special exceptions' follow the 'most restrictive' interpretation of policy, to avoid the perception of favoritism. Staff favoritism is a real poisonous topic, with very toxic effects.

So. Short Answer: It would apply to characters who will awaken after Chargen because characters who awaken after chargen will chargen as an Awakened Character who doesn't get to enjoy the full benefits of their points until later. This makes it a 'RP' incentive, and not a 'Powergame' incentive.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

I prefer the other proposal currently up on the board. Give essence loss an equivalent magical resistance of some sort. This way, the mages can grow in power, but sam's have an inherent resistance to them (like other complex technological equipment).

Do so many of your players clamber all over themselves wanting to take Exceptional Attribute that limiting it this way is a meaningful way to curb their activity?

What's a Magic 7 character going to do, exactly?

Intiate only eleven times, instead of twelve?

Although, they are still paying for the Quality... but unless the Quality costs more than the cost of your first Initiation (plus the relative value of the side benefit of leaving chargen with an extra point for spellcasting), it would actually end up as a discount.

~Umi

Isn't the balance issue generally thought to be with progression, and not with chargen? Seems to be going after the wrong thing here.

It's probably fine. There are easier ways to get dice, and it's not actually equivalent to Initiation.

True, you don't get a metamagic.

So it roughly balances out in that regard, but I'd still need to see the cost. How exactly are Positive Qualities handled in SR5? That may have been answered in another thread, if so toss me a link please.

~Umi

So I think I understand what you are trying to say, but I have a couple issues.

1. How does a rule about character creation help balance characters over a campaign?

2. Exceptional Attribute can only apply to Physical and Mental attributes, not special. So you can't have a started character with a 7 magic either way.

It is explicitly permitted, in SR5, to apply Exceptional Attribute to Magic or Resonance.

If it is really an issue, then just house rule it that it only applies to the 'normal' stats and leave Magic and Resonance out.

In any event, the rules say that this quality is subject to gamemaster approval.

In one of the previews, it said that a character with this paid 14 Karma for the Quality. (Preview 3, page 64, Rob the street samurai)

Characters pay for special attributes from the points in their Metatype priority and starting Karma. Awakened chracters get more Magic points from their Magic priority. Starting with a Magic of 7 means sacrificing Edge except in the following cases:

An awakened human:

Metatype A, Magic B (1 special attribute point wasted)
Metatype A, Magic C
Metatype B, Magic A (1 special attribute point wasted)

An awakened Elf:

Metatype A, Magic B
Metatype B, Magic A

All other possible ways of getting Magic 7 at chargen (that I know about) incur an Edge cost, which is measurable in Karma. So the total cost so far is 14 Karma plus the Karma cost of getting your Edge back to where it would be had you not chosen to do this. I'm not going to go through the chart to do this now for every possible case, but I think it offsets the benefit of doing this almost entirely if not more so in some cases.

The character is also missing out on the chance to get Lucky, or 14 points of positive qualities at the very least. That's potentially worth 28 Karma in-game.

Not to mention using up your top priority slots to do this.

What have you saved? You're now 35 Karma minus the cost richer at this point. The cost to initiate is not a factor, because my assumption is that a character will pay the 13 Karma for the metamagic in any case. If you don't make that assumption, then it's no metamagic for you while saving 48 Karma minus Edge cost minus positive quality opportunity cost.

Is this really a big deal? I think it would be a mistake to make a character like this. Just initiate as planned and if you really want the extra point, pay the 35 Karma. I don't think it's worth it to sacrifice so much at chargen. What's the best thing in the game you can do with the extra die and indirect spell damage point, or spell/spirit/enchanting Force maximum?

I really doubt that fixes the cyberware nerfs. Actually working on those nerfs instead of somehow introducing other mechanisms that cause more butterfly effects within the rules might be a better way to go.

While on the subject of initiation, is this an option available at chargen to at least Init lvl 1?

How about a "Rooted Soul" Quality (mundanes only) for an Essence of 7 (I do not know anything about "costs" yet advancement vs chargenwise to attach a "price tag" to this). That would be waaay more valuable as option for Samurai/ Cyberd Characters unnerfing them a little in the short and long run.



Some of the thinking, If I did get this right, also wants to prohibit magical characters from going exceptional attribute on any drain resistance attribute. Going to Magic 7 in Chargen might not be as interesting point wise as to rack my elven shamanic social mystic adepts (aka the p0*nomancer) Charisma to 9 (assuming natural attribute values stayed the same). Which in Karma (old rules) would have cost me 45 kp just to get from 8 to 9 in addition to the exceptional attribute. In Chargen it would cost me 1 attribute point more plus the exceptional attribute cost. The diminishing returns of that ONE die at this price not figured in of course.

Again I would look at Power Focus cost (and functionality in 5th) in relation to the cost of exceptional attribute and magic 7, when the price is that steep, its the players choice to pay up for realizing his or her concept.

love,
Sunshine

It is. The motivation was that progression advantages is hard coded into the system, and so the less intrusive means of addressing it is pushing back the point at which mundanes are surpassed by providing an additional place to min/max. Furthering the 'head start' that Mundanes receive, in addition to removing a location where Awakened Characters may min/max.

Definitely open to alternatives.



For groups concerned with cyberware, working on that cyberware to modify it is likely the way they'll go. Unfortunately, I'm not clear that this can be done in a non-intrusive manner that is not somewhat arbitrary and/or heavy-handed.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Shadowrun doesn't need classes, and de facto this would make the streetsam a class. Also, it would boost technomancers unnecessarily. Though I can see a return of the Streetsam qualities from Way of the Samurai with the Cyber supplement (or 5E's Way-of PDF supplements maybe) to somehow alleviate the damage done to cybered characters by removing the halve-the-lower-rule.

Just reintroduce the halve-the-lower-rule, and you should be set. If necessary to rebalance, use SR4 essence cost, though from what we've seen so far, there is no big change there. Hey, you can even do this Way-of-the-Samurai style:

Augmented Character
Cost: 10 Karma
Prerequisites: Cyberware and bioware essence cost must total at least 5, and essence cost of either must total at least 1.
Description: Characters with this quality calculate the Essence Cost of bioware and cyberware implants (not nano- or geneware) as follows: Cyberware and bioware essence cost is tracked separately. Only the higher of the two totals deducts from Essence in full, with the other deducting at half. For example, if a character has an Essence loss of 1.5 from cyberware and 2.5 from bioware, then the character’s Essence is 6 – 2.5 (full bioware) – 0.75 (half cyberware), or 2.75.

While this makes augmented characters more expensive at chargen, at least it un-gimps them somewhat.

One of the primary reasons that that appears attractive to me is that it allows the Samurai to gain a bit of vertical parity through karma expenditure. That said, I'd be concerned about how it interacts with the Cyberware/Bioware prices that I'm assuming have been already been fine tuned based on internal play tests.

Is the intent that it operates on base essence costs? I.E, prior to being modified by Alpha/Beta/Delta modifiers?

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

It is operating after Essence modifiers from ware, it is the net total cost. Chosen like that because it was that way in SR4, and the lack of this rule makes cyberware much, much less attractive than it was in SR4 (where this was standard for all implants). As a quality, there's the bonus that it cannot be applied to mages, so cybermages are marginally toned down. Fiddling with requirement essence scores may be in order. Maybe essence/bio cost of at least 2. Also, if bought in-game, it would create an essence hole; that would also need fine tuning I think. It'S a rough sketch, not a finished house rule.

It certainly has a strong foundation. As a quality it is fairly easy to implement. It also has historical precedent, making it fairly intuitive. All in all, I'm inclined to like it. I'm just... You know, apprehensive about being invasive to the core rules, and incurring unintended consequences.

Re: Can't be applied to Mages -- What mechanism prevents a Mage from taking it? Simply the additional Karma cost that disincentivizes taking it?

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Sure, I'm also inclined to read through the actual rules first, though I am not optimistic that things will be balanced out enough to not make cybered characters enormously less viable across the board. It's an idea to re-balance them, and a less invasive one than giving them more essence or making them magic-repellant bricks, or so I'd hope, by tinkering only with essence cost and not with ... everything.


That they need to expend a lot of Essence, yes. Though maybe a clear "cannot be taken by characters with either a Magic or Resonance attribute above 0" would enable it for burnouts.

Controlled, small, finely tuned tinkering is best. Totally agree. And essence is certainly a viable place to operate.



I think a restriction on Magic/Resonance like that, as opposed to a total cost of Cyber/Bio, may be a preferred method. As one of the unfortunate unintended consequences of dealing w/ Samurai is you always beg the question: "Does this just make the CyberMage better, in the end?"

I thought SR 3 addressed this elegantly by allowing Essence + Body Index to reach a 9 point total, prior to introducing over stress. This was the equivalent of 9 points of magic loss before an Awakened Character could say: "Yes, I can do that too. Plus have Magic." And while 9 points of Magic Loss covered by initiation was possible in theory, I always found it was largely impractical enough not to worry about balancing against it.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Unfortunatly, yes. The route to cover this by lowering essence cost notably leads to better cybermages and little else. Which is why I think taking out the 1+1/2 rule is such a big mistake, probably the biggest in what we've seen in the rules so far. Making it dependent on the character not haviing a magic or resonance attribute, on the other hand, takes cybermages down a bit compared to the sam, at least.


Much as it screwed with many characters from SR2, I liked that rule best (with SR4's a close successor). SR3 numbed that down with their Errata later, where bioware only caused 1/2 bioindex Magic loss, and introducing overstress.

Right! And balancing the cyber-mage is a key component of this discussion.

...honestly, that's where a not-insignificant portion of my ire has always resided: The end result of combining the Awakened Character template + Cyberware.

I think your suggestion is pretty sound. Are you seriously considering implementing it in your games?



Interesting. I didn't recall that. Though, it's been the better part of a decade since I really spent much time thinking about Shadowrun. Almost sounds like they were throwing a bone to SR 3 Adepts.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

I remember one group that did the Higher (Cyber or Bio) Ware at full value and the lesser at half value, but they also made magical types/awakened critters lose Double their magic for any essence loss.

So if a normal joe paid 0.4 essence for that set of cyber eyes, a mage would lose the same 0.4 essence but lost 0.8 Magic. It tended to curb the cybermage option a bit and made the threat of burnout from both cyber and drug abuse/similar a real threat.

Yes, very much. If SR5 is implemented at all, it will be with a - priobably refined - version of this.


They definitly were. They also introduced a lot of powerful new options for adepts in late splatbooks like SOTA 2064.

Mmmm. That would definitely curb some of the perverse Cyber incentives that Mages have.



Keep us posted on your final iteration. As well as any insight you have into how it plays out in practice.

Last thought: Would you ever automatically grant the Quality for characters who choose Priority 'E' for Magic/Resonance?

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

That could be considered. It's still a hotfix, and would probably interact badly with 5E's iterations of Sensitive System, so the final form will likely change.

Whether it sees much testing depends on whether, if and how SR5 is implemented with my local guys, of course. Some are quite unenthusiastic about it.

Honestly if you wanted to make something mundane only to fix the balance, it needs to be something a lot more major than a quality few characters ever take to begin with.

We're talking on the level of "Edge is now Mundane only. Magic/Resonance replaces Edge when the character becomes awakened", or something similarly crazy.

Bringing Magic/Resonance to 7 at chargen does take away edge in every case except for humans and elves who use their two highest priorities for metatype and magic, or in one case where humans use their highest priority for metatype, and priority C for Magic, sacrificing all of the magical skill points and either 5 or 2 spells if they want priority B to be something else.

And what does Magic really do in SR5? One more die in the dice pool that, if it hits, just adds to drain anyway, assuming they cast a high enough force to make it matter. One more point of base damage on Indirect spells. One more success allowed before the drain becomes physical. Two higher maximum spell Force, probably the same for Conjuring and Enchanting. Maybe something to do with active foci. Another Power point for Adepts. (Those last two would be nice, actually.)

And look at what it costs on top of that. 14 points of positive quality. No thanks, unless I see something in the rules to make it worth it. All that to save a whopping 35 Karma, assuming it will still cost 5 x new rating. (Which I haven't seen confirmed yet.)

So far, it looks like drain minimization is where the real power in this edition lies. With a 30 dice pool for doing magical things, you can expect about 10 successes assuming the Force you're dealing with allows them all. And then your drain, which can't be mitigated by anything other than your natural healing, will really hurt. But who am I kidding? Who's going to get 30 dice? 7 Magic + 7 spell focus + 12 skill + 2 specialization + 2 mentor spirit = 30 dice. Oh right, you could spend your probably reduced edge too if you want to actually die from drain.

That would be pretty crazy. I'd be concerned about unintended consequences with something like that. The design goal is something with a small footprint in the rules, that doesn't dramatically impact the game and is more of a nudge in the right direction.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Nothing 'small footprint' is going to rebalance the mess that has been made of street sam vs mage balance over the last few editions.

If you're looking to give augmented characters some means of achieving vertical Karma parity with Awakened characters.... You're probably SOL, unless you bust out the military hardware and let the street sams run around in the equivalent of powered armor with an Ares Thunderstruck modified for burst fire in their arms and an LMG turret-mounted over their shoulder. And even then, you'd need to come up with a way for them to dispense horrible murderdeath onto spirits and such, perhaps by letting that Thunderstruck fire a chunk of magically-active iron that is substandard as a projectile against mundane targets but counts as damage from a magical source.

If you want to come up with something that might make street sams a more attractive option... My knee-jerk reaction is to let them spend Karma to "buy off" the essence impact of augmentations. Explain it as the 'ware becoming more holistically a whole part of themselves over time. But, it has a catch attached to it. The Essence price of any 'ware so bought off is also deducted permanently from the character's Magic or Resonance rating, and automatically rounds up to the next whole point. This doesn't affect the street samurai, the gun bunny, the rigger or the hacker, because they don't have a Magic or Resonance rating. However, it will be a big blow to the Wizard/Technomancer who thinks they'll just load up with .99 Essence worth of the best 'ware and then buy it off - each item they buy off will raise their Essence by its value, but will permanently reduce their Magic by 1. It will be a definitely not-worth-it trade-off to any magician or technomancer, without coming outright and saying "you can't do it because we said so;" the option will still be there, if for some reason they want to do so. They just won't want to unless they've initiated a lot, want to buy down their essence loss for some reason, and are willing to eat the hits to their Magic. (Let their metamagics/equivalents remain unaffected, don't be completely heartless.)

This will give Augmented characters license to expand horizontally using Karma instead of just nuyen. So sure, when you need something a given magician specializes in, it's hard to beat him, but when you need something odd done, call in the goofball who has as much cyber in him as Adam Jensen.

If this is for a MU*, you might also consider allowing this only for 'ware that's been in a character's body for a given amount of real time or game time equal to a given amount of, like six months to a year. So sure, you could get your old alphaware Wired Reflexes 2 ripped out and install the Delta Wired 3 for less Essence cost, letting you buy more 'ware to put in there, or you could buy off your trusty reliable Wired 2's essence impact off completely for Karma, letting you get something shinier and new with the Essence and nuyen you just saved.

It would also make people with full cyberlimbs and a cybertorso an actually-useful option. I'd let that be a chargen option-quality for those specific types of cyber.

Interesting suggestion. I like the spirit of where it's coming from. And building in a mechanism that makes it impractical for Awakened characters gives it a more targeted effect.

May be a bit heavy handed, though. That isn't an insignificant change.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

No it isn't an insignificant change, and I'm not sure what the proper pricing on it should be, either. Maybe 10, 15, or 20x the essence cost of the implant.


But you're not going to change a significant problem with an insignificant change to the system, and you don't want to introduce a mechanic that would let mundanes buy more Essence without the Awakened do so as well, as they will be saying "Well, why can't I do that?" This lets you restore Essence lost to augmentations, without buying more than your original grand total, which would be of too much interest to unaugmented magicians.

Another implementation might be to not restore the lost essence, but convert the karma-integrated aug's essence cost into essence hole. You could then gain that essence back normally, if you wanted to spend the time and nuyen on rejuvenation therapy. And, of course, retain the loss to special attributes for doing this, because magic/resonance does not play well with cyber, and convincing your aura to fill those pieces of metal and alien flesh and make them a full part of yourself is gonna take some sacrificing.

If you wanted to be less than outright evil to the magicians/TMs and such, you might let them track their special attribute by percent, and while it would functionally fall to the next lowest integer immediately, they could then use the remainder to buy off other low-impact augs.
Example: Sally Shadowmage has Essence 5, Magic 6, and has initiated once. She has a cybereyes basic system rating 4 (.5 essence) and a cyberears basic system Rating 4 (.5 essence) and thinks it's about damn time she got a datajack to boot. If she just bought a datajack, her Essence would drop to 4.9, dropping her effective Magic to 5. Alternatively, she could buy off, with Karma, the essence impact of her cybereyes basic system. Doing this would penalize her magic attribute by .5, making it 5.5 and lowering its effective rating to 5, but the Metamagic she learned for having initiated would remain intact, and it would leave her with an essence hole of .5 to play with. It would also let her buy off her Cyberears at the same time, or at a later date, giving her an essence hole of 1 to play with, penalizing her magic by another .5, to the whole integer 5. Under my original proposal, her first buy-off would cost her 1 whole point of magic, and the second would cost her another, leaving her at Magic 4, despite having only reclaimed one whole point of Essence with which she could then buy Magic back up with yet more Karma, or install yet more augmentations. It's clearly not a worthwhile trade-off, as she'd have to buy back up to 5.

But again, that depends on how much you want to support the "Magician with one point worth of augs" concept, since the whole point of having cyberware eat your soul is to prevent the Awakened from also being street samurai or super-riggers and rendering the mundane characters superflous. That said, even if you go with the friendlier option of the second, if the magician is spending Karma out of his ears to mitigate the effects of getting ware, he's not Initiating, or buying more spells or binding foci or whatever.

You could also just go with a bit of Because We Said So and simply make doing this cost the Awakened more Karma than the Mundane. This would also allow you some leeway to, for instance, charge the Emerged more than the Mundane, but less than the Awakened, because let's face it, technomancy, while great, is not as universally-useful as magic.

Right. That's the central objection.

Which is also why I was curious if there had been a karma curve modeled during development at which it was clear that at specific karma thresholds, awakened characters pulled ahead. And also where on that curve they were designed to have rough parity.

July 11th needs to hurry up and get here, so I can start ripping through this core book in all its PDF glory.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Due to a last minute change, you only get to preorder your PDF on the 11th. The actual release of the PDF is to be 1 week before the hardcopy comes out.


Just kidding


heh, pretty funny, eh Wired_SR_AEGIS?

*schnick*

Wired? Um... where did that extendable baton come from?

*tap* *tap*

Ha ha .. very funny .. we get it.. I made funny .. now you making funny right?

*tap* *tap*

Wired??

WIRED???

<fade to black with several crunchy sound effects in background>

You should have hacked his baton. He'd have lost all the boni from it if you had bricked it

HA! Oh man, you totally got me.

...my jaw was hitting the floor, and my eyes were widening while I prepared to groan in anguish.

Hehehehe.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS