I'm looking for simple to implement house rules that increase the viability of Samurai, with minimal unintended consequences.

Historically, Wired Reflexes and the Adept Improved Reflexes had identical costs. Somewhere along the lines, that changed, lowering Adept Improved reflex costs relative to Wired Reflexes. Would anchoring Wired Reflexes to the new costs of Improved Reflexes make sense as a rule to enhance the viability of Samurai?

It would:

* Create Incentives for Wired Reflexes over Synaptic Accelerators
* Improve a historic staple of Samurai Core Builds
* Bring basic Samurai building blocks in line w/ their Awakened Counterparts
* Be easy to implement, and feel intuitive

EDIT: Hard numbers for this proposal are as follows: Move Wired Reflexes from a Cost of 2, 3, 5 to instead match Improved Reflex costs of 1.5, 2.5, 3.5

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Decrease the essence cost, or allow betaware at start(anyone with hospital access can get it, including people with docwagon), and allow adapsin at the start.

Should do the trick.

Or perhaps re-calculate wired reflexes cost compared to move-by-wire minus the extras.

The reason I like the essence decrease route is because there's already like years of historical precedence for the two of those items (Cyberware and Physical Adept Power) having identical costs.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Your statement that historically the cost of adept reflexes and wireless reflexes being same in cost is not entirely accurate.

Back in SR2, Adepts actually paid MORE for the abilities at time. They followed a 1/4/6 progression versus the sammie's 2/3/5. so they got the first boost cheaper but paid dearly afterwards.

Plus I would expect some errata to come out about the adapt level 3 being actually 4.5 and not the 3.5. seeing as the other two abilities are only 0.5 below the others. To allow the best version get such a low price seems suspect.

So do not go chomping at the bit hoping to shave off 1.5 essence by campaigning for a probable error (gasp.... an error HERE.. surely I jest) just yet.

Good catch, and point taken. Years of historical precedence of Wires having effectively an equal to-or-lesser cost.



That price isn't just a carry over from SR4A?

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

It is carrying over... Sendaz is actually wrong on that. In SR4A, Increased Reflexes cost 1.5, 2.5, 4 in pp.
Thanks

So carrying over with a slight improvement in this edition, then.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

yep.. damn my cheapness in not getting SR4A

Personally, I believe the Nuyen price on Wires need to be drastically decreased to create an incentive to use them. I'm against lowering the essence cost, with higher grade ware being more readily available (just not at chargen, suck it up already!).



Do note that Adepts do not have the option of purchasing Delta grade powers, and increasing their attributes is prohibitively expensive compared to Ware.

Just revise the PP cost upwards. The essence cost and availability of wired is already balanced against the bioware option to restrict augmented characters to a maximum +2d6 initiative boost in character creation, the same should apply to Adepts to keep things level.

Not really quite true... With Geasa and Way Discounts (Assuming they cross over to 5th, and I expect that they will), you can potentially net a 50% savings on PP Costs.

Adepts can buy Qi foci and gain PP from initiations. They don't ONLY improve from boosting magic.

And frankly, given the new standardized monetary rewards? I'd bet a character will be able to afford boosting their magic several points long before getting any delta ware.

No they are not, they aren't balnced in the slightest. Any time cyber is more than x2 the essence cost the balnce is way way off. Bioware is not only cheaper in essence it is also much harder to detect making it actually far more powerful than its relatively msall extra cost would indicate. Maybe if cyber was 2 to 3 times more powerful(which would make a lot of sense as machine has fewer limits) then it could justify the ridic increase in essence cost, but as is youd have to epic suck at optimization to ever take wired reflexes in SR5.

Both of which are optional rules, and not available in Shadowrun missions. Furthermore, even the most lenient of DMs I've met will only allow one or the other, not both in combinatio.n



Qi Foci require PPx4 in Rating, and with the new, lowered Focus addiction thresholds (in SR4, it used to be Magic*2, now it's Magic), you're very likely to get addicted. Furthermore, Foci cannot be upgraded, so Awakened will likely save up to buy the biggest Focus they can afford, since they pay Karma to bind these.

If they nerf Improved Reflexes to cost the same as Wired Reflexes, the Adept is in the same boat as the Sam: get Synaptic Boosters. Aka the way it was in SR4. I agree the monetary rewards as written are too low, but if those get fixed, there's no reason to touch Adepts for now.

I was really looking forward to having Adepts without ware perform as well as the Streetsam out of chargen. SR4 has really made me sick of all those augmented Adepts.

IT actuallly makes a lot more sense to have wired reflexes be cheaper essence-wise than the Adept power is power points-wise. Because technology improves, and yesteryear's betaware is today's bargain bin. In fact, a few other items need essence or nuyen repricing (I'm looking at you, muscle replacements).

We allow both... So there you go, you know someone that allows them in combination.
Not as powerful as it seems, though. Especially if you take a Geas that actually means something (Which we do pay attention to). For me, I take the Geas on my entire power set, and I usually take a Geas that makes sense and matters in play. Can't tell you how often my Oni Ninja broke Geas because he just could not stop everything to perform his 30-Minute long ritual to the Kami, at Dusk twilight, for one reason or another. Of course, it helps to have a character build that can go without the Magic from time to time.

Sure, and magic levels rise which can justify PP cost reductions. On the SR4 boards I said I'd like wired to be 1,2,3 essence. They are not cheaper money wise than the bio version and there only real benefit is if they go wireless and yet they are much more detectable. Heck halve the monetary cost and make them 1,2,3 essence and they are kind of balanced with the bio version.

I could get behind 1/2/3 Essence Costs with SR4A Nuyen Costs. That would indeed make me very happy.

Can Bioware (synaptic booster, in particular) have grades in SR5? It's a bit unclear.

Regardless, no, they wouldn't be balanced at 1 essence in my estimation, as even with the base price of WR1, the deltaware version would be exactly as essence and nuyen-costly as synpatic boosters, but with the stacking advantage added. The Rating 2/3 would be more expensive in Deltaware than the Synpatic Booster in basic grade.

I think I'm going to make them 1.5/2.5/4 with a heavy nuyen discount (20k/50k/100k). That way, Cyberware is cheaper, even in Deltaware, but more expensive in essence (but much less so than before).

I think that Adepts appear to be in a good place right now, for the most part. It really looks like it's possible to play an unaugmented Adept. I fully support that design goal.

The above proposal is not about nerfing Adepts relative to everyone else, it's about improving Samurai relative to everyone else.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Stacking advantage when you blow more essence and money and go wireless vs not detectable by a cyberscanner and available at char gen(only place you have 100,000+ on hand to blow). Synaptic booster still looks better to me.

Yeah pure adepts look decent now. Though I think most combat would still go for muscle toner in the long run. Attributes are just so much better than skills passing up on 4 dice in every agility skill is pretty damn hard. If attribute bost was a free action that would be more viable, at the simple action level it is viable for ranged combat adepts, at complex it just isn;t that viable. Giving up a pass makes it almsot a wash and if I am paying for it I want more than a wash.

Well... it is a simple action, not a complex action, so there's that. Keeps the door open for Ranged Combat Adepts. And since melee combat Adepts have other means of increasing their damage output, they probably won't be as concerned with an Attribute boost.

Which is all probably okay. They've got a number of neat tricks, a number of which are non-duplicated by their Samurai Counterparts, that they can both contribute in similar areas without tripping all over one another.

So yeah, I agree with you. They look decent.

Back to Wires real quick -- My biggest concern here is... Cybermages. What's the impact of lowering Wired Reflexes to match Improved Reflexes. Are we going to see a bunch of Mages walking around with them? Or, given that Synaptic Accelerators are already the more essence friendly solution, is that a non-concern?

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Of course they can...

Our Current Beastly Combat Mage (Magic 6, 6 Initiate Grades) has 3 Points of ware in him. Never seamed all that bad, since he could have done the same thing with Magic for cheaper (and been far more powerful than he currently is. *shrug*

I don't think you know what 'optimization' means. Wired is a tradeoff, yes, but the tradeoff bioware gets is less essence cost for more nuyen cost, and not being able to stack with other forms of reaction enhancement.

On an absolute level, cyberware is capable of being faster than bioware, period. +8 max reaction vs +4.

The drawbacks to it are founded in some really, deeply dumb wireless rules, but those are going to get errata'd anyway.

This is why cyberware needs to be more than twice the price in essence compared to the bioware equivalent when it exist, but at least 3 times cheaper. So that bioware is more costly than delta cyber, but also more essence-saving.

I think better would be having cyberware be cheaper than bioware.

How are some specific ways you would accomplish that?

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

SR4 Did not seem to have that problem on a large scale. Could have gone a little cheaper to be sure, but they were pretty reasonable. Bringing Grades down in cost would have been another thing SR4A could have done (Which SR5 did, though they sent the prices through the roof again on the basic 'ware).

In games I run I will be both lowering the essence cost of wired reflexes to be equal to the PP cost of increased reflexes and lowering the availability of wired reflexes so that both Sammies and Adepts can take level 3 at character creation if they wish.

Will you be eyeballing any price changes? Or maintaining the same price? Also, will Alpha grade Wired 3's be available?

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

I'm null voting because I believe a change to the nuyen cost and availability is more effective for the setting. Sams with less resources are going to tank their ess for wires while sams with more resources are tanking their nuyen for synaptic boosters.

Wired Reflexes probably should give +2 Reaction per level, which would solve just about any problems you can throw at it. Combined with wireless-stacked RE's at rating 3, that would mean a possible +9 Reaction and a huge advantage over Synaptic Boosters or magical enhancement, if you can pay the Essence.

Also it would mean that you could start with WR2 at the non-wireless augmented maximum of +4 Reaction, with RE2 for +6 Reaction +2d6. Compared to the Adept's ability to start with Improved Reflexes 3 (+3 Reaction +3d6), they'd actually be similar in power.

EDIT: I'll add that once you get into super-high-grade stuff, delta WR3 + RE3 still takes up about half of your essence, while delta Synaptic Boosters only take up .75 Ess -- not to mention that you can use a Force 4 Qi focus to carry you from Imp Reflexes 2 to 3, or a Force 8 Qi Focus to carry you from 1 to 3, at a fairly reasonable cost.

That's assuming that foci can exceed rating 6.

There's nothing to indicate that they can't. There's only a limit on the amount of Force and number of foci one Awakened can have bonded at once.

I'm assuming you could have a Force 20 power focus, but it would have an Availability of 80 and no one would ever be able to find one.

Likewise in the creation process the Force + Object Rating sets the threshold, so finding someone who could hit a 22 would pretty well be impossible.

Because of this, I'm guessing that foci of Force 10 and up are impractically difficult to make or acquire, and then you're looking at Availability 30+ or Threshold 12+ to enchant it yourself.

EDIT: It looks like it's an opposed roll instead of a threshold, whoops. But then you count net hits to determine the actual Force, so getting that many net hits on an opposed roll with a Limit of the formula Force (so if you want a Force 20, you roll vs 20+OR, and net hits give you actual Force. You'd have to have some godawful amount of dice to do it.

My guess is that what you describe for the Wired Reflexes will be modeled in the Move By Wire System, much like it has been in the past.

I'm more looking back to the SR3 version of Wired Reflexes, which were just vastly superior to the bioware equivalent. At a huge essence cost.

The only real limitation they had was that Synaptic + Boosted could get +4d6 init (if installed at the same time), while Wired III's were limited to +3d6.

Edit: Though, IIRC, Boosted reflexes offered at most +2 reaction. So +2 Reaction + 4d6 init was 0.5 slower on average than +6 Reaction + 3d6.

Also, seems like this change is fairly well received -- Has anyone built a case for why this change is completely, and fundamentally unnecessary, and why enacting it would be a terrible decision?

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Except boosted could not be combined with synaptic. Or anything else that increased initiative (not certain about +Reaction stuff).

Man & Machine introduced the option of Synaptic Accelerators which, in turn, could be combined with Boosted Reflexes. IIRC, the end result was Reaction +2 w/ a total of 5d6 for initiative. Additionally, this could be combined with Reaction Enhancers for a total of +8 Reaction w/ 5d6 Initiative.

Wired IIIs were natively +6 Reaction, and had a total of 4d6 initiative dice. Stacking Reaction Enhancers increased that to +12 Reaction with 4d6 Initiative dice.

The end result favored Wired IIIs by an average of 0.5 initiative, however they were costly and essence hogs. I believe that Synaptic + Boosted was the more affordable implementation, though it's been so many years that I'm not 100% on that.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

But really, did it matter much when a Sam with A priority on resources had a cool million in Nuyen to spend? I had a hard time spending that much on anything but a decker with a fancy deck.

Well, I believe Adepts should have the speed (=Initiative) advantage, whereas Sams should have the resilience(more Bod/armor)/attribute(higher physical skill DP average across the board) advantage. By taking away the lowered cost of Improved Reflexes, combat Adepts don't have anything where they outshine the Sam.

I never had much trouble spending a cool million.

I'd typically aim to leave Chargen with under 1.0 Essence, and a bit above 3.0 Body Index. Plenty of places to spend cash. Eyes. Ears. Bone Lacing. Reflexes. Suprathyroid. Enhanced Artwinkulcation. Trauma Damper. Muscle Toner. Cerebral Booster.

Maybe a Reflex Recorder or two. And can't forget about the Smartlink. -2 to your TN? Yeesh. The math behind TN reduction made that crazy-good.

Ahhhh, the life of the million nuyen man.



It seems odd that you'd highlight 'higher dicepool' as a Samurai Advantage, when Adepts are the ones that can buy their dice pools up w/ Power Points?

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Well, adepts can buy the pool up for one power, or for a limited time on an ATT with drain afterward. Meanwhile the Sam is generally running around with higher ATTs making all of his pool on average larger.

Yea after checking SR2 and 3, the wording was specific to Wired Reflexes and VCRs (in 2nd), and also that Boosted could not be upgraded. Did not mention +Reaction items or synaptic accelerators.

Mmmmmm. Well, I suppose that I agree that a Samurai may have a larger pool in a general sense. However, there's nothing expressly forbidden about an Adept also taking those augmentations in addition to using their PP to boost skill dice.

So in specific senses, it still seems that an Adept will have the dice pool advantage. In the places they choose to specialize. No?

Also, on the subject of an Adept not having a place to outshine a Samurai -- It seems to me that the place that Adepts outshine Samurai has always been their ability to have limitless advancement through their Magic Attribute, in addition to becoming highly specialized in specific disciplines.

I could certainly be mistaken, but I haven't noticed that Adepts are less able to become superior specialists in SR 5? Is there a skill cap on the number of dice that they may gain from their 'Improved Skill' ability? If so, I must have missed that on my initial reading.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

That is what I meant. The Adept can achieve a higher DP on the few things he specializes in, whereas the Sam will always have medium to high DPs on everything due to augmented attributes.



I'd hate to see Adepts balanced around augmented Adepts. It was that way in 4e, with the results that any halfway optimized adept was always cybered.



I hope that with the new skill cap, the Samurai will have plenty of room for advancement through Karma. Whereas Adepts, TMs and Magicians spend their Karma to initiate/submerge/raise Magic, the Sam will improve his skills/attributes.



The cap is 50% of the base skill rating. E.g. a skill of 4-5 can gain a max of +2, whereas a skill of 12 can gain up to +6.

Right, okay. We're on the same page. I think that the way Attributes work sort of underscores that. For instance, coming from third edition, Muscle Toners are dramatically more effective! No longer just a raise to an attribute, which is of secondary importance, but it raises a huge number of highly practical skills!

So in general terms, the advantage is that the Samurai is pretty handy in a lot of areas. Is probably a little more robust than the Adept.

The Adept can find a few niche areas to focus in that exceed the Samurai's general utility.



I tend to agree. Honestly, one thing I really like about this edition is that Adepts look fairly viable without cyber augmentation. That said, I'd like to point out that the proposed change doesn't negatively impact Adepts. It positively impacts Samurai. And the net result is not the same -- There already exist areas for which (The above discussion about focused vs. general utility) the two are distinguished.

Is your concern that if Wired Reflexes are reduced in essence cost, that Adepts will be incentivized to take them?



Ahh, right-o. Thanks!

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Even in SR3 I felt that the adept's place to shine was in speed and specialization versus the Sam.