Hope you guys aren´t getting sick of me yet.

Do the Expenable foci refresh at the beginning of a CT?

If so, what´s the big difference between the two types?

Topper

The big difference is that expendable foci never refresh, because they work just once. Using an expendable focus, ermmm, expends it - it is similar to drinking a magic potion.

The result is, expandable foci are hardly ever worth it, and should be used only when you *really* need those extra dice - like using that Manipulation expendable focus to cast your last fireball, or using a Healing focus to help your seriously wounded friend.

And remember that an expendable focus is created for a category of spells, e.g. Manipulation spells, so an expendalble Manipulation focus can be used for any Manipulation spell, be it Shapechange of Fireball.

Expendable foci don't need any Karma for bonding, so they are a simple way to trade nuyen for extra dice (1500 for 1) for a Spell for any magician.

Successful conjuring of an Elemental can add slightly cheaper dice (1000 for 1), but not for Health Spells, and only for hermetic mages.

Other ways of adding dice to spells generally cost Karma and are reusable.

Occasionally a Samurai in our group will shell out the nuyen for an Expendable focus to be used in healing him, particularly if the player knows that the magician has enough Karma pool to reroll twice. He figures it'll reduce or eliminate hospital costs.

Whenever I play a spellcaster I like to have two on me. One health and one either manipulation or combat. You hope you never need them, but if you do, you're darn glad you have them!

The cheapest way is to create your own conjuring materials (you can buy the raw herbal materials and save that much more time) with Talismongering and then conjuring an elemental. It can be as cheap as 50 nuyen or less per "Karma" that way..