Here's a little something I noticed about Magic and Burnout while reading the book over the weekend. Not sure if this has been spotted or mentioned before, but this is a bit of a gem.

From Shadowrun 4:


While from Shadowrun 5:


So, what does it mean? It means that while in Shadowrun 4 a magic 0 character was a burnout, in SR5 not necessarily. This opens up a number of surprising options, my favourite of which is Sammie takes priority D Adept, takes 5 points of 'ware reducing magic to 0 and max magic to 1. Later he raises magic back to 1 and spends his lovely power point. From there he can initiate to raise again, picking up power points along the way, while being a cybered solo.

I'm sure there are other things you could do with this. I'm thinking of taking D as a hacker and taking 'ware so I can later raise it up again when I have all the ware I want.

Has this been discussed before or am I the first to notice?

I remember someone on the Shadowrun subreddit mentioned that, but I didn't think anything of it at the time. But yeah, your interpretation seems to be correct. Seems really strange, but I guess it makes sense considering the way that the priorities work. Also means vampire attacks and burning out on drugs won't turn you mundane forever, I guess that's nice...

This has been noticed and commented on on the Catalyst forums as well. Thing is this little loophole doesn't apply to technomancers so they can very easily burn out. Not exactly an equal implementation of the rules considering both magic and technomancer share the same priority levels. Personally, I don't like this change. I prefer my magical characters to have to make a choice between magic and tech and that choice shouldn't be "eh, I'll work the magic later, after I cram myself full of tech."

I'd like to point out one other small change:

SR5:


SR4:


The bolded line was removed.

Getting a datajack (0.2 ess) reduces your Magic by 1 immediately. No change.

In SR5, getting a second datajack a month later reduces your Magic by 1, again, immediately. In this way it is entirely possible to have 0 maximum magic and 5 essence.

I think there's a clear argument for "Rules as Intended" vs. "Rules as Written". You can run your game however you like; I'm not docking the mage a full magic point because he took a few weeks between getting his cybereyes and datajack, that's dumb.

-DrZ

Yes I noticed this as well... but at the end of the day this is nothing more than the old 'latent awakening' 5BP quality. But you're spending your priority points for it so it's actually far more costly than just slapping a cheap latent awakening on your heavily cybered SR4 char to leave open that back door of becoming an adept as well.


Generally latent worked best if you became an adept or mystic adept afterwards. Because PP could immediately augment and work off your existing skills. Full mage was the worst because you had none of the skills you'd need to do anything, no spells, no skills to use said spells, and if you did it would be a long time before you could work up say 7 dice to make spellcasting even marginally useful. (for magician types... summoning was about the only way to go for latent awakening... 2 magic and summon a force 4 spirit.... since you only needed your magic and the summoning skill).



So count me in the camp of... yes it is a powergamer trick... but at the end of the day it's a very costly power gamer trick. Priority D magic means you probably dropped priority E into race (human with 3 edg and no magic). Since you needed resources for augments that's going to be at C or higher, and both attributes and skills are high on the 'need' list as well for that char. Without money you're not going to have those augments dropping your magic to 0...

Deleted because of an error in my reading.

I'd just like to point out that "probably a copy and paste error" with regards to certain lines and phrases propagating through editions, despite being contradictory or otherwise in error is the same cop-out being used here: "the writers probably didn't intend for it to be used in [stated] way."

If there are copy-and-paste errors of sections that were not proofed, then how do we simultaneously end up with a section that is clearly copy and pasted, but missing a key line?

I'm not debating that it was a copy/paste error or what have you. I am saying that in my game, I am going to run it the way it was written before, which made sense to me. You're welcome to run your game any way you'd like.

Also, there's 1000 different ways a line could get cut. Maybe the section editor felt it was implied. Maybe another writer was copying from the previous source, but got distracted with it's implication on another rule. Maybe they didn't have the SR4A book open in front of them and they were copying from memory. It doesn't really matter.

1) I'm not in a game, running or playing in any edition, currently.
2) I'm certainly going to agree with you on this, I was simply pointing out the change.

I think the reasoning behind this might have been to deal with things like temporary magic loss. As I recall, in 4E you could be rendered permanently Mundane simply by being hit with a background count if you had low enough Magic to drop to 0 temporarily.

~Umi

One house rule we have is that if you have a Magic of 0 (not Maximum Magic, but Magic), you cannot get cyberware/bioware that would cause your essence to be reduced by another point.

Thus, if I have a 0 magic, and a 4.5 essence, I can get a datajack (.2 essence), no problem. But I could not get wired reflexes (2 essence) because that would cause my essence to drop, which would cause my magic to drop, and since it is at 0, it can't.

This is specifically to avoid the cheesy, "Hey, I know, I'll take magic real low in char gen, but a buttload of cyberware, and after the first 2 points of essence, all the extra bioware/cyberware doesn't actually cost me anything."

Except it does cost them something, at least in SR4.

Let's say you take Magic 1 at chargen, then buy 5 points of cyberware. Your current magic drops to 0 and your Maximum Magic drops to 1. If you start play at this point, you instantly become Mundane, because you have 0 Magic. If you want to buy up to 1 point of Magic at chargen, you in fact have to pay for all 6 points, which then get reduced by 5 because of your Essence loss, which only kicks in after you purchase your total magic value in chargen.

In SR5, however, with burnout now being based on Maximum Magic, this appears to no longer be the case.

~Umi

@Umidori,

That may be the case in 4e, but I never really played that. I am speaking specifically about 5e, which, unless there is a clarification I missed, allows some abuse.

Lobo:
Now get your emotions and feelings out of that and look at the strict cost/benefit of how they do it.

One. They can't dump a priority E on magic. So it has a real cost. It'll cost them 50 or 100k or so in resources... which they sorely need to augment themselves. Or they'll get the resources and be starved for skills/attributes to use them. Both which can turn into huge karma sinks.

Then they need even more karma to buy magic and the things attendant with it. Pretty much everything dealing with magic requires a karma investment with a few exceptions.

Two. At the end of the day this is FAR FAR more costly than spending 5BP on latent awakening as was done under SR4.

In rough terms... this is more like a 15 or 20BP quality compared to SR4 in terms of raw cost.

It's only "abuse" from a viewpoint of previous editions and that it's now different than how you are used to doing it, and different therefore must equal bad. If you are looking at it specifically from the frame of reference to 5th, keep your expectations isolated to 5th.

Like Falconer implied, it's not like a character gets all this magic rating for free. In previous editions, your magic rating started equal to your essence, but in 5th, the character now has to assign some of the resources from character creation itself, into gaining that magic rating. Furthermore, the old editions had a work-around with getting the magic rating down to 1, getting magic 2, then more cyber, then back to magic 2, ad infintium. The new approach just cuts down on the number crunching. Further, to declare abuse, you've got to show that this option is so efficient as a path to power, as to make the other options so sub-optimal as a person would have to be crazy to not pursue the cyberadept build that this change makes possible.

Go make three characters, straight from chargen: one human adept, one human sam, one human cyberadept. Do this while focusing on the same capabilities/skill set to have all three characters fulfilling the same role within the team. Then compare and contrast with the actual results, because it is only then can you make any valid declarations rather than a knee-jerk (over)reaction.

That real cost may be reducing Metatype from D to E. Just saying.

But that's still two points of Edge - just for the ability to spend karma raise Magic to one later on, then have to initiate in order to get it to two or higher. I don't think it's an insignificant opportunity cost, balance-wise.

In which case you're dealing with an edge 3 human... for priority e...

We can actually assign a marginal cost to this. If he had priority d human instead that would be 5 edge instead of 3 (or higher boosted agility & cha if he went with elf, which could be worth more if he maxed out agility and/or charisma).

A marginal karma value of 45 karma. (20 + 25 karma for the 4th & 5th points of edge under a karma system or were to try and raise the attribute later after gameplay started). Compare to +75 karma value for the 7th & 8th point of charisma & +30 karma for the 6th point of agility, and -25karma 2 points less edge. (total 80 karma, remember only one physical/mental attribute can be max out of chargen).



So the argument that the character is getting magic on the cheap ignores the opportunity costs... he's actually paying a huge amount of 'karma' for that 'cheap' magic. Buying back that first point of magic is costing him *50* karma (5 for mag 0->1, 45 in lost attributes he otherwise could have had instead... ignoring the 'lost' points of magic 2 -> 1 -> 0).

Again if this was SR4. He'd pay 5BP (or 10 karma) for 'latent awakening' and that would be the end of it. His first point of magic would come with a few strings and 10 or 20 karma debt if he came out of latent with mystic adept or full magician instead of adept.

I agree with Falconer, it isn't a 'free' option. The character I considered doing this for in the end didn't, mostly for story reasons but also because 2 edge now is better than 1 magic later.

Also, I noticed this while looking at the option dropping metatype priority from D to E as mentioned above. Another look at the table shows that in any other situation this is a wholly bad idea and really crappy deal.