I have 2 quick questions about essence loss that I want to check I'm correct about. These are changes from 4th edition.

1) There is no longer a 50% reduction in essence loss for the least taken type of 'ware (bio or cyber)
2) You can now have second hand cultured bioware (though I don't know why this would work, maybe re-coding)

Cheers

Josh

1) Correct, no more essence discount for the lower half. Many essence prices have changed in addition.

2) "Used" is now it's own category and does not stack with grade. If you pull 'ware out of somebody, it's now "used" grade, regardless of what grade it was before.



-k

Personally I wouldn't allow cultured bioware at used-grade. If the bioware needs to be tailored for you, the only people to take it from would be your clones or your identical twin (And as I am no biologist, I am not even sure if this would work)

Our group hasn't yet started playing in SR5, but in our SR4A game, we talk ooc about which ways the characters want to improve and as gm I try to have contracts for them, that pay enough to achieve this, e.g. buy alpha or beta ware and use the new won essence for more stuff. If your group feels like the restrictions on essence are too harsh, just give them opportunity to upgrade fast. Instead of paying the full price, they could also cash in a favor with a Johnson, so the mage doesn't get the same money and can go crazy with it, but can rather use his favor for finding a lodge, help with initiation or something.
Not that I wouldn't allow a mage to have a lot of money, but once they have everything they need at first sight, my mage players tend to think big.

Yeah I get that, but cultured isn't a grade either. It's a sub category of bioware. It used to state that as it was tailored to the user it couldn't come as 'used' Ware, but that distinction doesn't seem to be in the book anymore.

Not to my knowledge, no

Technically this is right, although I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that if you... *ahem* harvest some deltaware from somebody then put it in someone else that you could just apply the 1.25x multiplyer to the edge cost.