Hey guys, so I was toying with the idea of a mixed magic & bio/cyber character and I'm trying to determine if it's viable.
Magic usually rewards purists and I understand there is a steep penalty for losing essence, but is it worth it at some point?
I'm not looking for a burnout, but an awakened character that is perfectly willing to limit their Magic in exchange for technology.

There are some "magical" skills (e.g. Assensning & Astral Combat) that don't depend on the Magic attribute.
I'm wondering if there is some piece of ware so good that it's worth taking some essence loss or is there a group of spells that don't require a Magic rating over 3.

Is it possible to go half-way?

Step 1: Go with Magic at priority D.
Step 2: Buy all the cyber/bio you want, just don't go below 1 essence.
Step 3: Because a character does not completely burn out at a magic rating of zero anymore, and instead burn out when their maximum magic rating hits zero, use the additional Karma for rounding out your character to increase your Magic rating back to where you want it. 5 Karma from 0 to 1, 10 to a rating of 2, 15 to 3, and if you mortgage the farm, you could grab a rating of 4. (There is a reading of the rules that would allow the spending of the special attribute points from the metatype priority to increase the magic rating after the essence loss, but that's probably something you're going to want to run past your GM)

This works best with Adepts, as there's a lot of crossover between the archetypes of the Adept and the Street Samurai and the magic rating itself is usually only used for PPs. Due to how Priority forces expenditure of character creation resources, a cyberadept will tend to come out slightly ahead in an optimization sense, but not so much as to render other approaches obsolete, especially if you wanted to specialize in things one archetype does better than the other.

But as a spellcaster not only is your magic rating much more important to the character than the Adept archetype, but it would also require a lot more of the supporting resources to buy the necessary skills and spells. This might result in the Bard syndrome: able to do a lot of different things... but suck at all of them. However it would still remain plausible if you wanted to roleplay a cybermage.

I've thought about Cerebral Boosters for a hermetic mage, but with the price increase, it might not be affordable.
Synaptic Boosters or Attribute-based mods might be more useful than their magical counterparts.
Ware probably isn't worth it for a conjurer or a flamethrower type caster, but I could see it working for investigators, gunslingers or brawler types.

That's the advantage of going with Magic at D, usually you can put Resources at B or A. However that'd mean the character would be an aspected mage (and maybe a ECDBA spread), which is usually non-optimal, but you would definitely have the nuyen for all the foci you could want.

You might be able to make a Magic priority at C work for a full mage, but you're going to either have crap for attributes or crap for skills, and I'd probably go for a EDCAB spread. If your GM allows gear from SR4 that hasn't been restatted yet for 5th, a trauma dampener would be one of the better investments.

However Cerebral Boosters would at best give a +2 bonus against drain, and then only for hermetics, and the cost in Magic Rating, Nuyen and ultimately priority slots is just a little much when you can increase your attribute priority slot for pretty much the same effect without sacrificing your magic rating.

I don't believe this works the way you think it works, because spending Special Attribute points, buying 'ware, and spending chargen karma are not strictly ordered steps. I'm 100% sure the intended calculation method is: Spend your base Special Attribute points, then add any extra with Karma if you so desire, and THEN subtract as appropriate due to essence loss for any 'ware, because that's the least gimmicky/game-breaking way of doing it.

I realise that this hasn't really been covered in the initial core rulebook for 5th Ed, but I've just been kinda assuming that raising stats that are reduced in some way (like magic) still cost the same to raise as iff they weren't reduced. So for example if your magic is 2 and then you burn it down to zero then raising it back up to 1 should still cost you 15 karma, as if raising it to 3.

I also think you need to consider the exploiting some loophole of 'If I have no magic rating I'm not reducing it with cyberware' is against the intent of the rules and the spirit of the game.

Your Magic rating should (and I know this is technically not RaW in 5th, just 4th ,3rd , 2nd and 1st....) = base magic rating - (6-Essence (rounded up)).

The same logic should also apply to cyberware. If I'm a human with 4 str which is raised to 7 through muscle replacements then raising it to 8 should only cost 25 karma (the cost of raising it from 4 to 5).

Actually, yes, there are strictly ordered steps. Step six is "Spend Your Resources," which includes buying cyberware, which then immediately reduces the character's essence which then can effect the character's magic rating. Buying enough cyber puts the magic rating at zero, which stops the character from being able to use magic but doesn't completely burn out the mage (page 278, first column).

Step seven, which is after the above step which reduces the magic rating, is "Spending Your Left Over Karma" which includes things like raising your magic rating, per the character advancement rules, for a formula of new rating times five.

It doesn't matter what anyone thinks was intended, RAW is important for things like Missions, where you have to assume a new player really only has access to what is literally printed on the page and can't PM Bull for his interpretation.

If you're not doing Missions, do whatever your table agrees to! Just be honest with yourselves that you are making house rules for the good of your own table.

Further, if you go down the path that the steps of character creation aren't strictly ordered steps, that leads to spending special ability points from the metahuman priority to counter magic loss, because if you're ignoring the steps of character creation, anything goes.


Feel free to house rule your own game however your table will come to an agreement on, but I've personally never played this way and as a player, I'd kinda be pissed at that rule if my character took a permanent attribute drain and had to spend additional karma, as that would be a form of double jeopardy. If your table agrees to it, all the more power to you.


I don't think you've really thought through the repercussions of allowing negative attributes, but my personal take is that not having negative attributes and putting a floor of zero on any attribute is to stop silly shenanigans of gaining free Karma in chargen for having a negative magic rating. Note that improving an attribute is new rating times five, not the absolute value of the new rating times five or anything like that. If my new rating is -3, that means it "costs" negative fifteen karma to go from -4 to -3. Under your interpretation, every street sam could put magic at D, load cyber to a zero essence, and then get thirty free karma while maintaining their "mundaneness," and it would also effectively give cybermages a free magic rating (if they dropped their essence to 3) or two (if they dropped their essence to 2). Arguably it's still more karma efficient to take the E magic priority and pump Edge to 5 for a mundane human, but meh.

That said, there's nothing in the rules that even implies a negative attribute is possible, I would also argue that the rules for improving attributes don't take negative attributes into account, and the Decrease Attribute spell puts a floor of zero on the effected attribute rating as well. So whatever "intent of the rules" or "spirit of the game" you argue for is one I believe you are projecting upon the rule set. We go by what's written, however when a table collectively agrees to deviate from it (which is totally fine!), it's a house rule. But that doesn't change what is written.

I re-read the section. I could have sworn I had seen something to that effect in there, but I guess I was wrong. Maybe it was just the examples that had the players spending Karma "out of order" that gave me that impression. Alright, then - I think RAW makes no sense and yes I'm house ruling it as per my post above at my table. I don't think anyone is going to notice because they all think it works that way already

If you check out the Exceptional Attribute example, you will see they are not strictly ordered.

Yeah, the whole spending karma out of order throws a wrench into the whole thing. In most cases, with reasonable GMs and reasonable players, it really isn't a big deal, and there is some sort of compromise for each table. If they intended the steps to be strict they should have had a note at each point where the player creating the example character makes a note to spend karma for this attribute or skill at step seven. Or alternatively, they could have started off the character creation examples with a statement that the steps are more of a guideline and that karma points (or any other points) can be spent at any point, in any order. Going halfsies would cause much twitching on my part, but I suppose if during the attribute step was the only time the player could spend karma to increase attributes, that would make a little bit of sense, but the additional bookkeeping and needing to back track or having the perfect plan to spend said karma prior to ever creating the character would make me scream bloody murder. As a GM, I have no problem with power gaming because I can always drop a bigger flaming mountain on top of the PCs than they can power game their way out of. My only concern is when there's vast differences between individual players and their capability to power game, as that can create spotlight and challenge problems.

Awesome! If everyone at the table is happy, I think it's a job well done

Edited to address RHat without spamming the board:

If you re-read it, it says:

Technically, in the example, the player hasn't spent the karma for the Exceptional Attribute quality yet, but has, with the GM's approval, allocated one of his attribute points to increase his Strength to 11 prior to actually acquiring the quality needed to take it to 11.

Again, mentioning the spending of karma out of order in the example creates the illusion that the steps are... handwavey. And again, with reasonable players and a reasonable GM, it won't be a problem and the table can agree on an interpretation that works for them. But RAW doesn't say what you think it says and if CGL intended different, then this is an element up for errata, but until then RAW is rather clear.