I was talking with one of my GMs tonight. He was helping me roll up a Shadowrun 4a character since he played and GM'd it for a long time and we got into a disagreement over Essence.


My point of view was that scraping the bottom of your Essence Barrel means you're the next best thing to a Borg Drone. You become less and less (meta)human as you have parts ripped out and replaced and it effects you even if the game crunch doesn't support that.

His stance was that since it applies no mechanical penalties to social skills, charisma, etc. that there was no penalty for having next to no Essence. You're basically the same person just with more hardware. (Yes there are penalties to things but in the context of this discussion they don't count.)



Does anyone have sources to answer this? The game book was markedly unhelpful.

Compared to SR4, SR5 & SR3 have a lot more involvement in game mechanics than just how much 'ware you can shove into you're body or how penalized a spellcaster's Heal spell is.

I consider that Essence is the soul of the character, tough the explanation variates in the books.

The soul idea made the most sense to me.

It's a mechanic designed to limit ware, particularly for awakened/emerged characters.

In SR4, you suffer no adverse effects (besides penalties to healing checks) for having low essence unless you take certain negative qualities.

Here's a first-hand account.

Short answer: Your GM is right.
The lack of rules for this situation means that RAW, you can go down to 0,1 and never have any issues relating to nice things like puppies, ice cream or cotton candy.

This being said: There are rules, if you want them. You can pick up cyberpsychosis in a variety of flavours (in the form of fun mental and health issues) from the Augmentation book and / or use the cyberpsychosis optional rule there. Even then, it's pretty tame as a negative quality, and something you can easily avoid. The rules are on p. 21, Augmentation, if you're interested.
You can also be a good roleplayer and just say that your character relates less and less to his fellow humans, the more meat he sheds. There are bound to be effects if you're able to kill someone with a flick of the wrist, before they can even react. You'll probably feel superior, self-assured, and maybe even a bit more inclined to use violence to solve problems. After all, when you're a hammer (not Captain Hammer, this would be inappropriate ), every issue looks like nails. There doesn't need to be a roll for this kind of behaviour. You can just say that this is how you play your character.
On the other hand, you're also completely free to just state that your character received counseling to cope with his loss of essence, and suffers no adverse effects at all.

Now to your original question "What is essence, exactly": There is no exactly, although none of the previous posters are wrong (even though I'd debate the soul bit, not being someone who believes in this kind of thing).

Different editions have handled it differently, but here's my explanation:
Essence is not the soul. Essence is not just a mechanic. Essence is, in essence, Essence. There's a reason why there is no other word for it, because Essence is its own distinct thing. It is a measure of a thing that interacts with your body and the manasphere. If you lose too much of it, your body's connection to the manasphere breaks and you die. That's as specific as my explanation gets, because in my eyes it's not a graspable thing, just something where the limits are clear (although they can, in the case of cyber zombies, still be broken). That's also why it gets harder and harder to heal a body magically the lower its Essence score is.
Furthermore, in my opinion, Essence does not have anything to do with how you interact with the world around you or skews your perception of it, that's what particular implants are responsible for: A cyberlogician will tend to calculate odds and make decisions based on this and may come across as aloof, or outright terrifyingly ruthless; a gillette or razorboy will threaten with spikes of built-in chrome, because they know they're a weapon and can cut anyone they disagree with. Active boosters make people twitchy, because they are constantly on adrenaline, and so on.

Also remember:
The more penalties you assign to augmented characters, the more magic/adept run you will see.

To be counteracted by the prevalence of background counts.

That argument pops up so often and i have yet to see it actually being used.
Nobody has problems with loading more and more problems on augmented characters, but oh no, not the magic ones, because they paid points for that!

It does become quite an arms race, as soon as incompetent GMs realize that magic PCs are somewhat heavier hitters.
Seen it happen multiple times.
Of course, it's only a problem if you start penalizing cybered characters in the first place and don't know how to handle them wizards

I don't do either but the other guy that runs our games dislikes awakened characters.

Actually, Bannock is right. But I found it more comfortable to link that with a soul. It's a concept easy to understand. I don't even need to believe in soul (it's just a game paradygm-I don't believe in magic neither):

e.g.: A cyberzomby is a soulless killer.


Actually, at the origin, every cyber-modification made you less human hence street samourais. They had a bushido-code to keep a human behavior.

With time, it faded more and more as Transhumanism became the new anticipation model.

I guess it's coming back in 5th because the autors want this edition going back to it's Cyberpunk roots.

They aren't soulless killers just soul impaired life disposal technicians .

Shadowrun goes to great lengths to keep the term soul of of the game.
Well, not so mcuh anymore in SR5.

Whether there's a soul or not, there's some kind of astral energy and some amount of physical matter involved. The way I've read it is to say Essence is what binds the two.

I ran a mage with Astral Hazing. I beat my GM to that arms race - I've never encountered BC higher than my own character.

+10 internets to you, sir. Hatchetman's tale is what made Cybertechnology my favorite Shadowrun book. Possibly my favorite book in any RPG.

I detect a note of bitterness there. Sorry to see it.

I played a Free Spirit PC in Los Angeles. Its Force went up and down like a yo-yo. Headed to its home plane or out to the desert regularly just to feel whole for a while.

Now, don't laugh too hard, I'm sending an adept to Mars. Near as I can tell, he will never see his full Magic again, unless he returns to Earth. Where he is likely to be murdered by the syndicate that took a disliking to him.

What do you call a rocket with 100 Lawyer Adepts on a one way trip to Mars?

A good start.

@pbangarth
yeah, slightly bitter about that, as i love my truck sized ammounts of metal held together with a bit of biomass . .

and no, i won't laugh at that at all.
if he knows what he is getting into, he only has himself to blame, and if he actually CAN get his magic to work up there, it might be a force multiplier to be reckoned with, seeing how there is no real way to have magical security up there . .

You'd just need a LOT of plant life in that Martian base in order to see some magical ability. Hope he doesn't have astral perception and doesn't try and use it.

Most Adepts I've seen have about 1-2 points of Bioware for Initiative and attributes, and would be mostly fine.

Essence is not your soul, but a measure of how strongly your soul/spirit/karma/... is tied to the physical body. The more the body changes, the weaker the link becomes, until the spirit finally has had it and takes off. What cybermancy does is tie this departing spirit forcefully back into the dying body.

We use it. So much so, in fact, that I always design Awakened characters to be able to actually function in a BGC of 2.

Essence is a mechanical limiter to prevent Augmented characters from simply cramming more-and-more augs into their body, and also to prevent Awakened characters from benefiting both from augmentations and magic, without penalty.

They come up with in-character justifications for it, but personally they've always rung a little hollow to me, especially as magical characters can improve perpetually, if not without difficulty, by Initiating. But you have it.

Frankly, I go with it as being "whatever you want to be," especially in 4e. Some guys who go to 1 Essence are only a half-step above a cyberzombie. Other people go to 0.01 Essence and they remain the liveliest, most human life of the party ever. Because quite honestly, Augmented characters get shat upon enough in Shadowrun, especially as compared to Awakened characters, they don't need to be mechanically pidgeonholed into being soulless murder-monkies, too. Transhumanism does not cost you your soul. (Unless you want to play your character that way.)


As for background counts, I don't use them except in really exceptional places. I tend to assume that any magician is capable of overcoming low-level "emotional/civilization life" types of background count, IE the often-stated fact that any city has a permanent BGC of 1 or 2.

If you want to find the kind of background count that penalizes you in my games, you'll either need to go someplace that's been specifically aspected to a tradition which is not yours, or which has been the scene of extraordinary events and emotional outpouring, like the site of a mass murder, or a house of worship, or a funeral home which has been the site of countless grieving parades of people.

Ok, this was extremely helpful. Thanks guys!

How would allowing players to Initiate Essence (for the purposes of augmentations) affect the game? I was thinking of allowing something like it since Awakened characters theoreticaly can increase their power infinitely.

My thinking goes that the more synthetic gubbins you shove into your body, the less you are connected to your soul (the soul is not diminished, but the 'glue' that attaches it to your body is). You become less (meta)human over time because you lose connection to what it means to be (meta)human.

However with enough dedication, introspection, and practicing empathy (Initiating), you can retain a connection with your soul. Naturally this would require GM approval of your roleplaying in-game.

I think this makes sense thematicaly. I'm not a lore buff when it comes to Shadowrun but I get the impression that some people can come to terms with their essence loss over time, and I *think* it would put cybered characters on an equal footing with Awakened in the long term.

Of course I can't actually find anyone near me to play Shadowrun so I can test this.

I always went with the Astral Blueprint theory-- your Essence is a measure of how close your physical body is to your astral blueprints. The closer they are, the easier ti is for mana to flow from the astral to you.


That would be a bad idea. In order for it to work, it'd have to be open to everyone, which means magical characters could take it too. That would mean they could take augmentations, and then restore the lost Essence, with no net hit to Magic. Combine that with normal initiations, and you'll see a lot of cyber mages and bio adepts in short order.

Just make Deltaware accessible.

I think you're underestimating the balance issue, Elfen. One of the big things about magic is that it requires massive karma investment to get better, late game. Cyberware is karma-free but money expensive. Nuyen is a lot easier for an established street mage or adept to come by, and if he can buy off the negative effects, a massively greater return on investment than power points or spells.

Exactly.

Let's say that the karma costs for restoring Essence and Initiating are similar, in that they scale as you buy it up. That means, after a certain point, raising your magic via Initiation will be very expensive. That means, after a certain point, it's better for a mage or adept to get chromed up, and then offset the loss with karma. Effectively, it's the same as buying back their magic, it's just substantially cheaper.

Making deltaware readily available only makes the problem worse. Not on;y do mages have fewer things to spend their money on (which makes saving up even easier), Deltaware means they get even more bang for their buck. I can tell you from past experience, when mages or adepts get cyber, they always get in in .99 Essence increments-- namely, they always get just shy of one Essence worth, so they lose the minimum amount of Magic and can buy it back easily. Deltaware means you can fit even more toys into that space.

This is the main Problem with the SR Balance of Magic versus Ware.
Characters with magic CAN ALSO GET WARE but Characters with ware usually CAN'T GET MAGIC.
Forbid ware for all awakened and call it a day, THEN you can work out how to get more power to the mundanes . .
Because as it stands, because of the first two lines, everything that helps the mundanes WILL ALSO HELP MAGICIANS.

So... make it so that only 'mundanes' can gain back their essence in this manner, and find a fluff reason to explain why Awakened can not? Something metaphysical.

However figuring out a reason is beyond me at this time of night.

Essence is useless.
Your Maximum Magic Rating is Essence+Initiation Grade.
So with Essence 1+ you can still initiate at will and get more magic.
Because Magic rating is specifically NOT docked to Essence x1.5 as the augmented maximum.
Neither is initiation limited to/by the essence attribute.
Magic does. not. have. such game balance safety features built into it.

Imagine if they had made Attributes for mundanes not limited to natural max x1.5.
A samurai could, if he so chose to burn away his complete essence, go and get level 20? (no idea of the SR4 essence/money-costs) muscle augmentation and toner.
Everybody and their grandmother would cry foul, overpowered, nerf please!
not so with magic. because . . reasons . .

Why beat that poor old dead horse some more?
Yeah, you can initiate as much as you want; no, factually you're not doing it because you're not earning enough karma to go past the first initiation levels and increase your magic, even if your campaign lasts for years.

Not likely in the least, but if I ever win one of those lotteries, I'll host at my expense (travel. accommodation and food [NOT booze]) a session in which I will GM and demonstrate just how easy it is to fairly, logically and within the express rules of SR4A challenge and frighten the magicians and the samurai equally.

Until then, saying it can be done is just farting in the wind, isn't it?

You'd have to slap a "game balance" sticker on it, and then hope your players accept it. Really, that's the only way something like that could work.

However, I'm still of the opinion it wouldn't help. Unless your game is amazingly cash-heavy, odds are that the cybered characters will never get a significant upgrade. SR5 Essence costs are too high, which means they need to afford Beta or Delta to get room for new items. Even in past editions of Shadowrun, cyber upgrades were rare-- the only time I saw someone get a hold of Delta Wired-3 was after some heavy-duty roleplay: he basically had to do several life or death runs for them, and even then he had to pay a pretty penny and *still* ended up owing them his soul.

The game balance, prior to SR5 at least, was that cybered characters could front-load better than the Awakened, while magic had a better rate of advancement. Now, that balance is thrown out the window.


The problem with Cynewulf's suggestion is that magic-using characters can pick and choose. If it's cheaper to get cyber and buy back the Essence, they can do that instead of Initiating.

False - I have several Characters with Additional Magic and 3-5 Initiate Grades.
My Original Adept has Magic 11 (he lost 3 points of Magic due to Augmentations over the years) and Grade 8 Initiation.

What happens is that there's a point of diminishing returns. It becomes more efficient to raise other things. Unfortunately, the more choices you have, the more rapidly you gain power, and adepts have all the options.

True...
And while Adepts can be powerful, I have found that Mystic Adepts are the go-to option for diversified power gain.

In SR5, absolutely. They have at least four options for advancement: raise attributes, raise skills, initiate and buy a PP, and raise Magic to buy a PP. I believe that in SR4.5, mystic adepts could only initiate for extra PP, so it slowed them down a lot.

After the errata, they are back to only being able to get a power point by choosing one instead of a metamagic (although that part of the errata is not as clearly worded as it should be). Which is actually more balanced. Forget the old 2 karma cost to start out with power points - the real imbalance is that raising their Magic gave them a point of Magic for awakened skills and a power point.

It's interesting how mystic adepts were implemented. Rather than adepts who can use magical skills, now they are mages (only lacking astral perception/projection) who have the option of supplementing their abilities with a few power points.

Honestly I'd say a mage lacking perception/projection isn't much of a mage. Granted they can spend 1PP to perceive, but to me that says more "Adept who can use spells".

Mmm. I'd say that physmages/mystic adepts have always been one or the other. Since they first appeared in SR2, the effective builds have always either been an adept with a little magical ability, or a mage with a few adept powers. Sure, you could try for an even split, but the huge array of stats and skills required to be effective meant you were stretched too thin.

What's scary now is that they can be both. Since you don't have to split your Magic anymore, you can have full Magic for Awakened skills and full Adept powers, right from the start. Advancement can get interesting, but on the surface it looks like mystic adepts can front-load better than anyone else.

Most of my Mysads have always been effective even splits (previous editions, have yet to make one in SR5), and they have worked out far better than expected. But in SR5, they are indeed crazy broken, in my mind.

This isn't really a drawback, honestly. It just means that mystic adepts build like samurai. Front-load all the adept powers they want, then get magic rating from initiation to diversify their toolset.