Sure it did. He got to be the star for a little while with his OP character, and now will be petitioning his GM to let him build his new one with the same karma total as the rest of the group so that he isn't left out.

Knowing the munchkin mindset is easy.

I'm not convinced that Infected qualities are Positive Qualities. They're explicitly referred to as "Infected qualities" (pg. 76, Runner's Companion, Building An Infected Character, second sentence). Later it states that these qualities do not count towards the limit of Positive Qualities, but that doesn't mean that it is a Positive Quality itself.

If that's the case, then there would be no need to pay it off if you received it in gameplay.

It's also fairly easy to stomp on and block, if you want to as a GM.

I generally don't bother. Munchkins just don't get invited back to play. My free time is too rare to want to GM for people who are actively trying to wreck the game.

Where exactly did you get the idea I was saying anything different?

I was replying to some of the other posters talking about the Karma costs, although some of them might have been assuming a voluntary target.

I ran a Nosferatu in a game at one point. Dropping 150BP at character creation HURTS in a way that is extremely hard to recover from. At best he was a mediocre mage with an unlimited Compulsion and Influence power, which you can essentially duplicate with spells. I spent the entire game trying my best to catch up to the rest of the players in terms of versatility, but starting Nosferatu just dont have it. You have enough points left over for pretty much ONE area of expertise, not multiple like the rest of characters.

In terms of Essence Drain to boost attributes, especially magic: The notes here about casting Force(uber) spells brings about massive drain tests which you just cant pass are absolutely true. So the magic boost is really just about getting more dice to cast the spells you already have at reasonable Force. And while we're at it: have any of you actually looked at how long it actually takes to drain essence? IIRC Its a one minute per attempt, and you're going to have a good chance to fail against a target with essence 6 maybe more than once. Getting juiced up to Essence 18 so you can boost your magic by 9 temporarily for 12 hours is going to take a minimum of 3 victims and a serious amount of time that you probably wont have on any time sensitive run where it would make a difference.

The only thing I had going for me was Regeneration and 2 initiative passes without casting a spell. Having 7 Will and 7 Logic didnt really help me much, when everything else was pretty much Nosferatu racial minimums thanks to not having any points left over.

I do wonder how the "special" characters will be handled in this edition and if they, again, will either be minmax heavens (changlings) or extremly gimped (Drakes, many infected,...)

Actually draining Essence is an extended test that takes Charisma + Magic (10 – target’s Essence, 1 minute). So it's actually potentially longer than 1 minute per point. Also, this little requirement rgd. spending drained Essence to boost an Attribute: "...a critter that has drained Essence within the past hour can siphon the stolen life force into other attributes..." Combined with the time requirement to drain essence to begin with, you basically have 1 hour to drain all the essence you need to convert into an attribute boost. Just how fast can you drain that Essence in practice? If you have 12 dice, you ought to get 4 hits per roll. If the victim has an Essence of 6, you can get that first point of Essence within the first minute. But you'll statistically need two minutes for the second point. Technically you can then spend the two drained Essence points and convert them into a further point of Magic, giving you 1/3 success more on the roll. But for that 3rd point of Essence, you need 6 hits, and then 7 for the 4th one, and som on. Draining someone completely will statistically take you around 12 minutes, depending on modifiers, Edge use, and general luck of the dice. You can do it in 6 min. if you're really good and lucky, and you could spend as much as 39 minutes, if you only get a single hit per attempt. Basically, this isn't something that you are doing on the fly because you happen to need Essence here and now. It's something you need to plan out and set up. Especially since you also need the victim to at once subdued into helplessness, and at the same time be exibiting strong emotions, regardless of whether they be positive (i.e. love or lust) or negative ones (i.e. fear or hatred).

Infected made during character generation are NOT powerhouses, and the ability to boost an attribute is not all that powerful in practice (YMMV, depending on the table in question).

I was able to be good at around four things, 20+ dice on my Compulsion and Influence powers not included. It just really matters how good you are personally at optimization.

For example, instead of boosting your mental stats to 7, you take them to 4 or 5 and then get the Increase spells for them. When you've got your spells up you'll be close to (if not at) the Augmented Maximum, and if you know your dicepool modifiers well enough you can adjust for being -2 to -4 to all dicepools and still be operable (I know I did).


An alternate reading of the Essence Drain ability is that, if you drained Essence at all in the last hour, you can use the ability. The English language is ambiguous enough to allow for that interpretation as well.

Agreed on the ambiguity thing with regards to the English language in general. Normally I'd expect the reference to "lifeforce" to reference back to the "Essence" that was drained within the past hour, but though I'd call the alternative interpretation you suggest..."stretching it", I do see what you mean. But then again, I'm not a native English speaker, so perhaps your interpretation is less of a stretch than it might be in my native tongue.

I prefer the alternate reading myself, as it makes Special Infected more suitably terrifying. My players tend not to use them, as they understand that if they bring something to the table it opens myself up to those options as well, and they all know I can optimize in 4th Ed significantly better than they can. It works almost like a "Mutually Assured Destruction" option.

I suck at optimization.

Considering the Increase line of spells and having mental stats at 4 or 5 instead: The net gain is 0 while you maintain those, for those particular attributes in question, but the -2 or -4 to all the other actions you take will probably hurt.

In my case, my Nosferatu mage was probably bad because I tried to be a mage first, and have a couple of extra powers from being a nosferatu. If I tried to be the best nosferatu I could be (build towards using the powers best), I'd have probably done much better.

No, going from 8 Drain dice to 24 is more than a net 0 gain.

And, like I said, it's easy to mitigate two spells active. I was working fine through three to five spells active.