Greetings Runners,

I have been away from SR for years. I was a very active player in 1rst and 2nd edition. Now I am returning with new friends and we are relearning the game. Seems that Magic is a wee bit stronger starting out as compared to a new Samurai. Is there a way to bring both on par without nerfing magic?

I was thinking about allowing anyone who wanted to play a tech/hardware based character to have access to a single piece of betaware or similar tier for rigging/decking.

Also I have the core rule book. Do you all have suggestions on must have books you think I should also acquire? I did not want to start out with all the new stuff in books like Grimoire or Chrome but perhaps there is a source book that is really helpful?

Thanks much!

I'd recommend awarding more money per run. That way the Sammie advances faster (since sammies advance by getting cybered).

Run Harder
the 5th Ed Runners Compendium) you get all Metaraces &Variants, more pos & neg qualities, Surgelings and Shapeshifters, new Lifestyles,etc.
Most usefull Book ImO


ImO ...No
but awarding more ¥ helps the Cybered Char a bit
and using Backgroundcount (sparely !!!) hinders the awakened a bit

with aa bit of a Dance
Medicineman

It's Run Faster in English, though Run Harder might be a more direct translation of the German.

Run Hard, Run Fast... Die Hard Die Fast... erh not quite the same is it

For the OP, increasing nuyen awards is probably a good idea, or you could incease starting nuyen by 50-100% - earlier editions of SR had 1 million nuyen as maximum starting amount, and prices were not always higher than in SR5.

However, increasing nuyen will also make it easier for mages to get high force Power Foci, being capped only by Availability (and that ends right after character creation if you have a good Face). And adepts who also uses 'ware will benefit from this, as they can afford expensive low-essence bioware more easily to accompany their adept powers.

If you just want to nerf magic a bit, make initiation more costly or harder to do. Without cheap power points adepts are far more balanced. As it is, it's cheaper for an Adept to get a 7th power point than it is for someone to gain the 7th rank in a skill, much less an attribute. Magicians increasing magic is however expensive.

Does anyone have experience with SR5 and using the recommended awards for nuyen and karma? I have a small slimmer of hope that they actually tested it out and actually made guidelines to keep magic and augmentation sort of equal, without simply having one copy another.

Great replies! The idea of increasing cash is good. The actual players and new and I am still reading all of the core rule book. I wish they laid out the history like they did in 1rst edition. I loved how they laid it out to that point.

I had always thought Adepts were weak but after reviewing the costs of powers per point, if done correctly they can outshoot and out slash a Samurai early on.

Do your groups have adepts in them and do they play well?

Yes, already in SR4 adepts could easily outperform street samurais both early and late, especially if they dipped a bit into 'ware as well. My attempt to fix this for 5th edition is to reintroduce the Physical Adept of old. In essence, adepts can only directly enhance their low-tech skills magic, not firearms or hacking. So they can and will be the best unarmed martial artists, but are outperformed by street samurais with implanted smartlink for things like shooting.

So far in my game the Adept is going for unarmed and blades mostly, but also use longarms (shotguns or rifles) as a secondary weapon. SR5 lends itself better to melee than SR4, yet guns still have the advantage due to being able to take cover and use semi- and full-auto bursts. Too early to say anything about balance.

naaaah,its only that I mix/switch harder and faster (my Girlfriend complains too )
the German Book is called Schattenläufer and thats translated as Shadowrunner
(to be honest I know that by now, but it became a ...Running Gag to voluntarily Mix harder and faster )

I did, thats why I advocate more ¥ and more Karma too
the official English Guidelines are really miserable (or is it miserly....?)
the German Guidelines are directly converted from SR4A so they're a bit better (a short, average Run gets you , maybe,5-6 Karma from the US rules and 6-8 Karma from the German Guidelines )

try to get the 6the Wolrd Almanach
it's a Book from 4A Edition 1/2 History Book and 1/2Atlas.
it's rare and a bit expensive, but it's worth it (ImO) a necessary Book for the enthusiastic SR GM


but that included the Pistolero Adept ,an Epitome of the Adepts ,one of the main Adept Archetypes
and You are nerfing that special type ...

with a harder and faster Dance
Medicineman

Both more nuyen and more karma? That only seems to speed up the power increase in total rather than favoring awakened or not. Unless the point was that awakened are too powerful out of chargen but both nuyen and karma awards even things out? I got the impression it was the other way around. What nuyen awards are in the german version, and why do they not simply translate the work rather than change rules?

As for the pistolero/gunslinger adept, I don't believe it existed in core SR1 and SR2 at least.. maybe not even SR3. I never saw it as an archetype until SR4.
The Adept in SR3 didn't even have a single firearm skill. Sure, they could get improved ability for firearms skill, but no archetype I can see. And yes, I am nerfing the gunslinger archetype because of my experience in SR4 where the adept became a beast compared to what a street samurai would have been. Maybe an overreaction, but I find I don't really NEED that archetype - let the adepts be the spiritual "monk" type and let the sammies be the chrome, blood and bullets type - they don't have that much going for them in the first place.

Background count is defined in Street Grimoire, and it is, IMO, a really important part of balancing things out. For one, it makes sustained spells less reliable (force of all spells is reduced by background count), which hopefully keeps your casters from going all in on magic buffs. For another it puts a penalty on everything magic related (casting, spirit powers, adept rolls that are affected by their powers, etc).

As written, somewhere between a lot and most places would have a background count of some degree or another, and magic types would only reliably get a break in those places where they've bought the Home Ground quality. That is probably excessive (it feels like a bait and switch, as a player, to be told you have one set of numbers, when in reality they are always lower than that). But if enough of the places where the excrement hits the fan have a noticeable background count, the reliability of the mundanes begins to matter more.

The other thing I suggest is liberal use of wards as part of building security. When you work through the math in 5th, teams of weak magicians can pretty easily put up moderate strength wards. This implies that it is entirely reasonable to have most corporate locations (and nicer places in general) have wards over all main entrances and around the most security sensitive areas. These absolutely do not stop mages, but it stops them from easily walking into places all powered up (likewise adepts). Hence it keeps magic from being a way to completely bypass much of the security, which makes breaking in and out and going undetected more of the puzzle that it should be .... and in turn puts more value on stealth, perception, astral perception ..... which means that characters can't be entirely focused on one area and still be effective.

This is all just my experience, from an admittedly limited sample of games.

yes because SR5 Rules are too miserly on both
More ¥ helps more the cybered Chars and more Karma helps both the awakened and the Mundane


I remember them from SR3 but not from the BBB / Corebook


Relax Chummer , it's Your Game
I don't like it when a GM cuts down the possibilities of playing various Chars but its your game and your Rules.
If the Players don't mind than its OK

Hough!
Medicineman

Limiting both awards should equally weaken all sorts of characters then, and is equally viable to giving more, it just depends on what level you want for you game (street, average, prime runner etc.). In my own game the level is below street, so awards have been very low so far (not more than 1000-1500 per runner), as have the challenges. Once I get going, around 10k per person for an average run seems ok to me.
Yup, it's my game. I've been straight with this from the start, and no-one wanted that particular type of character anyway.

More precisely, it's a book from the era when CGL was just short of going belly-up and rushing out product with the sections assigned to freelancers who left over that mess roughly patched over...in short, it's history and mapping is not always canonical

IMO the timelines from the wiki (for whatever reason, it has two) would be more helpful, and free

Again all these replies are very helpful. What I come away with all this is that for someone who does not go the magic route at all will be slightly sub par. I also get the impression that a full cyber, Samurai is not as optimum as an adept that adds some bioware.

I do like the idea that cybered sammies are the 'go to' gun toting, 'get me outta this drek' guys when bullets start flying. I still think the option to acquire a piece of cyberware at beta lvl might make them on par with a min maxed adept/mage 'at start'. I was thinking of offering such if anyone wanted to go that route.

I also feel that the rewards are a bit miserly, but then when I ran fantasy D&D we ran high fantasy.

When I run an RPG I have always decided that when you play in my game if you want to be the superhero and feel powerful you can be. Under-powered, grovelling and scraping by are what we as regular Joes do every day. I had discussions with my circle of friends and to sit down a play is an escape and if they want to be a a role that is 'ABOVE average, by bit' than that's the game.

It's quite tricky to talk about balance in Shadowrun, especially for mages vs mundanes, because there are so many different situations.
Background Count can make the life of an Awakened much more difficult and some technological (or magical) stuff can be detrimental to cybered characters. Depending on the situation (and the GM) the advantage might be to the mage or to the cybered character.

Besides, the world in itself should have a balancing power: we're not in D&D where the opposition is made of creatures who'll just have to do with what's in their entry in the bestiary. Most of the time, they're people or organization with some ability to think and evolve. If mages can easily raid corporate property, the corporations will probably invest more in magical security until the threat is about as big as the one of an equally powerful cybered mundane. In some cases, one security will be better than the other, but on average it can be pretty balanced.

To me, the problem arise in two cases:

1. When a character can be "just better" than another well-built character, just because of one concept choice.
2. When an option leads to an imbalance compared to the expected power level.

For example in SR4:
1. An awakened character can be mathematically consistently better than a mundane character, which is the case in SR4 with cybered-adepts. If you optimize the choice between adept powers and ware, you can get at chargen a character that will have the same stats and options than a wared mundane or non-wared adept, plus some more.

Also when a mage buys a new spell, he gets a new ability he can use at the best of his current magical abilities. And when he improves his magical abilities (Magic score for example) this affects all his magical abilities. Meanwhile, an augmented mundane will usually only get incremental improvements with the new ware, gear or skills he gets.

Also, when a rigger loses a drone (which is quite likely to happen), he loses value, which is rarely the case for other characters.

2. When a mage summons a spirit, he gets to roll one of his generally higher attributes + one of his generally higher skill, and is opposed by the Force of the spirit. To make it simple, let's consider that the mage has the same rating for the Attribute and Skill and let N be that rating. The mage can, without much risk of failure, summon a spirit of a Force = 1.5N (mage will roll 2N opposed to 1.5N).
This means that a mage can easily summon a spirit whose Force will be superior to the mage's best attributes/skills. So if you scale an adventure to the mage's level, it will be relatively easier for his spirits.

^^^Thank you for the information. I was aware of the spirit issue. It seems to me that a separate class just for conjuring/summoning should be the case and be excluded from the regular spells that traditional' mages get or at least make conjuring a a path that makes regular spell casting more expensive in drain or cost.

One way I would think to limit limit mages and adepts in Shadowrun is limit the number of times they can Initiate. My thought is that they can only Initiate as many times as they have Essence points, rounded down. For instance, my Combat medic mage has two points of cyber/bio (SR4 character). With my way of doing things would only allow him to Initiate 4 times for max magic of 8. So yeah, if you want a super bad ass cybered adept, you had better choose your cyber quite carefully.

Also for SR5, I would bring back the cyber/bio rule from SR4 (you only take 50% Essence loss from the lesser of either type of augmentation).