Hey

I marked this 3rd edition as it seems the prices there are the same as in 2nd edition. Looking at the cost of a power focus or even weapon focus in SR1-3 vs SR4 and SR5 it looks like they are in completely different world and economies. At first I thought that nuyen was simply less valuable in 2050-2060s, but other equipment has listed costs similar to those in SR4/5.

In SR1-3 you could get maybe 1,000,000 nuyen at chargen, in SR5 that is reduced to 500,000 nuyen. So it makes sense that cyberware etc. is priced less, easily half of the old costs. But the foci prices are absurd: In SROLD they are so expensive most mages will never be able to afford them, while in SRNEW they are a bit expensive at first to actually available at chargen just like any weapon.

In my game I use the SR5 rules yet my setting is almost 2050, so I have changed the prices of pretty much everything to reflect that. But I find that changing the price of a Spell focus to 75k per Force when it was only 4k times force, is basically telling the 2 mages in the group "you can't have this".

So what I'm really looking for is advice from old edition players and GMs as well as new: How can foci be this expensive yet be something mages can get? Do I need to flood the group with money each mission for the mages to be able to afford this? Was it possible to craft foci in SR3 and before using karma and risks rather than lots of nuyen, and if so why are these so insanely expensive? Should I just use 5th edition prices anyhow, or should I try to do something between 5th and 3rd (like maybe old prices /5 or something? Even so, a Force 1 katana focus is 290k, that's way too much for a single die in combat when the adept has killing hands. At 58k it is still very expensive but something that can be saved for. Also, if I ever use foci with the opposition, the group will loot and sell them rather than have the mages use them simply because it's so expensive, right?

Any advice or opinions are appreciated. I don't want to screw over my players too much, but I think Mages are a bit too powerful in SR5 and I don't mind making foci more expensive, just not impossible to get. One of them already has Enchanting and Arcana skill, so they will try to make some anyway (for almost no nuyen cost).

In previous editions, the foci were so expensive because it was assumed the magician would make his own. I can't recall the exact price difference but it was way cheaper in both karma and nuyen to make your own foci in 1st-3rd ed. It actually costs more karma to make your own in 4th ed (1 point to complete the enchantment + the cost of the actual bonding). This means most magicians were just buying the foci since the price was low enough to make that feasible.
I think the thing was that magicians making their own foci in SROLD were spending a ton on time doing that and not actually shadowrunning so for 4th ed the brought the prices down to make buying them possible.
So I would suggest you either change enchanting to make it easier to build your own foci or else stick with the 5th ed prices on foci.

I was planning to use the 5th ed crafting rules, which makes it cheap, sort of dangerous, but possible to make Foci, and not very time consuming. I don't mind them doing some crafting, in fact I prefer they invest some time and effort into making things they can describe and customize, but I want the world to make sense, and if a mage can spend a few hundred nuyen and some karma and gain 200k-400k nuyen for a few days work, that would probably break the economy pretty fast. So I want foci prices to be relevant to the actual use of the items (investment vs gain), and actually feasible to get for a mage eventually, but not so cheap as normal guns. I want the mages to have something to spend money on just like the Street Samurai.

Here's my thoughts so far on pricing: A bit more expensive than SRNEW, but far cheaper than SROLD:


MAGICAL EQUIPMENT (WIP)

ITEM RATING AVAIL. COST
Shamanic Lodge Materials Force Force x 2 Rating x 500¥
Hermetic Library (per skill group) Force Force Rating x 1,000¥

Enchanting Focus (per skill) Force Force x3R Rating X 10,000¥
Metamagic Focus (per metamagic) Force Force x 3R Rating x 30,000¥
Power Focus Force Force x 5R Rating x 50,000¥
Qi Focus Force Force x 3R Rating x 25,000¥
Spell Focus (per category) Force Force x 3R Rating x 30,000¥
Spirit Focus (per type) Force Force x 3R Rating x 35,000¥
Weapon Focus Force Force x 4R (Reach +1) * 10,000) add together
see above +(Force*5,000)¥

Reagents, per Dram - - 20¥

~erm~ Objection ... Base costs for first bonding were significantly higher in SR3 unless you used larger numbers of alchemical ingredients / orichalcum on a (virgin) telesma and had a high enough enchanting skill to produce enough successes on the enchanting test.

And in order to get something like that going ...




... they indeed spent most of their time with either the enchanting process itself, talismongering their alchemical ingredients and refining them instead of doing Shadowruns.

But even with the higher monetary prices on purchased foci it certainly was viable to buy them instead of making them by yourself.

In SR3, awakened characters started out with a base Magic of 6, magical skills were a much narrower list, and sorcerers with Resources: A or mages/shamans with Resources: B were not haplessly gimped in other ways to get there. So mages could easily start out with foci - often rating: 6 foci.

Foci in SR5 are weaker, less stackable, can't help with Drain, and tend to be lower Force. Even getting Resources: D (to afford a rating: 4 spellcasting/summoning/sustaining focus) has opportunity costs. My advice? Leave foci prices alone. Mages are already gimped enough in SR4 (although augmented characters got hit even harder). Despite some superficial similarities, SR5 is a completely different beast than SR3.

No arguments here. It's been at least a decade since I looked at the 3rd ed rules in any detail. Thanks for the clarification.

I would simply use the SR5 prices, as those are quite alright.

Just because you play in 2050 doesn't mean the prices have to be like they were 2 editions ago.

Bye
Thanee

Thats odd, seems you would need a B resources in SR3 to afford even force 3 power focus, and that costs almost all your money and spell points. In SR5 you can get the same with priority C, and still have enough for more foci or gear. SR3 foci might be more useful for drain, but the mages in my sr5 game has barely had any issues with it.

For overall balance, sr5 has been called "magicrun" here a lot, so I assumed cheaper foci was part of that. Maybe both magic and ware has been nerfed since sr3, but in that case it matters little as they are both still superior to the mundane with full essence.

For my game we have 2 shamans and 1 adept out of 4, and even before they earned much karma they are already very powerful and have great utility. So I dont mind them having to save up many missions worth of nuyen to afford a proper focus. I just dont want it so expensive that they give up on them.

You might want to revise (or even not bother using) SR5's magical background count, then. It would kind of suck to scrimp and save to finally get a Force: 4 combat spell focus, only to be told, "Sorry, you're at a sold-out rock concert, so that's a rating: 4 background count - your focus doesn't even activate".

Are those rules in street grimoire or the equivalent? I only use the core book anyway, and I base my background count of what I remember from SR4. So yeah, that apartment ruin where people have suffered for 30+ years might have background count, but not just a big rock concert. Didn't know they directly affected foci anyway.

Speaking only from the experience with our SR3 campaigns - YMMV....

The mages in the group would fall into one of several categories normally, after a run:

A) the run was insanely dangerous, but very lucrative. We got 4-5 figure paychecks, so buying a sustaining focus or low level power focus was feasible after a couple of runs. You also had time to do an astral quest to reduce bonding cost, and deal with the wounds afterwards, while the street sam was still recovering from surgery

B) the run was moderately dangerous and rewarding. You had to do more run, but no one got that badly shot up. After a few runs, we'd all agree to a 5-6 weeks off - the street sams/deckers / riggers to go and do a months training on some skill or attribute to spend their accumulated karma, and the mages would go do a week of talismongering and then 4 weeks of enchanting and build their own focus... or at least the radicals and precursors.

C) the run was very RP heavy and was about making contacts. The street sams spent their savings on AV rounds, the deckers on new programs, the riggers on drones and the mages bought a shed load of expendable spell foci and a discounted power focus.

For us, we always seems to work it out as a group to ensure we could all use the downtime, and handle it at the end of a campaign arc, or would go and do the talismongering together as a quick adventure - but everyone managed to advance at about the same sort of rate.... whilst the mage was getting a F3 power focus, the phys-ad was upgrading to mystic armour 6 and the sniper was specialising in Rifles (6) / Barrett .50 (9)

Adjusting the prices in game by dropping some raw materials from a cache, saving the life of an enchanter, or having a magic rush that drives up the prices should allow you as a GM to modulate supply and demand and make things work for your group.

Foci and Active Spell Force are reduced by the Background count in a direct correlation. Background Count of 4 and you lose 4 points of Force from all your Foci and Active Spells. If that means your spell goes to zero, your spell fizzles. If that means your Focus now has a Force of 0, it deactivates and cannot be reactivated while in the BGC zone.

Personally I prefer the rules for Background Count out of 4th Edition... They were a tad harsher in some eways, but it made far more sense than the Rules for Background count in 5th Edition.

That's interesting input, good to know. I can probably also fluctuate the prices and adjust it as time goes, so they can afford some but not go nuts. Sounds tricky to balance with everything else though. I have a lot of magic users in the group, so I will need to give out high nuyen awards so the street sam won't be let in the dirt and can actually afford some decent ware (so far he only has Wired 1, for example, while the Adept is rocking Improved Reflexes 3).




It's a bit weird to me, any reason why this was changed in the first place? I think Ill stick with SR4 ones as well, even if that means they will sometimes lose ALL magic (IIRC).

Not sure why it was changed, to be honest, other than the fact that if they used the New dice adjustment with the 4th Edition Chart, it would result in not enough penalties. They needed to make it a harsher penalty, I guess, to make it "worthwhile". Best guess I have, anyways.

Exactly this. The character creation tradeoffs are different between the editions, and thus the gear costs are also different.