I’m in the process updating our group’s official House Rules document. As its designated keeper, I’ve allowed it to get in far too shoddy a state, with hastily-written and frequently incomplete notes and patches, so I’m in the process of a full clean-up for it. When I’m done, I’ll post the whole thing here.
We already have a major revised rule for Essence, and one minor one as well. These are:
Revision #1 – Essence 0 Doesn’t Mean Death
Essence 0 means Magic 0, and that’s all. If you have higher than Magic 6 and then get some cyberware installed, we calculate a proportional loss of Essence. The end result is Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex meets The Sixth World, with plenty of people who are really just brains in a braincase unit, able to effectively change into different fully-robotic bodies at will. Magically speaking, their robot bodies count as Highly-Processed Objects for Resistance Tests.
Revision #2 – Really Just a Little Bonus for the Awakened
If the only piece of cyberware you have installed is a Deltaware commlink (or datajack), you can have that for free, Essence-wise. But, you can’t have any more cyberware installed, or you’ll retroactively be charged the typical 0.1 Essence for it. This is to allow the group’s mages and adepts to have headware commlinks, which makes coordinating with the rest of the team easier (not having to carry around commlinks and/or wear headsets); the only member of the team who doesn’t have one is the technomancer, who doesn’t need one.
I’m going to be proposing adding the following rule, and was curious as to any thoughts here.
Proposed Revision #3 – Location-Based Essence
Much has been argued over the years about “Essence Holes.” The (rather reasonable) idea being that if, for instance, you already had your right arm replaced with a cybernetic version, then having that removed and replaced with a newer model shouldn’t cost you any more Essence. We already generally allow this, but this is a more formal allocation of Essence according to following body areas:
Head…worth 0.5 Essence
Torso…worth 1.5 Essence
Arms…worth 1 Essence each
Legs…worth 1 Essence each
This divides up the body into 6 Essence and then pretty much replaces all the little Essence costs of individual cyberware pieces into this more simplified structure. Again, this is only if you aren’t going “full cyborg,” in which case you lose all your Essence (and all your Magic, if you had any).
Your thoughts?