Can someone tell me why (assuming I've read the rules correctly) that it costs more Karma for a mage to do a First Bonding w/ a Foci he just created, than to bond w/ a Foci pried off the dead cooling fingers of another mage? For example, it costs 25 Karma to bond w/ a Force 5 Power Foci. It costs a base 35 Karma to do a First Bonding to the same. Yeah, you can trim it some w/ Virgin Foci or Alchemy parts, but the amount saved is basically trivial from what I'm reading.

The reason why it seems wrong to me is that all the creation rules seem to imply that a foci that's "closer to the builder" is easier to enchant. Anyone else see something wrong with this?

you have indeed read the rules correctly. the disparity could be explained in any number of ways; the easiest is to assume that the first bonding requires more power because you're turning something that isnt' inherently magical into something that is; once it's become a magic-attuned artifact, it remains so, and later mages don't have to re-attune the link between object and mana.

As to your line “a foci that's "closer to the builder" is easier to enchant” this is true. If you use special materials or make it yourself by hand it is easier. Personally I wound up throwing oricalcum at the problem because I could make it cheaper than cash for karma.

Edward

Yeah, that's pretty much the solution there: load it down with orichalcum. Throw enough units at it and it suddenly becomes downright cheap.

So basically, throw in about 20-something units of orichalcum and that Force 5 Power Foci becomes essentially Karma free? Granted, units of orichalcum are physically tiny, so it wouldn't be that hard, but of course you're basically robbing Peter Nuyen to pay Paul Karma.

As an enchanter, you can technically make orichalcum for fun and profit, given enough time. Technically, you could even teach your Ally Spirit to do it for you.

ally spirit doing your enchanting? that is nasty, a force 1 ally could with a high willpower and high enchanting and enchanting shop make 10-20 orichalcum units a month... new force 6 focus each month

Edward don't even think about it

When I was playing an enchanter I did some maths and it emerges that other than gold you’re best of buying the radicals. Gold is so expensive it is actually worth the effort to make it yourself.

All this said I am now of the opinion that PCs should not take enchanting. It is far to easy to make far to much money with it so why run. I see it as a retirement skill. Learn it up and retire to being a tails monger. Or use it strictly to make your own equipment (not the precursors)

Edward

My campaign GM says that high-powered foci are exceptionally hard-to-get in his world. So if I want a high-powered foci, my options are either to make it myself, or peel them off a cooling mage's stiff fingers. The second option is essentially impossible for me for 2 reasons; virtually no foci have shown up, and the one time that it did, the GM made it "self-destruct" (ie, the caster had made a spell set to destroy his own body and equipment when he died).

Hence, my need to become my own enchanter.

Another reason not to retire and do talismongering is that you can make more foci as a shadowrunner. The reason for this is that a shadowrunner will earn more karma, to make foci, than a talismonger will.

If I, as a GM, wished to make high power foci more rare, I would require exotic material for anything above force 5, with each level the danger of acquiring such materials growing ever more difficult.

Materials become easier to come by if you end up having your entire party learning talismongering. Collect materials from all the different places you go.