Where else can you get a 0 , 0 karma, universal sustaining focus whose power increases as the group gains karma?

I'm talking 0 karma for the mage. When asking someone to do something that requires them to spend karma, that tends to be the biggest limiting factor.

In regards to karma for the adept, it costs precisely as much as any other point worth of powers, so the karma cost becomes irrelevant to the discussion.

Wink, wink Dash....


Plus, it would be pretty cool to have a mage be addicted to using use as a foci.

On him.

That's the rub. The normal sustaining focus works on anyone/anything, but just for one spell type.

So great, you can give the Adept any sustained spell on his own. Or you can give one spell to anyone.

But I wouldn't call it "free" exactly. That power is in place of another power. Where else are you going to get, let's say, +4 to Analyzing crazy problems? Extra dice you can't get anywhere else?

Kinesics? Power Throw?

If it factors into your tightly knit shadowrunning team to have the adept magic'd up then it's fine. 'Suboptimal' doesn't mean 'sucks'.

Whatever 1 Power Point worth of adept Power you give up to have Living Focus is replaced by an extremely flexible, interchangeable "Power Point" worth of all kinds of abilities, many of which the adept could never have on her own.

DSers recognize the usefulness of skillwires. Living Focus is a parallel to that implant in the magical realm.

Yes, it does require cooperation among team members. So what? So does any run worth the

or the mage could be nuking the enemy free of hindrance.

Yes, the -2 penalty is a cost but by that logic sustained spells are all a waste of time. There are many instances where the adept doesn't need to be doing a zillion things at once, only the thing which the sustained spell has allowed/enhanced her to do.

Yes. And for that 1 point I could have brought something ELSE on the table that you couldn't replicate with a Sustaining Focus and some Karma.

Let's see +4 to Perception/Assensing tests, +4 to Social tests where you're physically present, +2 Spell Resistance, L4 Analytics which may just help you figure out a problem or deduce something that your GM planted and will love you for, L4 Facial Sculpt which can give you a fairly new face for Magic hours, Traceless Walk, and all the smaller little things that are fun and useful.

-2 to all my tests or eating once a day and sleeping for 3 hours, quickdrawing any weapon and readying to attack it with one action, and being able to replace a clip with a free action.


Yes, it's good. No, it's not "free". There are better things that a Mage can't bring to the table with all his spells (or at least undetectable as his spells aren't).

Dude, anyone recognizes the usefulness of skillwires. One Rating 3 Skillwire pretty much sets you up for the rest of your career as long as you can get the soft for it. This isn't the same thing at all.

And it's more than just cooperation, it's coordination. You're relying on this adept to have this power on him and the spell the mage casts. You'd raise your power level appropriately too. Giving the Adept say a Force 6 Combat Senses spell would let him throw some dice against getting caught in a Full Auto attack (provided he had more than 3 Reaction to begin with and had 6 hits).

Also, have you given any thought to Counterspelling? True, it means the enemy Mage that tries to Dispel the sustained effect isn't hurling a fireball at your face and whatnot, and it's hard to really beat going up against Force + Magic vs Magic + Counterspelling which could easily be 12 vs 6 + (1-6), and the drain will be a pain.

But that power A) Lights up the Adept, B) Can be reduced by an average Wagemage, and so on.

A Mage with a sustaining focus can suffer the same fate. But he didn't waste an Adept's power point with it.

But then that same argument could be said for just letting the Mage sustain the Spell himself in the first place, and not wasting the PP. All you are doing is shifting the Sustaining penalty from one person to another, and while useful in certain situations, I don't think it is worth the price of 1 PP.

Check the errata, that doesn't work, it still counts toward the mage's limits, which means, if the spirit is unbound, that he has given up his one slot for unbount spirits, and given up control of it, a rather bad choice.

I think the -2 dice is a definite cost, but it's a negligible one. the adept is maximizing his dice pools. His -2 is a lot less painful then the mage's -2.

Shadowrun is an extremely team oriented setup.

It's definitely expensive. That's why I said "if I can free up the power point." It wasn't my first choice becaues of the large point cost compared to, say, getting +4 dice somewhere.

You've heard, I assume, of Adept Centering?

You can actually do both. That 8 karma the mage saved by not bonding the focus for you? He can spend it bonding a focus to give to you or someone else.

Yay teamwork!

Analytics is first on the chopping block if I take Living Focus. Bonus dice are easy for an adept to get, and those are way too specialized IMO.

Useless to many builds.

Nobody has said there aren't other powers. No matter what you pick, there will always be stuff you want. That's kinda the thing with adepts.

How kind of you to spend someone else's karma for them. What if your character doesn't want to be a drain on his teammate's limited resources?

so you've proven that there are good adept powers. So what? Whichever one of those you pick, you won't be able to pick any of the others. Sounds like they're all useless according to that logic.

Honestly? Those are your options? Have you seen the essence cost on a sleep regulator? Ot the cost on a quick draw holster?

Who said it was free?

And you've heard, I assume, of other modifiers? Especially in combat? And how Adept Centering doesn't eliminate all of them, just a few?

I don't think anyone is saying Living Focus is useless. Only that when compared to most every other adept power, it's one of the weakest especially for the Power Point cost. Doubly so when used in the manner a few people in this thread desire to use it as -- as a form of Improved Reflexes. Sure, it's cheaper than 5 Power Points, but you're not only getting less bang for your buck (+3 Initiative vs. +3 Reaction), but you're also suffering that -2 dicepool modifier on every single thing you do. That includes Quick Draw tests, Combat Tests, Skill Tests, and Social Tests.

If that limitation s fine by you, as well as all the other negatives that come from having a sustaining focus (being unable to walk through a ward without a test, being dual-natured and vulnerable to attack [or is that legacy thinking again?], being a link back to the mage who cast it, leaving behind the mage's astral signature, etc.) knock yourself out with Living Focus.

Me? I'd rather spend the point elsewhere or just give it up entirely and get a set of real Skillwires 5 or Synaptic Booster 2.

Well of course both options are stronger than one or the other.

I guess I'm just not saying this clearly. But then again, another 8 karma would mean the Adept wouldn't have to spend X karma increasing his magic/getting initiated.

I know Mages are already hard-up on Karma so it's not like it's an easy thing, but Mages are a lot more versatile than Adepts. And I pointed out Kinesics/Power Throw/Analytics as a varied sampling of the different kind of Adepts and what they can bring to the table that they can't get elsewhere. And where a sustained spell would be astrally spotted, disabled by a Ward, or plain old dispelled.


Tell me this then, in what combat situation (let's face it, that's what we're all thinking about) would it be beneficial for an Adept to sustain a spell himself instead of having a Mage sustain it for him or through a focus for him? If he doesn't have Improved Reflexes but has Improved Combat Ability to negate the -2 penalty, then you may have something there.

If your retort is that a Mage and an Adept with both Living Focus and a Foci will rule, well a Mage with two Focii can do the same thing. With anyone.


As a mage I really would rather dump the Karma into a solid Manipulation, Illusion or a Health sustaining focus than not have the Adept enhance himself directly. Great, I can cast any beneficial sustained spell on you. I could've done that with a few more runs and you could've gotten something nicer, like I dunno, Improved Combat Ability.

From a min-max perspective Adept Power Points are far rarer than Karma is.

For example, a soft-maxed Adept with Magic 5 is going to need 18 Karma to raise Magic to 6. Meanwhile a Mage who wants to sustain Increase Reflexes spends 12 Karma to bind a Rating 3 focus for Health. Though admittedly it'd only be really useful for that one spell as the other Health sustained spells aren't really what you'd call 'handy'.

The tradeoff is that it's a one time investment of 18 karma for any spell to run on the adept. Wunderbar! you say. Great, for the adept. Maybe the group by extension. If you plan things that closely and don't mind the metagaming of it all, it can lead to something strong. But it does lose flexibility. And that Adept could've been a better whatever-kind-of-Adept he without the use of sustaining spells.



Maybe I'm just projecting a wariness of planning such characters far too closely like that. It builds dependency and a crafty GM will introduce you to situations where that might not be possible.

Like all of those Awakened out there who settled for Sustained Foci for Increase Reflexes and were thrust against a wagemage with a high counterspelling skill, thrust in an area of high mana background count, a warded place, or some bound spirits that like the look of sustained focii. Instead of the slightly more reliable 'ware route.

They're both perfectly okay. One requires a lot of ifs and maybes, the other can be turn on or is always on.

I thought so myself. But here we are pooling resources. That was the gist of it all wasn't it? Extreme coordination?

Or did your Adept learn to manifest a Living Focus aspect of his talent on the off chance he might meet a friendly mage with the proper spells to enhance his particular brand of Adept-ness?

The point is, he's not a drain (heh) on anyone's resources if he contributes something in its place.

Weaken me with a strong sustained spell slightly with a -2 penalty, or I can bring something that the team might not have in supply.

That was the whole point of 'coordinating' and 'cooperating' right?

No, not at all. It's all in place of one or the other. The point is you're bringing something to the table that doesn't rely on someone else, you know being a drain on someone, and can positively contribute to your role.

You didn't take Living Focus and turn into a battery for your group's mage. You know can walk quietly or turn your hands into flaming fists or turn into Sherlock Holmes and piece together different clues.

No, you won't be able to pick the others. But there's one less out of the jumble of good adept powers that you won't have to worry about not having.

Uh huh. A holster holds a pistol. Quickdrawing any weapon is quickdrawing any weapon. The Essence cost of a 10,000 Sleep Regulator is HUGE.

Why? You pay a freaking Magic point for it. No dice.

I believe someone said something along the lines of 0 and 0 karma.

BWWAHAHAHA!!!
(Sorry to not saying anything constructive but **mn thats funny stuff!)

And far better since the Concealment power affects all perception tests not just visual.

Do you not understand the meaning of "you can do both?" There's nothing stopping you from also getting a manipulation, illusion, or health focus just because the adept was nice to you and got LF.

How does this not apply to sustaining foci?

What does back story matter in a balance discussion?

0.15 is huge? Maybe if you plan on being pristine in the cyber/bioware department. But most adepts I've seen go for at least one point of magic loss for cool toys. If your style is different, that's cool.

That's not the same as free.

I did. You skipped the part where I mention it. Great, you can do both. Whatever.

And I am not saying LF is a bad choice. It's just a suboptimal one.

We vary on just how bad or how good it is.

Yes, it's huge. A Physical adept will go for Synaptic Boosters 2 which is a full point of Essence most likely.

If you can squeeze it in with Tailored Pheromones, if you're a Social Adept then fine. But it's still just 3 hours of sleep. Sustenance does let you get away with just one meal and one trip to the bathroom.

But anyway that's too dependent on the actual adept at hand. Assuming no previous 'ware, it's huge. Assuming a combat-centric adept, it'll go over the limit. I don't know if you can fit cultured Muscle Toner 2, Synaptic Boosters 1, and SleepRegulator into 1 Essence point. I think he goes over by a small tad, so you're looking at Beta Sleep Regulators there.

It's potentially huge. Unless you're not gonna go after the juicy 'ware.

You did ignore all the parts where I said sustaining foci have the same problems?

You know, like the very next line of what you quoted?

"Like all of those Awakened out there who settled for Sustained Foci for Increase Reflexes and were thrust against a wagemage with a high counterspelling skill, thrust in an area of high mana background count, a warded place, or some bound spirits that like the look of sustained focii. Instead of the slightly more reliable 'ware route."

Oh I see. No, I don't.

Yes and no.

Yes, he could sustain the spell.

No, it would not create a sphere of invisibility, because that's not how the spell works.

Free means no cost. LF has a cost, it's just not monetary or karma. Those other costs have been talked about in almost every post in this thread.

If you still don't see, I don't think I can ever explain it to you.

I don't normally disagree with Ancient, but I don't think this'd work: if you need stabilize you're not conscious, and if you're not conscious, you can't use a power. OTOH, it would let the mage cast a lot of healing spells in relatively short order, as long as he can handle the drain.