I keep seeing all the arguments about magicians being better than mundanes, and the threads about retiring high Karma Pool characters, and the ones about handling the experienced magician without killing all the other characters. I have to say, it drives me nuts.

I like playing awakened characters. I have only played a few mundane characters. I never have a plan for advancement of the mundane characters because they have about everything I would like them to have when play starts. The awakened characters are always at least a few attribute points from average, a few skills shy of the standard runner compliment, and usually impoverished.

I've played in a few games where my awakened character is almost to the point of where my mundane characters typically start. This is excluding their magical ability and the mundanes secondary skills. It seems like at this point, the players of the mundanes are bored and the game/campaign ends. Up to this point they have been laughing at me for taking cover in every fight, laughing at me for barely being able to carry my own weight encumbered by less armor than they wear and a pistol, wanting to know why I don't have every spell they would find useful, etc.. I have to work quite hard to stay alive when the GM throws stuff at the party.

I don't have much sympathy later, when they need to try using a little tactics, or even common sense, to survive a battle. I don't have much sympathy later, when they complain they can't buy magical aptitude. Or when they complain because they can't get more cyberware and bioware because they already have bone lacing, boosted reflexes, smartlinks, cybereyes with all kinds of tricks, muscle toner and augmenter, suprathyroid glands, and enhanced articulation, cerebral boosters, synaptic accelerator, and dermal sheathing. Yeah, it must have been tough surviving all this time with all their physical attributes at 9 or more and double digit combat pool, and getting to actually play twice as much with their initiative in the 20s and 30s.

Oh yeah. Why aren't there all kinds of rants about how the cyber guys get to go a bunch more times? No, they are quite happy until the awakened start catching up and getting to play too. Then they have to share the fun. Or start whining.

Mundanes are generally better suited at one task. Be it combat, rigging, decking or facing (what the crap would be that verb anywho?), they tend to do better as mundanes straight out of the box than 100 karma later.

Generally speaking, in the long run, Awakended are better. But for short games and one-shots, go mundane (unless the team really needs some magical backup). You get more bang for your proverbial buck right from the get-go.

That's what I tell anyone who'll listen. Out of the chute, the cybered mundane will be better than the average (for example) physad. But with the physad, there's infinite room for advancement.

Well mundanes are a little better out of the box, but as a rule they are more susceptible to things the average Awakened Character laughs off. I mean at start a Cyber-Sam is going to get hosed by StunBalls, Manabolts, Mind Affecting powers, meanwhile the mage or Adept is going "What's your problem?" That's the way it should be everything has it's equalizers in the beginning. the problem is that it doesn't stay that way, but i am quickly thinking of things theat might even it up.

Well, "mundane" is a bit of a catch-all.

I can make a monstrous street samurai who, minus certain mystical tricks, is far more generally survival-friendly than an adept in similar roles. I can also make a decker who, through virtue of having more points available to attributes/gear/skills, and not being compelled to raise a certain set of magical skills, is somewhat better than an Awakened character with decking skills (though the limitations on just how good you can be at decking, in character creation, apply. It doesn't take that much in the way of resources to get the best deck/important utilities within starting availability).

Or I could make a character with no magic, no augmentations, and just rely on skills, high attributes, and edges to make such a character workable. Then complain on these forums when they're not as fast as a samurai, or don't know kung fu like an adept, or can't react as fast in the Matrix as a decker with a datajack and full DNI. That seems to be a popular hobby nowadays.

On the whole maxing out with cybersamurai vein...
Who says, when all is said and done and your sammy has delta-everything (personally, I play where you can remove and upgrade cyberware fairly liberally, but that's just my style) or has upgraded as much as your game allows, that hey-maybe they want to try something else. So you have 15 in assault rifles and can move faster than a semiballistic-maybe now you can start practicing with those clubs, or edged weapons, or perhaps even branch out-begin upping your social skills. Learn about underwater combat. Learn how to drive a sailboat, a helicopter, a blimp. Learn program design and magic theory. Start a corporation with your pals. Help a revolution. Start a revolution.

Because no matter how powerful you get, there will always be some way to kill you, your friends, your family, your allies, for your enemies to frustrate you, and there will always be a new adventure and new skills you can learn.

As long as you like the character you are playing, (and the other players like theirs as well) there shouldn't be any reason you have to stop.

That counts for any kind of character.

But no matter how its pronounced, they are still both sandwiches.

At 300 karma, your avg (well... you get the idea) awakened is going to kick more tail then your avg mundane. By then your sammi has graduated to delta everything, and has retired and become his own chief of cyber implant surgery cause hes run out of places to put karma points.

i feel the same way. my main char is a sneaky/shooty/punchy physad who's up around 250 earned karma. he's pretty badass, but he's by no means unkillable. especially the way i keep throwing him into the teeth of every encounter.

There are never enough Karma Points!

that's what i'm sayin'.

Yeah I know ... I was responding to Lindt, and just commenting in general.

The hell you say! Let me introduce you to my friend Monty Haul...

Even he wouldn't have enough to satisfy me.

Seriously though, there is always something to spend Karma on. I have never seen a player trade Karma for Cash, but I have been inundated with requests for the reverse.

I've geeked them all, Mundane, Awakened, High Karma, Low Karma. I don't consider myself a Killer GM, but I let the dice fall where they may, and sometimes I get those 2 10's with my drones 2 dice and that full auto assault rifle makes a huge mess of someone. I've found that a player's tactics, grasp of the situation, and luck has more to do with them surviving (or if it's not a "confrontational" situation, achieving some objective) than what type of character they play. Mages are tough, no doubt, but they can only cast one spell at a time (or more if they are crazy), and all those sustaining foci are susceptible from astral attack. Drones can give a mage fits as well. A Street Sam never really loses his wired reflexes, an adept theoretically could (magic loss, not performing a geasa). I've found as a long time GM that the different character types are extremely well balanced and if you have a good mix in your group, you just increase your options when confronting a situation.

Paul, I guess I was trying to relate to how my magic characters always seem to lack something I want for the concept, or to lack something at the right rating to make them as effective as I'd like or to have even average physical stats. I never have enough spell points for half the spells I would like, especially the ones that have less to do with combat, sneaking, or getting information.

I was in one group where the first time there was combat, my mage took cover behind a couch. The other players laughed. I think the GM even laughed. They were not the least worried about the level of the opposition. 70 karma down the road, they want to retire their characters, and the GM is telling me my Body 4 Strength 3 guy is too powerful. I couldn't believe it. 300 karma. I wish. Oh how I wish.

I played (guess like most people here) mundanes as well as adepts. Both can become pretty powerful at character creation, as soon as the player has an idea what is character should be able to do.

Maybe in the very long run adepts get better.. no, i'm sure about it, while typing this. They simply can advance in magic rating, while a mundane is running out of esscence. But a mundane can still boost his attributes over the limit (6 at a human, you got the point) and he a can aquire a lot skills at rating 4 or 5 which makes him a better and better rounded out runner. Or he could start to bring his skills over the edge to ratings of 8 or 9 (we're talking about 300 karma earned).

All the player needs is an idea what the character should be able to do. And you never run out of possibilites to spend your karma

Out of the box, mundanes I've seen usually have a bit of an advantage in stats.
Too good? Nah. There's usually not a huge gap in ability between an adept and a street samurai in our games. Of course, as the Karma accrues, adepts generally even out and then surpass chromed characters.

I usually see higher skill ratings in mundane characters, as they really have only two options: Skills and Attributes. Magically active characters (esp. magicians) have a plethora of options.

No character has any ability that is completley immune from being lost to something; whoever said that about cyberware needs to go read M&M again. Same holds for attributes, magic, gear, and even skills atho they are definatly the hardest thing to neutralize.

Anyhow, mundane or not, its easy to build powerful characters of any kind out of the box. How powerful depends *ENTIERLY* on your gaming group. Entierly. Because every group has some abilites that see more use, are assumed to work a certain way, or simply seem better than other abilites.

There is no way to compare my campaigns average sam to my campaigns average badguy and estabilsh one power level, and then go here and post how its xyz powerful. Because the standards are gonna be different in your campaigns.

All said, magic and mundane are about even out of the box. Mundanes *tend* to be more of a laser effect, being very good in a narrow focus, while Magicians *tend* to have a higher variety of abilites at a lesser ability level. But no doubt you can just as easily build a narrow-focus mage or generalized sam. And Ive seen very few builds that would ever make me seriously consider one to be better than the other; and nothing to make one seem "too good" relative to the other.

High karma is no different, each group is gonna have its own concepts of norm. Mundanes tend to platue out in their area of expertise and so broaden their skills, while magicians tend to go the opposite route becoming more specialized, and somewhere in the middle they meet.

But again, Id say theyre pretty well even. Especially starting out. Its very hard to make flexible, playable characters with magic or mundane really shining out as obviously better, givin equal resources/karma/etc to make them with.

I'd have to agree with DrJest.

For example, we take a Street Samurai and an Adept.

The adept is slightly behind in Attributes and Skills.

Let's say Mr GM comes up with a scenario. Both our PCs go in. Mr Sam would have an easier time overcoming the obstacles than Mr Adept. But let's say somehow or another, both miraculously survive. What are the odds that Mr Adept will continue to survive as compared to Mr Sam? Mr Adept will have to constantly roll better than Mr Sam in order to overcome the disadvantage in the same scenario. A scenario that is challenging to a sam is more challenging to an adept and the odds for the survival of the adept is less than that of the samurai.

So not only does the mundane have an advantage over the adept, he gets to survive to keep that advantage.

Why should Mr Adept have lower atributes and skills? Sure he has to spend 25 BP to become adept, but can save the points at ressources. So they're matched, i would say out of experience. The modified attributes of Mr Sam might be higher, depencding on the cyber, but that's it.

Is it just me, or are most of the problems with adept characters due to the fact that GMs are lenient on Magic Loss rules? I mean, with how fragile adepts are and the myriad ways of making them lose magic, I'd say accidental injury would occur at least once if not three or four times during the span of a campaign.

So do you allow mages and adepts to make use of this "super-charged yoga?" If not, what's the rationale?

Actually it's never come up. They just initiate. but yeah, there's no reason they couldn't. It just replaces lost essence from removed cyber.What originally made me think of it was one of the SR novels. There wa a troll that was an ex- street sam that was called by bear. I couldn't think of any reason he couldn't have the cyber and have his essence cleaned up a bit (albeit with a lot of work and nuyen). He did have a healing totem after all.
The difference is that if a mage did get cyber, then drop it, yes, in my game he could get his essence back. But NOT his magic point. You have to initiate for that.
After all, you can lose magic from a deadly wound and still not lose essence.
I like I mentioned, I go out of my way to make it really expensive to balance it out so that the Street Sam doesn't try to keep switching stuff out.

I see. Important distinction about Essence and Magic.

There's something that I don't see getting brought up in these discussions: doesn't a mage with reduced Essence have a lot less time to spend on astral jaunts? I thought there was some kind of pretty harsh rule about that. Or was it based on Magic, not Essence? Or to I just need to RTFM better?

You friends with my buddy Gyro Gearloose eh?

So it is Essence-based then. There would be a pretty darn good reason for the cyber-mage to spring for some of the "super-charged yoga" action. I can't believe it never came up.

Well in my current campaign the team is currently sitting at around the 400 karma mark and has had several million nuyen in 'ware and the like.

Party composition is as follows:

Cybered Physads x2
Full Mage with some Cyber/Bio
Physmage Shapeshifter
Street Sam

The Street Sam is in no way eclipsed by the other characters. Whilst they've been spending months meditating for initiation and poured karma into it he's been ratcheting his attributes and skills through the roof.

The awakened characters generally have no natural skills above 6 (exceptions being the mages sorcery, conjuring and centering) whilst the Sammie (ho ho) has natural skills in the 8-12 range with far more versatility... not to mention enhanced artic and reflex recorders. So okay, the physads with weapon foci and adept powers are still outperforming him in melee... but unarmed or in a shoot out he has the advantage. His natural physical stats are in the 8-9 range then augmented, his willpower is can hit 9 with adrenal pump and then drugs can push it up to 11 or 12, more than enough to protect against manabolts and the like.

In short, he holds his own and is easily one of the two most powerful characters, so I think it's perhaps short sighted to claim that the awakened easily outclass the mundane. No matter how awakened you are you don't like a guy rolling 19 dice vs. TN2 on a full auto Alpha Blast firing APDS....

If you pay way way more than the rules say you should or litter the world with opportunities for free implants, etc there isn't a problem (imho a mix of both is the way to go). Sam's, riggers, other mundanes can keep up. The gotcha there is if the magical charachters start piling on bioware too and end up being 2/3 of a sam + a mage or physad, but that is easy to stop by managing thier free time (either you go on the special paracritter safari to fulfil your ordeal for initiation or you take the free cultured bioware implant).

If you pay what the rules say you should there is absolutely no way that a sam will ever get even one medium sized peice of cyber beta grade, let alone delta. They might someday scrape up the cash for a delta smartlink or cybereyes.

Of course mundanes also do somewhat better under the point system, especially with some edges and flaws. Making them on the priority system is extra-painful.

So it largely depends on how closely you follow the books and which optional rules you use. With a bit of tweaking there isn't a problem.

mages and sams, even with bioware and cyber, still can't match the karma that sams/deckers/riggers can pump into their skills and attributes. it's a tradeoff.

Play long enough and get a good enough fixer, and eventually, you'll find that hallowed place we call the Delta clinic. Once you make that first big payment, getting through the door the next time should be a bit easier.

The thing is, by the books, even if an awakened character does get bio, it still drops their magic just like cyber, except that it tracks separately. A datajack, and lv 1 muscle augmentation takes off 2 points of magic. Now a mage might be able to initiate, and just cast lower force spells (or center the drain away), but that hits the adept hard. That's 2 power points right there.

Another thing I'm trying out right now is to let players buy edges later in the game for ten times the cost, just like buying their way out of a flaw. Seems to be working well too. It's abilities they all could have had anyways. And if the player wants to shell out another 20 GK to have "common sense", fine with me.
Probably the strongest one out there Edge wise is "skill aptitude". But realistically, they can get it for 4 BP at character creation. I see no problem with letting them buy it for 40 GK. It' a hefty price tag, and they can't use it for combat skills (in my game at least), so it doesn't change the balance all that much.

that's changed in the errata, fist. bioware only counts as half for magic loss, and it stacks with essence loss rather than being tracked seperately.

p. 78 Bioware and the Awakened [4]
Replace the third, fourth and fifth paragraphs with the following:

In game terms, bioware reduces an Awakened character's Magic rating in a way similar to Essence loss. Magic is reduced by the character's Bio Index divided by 2 (round down).

The effects of Bio Index and Essence reduction on Magic are cumulative, so the two should be combined before determining how Magic is affected. Magic has a starting value equal to the character's Essence minus (Bio Index ÷ 2), rounded down. So a starting magician with Essence 5.8 and a Bio Index of 1 begins with a Magic rating of 5 (5.8 - 0.5 = 5.3, rounded down to 5). Further increases in Bio Index (or reductions in Essence) may also affect the Magic rating whenever the total falls beneath a whole number. If the same magician later acquires more bioware, raising his Bio Index to 2, he will lose an additional point of Magic (5.8 - 1 = 4.8, rounded to 4).

Magic reduction from bioware functions like other forms of Magic loss-adepts lose some of their powers, for example. Geasa can be used to counteract magic loss from bioware and a character can still initiate to raise his Magic rating.


So in other words, no, I'm not sure. Apparently that rule was changed, which is cool. I like this better.

How does one go about judging the relative "power" of a character, anyway? People keep talking about how "sammies will be more powerful than mages" or "adepts become more powerful than cybered characters," but say nothing about what sort of power is being discussed.

And that's only one of many ambiguities detracting from the sensicality of the issue: "mundane" and "magical" characters are being treated in two lumps, for instance, as opposed to the thousands of actual permutations available. I also notice characters in this sense are being boiled out to their attributes, to their capabilities regardless of their abilities; it's impossible to ignore personality, and the effects on personality caused by being a spellcaster or a decker or a sammie or whatever.

It's as if someone has tried to decide which is better, the Colt .45 or the M-16, without any consideration of the situations they might be used in, or the persons wielding them. Any such comparison is bound to be useless and impossible to reach a valid concensus on.

The guidelines specify that people only make something in the thousands per session, and something like 5 karma. If you give them 100 times that amount of money or gear you aren't following the guidelines.

here's good example going agaist that. Corporate Punishment adventure, where you go for the elemantal scrolls, pays over 200k each. By the book example chummer.