I wholeheartedly agree with that simple policy.

In no way do I mean to imply that FanPro has created a solid, clear, and universally-satisfying new edition. ?There are many things that I personally feel still needed work before the books hit the shelves. ?I'm sure each person here can say the same thing to some degree, yet each of us certainly possesses significantly different lists of grievances. ?Conversely, there are a great number of new things that I like very much (or I wouldn't be here in the first place).

In any case, consistency of expectation is more important than trying to spend numerous admin manhours tweaking, retweaking, documenting, and defending house rules for the site. ?Even worse is the negative impact upon gameplay when "newbies" have to get retrained on house rules that they thought worked according to the book (and you know those situations invariably manifest as gameplay interruptions).

"But the book says..."
"Sorry, it's a house rule. ?Didn't you read our documentation? ?There was a sign in chargen."
"Uh, no."
"Oy. Okay, so, how it works here is <blah blah blah blah blah>."
"That's dumb, why did they change it?"
"Because <blah blah blah blah and more blah>."
"Ugh, wouldn't it have been easier to <blah blah more playtime is lost blah blah blah>?"
"Maybe. Can we just continue now please?"

... So, yes. ?The official rules might be questionable, but I'd rather be damned by consistent policy than damned by repeated revolutions.

edit: goshdurn typos

No, I'm sorry, let me clarify. ?My basis of skepticism regarding Magic Vs. Mundane balance is based in the legacy of ridiculousness that awakened character's have demonstrated over the years. ?And the playtesting inside my group has come to the conclusion (opinion) that while it is much better than it was, it is still not even. ?And the problem just compounds itself with time.

Further, inside of a tabletop setting, the problem is much easier to control due to the One on One attention a GM will devote to his players. ?This is not the case on a MUSH.


I'm sorry. ?What I meant was: According to the dice mechanics, there are no thresholds above beyond those outlined in the books based upon where you're getting your dice to roll. ?I absolutely agree that the manner of which it is Roleplayed will vary accordingly, but I do not see any precedent for additional penalties imposed on individuals who achieve success through one way, or another.

Re: Green Elf - This is a prime example of why using physical spells against targets that will have obviously high thresholds is a bad idea. ?I agree, completely. ?I don't believe this changes the scenario much, however. ?But yes, we can certainly agree that it has gotten better than it used to be.

-CM

Re: Mark - Well said.

-CM

Actually, Physads end up spending 70 BP to get what Cybersams get in more like... ohhhhhh, 35 BP tops.  Plus with the other 35 BP the sam gets many more strengths and capacities that the Physad would be really stupid to take.

For instance.  Samurai can utilize a cyberhand gyro mount, and an Ares Alpha to full auto without penalties.  My drones can't full auto without being completely unable to shoot (1 die for shooting at that point and that's WITH smartlinks).  A mage, on the other hand, can fire off their 10 dice - 12 dice against me with their mana ball and screw me over.  Now, I could also take with those extra 35 points, Magic Resistance at 4, and still have 15 points more still for money, or could buy an attribute point, etc.

So if you are worried about the mage, take magic resistance.  Take stealth, take all the things which make you harder to detect, that way when the mage wants to manaball you they can't cause they can't SEE you.  Than you shoot them cause they spent their points in casting abilities and foci, attributes, etc and not in Stealth.  You take agility 6, plus a reflex recorder (infiltration), enhanced articulation, AND Muscle Toner 2, and stealth skill group at 4... you've got 14 dice on infiltration right out the door!  Now what's the mage going to do?  Sure they can take most of that the same way, but you've got cybereyes with all the bennies, you've got ultrasound to see them while their invisible, and you shoot them.  They die.  They blow you up with a DV 6 manaball, and you've just got a -2 to your dice pool.  Oh no! Not only 10 dice to full auto my ares alpha into the guy with a body 2!!!!  Oh noooooooooo!!!!!  /sarcasm

I've made a physad, multiple physads.  We suck.  And they've capped our skill growth well enough with the new erratta.  No more do I have infinite dice I can acquire with physad abilities. I'm stuck at maxxing out at 1.5x my base skill.  Which means for most things a streetsam's bonuses can outweigh mine pretty easily.  There's only a few exceptions.  Above and beyond that it takes A LOT of freakin' karma to increase magic stuff.  We've got to initiate and than increase our magic rating separetly.  There's no ordeals or groups or anything anymore.  Just a straight number that just keeps getting hiiiiigher and hiiiiigher.

The point is, the game is really remarkably balanced.  You need samurai to fight samurai, you need mages to fight mages, and you need hackers to fight hackers.  Each of them can cross over to a certain degree, but really, that's not only karma costly (or BP in chargen) it just doesn't make for a good archetype.  I'm the mage who's better at hacking than spellcasting!!! But of course, my hacking sucks compared to a REAL hacker...  grrr.

We aren't planning any house rules at this time. After beta, we'll review what's cropped up. This conversation may be better served by waiting to see what actually happens.

well touching uppon the essence vs magic point thing. I dont see where it's an issue. Essence is generally only reduced when you imiplant cyber or bioware. And at no other time does it EVER go down. Of course it cant go up either.

Magic on the other hand is a whole other ball game. Take a deadly wound. Oopps gotta roll vs magic loss. And the higher your magic stat. The more likely you are to loose a point. Used a trauma patch? Guess what? Thats another magic loss roll right there. Hopped up on large ammounts of drugs or take them often? There's another magic loss roll there too. Had surgery but the guy didnt use awakend friendly techniques? Ooooh another magic loss roll again!

With an adept I've been faced with potiential problems a Cybersam would NEVER see. Best example I have is on a staff run I got hit with over a deadly wound, Had to use a trauma patch. Required major surgery and the doc did NOT use awakend friendly techniques. Further more due to the deadly level damage I lost an arm. And what happens? The doc implanted a cyberarm of all things into an awakend character. So there was yet anotehr roll again for sugery, then again because of the cyberware implanted. And then I STILL lost a point because my essence dropped.

So in the end I could have gone from 6(7) (1 level of initate, which also made it far more likely i'd loose magic in the firstplace in all the above rolls) to 0.

That's like waking up with a cybersam so wared out he's got .01 essence left. Only to find that while he slept some one stole every last bit of his cyberware.

This is also something that's faced by ANY awakened character. Hell Iv'e even known of runner PCs to run around with trauma patches that they'd slap on incapacitated awakend chars just to be mean and make them roll for magic loss.

Well, fortunately medical technologies have come a LONG way since the 2060's... Stim patches no longer cause magic loss, and I'm pretty sure all the other magic loss things are a lot friendlier too.

Tear's right, I haven't read anywhere in the SR4 system yet (That I remember off the top of my head) that says a mage can't get patched up like a normal person without risk. Patches also don't necessitate magic loss anymore. If you want to get down to it, a Physad -can- eventually match a samurai, but not easily and definately not at Chargen level. The only thing that a physad might get away with over a sam is reflexes, as spending 5 magic off the bat is a lot easier to handle perhaps than losing 5 essence right off the bat. Especially with how much it costs. I like stealth personally... I like it a lot. Infiltration good, and you can by a reuth suit in chargen mmmm I like stealth.

Anyways, much more balanced, don't spaz about it, like they say lets wait to see what happens. By the book yay!

Confirmed; no magic loss due to medicine (edit: or "deadly" wounds) anymore.? Using medical skills on the magically active imposes a -2 modifier, but that's as far as it goes per the RAW.

And, for the record: Samurai = low ceiling, most square footage.? Adept = high ceiling, least square footage.

Well, we'll see if that stays the same in the release of the updated magic book. But I'm glad they've changed the magic loss thing then. Though I'm sure there's gotta be at least SOME things that will still cause it beyond cyber/bioware

And I certainly didnt/still dont mind the threat of magic loss in SR3. It was just something one had to live with was all.

Drug Addiction at its EXTREME, can cause attribute loss.  Which can in turn cause drops to essence is the GM so determines it worthy... and that will than drop Magic.  It seems as though, however, that just doing 'something' doesn't cause you magic loss.  Only the loss of essence.

Perhaps. So far in SR4 that I can tell no. Possibly something will come up with the upcomming magic book though. As that's supposed to go into awakend more in depth.

I've also noticed that apparently you no longer risk any dangers at all from recieving deadly+ damage like you do in SR3. No threat of unsightly scaring, loss of limbs, organs, stats etc. At least not that's in the SR4 main book.

Even though this is a slight tangent from the original posting I think there is no unsightly scarring and whatnot because medical advances have greatly increased. I mean hell you can get cyber implanted in a mall now, new eyes, datajack, probably almost all of the cosmetic stuff without having to do anything special. Almost like you could go to a high class mall and get alpha eyes if you had the nuyen.

That's a pretty big advance over SR3 surgery stuffs so it's probably fair to say that scarring, if it occured could be easily removed without delitirious effects. Doc Wagon probably developed it as an add campaign

Well you can attribute that to SR4's forward-looking stance on technology.  SR3 wanted to be conservative; perhaps they felt that making 2060's technology too good would interfere with peoples' suspension of belief.  In SR4, though, they took the opposite stance, which makes sense considering what the start of the 21st century is like.  Any more, it requires suspension of belief to think that medical technology wouldn't advance to the point of simple cybersurgery not requiring any rolls or recouperation time and cosmetic surgery being so advanced and routine that you don't even worry about whether getting your arm blown off by a grenade will leave a scar.

Really, I never understood the rationale behind magic loss from D wounds.  Magic is a function of essence, how much of the natural body is left intact, and sort of a measure of one's soul.  D wounds couldn't cause essence loss, so what were they saying?  Physical trauama frightens part of your soul out of your body?  Whatever...

Which means it's up to GM discretion. Would probably make sense if you glitched your damage resistance or healing tests. Mmm, discretion...

Addendum: The scarring thing, that is.

Additional Addendum: Before anybody gets the idea in their head, no I'm not going to give you scars every time you get shot.