| From: | "Like, dude, where's the firefight?" <MURRAYMD@******.BITNET> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Mages paying Essence!!! Where's my gun...? (longish but good) |
| Date: | Fri, 5 Feb 93 04:49:39 CET |
It seems that ol' Cat Dancing has decided to try goofing with the
rules concerning Mages, cyberware, and essence. Oh dear. Don't worry
about this one, I'll punch the holes in it for us. :)
Yes, expect a lot of repeated text. If you are not interested in
reading a bunch of that, you know how to delete this one. If you are, be
prepared to see a point by point discussion about this proposal. Then be
prepared for my soap box dissertation on mages and cyberware at the end of
this post. This spewing of rules changing hatred is directed not at Cat
Dancing, the original poster, but at everyone who wants to make mages more
powerful through one means or another. I have had my fill...
> Hoi, Chummers. I missed the first two "debates" on the subject of bionetics
>and magick, so I don't know if this has been thought of before. I've divided
>my proposal into two sections: Rationalization a la Game Balance, and
>Rationalization in terms of the game's storyline.
These "debates" can be best described by the lyrics to the Judas
Priest song "All Guns Blazing" off of their latest (and unfortunately last
it appears) album. Don't have "Painkiller" you say? Get it.
> Game Balance: While I agree that Magicians for the most part don't need
>any kind of artificial augmentation, there is one exception to that which comes
>into play during the initiative roll. The average Samurai or Physical Adept is
>going to be rolling at least 2, and as many as 6 dice, whereas a Magician will
>have only one, unless she is willing to risk a spell-lock, or can quicken the
>Increase Reaction spell. The Sams and PhysAds also add on a Reaction Attribute
>that is as much or more as twice the natural, unmodified human maximum (6).
> In short, while we have all this Power, we almost never get to use it, at
>least in combat. Or so has been my experience.
What you site as a bit of unbalanced game mechanics I say is what
keeps the game in balance. *I* don't want mages running around hucking
spells faster than they already do. On the average both a Sam and a mage
can radically alter a situation in one combat turn. The Sam has to do more
work for his turn: Shoot him, shoot her, slice him, stab her. You know
the routine. All of this can be done in 3-4 actions, courtesy of the wired
reflexes. The mage can *effectively* do the same thing with a well placed
manablast or powerball spell. Score right now is 4 kills to 4 kills for the
Sam -vs- Mage. Now imagine the mage with Wired 2 for little or no essence
cost.
Score becomes Sam 4 kills, Mage 12 kills. <=== *UNBALANCED!!!*
If you find a spell lock or a quickening just too darn dangerous
for your magic user, ("I don't want my mage to get hurt!" whines the
munchkin.) allow me to point my ACME Anti-Munchkin gun at you. (That wet
carp just got worn out.)
> Putting it in the story's terms: It is possible to invest magickal
>energy in inanimate objects; it's called Enchanting. But to use an enchanted
>object, it must be bound to the user, which costs Karma. That is what I'm
>proposing: that a Magician pay in KARMA instead of ESSENCE. I guess it's
>essentially a "bionetic focus". How much Karma depends on how
"unnatural"
>the mod is. Some should be plain impossible, like Orthoskin, as well as all
>cybernetic augmentation. Most Magicians don't need that stuff anyway. It
>should cost drekloads of Karma (and the enchanting skill) for even the
>simplest mod. It would also be rare, or perhaps the GM might require that
>all enchanted bionetics be cultured (4x cost, I think; don't have S-Tech
>with me).
I've never heard of living tissue being used as a spell lock. Bad
idea though. If you are going to enchant a mod somehow or another, I would
think that cyberware would be more acceptable as spell lock material. (NO!
This is not trying to dredge up the enchanted cyberspurs debate!!!)
Your bionetic focus still has to be put into the body somehow.
This requires invasive surgery. No big deal if you're a mundane, just make
sure that you survive the surgery. But for magic users, this is something
else.
Your magic user is magic. Magic courses through his body. He is
the conduit through which the magic flows for spells to be cast. If there
is an interruption in the magic flow (essence loss) then the magic does not
flow as well (reduction in max spell force before physical drain).
If your magic user is going to modify his body, he has to pay for
it somehow, just like the Sams. The Sams pay essence for cyberware (body
ripped out and replaced with machine = less machine = essence loss) and has
a limit for Bioware (you can overstress a body only so much). But magic
views bioware as if it were cyberware: Invasive alien material. This
reduces the magic users essence. If you want to, you could say that
bioware reduces magic attribute instead of essence and magic attribute.
This would allow your magic user to pack mods just like everyone else (and
lose magic at a good point).
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>>>Table deleted<<<
> This allows for much greater versatility in character creation. It also
>eliminates the need for Adepts, since they were just a ploy for lowering the
>cost of practising the Arte. This way, instead of playing, say, a Wolf Shamanic
>Adept, take Priority C and stick all 15 pts into Combat and Detection spells.
> Spells, and the PhysAd abilities, would be "bought" the same way skills and
>Attributes are. Yes, this does allow a single character to be both a Mage and
>a Physical Adept, but it also requires that character to pay fairly for it.
***Eeerrrnnnggghhh!!!*** Wrongo dear writer! Adepts are not
simply a ploy to become a low cost magic user. Adepts are rather heavily
penalized for their being of a lower status. I suggest you make up
characters for both a mage and a hermetic adept (Sorcerer or Elementalist)
and compare their capabilities. You will notice that the full blown mage
is mucho more capable in the magical arts than an adept.
And if I hear any more garbage about magical physical adepts I'm
going to start using the "M" word and start blasting away with my ACME Anti
Munchkin Cannon of Doom! (Forget the carp, I'm mad now!) Yes, balanced
rules can be made for these kinds of people, but why disrupt the way the
game is?
[Ed. Note: Get ready folks, this is the clincher paragraph that is
sure to be really obnoxious!]
If I were to be the type of person to suspect you of being a
munchkin, I would call you as such. With the rules that you propose you
would take the already downgraded in power from SR1 magic user and make
him/her more powerful by going around one small vulnerability of the magic
user: The spell lock. In my not so humble at all opinion the rules
concerning mages, essence loss, bioware, and all of the other associated
stuff is just fine. If you *must* have mages running around with more
bioware than you can shake a stick at, then I suggest two options: Go find
a mug of beer to go cry in because you had to follow the rules or have fun
in your munchkin world of supermages.
Questions, comments, quips, laughs, guffaws, and bribes can be
directed to the below address. Flames will be nuked from orbit.
**************************************************************************
* Matt: You shot him!!!! | Matt Murray at the University of Dayton *
* Chris: No I didn't. It | MURRAYMD@******.BITNET *
* was a gunfight. | MURRAYMD@******.OCA.UDAYTON.EDU *
* He forgot his gun.| "Like, dude, where's the firefight?" *
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