From:	Damion Milliken <adm82@***.EDU.AU>
Subject:	Re: Gene-Therapy
Date:	Tue, 11 Apr 1995 11:00:03 +1000

Dave Woods writes:

> Hi everyone :)

Greetings Dave.

> My first question for you is, can Gene-Therapy repair attribute loss. Not
> magic attribute of cause but body, strength, quickness, intelligence, and
> willpower, for my mage has lossed points it each.

I guess you are referring to the Attribute loses caused by the Ascetism
Ordeal for initiation. These are for physical attributes only, so I am as
yet unsure of where the Intelligence and Willpower loses have come from
[maybe you stuffed your Body roll when you copped Deadly wounds?]. But for
the physical Attribute loses, I'd say that gene therapy could remedy the
problem. The ordeal involves some physically taxing and dangerous activity,
which results in a loss of the body's condition. Gene therapy can heal
bodywide cellular damage of a similar nature, so I'd say if could fix this
problem. OTOH, the ordeal is magical in nature, and so may not be able to be
fixed using tecnological means (depends on your view of exactly what it
involves - it could well be a case of WYTIWYG more than anything). But I'd
allow it to be done (as long as you used the more expansive reconstructive
healing type therapy anyway). As for fixing the Mental stats up, I wouldn't
think so. Gene therapy fixes physical problems, and Intelligence is not a
physical Attribute, it is to do with your mind, not something easily
modified by technology. But then again, things such as Cerebral Boosters and
the like exists, so perhaps the powers that be can create detailed enough
mechanisms to fix even Intelligence loss, but I wouldn't allow it.

Continuing along this line of thought, it would seem possible to use gene
therapy to fix Essence loss too. Or maybe not, since Essence is a measure of
your aural wholeness. But, it would be possible to use gene therapy to
remove cybersystems which are not able to be removed by surgery (like wired
reflexes), so you could then implant other cyber in the "gap".

> Also can Sorcery Adepts quicken spells if they have a detection spell
> which allows them Astrally percieve spells.

No, because there should be no spell which allows someone who does not have
access to the astral to perceive to it. If you want access to the astral,
you must assign a higher priority to Magic during character creation, a mere
spell should not replace a magical ability such as Astral Perception. Think
of how handy a "Perceive the Astral" spell would be - sammies could have it,
any magician would be better off using the spell than perceiving, since they
would not be vulnerable to astral attack, and so no.

--
Damion Milliken Unofficial Shadowrun Guru E-mail: adm82@***.edu.au

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