From:	Bob Ooton <topcat@**.CENCOM.NET>
Subject:	Re: potential ...
Date:	Sat, 22 Apr 1995 01:32:47 -0500

> Well your post meantioned karma not money, and that is what I responed to.
>"You don't have to spend times the karma to bond a spell focus you just
> picked up off a black market talismonger, do you?"
> That is what you said, and my answer is yes, its aqually 5x its rating.

ARRRGGGHHH!! Nevermind...

>> Your riggers must not like the idea of vehicle mounted weapons, huh?

> How about you can hide from a weapon, but you cant hide from ritual
>sorcery.

Cover only goes so far, and if you p*ss off a guy far enough to have him
wishing ritual sorcery on you... then you deserve everything you get.
Though a round through the arm (just enough to draw blood) is plenty good
for ritual material, why waste the effort going to grab a focus? And foci
are traceable. So while you're working for hours and hours trying to get
that spell sent through the focus, the mage whose focus it is will be
waiting until just about the end to screw up your efforts and reclaim his
toy. As with most loot, the faster you purge it, you better off you are.

> Lets get this straight, I dont believe in ruining peoples characters
>I know this is only IMHO and some people actually treat their groups like
>that, but I dont. So yes this was not a typo, I would never force
>essense/magic loss on a player just because I *think* that his character
>is too powerfull. OTOH if the player himself chose a way of action that
>brought this upon himself, well that is another story.

I don't ruin characters either, but the chance exists for THEM to do it
should they mess around with the wrong things. And I don't force essence
loss either, but that doesn't keep me from throwing a vampire or nosferatu
out there when I feel like one would fit into whatever I'm brewing up.

> I fully agree and so do my NPCs, I think that this goes without saying
>anyway. In your respomse you talked about GM intervention not normal
>everyday combat as a result of the runners actions.

GM intervention doesn't occur except in extreme cases. I'd only "intervene"
if a character had gotten too powerful. We had a rigger with a Banshee, a
samurai with more karma than Indra, and a decker that treated IC like water.
They are all living happily as NPC's now. I didn't do this, I played the
samurai. But I knew it was time for him to move on. I would expect a GM to
remove unbalancing or overpowered characters from the campaign (at least as
PC's). No one lost essence, no one lost cyberware or the like. They just
all moved on. Overall the only person who remained upset was the rigger.
But even he's come off of that now.


-- Bob Ooton <topcat@******.net>