[Kesendeja]

Here's a new Positive Quality I was considering adding as a House Rule:

TechnoMagic Harmony (10 or 25 points)
Your familiarity and understanding with magic and technology has allowed you to mitigate some of the challenges with combining the two. You must be awakened to take this quality.

10 Points:
- Reduce the Object Resistance Dice Pool Modifier by one level. The level can be reduced no lower than "Natural Objects"
- Reduce the dice pool penalty for applying Health Spells to Low Essence characters by half.

25 Points: For the purpose of calculating maximum Magic, essence loss due to cyberware/bioware installation is divided in half. If this change is taken after chargen and results in a Maximum Magic score higher than current Magic, karma must be spent to raise Magic to its new maximum as normal.

Too much? I started drafting it at only the 10 point level but then thought the 25 point level might be a natural extension.

After playtesting these in my game we made the following change.

TechnoMagic Harmony (25 points)
   Your familiarity and understanding with magic and technology has allowed you to mitigate some of the challenges with combining the two. You must be awakened to take this quality.
   Reduce the Object Resistance Dice Pool Modifier by one level.
   The level can be reduced no lower than "Natural Objects"
   Reduce the dice pool penalty for applying Health Spells to Low Essence characters by half.

TechnoMagic Attunment (25 Points)
   You can ignore up to one point of essence loss for purposes of determining your magic.

[Kesendeja]

Found long ago online, need some help with determining cost, as 10pts was way too cheep for what they do.

Shielding Metamagical Qualities:

Mass Shielding:
This Quality costs xx Karma. The Initiate can protect an area with her Counterspelling equal to her Magic Rating + Grade in meters or a number of individuals within LOS equal to twice her Magic Rating + her Grade. This is a popular Quality amongst military and mercenary magicians.

State of the Art Shielding:
This Quality costs xx Karma. It allows the Initiate to apply her Grade in dice as a defense against any type of magical effect from any source.

[Kesendeja]

Something Ported over from 4th we really liked, buying metamagics outside of the standard one per grade.

Learning Extra Meta Magic
   If the gamemaster approves, Awakened characters can learn metamagic techniques through other methods, in addition to the one they acquire at each grade of initiation. It costs 20 Karma to learn a metamagic technique outside of initiation. The maximum number of metamagic techniques that may be learned in this way is equal to the character’s initiation grade.

Adepts and Power Points
We also allow mystic adepts, to buy power points each time they raise their magic, instead of spending a metamagics on it.

[ShadowcatX]

TechnoMagic Attunment (25 Points)
   You can ignore up to one point of essence loss for purposes of determining your magic.

I would probably change it to be exclusively for cyberware and cost 15 or 20 points.

My reasoning is that prototype transhuman does it for bioware already and is (basically) a 20 point quality. Also bioware > cyberware when you are wanting to save on essence. I would also add that it could not be stacked with prototype transhuman.

[Kesendeja]

Went over it with my group.

Technomantic Shaper (10 points)
Your familiarity and understanding with magic and technology has allowed you to mitigate some of the challenges with combining the two. You must be to take this quality.
Reduce the Object Resistance Dice Pool Modifier by one level.
The level can be reduced no lower than "Natural Objects"

Technomatic Harmony (3 Karma)
Reduce the dice pool penalty for applying Health Spells to Low Essence characters by two, to a minimum of one.

Technomantic Attunment (15 Points)
You can ignore up to one point of essence loss from cyberware for purposes of determining your magic or resonance.


Shielding Metamagical Qualities:

Mass Shielding (7 Karma)
This Quality costs 10 Karma. The Initiate can protect an area with her Counterspelling equal to her Magic Rating + Grade in meters or a number of individuals within LOS equal to her Magic Rating + her Grade. This is a popular Quality amongst military and mercenary magicians.

State of the Art Shielding (20 Karma)
This quality allows the mage to add their shielding dice to any roll to resist critter powers or abilities that rely on magic.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Technomantic ...

First suggestion: change the name.  'Technomantic' is far too close to 'Technomancer', and the former definitely suggests the latter.  'Technomystic' would work better, IMO.

Technomantic Shaper (10 points)
Your familiarity and understanding with magic and technology has allowed you to mitigate some of the challenges with combining the two. You must be Awakened to take this quality.
Reduce the Object Resistance Dice Pool Modifier by one level.
The level can be reduced no lower than "Natural Objects"

Hm.  This ... *double checks Object Resistance*  This is not a small thing.  The minimum you are doing is hitting the object with a -3 dice pool penalty.  Because reducing 'Highly Processed' to 'Manufactured High-Tech' is lowering it by 6 or more, I wouldn't allow it to reduce it by one level.  Otherwise, it reduces the dice pool by -3.  If you want this to just do that, great - find out what Quality (if any) reduces the opposition's dice pool by 3, and ballpark this off of that Quality.  If there is none (and I don't think there is), have it reduce the object's pool by a flat -3, minimum 3 dice (i.e. that of natural objects), and jack the price to 15 karma.

Technomatic Harmony (3 Karma)
Reduce the dice pool penalty for applying Health Spells to Low Essence characters by two, to a minimum of one.

Again, look up other  two-die penalty reductions.  I'd be willing to bet they're worth more than 3 karma.

Technomantic Attunment (15 Points)
You can ignore up to one point of essence loss from cyberware for purposes of determining your magic or resonance.

Hm.  ... 15 points I can agree with, I think.

Shielding Metamagical Qualities

Honestly, all of these are good ideas, but none of these are quite right - and should be either items studied as techniques, special actions for someone with the right metamagic, or else new metamagics entirely.

Mass Shielding (7 Karma)
This Quality costs 10 Karma. The Initiate can protect an area with her Counterspelling equal to her Magic Rating + Grade in meters or a number of individuals within LOS equal to her Magic Rating + her Grade. This is a popular Quality amongst military and mercenary magicians.

You're doing multiple possible things here; as a consequence, I think you need to split it up.

Expanded Shielding (Technique, 5 Karma): As a simple action, the Initiate can add her Initiate Grade to the number of individuals she is protecting as well as to her Counterspelling dice.  This requires a simple action for every combat Turn in which the Initiate desires to use it.
Area Shielding (Technique, 5 Karma): As a complex action, the initiate can protect with Counterspelling an area with a radius equal to one-half her Magic Rating + Intiate Grade in meters (or her Magic Rating + Initiate Grade in diameter).  This area is centered upon the Initiate; this cannot be changed.

State of the Art Shielding (20 Karma)
This quality allows the mage to add their shielding dice to any roll to resist critter powers or abilities that rely on magic.

Hm.  This ... is a significant upgrade.  Learning how to intercept the wide variety of weird magic-based Powers of various critters is something that's going to require an overall advancement of your knowledge of magic, which is why it says to me that it would need to be a new metamagic that requires Shielding.

Paranormal Shielding (Metamagic, requires Shielding)
The mage has learned to recognize the magic in, and thus defend against,  the magical abilities of paranormal critters.  This is an imperfect interaction, however; the mage may only apply 2/3 of his Counterspelling dice against critter powers.

[Kesendeja]

Could you tell me what book the rules for metamagic techniques are in. I can't seem to find them. But other than that I like your suggestions.

[ShadowcatX]

Technomantic Shaper (10 points)
Your familiarity and understanding with magic and technology has allowed you to mitigate some of the challenges with combining the two. You must be Awakened to take this quality.
Reduce the Object Resistance Dice Pool Modifier by one level.
The level can be reduced no lower than "Natural Objects"

Hm.  This ... *double checks Object Resistance*  This is not a small thing.  The minimum you are doing is hitting the object with a -3 dice pool penalty.  Because reducing 'Highly Processed' to 'Manufactured High-Tech' is lowering it by 6 or more, I wouldn't allow it to reduce it by one level.  Otherwise, it reduces the dice pool by -3.  If you want this to just do that, great - find out what Quality (if any) reduces the opposition's dice pool by 3, and ballpark this off of that Quality.  If there is none (and I don't think there is), have it reduce the object's pool by a flat -3, minimum 3 dice (i.e. that of natural objects), and jack the price to 15 karma.

Strive for perfection, which is 12 points but carries with it a penalty. What if this did the same? You want to cast on machinery, fine, but it results in diminished ability to target metahumans. Take a penalty on your skill roll equal to the Target's essence when directly casting on a being with an essence score.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Could you tell me what book the rules for metamagic techniques are in. I can't seem to find them. But other than that I like your suggestions.

There are several metamagics (5, 8?) in the core book; many more are in Street Grimoire, the primary magic book for SR5.

Strive for perfection, which is 12 points but carries with it a penalty. What if this did the same? You want to cast on machinery, fine, but it results in diminished ability to target metahumans. Take a penalty on your skill roll equal to the Target's essence when directly casting on a being with an essence score.

*hunts*  Okay, Strive for Perfection, Assassin's Primer, p. 17.  Halves the Called Shot penalty; while the standard is -4, Run & Gun's 'Specific Target' called shot locations replace that and run from -6 to -10 but are still Called Shots, so a player would have a notable point in a debate getting 5 points taken off that penalty on a called shot to the eye.  Penalty is that they always have to make Called Shots, unless they're doing something that's basically a flat-out 'not aiming at all anyhow', like Covering Fire.

Hm.

I ... think I would simply make Technomystic Shaper a twist on Strive for Perfection: Halves the Object Resistance dice pool of the item being cast upon, 12 karma.  I like your penalty idea, ShadowcatX, but it doesn't go quite far enough.  I think I would impose a penalty of a living target's Essence or Magic, round up and whichever was higher, on the Spellcasting / Ritual Spellcasting dice pool of whatever mage possessed this.  (After all, too much 'ware and the person starts to get closer to machine than man, right?)  This isn't a bonus to the defense of his target, but a penalty to his own pool; this is also in addition to whatever penalties a target might have due to low Essence, e.g. for Health spells.  (Which means healing a Street Samurai just got a bit tougher for the guy.)

[Finstersang]

Paranormal Shielding (Metamagic, requires Shielding)
The mage has learned to recognize the magic in, and thus defend against,  the magical abilities of paranormal critters.  This is an imperfect interaction, however; the mage may only apply 2/3 of his Counterspelling dice against critter powers.

TBH, it seems counterintuitive to me (and a lot of mage players I had at my table) that RAW counterspelling can only be used against actual spells cast by magicians and not against other magical powers. The use of the skill should be expanded to magic critter powers by default, without the need for an additional quality. If any, it should be an easily achievable and unexpensive perk.

[Finstersang]

Adept Powers
Killing Hands: Often overlooked for their ability to circumvent immunity to normal weapons, but I think they should be made even deadlier to fit the title. Suggestion: Change "When inflicting damage on the target of an unarmed attack, you may choose whether to cause Stun or Physical damage." to "When dealing damage to a target with an Essence Score (e.g. Living beings and Spirits) while this power is active, the damage is always physical, regardless of armor or other perks that would turn it into stun damage."

Adding to that:

Improved Killing Hands (0.25 PP, max. Rank 3, Requires Killing hands): Your Killing Hands Power has become even more destrucive by attacking the very soul of your victum . When using the Power, raise the Damage Code of your Attacks against targets with an Essence Score (e.g. Living beings and Spirits) by 1 for each Rank in this Power. However, the bonus Damage is also limited by the target´s Essence score (rounded down) - when there´s just not enough soul left in that cybered up Street Sam, the power can only do so much 

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Paranormal Shielding (Metamagic, requires Shielding)
The mage has learned to recognize the magic in, and thus defend against,  the magical abilities of paranormal critters.  This is an imperfect interaction, however; the mage may only apply 2/3 of his Counterspelling dice against critter powers.

TBH, it seems counterintuitive to me (and a lot of mage players I had at my table) that RAW counterspelling can only be used against actual spells cast by magicians and not against other magical powers. The use of the skill should be expanded to magic critter powers by default, without the need for an additional quality. If any, it should be an easily achievable and unexpensive perk.

If this were in a world where magic was, in general, pretty thoroughly understood and in which it 'took a hard left turn', yeah, that would make sense.  Thing is, SR is not that world; paranormal magic is notable in that it only works somewhat like standard magic.  Sometimes 'somewhat' is 90%; sometimes it's 10%.  Putting it at a general 2/3 is a good balance - and, in all honesty, might be well more than should be actually permitted.

[Nelphine]

I quite like Sum to Ten. However, it's not particularly balanced between the differences in priorities between different categories. For instance, taking resources A insyead of B is a much bigger improvement than what you lose by taking attributes D instead of E. Similarly, taking one higher magic priority is almost always better than taking one higher metatype (assuming you're already choosing at least D for magic.)

So I'm intending to completely redo the priorities in order to make them more balanced.

However, as much as I want to do this and I'm planning on making other changes as well to match it, some things elude me.

Why are resources set to the values they are? As far as I can tell they're purely arbitrary, but I could be wrong. Are any of the resource values specifically needed? Is 6000 or 50000 or 140000 somehow important?

To explain a bit more what I'm getting at, it's things like: choosing Trolls priority A instead of Trolls priority B is the biggest jump in the metatype table, by a noticeable amount. However, this is somewhat necessary in order to be able to choose a magic using Troll who has at least a few points of edge. So while it seems like a huge jump, it's got deeper reasoning for why it exists, and changing it has far reaching consequences.

On the other hand, attributes D and C being only +2 stats over the previous one seems to have no required reasoning so I'm intending to change attributes to provide 3 extra stats for each priority.

[Nelphine]

Next area I'm focusing on: skills for different archetypes.

Specifically, skills of a mage vs a street Sam.
Generally the priority difference between a mage and street same is magic vs resources. However, for both, utility in ability to do things other than their focus is highly important. This usually ends up in the skills category, which both then need to take at some priority depending on utility desired.

However, a mage can simulate most skills via spells.

The most extreme version of this is actually NOT utility, it's pure combat.

A mage can attack in melee, attack at range, and do area attacks, all on one skill. In fact they can also do almost all of their utility on that one skill as well.

A Street Sam on the other hand required at least 3 skills (melee, ranged, throwing or heavy weapons) in order to do all the combat things a mage can - and could actually be using upwards of 9 skills depending on the weapons involved. And then even more skills for the utility.


So my assumption is that the skill balance between Mage and street Sam (or more accurately, mage and any other non awakened non matrix type) is far from balanced.

To start, I change the 5 specialties of spellcasting into their own individual skills (and then break up those into distinct specialties - for example, the combat spellcasting specialty becomes the combat spellcasting skill, with specialties in touch, direct, direct area, indirect, indirect area).

However, is this enough for balance? The mage now has extra skills, and already had quite a few utility skills, but the street same still needs as many as 9 combat skills to match the mages combat spellcasting skill.

That being said, the mage will probably want at least one of those combat skills themselves, and has 5 other mage specific skills as well. So it's pretty close. This change makes it so, assuming both mage and street sam have one basic combat skill in common, the mage needs up to 9 other skills to do everything, and the street Sam needs up to 8.

It's not the same split, but at least it's a pretty similar split.

[Lorebane24]

I'm a huge fan of sum-to-ten as well.  I'm dealing with the biggest issue (doubling down on priority A) by adding a cavaet that everyone is limited to a single priority A.  There are a few concepts that are made more workable that might prefer 3x B instead of havine one A.

I was also thinking of doing a street level thing that, instead of using the wildly imbalanced street level rules, has the players use sum to ten but they arent allowed to have priority A in anything.

I also feel like the higher "special point" values allow for some weird monkyshines, and was just going to nix any entry above a race's minimum priority+1 (humans can have only E or D in race, elves can have only D or C, etc...)