[Hephaestus]

This is getting into a situation where the the new rules are grating against the established lore. You either:

- Believe that you can buy back magic ability after losing points to augmentations (in some cases, after burning out completely). This is the mechanical interpretation of the RAW.

OR

- Believe that losing essence is permanent, and that you shouldn't be able to buy magic beyond what you have lost. This is the long-established lore interpretation, and had some mechanical anchors in previous editions. Once you lose essence, its gone, and with it should go any ability tied to it.

Personally, I agree with the latter. The idea penllawen had to treat it like an augmented ability makes a lot of sense. It should function as a constant resistance to your ability to wield magic, both in maximum ability and in advancement. And this negative mechanic already exists in the new rules for medkits and first aid, where lower essence makes you harder to heal.

Regardless of when your character buffs their magic ability, they should be paying extra to get augments and still be able to cast spells. It would also limit the ability of people to powergame with burnout mages/adepts.

So get your magic 5, burn down to 1 essence, and your magic reating is 5[0] until you pay 30 karma to get back to 6[1].

[Hobbes]

Per the discussions over on the Missions GMs forums I was told that even though the steps are numbered they shouldn't be considered to be done in order. 

"Sometimes you do things in order, sometimes you don't, depending on the GMs mood."  is less desirable than a clear instruction. 

Just sayin' is all.

[Typhus]

So, back in the day, when Magic defaulted to 6, it used to be that your Magic rating increasing past the current maximum was gated by Initiation (which added +1 to the attribute, or later +1 to the maximum rating).  I'm not sure which edition caused this limitation to disappear, but I assume it was originally there to prevent the abuse of the system that the above comments describe now being possible.  It was never originally conceived of as an attribute in the same sense as the others, and didn't have the same ability to be manipulated through direct Karma spends.  Initiation used to include the boost in the package.

If nothing has changed in the game world about what happens when you lose Essence/add augmentation, then what should be happening in this edition is that your *maximum* Magic attribute should be dropping as  you lose Essence.  Follow this by noting that the only way to exceed your current maximum Magic attribute is to Initiate, thus allowing you a +1 higher cap for each initiation grade.  Anything less than that is allowing abuse as described here, which would be pretty game-breaking if it were the intent.

It should also be specified what happens if you drop you Maximum Magic attribute lower than the amount needed to cover your Power Points or Mystic Adept abilities.  I assume this has also not changed between editions, but I may be wrong, of course.

If the intentions have changed, then I have no meaningful input to offer.

The real question for designers is if they meant to change anything about the way Magic and Essence interacted in this edition. If not, just rewrite it back to the way it was.

[Hobbes]

Also, the whole burn out thing.  Make an optimized Burn out Adept.  Make an optimized "Pure" Adept.  Go on, I'll wait, I have.

Compare them.  Give them both 50 Karma and 100k.  Compare.  Hand out another 50 Karma and 100k.

Tell me the dice pool differences between these two characters is greater than if someone chooses poorly during Priority Selection.

If the optimization behavior you're concerned with has less impact than simply choosing better Priorities I'm not sure why you'd be worried.  Personally I'd think you'd want to raise the floor of character performance so the optimization matters less.  YMMV.

[Michael Chandra]

I'm going with 'you may need to take something later on that allowed a previous step, but expenses are in order'. Points before karma, karma before gear.

[Shinobi Killfist]

For burnouts as opposed to bad priority choices. Other things being potentially more broken isn’t what I’d call balanced.

That being said what grates on me about the edge going to the burnout is that it goes against the lore. The rules should support the setting not fight it.

[Hobbes]

For burnouts as opposed to bad priority choices. Other things being potentially more broken isn’t what I’d call balanced.

I'd agree, but I feel it is a valid argument for prioritizing Errata. 

[penllawen]

So, back in the day, when Magic defaulted to 6, it used to be that your Magic rating increasing past the current maximum was gated by Initiation (which added +1 to the attribute, or later +1 to the maximum rating).  I'm not sure which edition caused this limitation to disappear, but I assume it was originally there to prevent the abuse of the system that the above comments describe now being possible.  It was never originally conceived of as an attribute in the same sense as the others, and didn't have the same ability to be manipulated through direct Karma spends.  Initiation used to include the boost in the package.

You got me curious, so I dug into my big library o' Old Shadowrun Stuff [see attachment] to refresh my memory:

2e CRB: No initiation. "If a character can use Magic, his Magic rating starts at 6, but is equal to the Essence Rating, rounded down." Magic is basically a derived attribution, like Reaction used to be.

Also, you can lose Magic points when you suffer Deadly damage or when you are healed incorrectly -- roll 2d6, if you roll under your Magic attribute you lose 1 point, if you roll snake eyes you always lose 1 point. With, at that point, no chance of ever getting them back. Ooof, that's cruel by modern standards.

The Grimoire: No idea, my copy appears to be irritatingly missing. But I'm pretty sure this is where initiation was first introduced and your description above is correct. Every initiation rank just added 1 directly to the character's Magic attribute, and that was the only way to increase it.

Awakenings: New Magic in 2057: mentions initiation but only in the context of additional rules for adepts and physads. Also very briefly mentions the concept of mysads (I had totally forgotten that) except they're called "physical magicians."

3e CRB: "If you have assigned a priority to Magic, then your character's Magic Rating is equal to his or her Essence, rounded down." No initiation rules, and I don't have any 3e splatbooks.

So it must be either 4e, 4eA, or 5e that made this change to treating Magic as a full-fledged Attribute in its own right. And, to be fair, that brings one very clear benefit - you  can now have street-level mages with Magic attributes below 6, representing their lack of training and experience.

[penllawen]

That being said what grates on me about the edge going to the burnout is that it goes against the lore. The rules should support the setting not fight it.

I totally agree. On that note, while I was flipping through old books just now (see my post above), I came across this fluff text that's very much in the vein of "burning out is very bad". I think that's very typical of how Shadowrun lore treats burnout, and I find it completely at odds with the idea that you can cheaply buy back lost Magic points in the manner described above.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

There's only 2 things new about the way the magic attribute works in 6we:

Essence loss only causes a reduction in Magic... not Magic and Maximum Magic
0 Magic is not said to end your existence as a magician.  (iirc this is new to 6we... I *believe* I remember that in 5e hitting 0 Magic meant you weren't a magician anymore)

[Hobbes]

There's only 2 things new about the way the magic attribute works in 6we:

Essence loss only causes a reduction in Magic... not Magic and Maximum Magic
0 Magic is not said to end your existence as a magician.  (iirc this is new to 6we... I *believe* I remember that in 5e hitting 0 Magic meant you weren't a magician anymore)

Pretty sure total burn out happened at 0 Max Magic in 5E.  Magic could hit 0 as long as Max Magic didn't.  The whole D Magic Adept Priority, stick in augments then buy up Magic to 1 with 5 Karma is not new to 6th.

[Finstersang]

I don't care about invisible values. If you burn Edge 3x from 5 to 2, you're buying back to 3 so you pay for rank 3. If you lost magic and now are spending karma, your current rank matters. I don't see what's so unbelievable about that opinion.

Oh, I also don´t think that this is unbelievable or incomprehensible. There are some valid reasons to keep it like you said and not the other way.

One could argue that it´s easier to understand because there are no "invisible values" to care about (which happens to be the reason why I think that Adepts should get PP from Special Attribute Points as well  ). I´d say it´s not that hard to manage, though. In 4th Edition, I noted the "orginal" Magical Attribute that you would raise with Karma, followed by the "effective" Magical Attribute ("original" Magic minus Essence Loss) in Parantheses. But hell, even the fact that you can save lots of Karma by incremently augmenting yourself at Magic 2 and buying the points back cheaply can be loosely justified (slowly acclimating your Magic to your Augmentations, yadda yadda, argle bargle...). For me, it´s mostly a balancing thing. IMO the burnout-buyback-trick is a bit too easy and cheap way to build a Burnout Mage or Adept. It doesn´t fit with the lore, where burning out has usually more serious consequences.

It´s good to know now that you buy gear and augmentations after everything else now. That way, Fans of Burnout Cheese at least can´t pull this off at chargen. That alone may be enough to reduce the number of cheesy burnout Adepts, because from my observations, they are most popular by powergaming/min-max fans that want to be 110% ready and powerfull right out of the box

Whatever you (and/or the powers that be) prefer: There should be no ambiguity left on what´s the final verdict. If the RAW has any room for different interpretations, it´s still something that needs an errata 

There's only 2 things new about the way the magic attribute works in 6we:

Essence loss only causes a reduction in Magic... not Magic and Maximum Magic
0 Magic is not said to end your existence as a magician.  (iirc this is new to 6we... I *believe* I remember that in 5e hitting 0 Magic meant you weren't a magician anymore)

Pretty sure total burn out happened at 0 Max Magic in 5E.  Magic could hit 0 as long as Max Magic didn't.  The whole D Magic Adept Priority, stick in augments then buy up Magic to 1 with 5 Karma is not new to 6th.

Wait, that was RAI in 5th Edition? Holy shit 

I always thought that you still need at least this 1 point of Magic to buy yourself back to 2. This cuts the already cheap price for the burnout-buyback-cheese in half again.

Screw it, THAT should definetely not be RAW. It´s ridiculously cheesy and not in line with the lore around bornouts - the fact that it may have been RAW/RAI in 5th Edition doesn´t make it any better 

[Finstersang]

That being said what grates on me about the edge going to the burnout is that it goes against the lore. The rules should support the setting not fight it.

I totally agree. On that note, while I was flipping through old books just now (see my post above), I came across this fluff text that's very much in the vein of "burning out is very bad". I think that's very typical of how Shadowrun lore treats burnout, and I find it completely at odds with the idea that you can cheaply buy back lost Magic points in the manner described above.

+1

[FastJack]

So, back in the day, when Magic defaulted to 6, it used to be that your Magic rating increasing past the current maximum was gated by Initiation (which added +1 to the attribute, or later +1 to the maximum rating).  I'm not sure which edition caused this limitation to disappear, but I assume it was originally there to prevent the abuse of the system that the above comments describe now being possible.  It was never originally conceived of as an attribute in the same sense as the others, and didn't have the same ability to be manipulated through direct Karma spends.  Initiation used to include the boost in the package.

You got me curious, so I dug into my big library o' Old Shadowrun Stuff [see attachment] to refresh my memory:

2e CRB: No initiation. "If a character can use Magic, his Magic rating starts at 6, but is equal to the Essence Rating, rounded down." Magic is basically a derived attribution, like Reaction used to be.

Also, you can lose Magic points when you suffer Deadly damage or when you are healed incorrectly -- roll 2d6, if you roll under your Magic attribute you lose 1 point, if you roll snake eyes you always lose 1 point. With, at that point, no chance of ever getting them back. Ooof, that's cruel by modern standards.

The Grimoire: No idea, my copy appears to be irritatingly missing. But I'm pretty sure this is where initiation was first introduced and your description above is correct. Every initiation rank just added 1 directly to the character's Magic attribute, and that was the only way to increase it.

Awakenings: New Magic in 2057: mentions initiation but only in the context of additional rules for adepts and physads. Also very briefly mentions the concept of mysads (I had totally forgotten that) except they're called "physical magicians."

3e CRB: "If you have assigned a priority to Magic, then your character's Magic Rating is equal to his or her Essence, rounded down." No initiation rules, and I don't have any 3e splatbooks.

So it must be either 4e, 4eA, or 5e that made this change to treating Magic as a full-fledged Attribute in its own right. And, to be fair, that brings one very clear benefit - you  can now have street-level mages with Magic attributes below 6, representing their lack of training and experience.

1st Edition Grimoire [FASA07106]

Benefits of Initiation

When a magician makes it to Grade 0, he is officially an initiate. He can use metamagic and travel on the Metaplanes of Astral Space. However, Grade 0 does not increase his Magic Attribute.

At each grade higher than 0, the initiate adds 1 point to his Magic Attribute. Various magical operations will also gain advantages because he adds his grade to his other scores. Anywhere this bonus applies is specifically noted throughout these rules.

[Finstersang]

There's only 2 things new about the way the magic attribute works in 6we:

Essence loss only causes a reduction in Magic... not Magic and Maximum Magic
0 Magic is not said to end your existence as a magician.  (iirc this is new to 6we... I *believe* I remember that in 5e hitting 0 Magic meant you weren't a magician anymore)

Terrible enough if RAW, even more terrible when confirmed as RAI.

Keep in mind that there is no negative Magic value, so coming back from Zero would cost the same measly 5 Karma no matter how hard you cybered up. So screw the incremental burnout-buyback-trick, amagine this instead: At chargen, you start with an Adept (or Magician or Mysad...) at the lowest Priority and Magic Attribute possible. Apart from that, you go full Streetsam, with 5,9 Esssence in the biggest and baddest Augmentations. Of course, your precious magic drops to Zero. But lo and behold: Just 5 Karma in the game, and your magical spark is alive again with a magic Attribute of 1. 25 Karma, and you are already at 3. Basically, you just level up your magic like any other low-level Magician would. The only difference is that you also walk around like RoboCop, because you were smart enough to Augment yourself before investing in your Magic.

Here´s a humble little suggestion to prevent this. Fits in one easy to comprehend sentence, and if I remember correctly, this sentence was also in 4th and 5th Edition:

"Your maximum Magic Attribute is equal to Essence (round down) + Initiation Grade". 
 
(And maybe, just maybe that sentence was actually just forgotten to add in 6th Edition, because argle bargle foofaraw what is editing baby don´t hurt me...)