[0B]

Excuse the crap map, but this is kind of what I mean. 1 through 6 are your normal office crap, board room, and cubicle farm. 7 is a "quiet room" for mages that are astral projecting. 8 is the magical research room, and 9 is the research farm.

More details for 8: the money symbol $ represents expensive equipment or experiments that the corp doesn't want to break/shoot at. So, in case of HRT, anyone squishy would want that in between them and corpsec

Corp mages will avoid doing anything destructive near the kudzu. Within those walls, the kudzu is "contained." I'm not sure how, but roll with it for now. If the walls are broken, then you can count 6 squares away from it, and that is the affected area for rabies.

If there is no way to contain kudzu that greps with your understanding of the setting, then just make the kudzu smaller and the "containment area" at least 5m by 5m. It's in the corner and will affect the outside of the building, but nobody honest is going to be flying that close to the building, right?

Incidentally, this also makes things precarious for anyone lobbing grenades all over the place.

Edit: Whoops, you posted while I was making this, so this may be irrelevant now

[penllawen]

FAB traps in 2e

shudder

Those things always gave me the heebie-jeebies.

For those who don't know: in the older editions, living things were a total block on astral travel. So there was this astrally active bacteria, FAB (it survives to the current versions but works a little differently now IIRC) that you could make solutions of and pump into wall voids. It would make an unbreakable barrier to astral travel.

Except there was a nasty variant where you held the FAB in big tanks until you deteced a mage in your facility, and then -- and only then -- pumped it into the walls, sealing the astrally projecting mage in. They couldn't leave, so they'd just sit there until their life force ebbed away, like a magical version of immurement. Ick.

[Shinobi Killfist]

FAB traps in 2e

shudder

Those things always gave me the heebie-jeebies.

For those who don't know: in the older editions, living things were a total block on astral travel. So there was this astrally active bacteria, FAB (it survives to the current versions but works a little differently now IIRC) that you could make solutions of and pump into wall voids. It would make an unbreakable barrier to astral travel.

Except there was a nasty variant where you held the FAB in big tanks until you deteced a mage in your facility, and then -- and only then -- pumped it into the walls, sealing the astrally projecting mage in. They couldn't leave, so they'd just sit there until their life force ebbed away, like a magical version of immurement. Ick.

If you had a decent spirit on call you could summon it into the room and have it bust the wall. otherwise you had to be lucky and hope your party figured shit out.

[0B]

Oh, to @Shinobi's point about having unlimited progression for mundanes the same way there is for mages-

After a certain rating, I feel like there shouldn't be essence costs. The concept of "essence" itself is a bit dated, but even so, technology should advance to the point where the essence change between a +4 cyberarm and a +5 cyberarm is negligible, or at least doesn't progress linearly.

You wouldn't be removing cost from it entirely, since you can always just make costs go up at a higher rate.

These are the current costs for "obvious:"

Rating	Essence Cost	Nuyen Cost
Arm	1	15,000
+1	1	5,000
+2	2	10,000
+3	3	15,000
+4	4	20,000

I would propose this:

Rating	Essence Cost	Nuyen Cost
Arm	1	15,000
+1	1	10,000
+2	1	20,000
+3	1	30,000
+4	1	40,000

Or even this:

Rating	Essence Cost	Nuyen Cost
Arm	2	15,000
+1	0	10,000
+2	0	20,000
+3	0	35,000
+4	0	55,000

The nuyen costs are possibly the same, I'm unsure if they really matter.

[Hobbes]

FAB traps in 2e

shudder

Those things always gave me the heebie-jeebies.

For those who don't know: in the older editions, living things were a total block on astral travel. So there was this astrally active bacteria, FAB (it survives to the current versions but works a little differently now IIRC) that you could make solutions of and pump into wall voids. It would make an unbreakable barrier to astral travel.

Except there was a nasty variant where you held the FAB in big tanks until you deteced a mage in your facility, and then -- and only then -- pumped it into the walls, sealing the astrally projecting mage in. They couldn't leave, so they'd just sit there until their life force ebbed away, like a magical version of immurement. Ick.

Could be worse, could be colonies of Devil Rats living in the walls.  That was horrible to watch, but at least it was sorta quick. 

[Michael Chandra]

These are the current costs for "obvious:"

Hold on, where are these numbers coming from? Do you mean Wired Reflexes or Muscle Replacement or something? Or are these from a book I don't know? Because last time I checked, cyberlimbs have a fixed Essence and Nuyen cost, and their upgrades simply cost Capacity, not Essence.

[0B]

Yeah, you're right. What the hell am I thinking about, then?

[Reaver]

I feel similar about the quickening/karma loss issue. I think the easiest solution would be to have counterspelling strip hits only temporarily, like 1 hit per hit, for magic rounds.

That leaves quickening with the advantage of being the cheapest increase path, but ware with the stability of it not being able to be stripped off when you need it most in combat. Also solves the karma loss/frustrated players issue.

the issue with this, is that everyone thinks of "quickening" only in the terms of a self buff, but the use of Quickening is not limited to self buffs...

A Wall of Fire spell can be quickened... (at least as of 5e)

So, by your rules... Mr. Mc asshole, the asshat mage who hates dancing... gets to live up to his namesake and cast and quicken "Wall of fire" on the entrance of Dante's Inferno.. thus making sure all the dance happy kids are either so hot, they're smoking -or- can't get into the club....Forever, as it can't be dispelled.

[Lormyr]

I feel similar about the quickening/karma loss issue. I think the easiest solution would be to have counterspelling strip hits only temporarily, like 1 hit per hit, for magic rounds.

That leaves quickening with the advantage of being the cheapest increase path, but ware with the stability of it not being able to be stripped off when you need it most in combat. Also solves the karma loss/frustrated players issue.

the issue with this, is that everyone thinks of "quickening" only in the terms of a self buff, but the use of Quickening is not limited to self buffs...

A Wall of Fire spell can be quickened... (at least as of 5e)

So, by your rules... Mr. Mc asshole, the asshat mage who hates dancing... gets to live up to his namesake and cast and quicken "Wall of fire" on the entrance of Dante's Inferno.. thus making sure all the dance happy kids are either so hot, they're smoking -or- can't get into the club....Forever, as it can't be dispelled.

Well that was spitballing ideas as opposed to a fully proposed fix.

But, your point holds up well, and if we wanted to run with the idea I tossed out for base concept, we could add a ritual for more permanent dispelling.

So the dispelling aspect of sorcery would only last magic in rounds, while the ritual would require say 10 mins per hit of the target spell, but permanently dispel.

Pretty simple solution, but obviously the idea requires refinement.

Edit: We could call the sorcery use of temporary dispel "Suppress" instead, and call the proper ritual "Dispel".

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

I'm not gonna say anyone's in the wrong for making house rules.

Personally though, in the case of quickened spells being easily dispelled:  I love it as is.  Spells incur virtually no opportunity cost, no essence loss, no nuyen, no downtime to install and heal up afterwards, and cannot be hacked.  Costing some karma is not an equal balance against all that... not unless the karma cost were WAY higher. 

Y'all do you, but I'm 100% fine with that karma being lost forever when the spell gets scraped off by a barrier or dispelled away.  If you want a long-lasting buff, you can pay the augmentation prices.  I say that ephemerality is the proper realm for spells.

[Lormyr]

Well, the ideal would be to just have a better balanced magic system. We have what we have to work with though.

[Beta]

I'm not gonna say anyone's in the wrong for making house rules.

Personally though, in the case of quickened spells being easily dispelled:  I love it as is.  Spells incur virtually no opportunity cost, no essence loss, no nuyen, no downtime to install and heal up afterwards, and cannot be hacked.  Costing some karma is not an equal balance against all that... not unless the karma cost were WAY higher. 

Y'all do you, but I'm 100% fine with that karma being lost forever when the spell gets scraped off by a barrier or dispelled away.  If you want a long-lasting buff, you can pay the augmentation prices.  I say that ephemerality is the proper realm for spells.

I'm  100% in agreement.   Quickening is entirely optional, and very clear on how it works.   No mage needs to take it.

[Shinobi Killfist]

I feel similar about the quickening/karma loss issue. I think the easiest solution would be to have counterspelling strip hits only temporarily, like 1 hit per hit, for magic rounds.

That leaves quickening with the advantage of being the cheapest increase path, but ware with the stability of it not being able to be stripped off when you need it most in combat. Also solves the karma loss/frustrated players issue.

the issue with this, is that everyone thinks of "quickening" only in the terms of a self buff, but the use of Quickening is not limited to self buffs...

A Wall of Fire spell can be quickened... (at least as of 5e)

So, by your rules... Mr. Mc asshole, the asshat mage who hates dancing... gets to live up to his namesake and cast and quicken "Wall of fire" on the entrance of Dante's Inferno.. thus making sure all the dance happy kids are either so hot, they're smoking -or- can't get into the club....Forever, as it can't be dispelled.

My wish for quickening is that it only made permanent spells on areas. But obviously dispellable. I don't think mages should have any permanent buffs but if they do make it through focuses so it hits them in the pocket book like every other permanent buff.

[Shinobi Killfist]

I'm not gonna say anyone's in the wrong for making house rules.

Personally though, in the case of quickened spells being easily dispelled:  I love it as is.  Spells incur virtually no opportunity cost, no essence loss, no nuyen, no downtime to install and heal up afterwards, and cannot be hacked.  Costing some karma is not an equal balance against all that... not unless the karma cost were WAY higher. 

Y'all do you, but I'm 100% fine with that karma being lost forever when the spell gets scraped off by a barrier or dispelled away.  If you want a long-lasting buff, you can pay the augmentation prices.  I say that ephemerality is the proper realm for spells.

Same, though again I'd prefer no permanent buffs for mages. I think that is the adepts and street sams gimmick.

[0B]

I'm not gonna say anyone's in the wrong for making house rules.

Personally though, in the case of quickened spells being easily dispelled:  I love it as is.  Spells incur virtually no opportunity cost, no essence loss, no nuyen, no downtime to install and heal up afterwards, and cannot be hacked.  Costing some karma is not an equal balance against all that... not unless the karma cost were WAY higher. 

Y'all do you, but I'm 100% fine with that karma being lost forever when the spell gets scraped off by a barrier or dispelled away.  If you want a long-lasting buff, you can pay the augmentation prices.  I say that ephemerality is the proper realm for spells.

Same, though again I'd prefer no permanent buffs for mages. I think that is the adepts and street sams gimmick.

I think you have the most important point. It's not really a matter of making sure the cost of quickening an increased attribute is equal to the cost of cyberware or an adept power. It's that SR is a very role-based system, even if that wasn't the original intent. Consider the different archetypes in 1e compared to 6e.

Nobody's going to complain if a mage doesn't have as much drain when they shoot a fireball, or if they last longer in astral space, because those are both magey things. I think if you want a mage to be able to do things like boosting attributes to put them on-par with sammy/adept, it needs to cost far more than it does for the sammy/adept, almost to the point where you'd be better off going and hiring some local muscle than having the mage cast the spell.