[Plastic-Man]

I've been tinkering with making a character that's replaced all their limbs with cyberlimbs and has a bit of magic.

By the rules if I have magic 2 and take greater than 3 augments I will have an essence loss of 4, my magic will be 0 but I can buy that up to 2 afterwards for 15 karma.

Is this seen as cheese or acceptable.

[PiXeL01]

That depends on how strict your GM is. Some would rule that if you ever touch actual magic of 0 then you’d be burned out for life while others say as long as your maximum magic is above 0 you’re good.

[Michael Chandra]

You mean, if the GM is houseruling or following the rules: p287, you only burn out if maximum rating becomes zero.

But the GM can easily go 'sorry, but I won't allow this' since they can always veto any character, and you also have to worry about what use a character with 2 Magic is. It's a bit cheesy, and many GMs are allergic to cheesiness.

Incidentally: you don't lose an essence point per augmentation.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Incidentally: you don't lose an essence point per augmentation.

Well in the case of cyberlimbs, you pretty much lose a magic point per

[Michael Chandra]

Pfff, I lose worse when I get Used Reaction Enhancers and a Used Control Rig.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

I suppose the relevant question for the OP is whether Magic bottoms out at 0.

If you start with 2 magic and lose 4 magic, does buying 1 point back put you still below (and effectively at) Zero or do you get a pass on two points of magic loss?

[Hobbes]

"Pass" isn't quite right, it's still 15 Karma going from 0 to 2 on any Special Attribute.  (Edge, Resonance, Magic).

For Physical Adepts your choices are:

Magic D, 2 Magic, down to 0 with Essence loss, 15 Karma back to 2 Magic.

*or*

Magic B , 6 Magic, down to 2 with Essence Loss.  Gain some bonus skill points and have chargen Karma to spend on other things.

Depending on what exactly you're up to you can build the same character either way.  The end results likely aren't that different for a lot of builds.  The first way is generally "Better" but the end results look very similar at the table.

[Michael Chandra]

Yes, Magic won't go 'negative'. So it's perfectly legal.

But Hobbes, the cheat here is that you basically 'lose' 2 points that you never had, then buy up as normal. If you were forced to first get up to Magic 4 with SAPs, then lose all 4 by Essence Loss, then pay karma for the 2 points, you'd be out 2 SAPs. Instead you drop to '-2' which is actually capped to 0, then go from 0 to 2.

Again, the GM can veto it. I always made clear I had veto rights with characters, and I in fact did veto some builds and provided input to tweak them. (I also vetoed Orgasm.)

[Hobbes]

I get the argument, my point is for most builds the difference between the two methods is minor in play.  Yes the buy two Magic for 15 Karma is usually a bit better mechanically than spending a higher priority and losing a couple points of Magic.  But the reverse is true for a character that is only planning on going down to 4 or 5 Essence/Magic. 

There is always going to be a Mathmatically optimal Priority Array for a character.  Unless the build really needs the "B" priority for Metatype or particularly expensive 'ware, the end result of either method gets you in the same ballpark of character ability.

One of my NT characters is a Magic 2, cyber'd up physical adept, I went through several major iterations of this build in the last few months      I could have brought any of them to the games I've played and it would have gone basically the same.  The difference shows up in the secondary skills and abilities, what skills can I get at 1 at char gen, can I jam in an extra specialty or two, can I afford Tetrachromatic Vision or Earbuds.  Stuff like that.  The primary abilities and dice pools are +/- 1, maybe 2, between the different builds.

[Marcus]

This is generally legal, but just not worth doing in anyway.

[DigitalZombie]

If its allowed at your table, its a great way to build an aspected magician, as other spellslingers cant use magic D for anything.

[Tecumseh]

For the record, this is the passage from p. 278 (not p. 287):

If your Magic is reduced to zero, you can no longer use any skill requiring the Magic attribute, even if your maximum Rating is still greater than zero (but you can still raise the attribute with Karma and then get back to the spellslinging). If your maximum rating falls to zero, you’ve burned out, losing all magical abilities, including astral perception and projection.

[welldressedgent]

The weird thing for me is that somebody would voluntarily chop off four perfectly good limbs and replace them with prosthetics, just because. No worse than the eyes, I guess.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Maybe they weren't perfectly good.

[Ajax]

The weird thing for me is that somebody would voluntarily chop off four perfectly good limbs and replace them with prosthetics, just because. No worse than the eyes, I guess.

Welcome to transhumanism.