Please Help: Shadowrun style Essence

[Aldric]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Your cyborgs probably didn't have the points to spend on supernatural abilities anyway.

It's different in Shadowrun where magic characters get money "free" at chargen and/or could use earned money to get cyberware implanted if it weren't for the Essence loss.

Any character could be a spellcaster, unless the GM requires an UB to be one, and makes sure the relevant skill/advantages cannot be gained later.
And any spellcaster can end up needing cyberware for whatever reason, so they'd be very interested in limiting the loss of Essence.
And every character might be mildly interested in not becoming a soul-less killing machine, maybe...

[Kesendeja]

Originally Posted by Aldric

Any character could be a spellcaster, unless the GM requires an UB to be one, and makes sure the relevant skill/advantages cannot be gained later.
And any spellcaster can end up needing cyberware for whatever reason, so they'd be very interested in limiting the loss of Essence.
And every character might be mildly interested in not becoming a soul-less killing machine, maybe...

In the game I'm doing anyone can cast with the right combination of Advantage (Magery 0) and spells. So your average street sam could cast magic every once in awhile, (he's generally not going to have a high skill since it's based on QN).

[Christopher R. Rice]

I wrote up a system on my blog.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Kesendeja

Do you think having an additional derived stat based on the average of IQ and QN for humanity would be a good idea? Take the average and multiply that by 10 and for each point you have to take that amount in Disadvantages relating to humanity loss.

That would likely interact very oddly with the GURPS point system.

The simplest way to treat Essence loss in a GURPS setting is simply by applying roll penalties directly. That is, look at the list of available cyber (or bio or what have you) augmentations, and whatever else might carry an Essence cost, and assign roll penalties for each one.

For ex, if a cyberarm is worth -1, then all social skill rolls, anything involving magic, etc. would carry a -1 penalty. Minor stuff might be partial, that is, a cybergland might be worth a -1/4 penalty, so a PC could get up to four of those kind of things before the penalty actually kicked in at -1. Exactly what the penalties should be would be a GM call.

As the penalties start piling up, begin assigning appropriate mental Disads and Quirks. Decide at what point the penalties have reached the 'lethal' level (the point at which the character has given up so much flesh that there isn't enough left to keep the soul on this plane and he dies).