Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => Gear => Topic started by: Neal Allen on <10-07-18/1409:55>
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Hey guys
I've struggled to understand how Wired Reflexes could possibly be worth it's essence (and nuyen) price. From a balance perspective we can compare it to two other things, Synaptic Boosters and the Increased Reflexes adept power. I'll be focusing on the adept power for a number of reasons. First, magic and cyberware are parallel aspects of Shadowrun and thus can be (for balance sake) quantitatively comparable. Second, Essence and Magic hold a bunch of similarities including (common) starting numbers (6 max mag, 6 starting ess), difficult to increase (initiation), etc.
Increase Reflexes (level 3) only costs 3.5 PP which is really not that much points. Especially because you can 1. grow your beginning number of PP at character creation through items, initiation (Depends on DM), etc, 2. be a full magician with 12+ spells as well as having other adept powers.
However level 3 of Wired Reflexes costs 5 essence. 5 ESSENCE. That's ALMOST ALL OF IT. Sure, you can reduce it with superior grades of cyberware, but it's already at an incredibly high availability rating making it near impossible to get at anything higher than Betaware and certainly not at character creation. Additionally the cost is HALF of MAX nuyen. This means you're limited to practically no other cyberware, as well you have 50% less nuyen to do everything else you wanted to do with your nuyen-focused character.
The quantitative magic equivalent would cost 6 spells and 5 PP.
I don't get it.
My personal solution as a DM is to reduce the essence cost to the same essence cost as the rating and the nuyen cost of level 1 by like 5%, rating 2 by 25% and rating 3 by 40%
What's your thoughts/opinion?
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You cannot stack ANY OTHER Initiative bonus with Improved Reflexes. You can stack drugs and the Increase Initiative spell with Wired Reflexes (unless Errata changes the definition for Augmentation) up to 5d6.
You can upgrade your Wired Reflexes to higher grade ware or change it out for Synaptic Boosters if we're talking post character generation paths.
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R1 Wired Reflexes are very cheap and easy to obtain. They work well together with Reaction Enhancers and can further be improved by a dose of Kamikaze.
WR and RE can be combined for a total of +6 Reaction and is one of the only ways to break the hard +4 limit to attribute enhancements.
All in all, it is a good low to midrange enhancement.
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Also, it is much easier to mess with magical abilities then it is with cyberware.
A strong background count, constant counterspelling, and even a good old fashioned ward and all interrupt a spell or adept ability.
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The answer is yes, Wired is worth it. While MBW, is cutting into lead a little. But Wired remains the pre-emanate initiative enhancer, why? B/c it has the language that allows it stack reaction enhancers and break the +4 limit..
Yeah its essence expensive, but there is nothing more effective in combat then jacking initiative.
If you're a playing a SAM it is the best way to go hands down.
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You can ignore the Augmented Maximum on Reaction if you get a high level of WR and RE, that's nice. But yeah, it's expensive. Still, definitely worth for some people. Though you should ignore high levels for character creation anyway and consider it a long-term goal.
As for Spells: sustaining complications. =)