[MercilessMing]

pg 52. The spell description for Comfort Zone describes a vehicle tire damage spell.

[MercilessMing]

Elsewhere on pg 52, one of the paragraphs for Stone Fist references the vehicle tire damage spell when it should reference Comfort Zone:

Step 1: Select a Spell Type
As with Tire Shredder, this spell manipulates reality, so we’ll put it in the Manipulation category.
The base DV is 1.

Since Comfort Zone is a Health spell, this sentence could just read "This spell manipulates reality, so we'll put it in the Manipulation category."

[MercilessMing]

More from Street Wyrd
pg 114, Scholastic Mage quality

Cost: 1 Karma or 1,000 nuyen per Knowledge skill
Game Effect: During character creation only,
mages can buy Knowledge Skills for 2 Karma
each. They can also buy Knowledge skills with
their starting nuyen (p. 68, SR6) at a cost of 1,000
nuyen per Knowledge skill.

Inconsistent Karma cost

[Shinobi Killfist]

It's out?  I literally looked 2 days ago for it and it had no estimated release date.

[Finstersang]

Yep, only realised it because of this very thread here. CGL can´t even properly announce a release anymore...

Not gonna lie, though: On a quick glance, the new rules seem suprisingly well thought through and consistent. The Tire Shredder/Comfort Zone blunder is goofy, but it´s just an example for the spellbuilder toolkit anyways.

[Michael Chandra]

More from Street Wyrd
pg 114, Scholastic Mage quality

Cost: 1 Karma or 1,000 nuyen per Knowledge skill
Game Effect: During character creation only,
mages can buy Knowledge Skills for 2 Karma
each. They can also buy Knowledge skills with
their starting nuyen (p. 68, SR6) at a cost of 1,000
nuyen per Knowledge skill.

Inconsistent Karma cost

Yeah I spotted that one and it confused the heck out of me. So it's a Positive Quality with a cost that gives a discount, but that cost kind of sounds weird? What I would SUSPECT it means is 'you pay 1 Positive Quality karma or 1k nuyen, plus 2 normal karma / 1k nuyen, for your knowledge skills'. If you pay 1 karma from the quality perspective, it counts for the (max 20 net karma) rule, while the karma spent on the normal buy doesn't. But then what about knowledge skill freebies, do those cost extra as well, so you pay karma or nuyen on the freebies, in return for a possible discount on any extra ones? It's just weird and I can't even establish a likely RAI.

[MercilessMing]

More from Street Wyrd
pg 114, Scholastic Mage quality

Cost: 1 Karma or 1,000 nuyen per Knowledge skill
Game Effect: During character creation only,
mages can buy Knowledge Skills for 2 Karma
each. They can also buy Knowledge skills with
their starting nuyen (p. 68, SR6) at a cost of 1,000
nuyen per Knowledge skill.

Inconsistent Karma cost

Yeah I spotted that one and it confused the heck out of me. So it's a Positive Quality with a cost that gives a discount, but that cost kind of sounds weird? What I would SUSPECT it means is 'you pay 1 Positive Quality karma or 1k nuyen, plus 2 normal karma / 1k nuyen, for your knowledge skills'. If you pay 1 karma from the quality perspective, it counts for the (max 20 net karma) rule, while the karma spent on the normal buy doesn't. But then what about knowledge skill freebies, do those cost extra as well, so you pay karma or nuyen on the freebies, in return for a possible discount on any extra ones? It's just weird and I can't even establish a likely RAI.

On further readings I bothered to look up Starting Nuyen (pg 68 CRB) which references the 'no more than 5000 nuyen to start the game' rule, so it sounds like the only time you're allowed to spend nuyen for knowledge skills in this way is right at the end of character creation with that leftover lump of cash.  This is an out-of-turn spend (qualities step 3, starting cash step 6) which makes it even more awkward.
The karma cost reads more like a mistake rather than 1 karma to unlock a discount. 
Anyway if the author looks that over and thinks "yeah this is good as is" they need their head checked.

[Aria]

Is the spell design ‘power index’ table missing? I’ve scrolled through a few times looking for it...?!

Edit: never mind... I can see that it is embedded in the descriptions of the 'ingredients' rather than a separate table

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

More from Street Wyrd
pg 114, Scholastic Mage quality

Cost: 1 Karma or 1,000 nuyen per Knowledge skill
Game Effect: During character creation only,
mages can buy Knowledge Skills for 2 Karma
each. They can also buy Knowledge skills with
their starting nuyen (p. 68, SR6) at a cost of 1,000
nuyen per Knowledge skill.

Inconsistent Karma cost

Yeah I spotted that one and it confused the heck out of me. So it's a Positive Quality with a cost that gives a discount, but that cost kind of sounds weird? What I would SUSPECT it means is 'you pay 1 Positive Quality karma or 1k nuyen, plus 2 normal karma / 1k nuyen, for your knowledge skills'. If you pay 1 karma from the quality perspective, it counts for the (max 20 net karma) rule, while the karma spent on the normal buy doesn't. But then what about knowledge skill freebies, do those cost extra as well, so you pay karma or nuyen on the freebies, in return for a possible discount on any extra ones? It's just weird and I can't even establish a likely RAI.

On further readings I bothered to look up Starting Nuyen (pg 68 CRB) which references the 'no more than 5000 nuyen to start the game' rule, so it sounds like the only time you're allowed to spend nuyen for knowledge skills in this way is right at the end of character creation with that leftover lump of cash.  This is an out-of-turn spend (qualities step 3, starting cash step 6) which makes it even more awkward.
The karma cost reads more like a mistake rather than 1 karma to unlock a discount. 
Anyway if the author looks that over and thinks "yeah this is good as is" they need their head checked.

Well, like so many other things, it can be read in numerous ways.  Syntactic ambiguity strikes again!

I think you can choose to read it as:
you pay 1 karma for the privilege of buying a knowledge skill at 2 karma, for a net 3 cost... which is a waste because that's what they cost anyway.
or you can pay 1000 karma to buy a knowledge skill at 2 karma instead of 3.  Not a very good deal, but it's better than "buy one for the price of one!"

Or, you can choose to read it as:
you pay 1 karma to lower the price of all knowledge skills you buy to 2.  So if you only buy 1 KS, it's still a wash at 3 karma.  But if you buy 3 knowledge skills, you're paying 1+2+2+2=7 instead of 3+3+3=9.  It's a slight bargain, but hey the quality only costs 1 karma, so what do you want?

Alternately, instead of paying any karma at all, you can pay 0 karma and 1000 nuyen per knowledge skill... so buying 3 would cost you 6 karma and 3,000 nuyen.

Recap:
the quality either costs
 1 karma per knowledge skill, or 1000 nuyen per knowledge skill
_or_
1 karma total, or 1000 nuyen per knowledge skill.

When a rule only makes sense (or works at all) when you read it one way but not the other... I find it's better to just go with the reading where it works

[Xenon]

As you say, it can be read in many different ways.


By a 'strict' reading of the rule as written the quality itself have one cost...and by paying for this quality you get a game effect that change the cost of knowledge skills. Which mean you end up with 4 different options on how to pay for knowledge skills:

• 1 + 2 = 3 karma per knowledge skill
• 1 Karma and 1000 nuyen per knowledge skill
• 1000 nuyen and 2 karma per knowledge skill
• 1000 + 1000 = 2000 nuyen per knowledge skill

Also, in a 'strict' reading it seem as if knowledge skills that you already got for free will also have an effect on the cost of the quality itself; so that you have to pay either 1 karma or 1000 nuyen extra for knowledge skills you got for free (just to get the quality itself).




Here is another one;

Cost is either:

• 1 single karma and then you can buy any number of knowledge skills at a cost of 2 karma per knowledge skill or 1000 nuyen per knowledge skill

Or:

• 1000 nuyen per knowledge skill and then you can buy any number of knowledge skills at a cost of 2 karma per knowledge skill or 1000 nuyen per knowledge skill.

(but this one is not very likely)



It can be read in even more ways than this (and the karma cost can also be a typo).

[MercilessMing]

And again no matter what, the money for this has to come out of Starting Nuyen, ie. purchased out-of-turn with the cash you have left over at the end of character creation, max $5000.  That's going to be a headache for people who write character generator software.

Also when it comes to the cost of all this, since 1 karma = 2000 nuyen at character creation, you can get up to 5 knowledge skills for 2.5 karma total using the money option.

[Aria]

I've not written it in to my excel generator yet... but more knowledge skills are good (and not going to rock the game world too much) so I may just interpret it in the easiest way to calculate it in excel until we hear otherwise (anyone got the ear of the author?)

Of course there's no reason why it has to just be a mage who accesses it either, although I guess the proportion of uni educated runners is going to be on the small ish side...

[Michael Chandra]

And again no matter what, the money for this has to come out of Starting Nuyen, ie. purchased out-of-turn with the cash you have left over at the end of character creation, max $5000.  That's going to be a headache for people who write character generator software.

Also when it comes to the cost of all this, since 1 karma = 2000 nuyen at character creation, you can get up to 5 knowledge skills for 2.5 karma total using the money option.

I always considered any gear-expenditure, including spell formulae and whatnot, to simply be part of the Gear cash. The 5k limit would be what you can take out of chargen into the game, not 'you can only buy 5k worth of the following goodies'.

[MercilessMing]

And again no matter what, the money for this has to come out of Starting Nuyen, ie. purchased out-of-turn with the cash you have left over at the end of character creation, max $5000.  That's going to be a headache for people who write character generator software.

Also when it comes to the cost of all this, since 1 karma = 2000 nuyen at character creation, you can get up to 5 knowledge skills for 2.5 karma total using the money option.

I always considered any gear-expenditure, including spell formulae and whatnot, to simply be part of the Gear cash. The 5k limit would be what you can take out of chargen into the game, not 'you can only buy 5k worth of the following goodies'.

Sure, but as I mentioned upthread, this quality specifically says the knowledge skills are purchased with Starting Nuyen and even references the CRB page where it says $5000 is the max starting nuyen you can have.

If this quality did not use the $5000 limit, then it's an even worse quality than we think because, why would you ever use the karma purchase option when 1 karma in chargen gets you $2000 aka two knowledge skills. 

Even once the cost of this quality is sorted out, I still think it's a bad quality because it basically says "are you a mage?  Congrats you're more knowledgeable than the team decker because you went to magic school."

[Xenon]

Let us assume that 'free' knowledge skills don't affect quality cost. This seems reasonable.
Let us assume that the cost is correct as written. This also seems reasonable.
Let us try that out on a few different use cases. See how it pan out. If it is reasonable or not.


With 1 extra knowledge skill (beyond Logic number of 'free' knowledge skills)

Without quality:
1*3 = 3 Karma

With quality, max karma:
1*1 karma + 1*2 karma = 3 karma (no difference)

With quality, resources for skills:
1 karma + 1000 (500:1)

With quality, resources for all:
1000 + 1000 = 2000 (1000:1 + 500:1)


Let us assume you instead get 3 extra knowledge skills.

Without quality:
3*3= 9 Karma

With quality, max karma:
3 karma + 6 karma = 9 karma (no difference)

With quality, resources for skills:
3 karma + 3000 (500:1)

With quality, resources for all:
3000 + 3000 = 6000 (1000:1 + 500:1)


Let us assume you instead get 7 extra knowledge skills.

Without quality:
7*3= 21 Karma

With quality, max karma:
7 karma + 14 karma = 21 karma (no difference)

With quality, resources for skills (but max 5000 starting nuyen):
7 karma + 4 karma + 5000 (500:1)

With quality, resources for all:
7000 + 4 karma + 5000 = 4 karma + 12000 (1000:1 + 500:1)


With this reading the intent behind this quality seem to be that you get to trade your 'starting' cash for karma at a ratio of 500 nuyen per karma (which is a pretty good deal if you are OK with starting the game with less nuyen).

It also let you trade 'gear' cash for karma at a ratio of 1000 nuyen per karma, but only karma you already planned to spend on knowledge skills to begin with (which is also pretty good deal as you are also allowed to buy 'back' 2000 'gear' cash for just 1 customization karma).

You should probably not pick this quality if you don't intend to buy extra knowledge skills or if you don't intend to trade cash for karma (as you will 'pay' with one of your limited quality slots without actually gaining anything).