[Hobbes]

Mana Barriers / Wards only stop Active Foci, so turn them off, turn them on.  Certainly a hassle but not difficult, unless you don't know it's there.  And a 'runner team without Astral Perception is going to have a tough time with any Astral defenses.  Don't be that 'runner team.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Yes, But the whole point is a counterpoint to "cyberware can set off sensors, and adepts would bypass those automatically".

Sure! And mundanes and their cyberware won't set off wards/magic detectors, so it's a wash.

[Finstersang]

Bit late to the party, but what gives? Time for some good old overthinking

First, just to make sure that everyone here is on the same page on what "essence holes" means, a very simplified explanation:

• Big ware makes a Big hole in your Essence.
• You take the Ware out, the big hole stays.
• If you put other, smaller Ware in the hole, the hole doesn´t get bigger...
• ... but if you put more, bigger Ware in it, it does.

IMO, it´s really not that complicated, but o boi, will you find find threads over threads about this concept! 

If I understand MM´s original suggestion correctly, this would be changed to:

• Big ware makes a Big hole in your Essence.
• You take the Ware out, hole closes (straight away?)
• If you put other ware in, it makes a new hole.

   
TBH: Not a big fan, at least not as a straight, no-investment-needed process. First, Flavour: Removing the concept of essence holes turns augmentations into just another piece of gear. Your Essence would be nothing more than a storage limit for your stuff.  Second: It´s really not that much of an issue for augmented mundanes anyways. Besides healing, the main reason for removing Augmentations is to make room for other, more efficient augmentations.

There are much more pressing issues that keep the chrome from shinging: The plight of Cyberlimbs, the penalty to healing tests (what´s the point of the Kybernetic Specialization?), the fact that Ware only hampers positive Magic (seriously, what´s the logic here? Also, if magic and tech doesn´t mix well, wouldn´t that also imply the existence of ware that is specifically designed to disturb magic?), not to mention the fact that many of the more "extreme" options like FBCs and Cyberzombies are missing since 5th Edition. Augmentations lacks behind in crunch and flavour because the writers were either not willing or not able to apply the same love to them as to anything magic. Spells make you fly, Adept powers makes you run up Walls, Hydraulic Jacks make you jump just a few centimeters higher. Woohoo. Augmentations are framed as something mundanes need to do to "keep up" with Magic users, but without ever coming close to catch up. Filing away the "Edginess" of Augmentations having a permanent imprint on your Essence doesn´t help with that.

However: I do think there should be some options for Mundanes (and Technomancers!) to mitigate essence loss and maybe even unlock other perks that are not available to Burnout Adepts and Magicians. In 5th Edition, Essence holes could be closed with expensive genetic therapy. Apart from this, I think it also could also make sense if essence holes can be closed up by some form of mental training or therapy.

To explain this, we´d need a more refined and less "argle bargle foofaraw" (never forgive, never forget  ) vision on what essence represents: If it´s not just about how many limbs you have left, but about the integrity of your body and soul, then a noticable portion about your essence might be about how much your "soul" and self-image harmonizes with your physical body. This then could mean, that if someone chops up your arm, you would initially use a portion of your essence not because of the "lost flesh", but because your mind and soul doesn´t align with your body anymore. Through mental training or shere habituation, you could overcome this discrepancy, and of course, you may also get a cloned biological arm to make yourself "whole" again. IMO, all of these are reasonable paths to integreate essence recovery. And it also would make sense if mundanes are somewhat better at this, because they don´t have to align the whole body-mind-soul-complex with the astral space.

In contrast, an actual cyberarm will always be a somewhat foreign element, since it´s not made out of - well, you.  It´s mechanical and it´s controlled by a foreign onboard computer system that´s interfacing with your nervous system. In a way, it´s more like a symbiotic relationship than an "extension" of yourself (Which is a theme that really deserves more exploration, especially when it comes to Cyberware. If highly recommend this gritty little masterpiece on this  ). Note that this also serves as another explanation on why bioware is less invasive than Cyberware.

But what if you decide to "train" your soul and mind to help accept and integrate the "foreign" element? That would imply that people can also learn to (partially) offset the essence loss of augmentations, by, for the lack of better words, befriending and embracing them. One way to intergrate such a concept might be a return of the "Samurai Ways" last seen late in 4th Edition: By embracing that you are an unstoppable "Tank" or a wired "Speed Demon", the fitting Augmentations become a integral part of your identity, thus lowering the essence costs and maybe even unlock more of their potential.

Also, remember that there is a whole Archetype that´s supposedly better at communicating with computers than anyone else: Late in 5th Edition, Technomancers got some perks to unlock more power in cyberware augmentations. These should definitley make a return. It´s all fine and dandy that Adepts got their Path of the Burnout, but that´s not the first archetype one should think about when it comes to "making more out of your ware"!

[Shinobi Killfist]

I think ops plan was it could go away, though not necessarily immediately. Like maybe therapy etc. Personally I'd let that happen for anyone mundane or magical. But that might just because I was on reddit where I guy kept talking about loading up mages who are captured/imprisoned with 6 essence of junk ware to destroy their magic. Which 1 reminds me of the players who really want to role play out the interrogation scenes, and two incredibly un-fun. But I would not mind a way to heal it back, to get back on track.

Now a lot of us just think essence should be removed entirely for mundanes, and on top of that make the ware cooler, god I hope the ware books makes it look like tech advanced at least a little bit in the last 30+ years of setting. or if not removed a option to permanently bump their essence like how mages increase their magic. 


As a nit pic general I wont argue the lack of woo factor from cyber compared to magic in a lot of the things there, but I think Hydraulic jacks unless they changed them were the much better jumping option compared to adepts jump power, though yes adepts could run up walls. At least previously it didn't add centimeter it added many meters as I thought it acted as a multiplier of base distance jumped, been many years where I even looked at them though as being able to jump almost never came up for us.

[MercilessMing]

I'm fine with Essence being a measure of how much man/machine interface you've got going on *right now* as opposed to ever in your life.  Characters don't lose essence for having a limb blown off, so why couldn't they recover essence after removing a cyberlimb?  Again, it just makes your Essence score more straightforward and intuitive, there's one less thing of which to keep track, and gives a tiny QOL boost for augmented mundanes.