[Hamhammer]

I'm currently the GM of a fairly long-running SR game. We started about two years ago, and - modulo minor gaps - have been playing weekly with the same characters since then. With the release of SR5, we've hit a bit of a snag that's only cropped up now: How on earth do we deal with the content that's missing from SR4?

Specifically, there are a lot of things (lifestyles, some of the advanced augmentations, martial arts, positive and negative qualities) that characters had that are (at least presently) missing in the current edition. It wasn't a huge problem earlier because we were in the middle of a fairly large "away from home" campaign when we swapped editions, but now the players have finally returned home to Seattle to find that... well, nothing's the same.

How have you handled characters suddenly missing core parts of their builds? Do the majority of the folks here start afresh with the new edition, or do you rebuild the characters with the rules? Are there people that are working on band-aid fixes until the extra books come out?

[Michael Chandra]

I'm switching to SR5 soon, and basically am turning it into "make new characters with the similar concept with chargen, then giving them X nuyen, Y karma and Z time (Low Lifestyle costs already subtracted from the nuyen to get X).

Lifestyles can be houseruled for now, so can some advanced augmentations, martial arts we have the new system which is much better than the imbar SR4 thing, PQs and NQs can be houseruled if actually necessary. But most of the stuff isn't necessary.

[Hamhammer]

Most of them aren't, true. We have a street samurai that relied fairly heavily on Astral Hazing as both a mechanical advantage (that quality really should have been positive, not negative) as well as a plot hook. We also had a character with Latent Awakening, and houseruling that with the change to a priority system was messy.

[Michael Chandra]

Are you sure you've been reading Astral Hazing right? All it gives in real benefits is reduce the base damage of spells, and it comes with some really negative aspects, such as making it impossible to be healed by any character with less than 8 Magic iirc.

As for Latent Awakening: You don't really need that. Yes, it's fun for the character concept, but it also leads to a crippled build.

[Hamhammer]

Astral Hazing gives you a rating 4 background count out to <essence> yards, spreading at one yard per hour. This carries all sorts of fun repercussions in SR4, like leaving a slowly-decaying astral trail, making it harder for people to heal you, making it harder to for people to cast spells at you, and allowing you to disrupt all kinds of in-place magical effects. It also plays hell with spirits, because unless a spirit is tough it risks getting disrupted when it gets close to you.

Latent Awakening was used for story reasons. Yes, I'm well aware it isn't optimal.

Really, though, the question was "how do people handle suddenly having their characters miss a bunch of things they used to have."

[Circuit Bender]

For things like lifestyles and any complicated or uncoverted gear in safehouses... If they were away from home for an extended period of time, then their homes and gear got repossessed. Poof gone!
Then it becomes a campaign to either get their stuff back or get new stuff.

For stuff they still have or you can't handwave away, then I'd come up with some written conversion so that the magic/qualities/augmentations provide a similar benefit. It's going to be a house rule for now, as the appropriate book isn't out yet.

Augmentations and gear might now be a generation old, so it might be time for the characters to look at getting replacements and upgrades. That provides even more opportunity for self-improvement runs [and shenanigans]. This plan doesn't work as well for qualities or spells, though.

Got any other specifics that are troubling you?

[WellsIDidIt]

spreading at one yard per hour

It's one meter per two to three hours, so it's a bit slower than that. That said, I agree, it shouldn't be as big of a NQ as its made out to be.

Really, though, the question was "how do people handle suddenly having their characters miss a bunch of things they used to have."

My biggest advice is to not convert the characters over. End the campaign, and start fresh with SR5.

The change in the way essence loss works for augs (no halving of the lower type) tends to cause issues for heavily augmented characters.

Its far easier to convert the bits of rules you like from SR5 back into SR4 than it is to recreate all the gear from the splatbooks that your group likely has as well as retconning gear and augmentations to keep your characters from being in negative essence.

[Michael Chandra]

Astral Hazing gives you a rating 4 background count out to <essence> yards, spreading at one yard per hour. This carries all sorts of fun repercussions in SR4, like leaving a slowly-decaying astral trail, making it harder for people to heal you, making it harder to for people to cast spells at you, and allowing you to disrupt all kinds of in-place magical effects.

The background penalty wouldn't apply to people casting from the outside in, unless they cast Sustained Spells, so combat spells wouldn't be affected by it. And if you think it should be a Positive quality, I'm suspecting you got that part wrong.

As for making it harder for people to heal you: Because both the caster's Magic and the Spell's Force take a hit from the background count, I seem to recall only Magic 7+ or 8+ characters could heal you. So it's not just harder, it's pretty much impossible until a caster got their magic up enough.

Let me check: Magic 7 becomes magic 3, overcast at Force 6... Spell drops to Force 2... Yeah, then it's possible. So until your magic goes to 7+ you cannot heal an Astral Hazer. Magic 6 -> Magic 2 -> Force 4 -> zero.

[Equinox]

The background penalty wouldn't apply to people casting from the outside in, unless they cast Sustained Spells, so combat spells wouldn't be affected by it. And if you think it should be a Positive quality, I'm suspecting you got that part wrong.

I was browsing the Runner's Companion, because I was curious about the mechanics myself.  It indeed appears to be the case.

pg.116 Runner's Companion.

 This astral haze affects all attempts to cast magic on, at, or in
the vicinity of the character. Whatever the ambient mana conditions
are, the character always stands at the heart of a Rating 4
background count (see p. 117, Street Magic) that extends a number
of meters from her body equal to her Essence; this background
count also impairs her own actions if the character is Awakened. If
she remains in one place for long, the background count expands
by one meter in every direction every two or three hours (at the
gamemaster’s discretion).

Unbelievably nasty for an anti-caster infiltrator, but you'd probably see one coming from a mile away on the astral.

[Michael Chandra]

I had a player who wanted to take it over a year ago, so I studied it quite a bit. There's a big topic or two on it as a result.

[Equinox]

Thanks for the heads up, they were informative reads.

We've been adopting a "Constants and variables" approach to the transition.  There's always an underground lab.  There's always a PTSD'd team leader.  There's always Seattle.

The details may have shifted around a bit (hey, didn't your mage have Shapechange at one point?), but so far, we've managed without major issue.