[dposluns]

Just wondering if anyone has done anything interesting with a character that is mostly essenced-out in cyberware/bioware but still has a Magic rating of 1. What kinds of clever uses, be it spells, abilities, summons, Adept powers, etc. are you able to squeeze out of that single point of Magic to make it worthwhile?

Even if there aren't more clever tricks, I think it's interesting that if you can get the nuyen for it (or get it crafted for you cheaper with the right contacts), you could bond a single Force-5 Power Focus pretty early on for 30 karma and have the effective magical power of a chargen magician. (Or if your design is just want to cast a single type of spell, etc. you could get a focus specific to that ability for only 10 karma.) Alternately if you start initiating you can raise your Magic stat directly starting at only 10 karma, and there may be metamagics that on their own are already powerful enough to make it worthwhile.

Are there any interesting/cool complementary combos of ware and magic out there?

[Hobbes]

Priority D magic, Way of the Burn Out, 5 Karma to bump magic back up to 1, tiny bit of Sorcery, 5 Karma to learn Detox..  Combine with Biocompatibility Cyberware Quality and load up on about 8 Essence worth of Augments, give or take.  Add Narco and assorted Drugs because Detox only needs one net hit IIRC.

I think that was about the cheesiest thing I could come up with.

Focused Concentration and Sustain Foci would start pushing some of your secondary stats towards the max if you really wanted to, but that cuts into your initial 'ware budget.  Probably more of a growth path IMO for those.

Anyway, yeah.  Burnout cyber-juicer, accept no substitutes. 

[Kuirem]

It will be much easier to do with karmagen than Priority or Sum to Ten.

With karmagen for a mere 15 karma you can go Aspected Magician and pick a couple of Passive Detection Spell which does not rely too much on the net hit. Some of them like Mindlink or Mindnet, Extended will fully work with a single hit (the range for Mindnet, Extended will be 20 meters, might want to have at least 2 Magic for this one so you can bump it up to 80 meters).

For 20 Karma you can pick Adept and maybe spend a extra 10 karma to raise Magic to 2 so you can pick up a couple of useful adept powers, there is plenty of choices here so it depends on what you want to do (Improved Reflexes for a Street Sam for example), you can even add a Mentor Spirit for some easy extra dice.

For a Full Magician it is really not worth it. The interest of being a full magician and having access to Summoning AND spellcasting is a bit pointless, better go Aspected for a Burnout.

Hobbes already mentioned the Burnout's Way I do not think I have anything to add on that. It is an easy cheese that was added in Street Grimoire.

Finally the Force Power Focus is a bit pointless with 1 Magic because the Force of your spell will still be limited by Magic x 2 (so 2), you will have a bigger dice pool but you will need to spend Edge to break the limit.

[dposluns]

Is the Biocompatibility Cyberware quality from Chrome Flesh? What does it do?

Interesting stuff on the Burnout's Way... I hadn't checked that out. Seems like an interesting backdoor to load up with more augments...

[dposluns]

Finally the Force Power Focus is a bit pointless with 1 Magic because the Force of your spell will still be limited by Magic x 2 (so 2), you will have a bigger dice pool but you will need to spend Edge to break the limit.

That's a good point, although reagents can also mitigate that (e.g. Force 1 Increase Reflexes + 6 reagents = super-fun-happy-time). You would have to choose your spells around it for sure.

[dposluns]

What about a high-Charisma mage with Summoning and Binding who binds a whole bunch of Force 1 or 2 spirits? Is there anything those spirits could even do that would make it a worthwhile strategy? It'd be interesting to watch, at least 

[Kuirem]

While it could work for a combat character I think you can do even more crazy stuff with non-combat.

For example Vocal Range Expander + Audio Analyzer + False Face will allow you to copy someone. Add to that the Adept Power Commanding Voice (from Stolen Souls) and you can just copy the boss and order people around. If you add Mimic adept power you can even fool biometric readers.

An other idea could be a 'super spotter' by using all the wares to increase perception and senses and some adept power for that too (or just Enhanced Perception to add even more dice).

Something else worth to note is that Muscle Replacement will cost you 1 Essence (so 1 Power Point) to raise your STR and AGI by 1. If you pick the Adept Power Improved Physical Attribute it will cost you x2 as much PP. If you go for Muscle Toner/Augmentation it is even cheaper in PP. Of course all that comes with an added Nuyen cost but if you go karmagen the final karma cost is often cheaper for Wares (for example Magic 4->5 is 30 Karma which convert into 60k Nuyen, almost enough for Muscle Toner rating 2).

On the other hand this is not true for Initiative Wares that either have a high Essence and/or Nuyen cost, so it could be better to pick some Adept Power instead to raise Initiative. For example going Magic 3, Improved Reflexes level 2 (Or Magic 2, Improved Reflexes 1) Nevermind those are not compatible and Initiative BoosterBoosted Reflexes Bioware will gives you 4D6 Initiative for a portion of what it would have cost you if you were going Wired Reflexes or Synaptic Booster, a single Cram will get you to the fabulous world of 5D6 Initiative!

[dposluns]

On the other hand this is not true for Initiative Wares that either have a high Essence and/or Nuyen cost, so it could be better to pick some Adept Power instead to raise Initiative. For example going Magic 3, Improved Reflexes level 2 (Or Magic 2, Improved Reflexes 1) and Initiative Booster Bioware will gives you 4D6 Initiative for a portion of what it would have cost you if you were going Wired Reflexes or Synaptic Booster, a single Cram will get you to the fabulous world of 5D6 Initiative!

One thing about this is that most forms of enhancement to Initiative are incompatible with each other and do not stack. If you've got Spellcasting 6 and some way to mitigate the sustain penalty (e.g. a Force-1 focus or Focused Concentration 1 or the Heightened Concern Adept Power) then I'm a big fan of the Increase Reflexes spell cast with reagents, although with this build you'd need to find a way to mitigate your low dice pool. Or if you Initiate and get the Quickening metamagic you could Edge the spellcasting test and Quicken with 1 karma to make it permanent-ish.

[Imladir]

Don't forget counterspelling if you make an aspected spellcaster, your Magic level doesn't matter there (as long as you don't dispel that is) and it's always nice to get more dice to resist spells.

[deathwishjoe]

I'm sure it would get expensive but you could use edge and reagents to remove the limit on alot of spells. I'm away from books at the moment but I'm sure there's quite a few spells this would be useful with. You might even be able to use teamwork tests on spirits of man and use your edge to break the limit since spirits can use your edge. You'd need 2 magic for this though as you need at least force three spirits for optional powers.

[Kuirem]

One thing about this is that most forms of enhancement to Initiative are incompatible with each other and do not stack. If you've got Spellcasting 6 and some way to mitigate the sustain penalty (e.g. a Force-1 focus or Focused Concentration 1 or the Heightened Concern Adept Power) then I'm a big fan of the Increase Reflexes spell cast with reagents, although with this build you'd need to find a way to mitigate your low dice pool. Or if you Initiate and get the Quickening metamagic you could Edge the spellcasting test and Quicken with 1 karma to make it permanent-ish.

This is not true. Most WARES that enhance initiative are incompatible but Wares, Adept Powers, Spells and Drugs are perfectly compatible (Well there is the Lightning Reflexes quality that is compatible with nothing). This is why something like Initiative Booster become interesting because it is a cheap 1D6 on which you can add other dice from other sources.

Quickening is a bit of a trap. If your GM deside to let it slide lucky for you but it is easily countered by an enemy mage (dispelling will roll against Magic + Force x 2 so around 6 dice) and it will make you a big astral beacon. You might even lose the spell just by trying to go through a Mana Barrier.

[Medicineman]

Is the Biocompatibility Cyberware quality from Chrome Flesh? What does it do?

Interesting stuff on the Burnout's Way... I hadn't checked that out. Seems like an interesting backdoor to load up with more augments...

Yeah, it's from Chrome Flesh ( but it has been around since SR3 at least)

For 5 Karma
the Essenceloss from either Cyber OR Bioware is 10 % less

HougH!
Medicineman

[dposluns]

One thing about this is that most forms of enhancement to Initiative are incompatible with each other and do not stack. If you've got Spellcasting 6 and some way to mitigate the sustain penalty (e.g. a Force-1 focus or Focused Concentration 1 or the Heightened Concern Adept Power) then I'm a big fan of the Increase Reflexes spell cast with reagents, although with this build you'd need to find a way to mitigate your low dice pool. Or if you Initiate and get the Quickening metamagic you could Edge the spellcasting test and Quicken with 1 karma to make it permanent-ish.

This is not true. Most WARES that enhance initiative are incompatible but Wares, Adept Powers, Spells and Drugs are perfectly compatible (Well there is the Lightning Reflexes quality that is compatible with nothing). This is why something like Initiative Booster become interesting because it is a cheap 1D6 on which you can add other dice from other sources.

Well here's my survey of the available options to you:

• Adept's Improved Reflexes is definitely not compatible with any other technological or magical improvements to initiative (CRB 310).
• Synaptic Booster is also not compatible with anything else that improves Initiative (CRB 461).
• Lightning Reflexes is similarly incompatible with everything, as you observed (Run Faster 148).
• Wired Reflexes only specify incompatibility with other augmentations (CRB 455), so as written could work with magic/drugs.
• Move-By-Wire (Chrome Flesh 84) is incompatible with other augments, but as written could still be compatible with magic/drugs.
• Boosted Reflexes (Chrome Flesh 118) likewise only is incompatible with other augmentations.
• Synaptic Acceleration (Chrome Flesh 162) also only mentions incompatibility with augmentation.

That just leaves drugs and the Increase Reflexes spell, which technically you could combine with any one of Wired Reflexes, Move-By-Wire, Boosted Reflexes and Synaptic Acceleration. I'm not sure what Initiative Booster is, I couldn't find it any of the sources I've got. But it pretty much stands: most initiative-altering things you can take don't stack with each other; there are only a few exceptions and they're pretty inconvenient.

I also take back what I said about using Increase Reflexes: I forgot it's an Essence-spell so you're going to be taking a 5-dice penalty to an already difficult to cast spell, so it's probably not a good choice in practice for this kind of build.

[Kuirem]

Damn apparently I cannot read and/or completely forgot that Improved Reflexes was incompatible. Same for Synaptic, the fact that it does not stack with drugs makes it much less appealing. Sorry Initiative Booster is Boosted Reflexes, as I said previously I cannot read 

[FST_Gemstar]

Here is a link to a full magician street sam i made. The concept is based around being good at both physical combat and astral combat. He works as a drug fueled combat character with magic perks and growth potential.

https://m.reddit.com/r/hubchargen/comments/4ml5c7/dropout_first_run_resubmit/?ref=search_posts

He was built for runnerhub, which houseruled that if magic hits 0 you permanently burn out and no regular attributes can be at 1, so the character could be even more efficient without those rules (a little more karma, taking essence down to 1 instead of 2, cheaper ware for and extra nuyen)