[Michael Chandra]

You are saying that if you lop off all your arms you don't lose any essence.. but if you replace them with clonal replacements you do.

I'm not saying anything in this debate except that the rules are very clear that once essence is lost, even if you ditch whatever cost you Essence, you simply end up with an Essence hole.

[Shinobi Killfist]

"Once gone it's gone" doesn't really answer the problem.

You are saying that if you lop off all your arms you don't lose any essence.. but if you replace them with clonal replacements you do.

So if you lose your hand you lose no essence, but if you use a hook you do? Does the hook have to be "attached" or does a strap-on still cause essence loss?

This makes very little sense to me and has very little logic.
If you want to say that essence loss is not logical.. OK.. but it makes it hard to decide how to rule on things if there is no logic to it.

I get that there is a game mechanic here that is important for balance, but you also need something that makes sense.
I think for my money.. if you get rid of the cyberware and replaced everything you took out with clonal replacements.. at the very least your essence would be restored over time since your body is being restored to something very close to original (as is indicated by the small essence loss from clonal).

"I don't think someone with a birth defect is also short on Essence, are they? But correct it with bioware or cyberware, and part of you is not really you anymore."

For instance, someone born without arms (I know someone like this)... if you "correct" that.. they never had arms before so the part of them that is "not them anymore" was never a part of them. So why would they lose essence at all in this case?

A peg leg wouldn’t. But a cyber leg would. It’s attaching a device that becomes part of your being. Your metaphysical being is damaged by the interference. It doesn’t get fixed by a taking it back. Think of it like how some people after a limb loss have a phantom feeling of the lost limb.  Your being knows what it should be.  A cyber limb gets in that spot and destroys that phantom limb which can’t come back.

Given that there is a magic and a astral form it doesn’t seem that strange to say these things interfere with that form, spirit, being whatever you want to call it. And once interfered with it doesn’t heal on its own anymore than a actual limb loss does. By attaching a cyber dohicky you are lopping off part of your spirit. As your body and spirit are one. So now just loss but interfering with that bodily integrity disrupts the spirit side of things.

[Overbyte]

You are saying that if you lop off all your arms you don't lose any essence.. but if you replace them with clonal replacements you do.

I'm not saying anything in this debate except that the rules are very clear that once essence is lost, even if you ditch whatever cost you Essence, you simply end up with an Essence hole.

Yup. The rules are quite clear. And it is certainly all about "balance". Totally understandable even if it doesn't make much sense.

"Once gone it's gone" doesn't really answer the problem.

You are saying that if you lop off all your arms you don't lose any essence.. but if you replace them with clonal replacements you do.

So if you lose your hand you lose no essence, but if you use a hook you do? Does the hook have to be "attached" or does a strap-on still cause essence loss?

This makes very little sense to me and has very little logic.
If you want to say that essence loss is not logical.. OK.. but it makes it hard to decide how to rule on things if there is no logic to it.

I get that there is a game mechanic here that is important for balance, but you also need something that makes sense.
I think for my money.. if you get rid of the cyberware and replaced everything you took out with clonal replacements.. at the very least your essence would be restored over time since your body is being restored to something very close to original (as is indicated by the small essence loss from clonal).

"I don't think someone with a birth defect is also short on Essence, are they? But correct it with bioware or cyberware, and part of you is not really you anymore."

For instance, someone born without arms (I know someone like this)... if you "correct" that.. they never had arms before so the part of them that is "not them anymore" was never a part of them. So why would they lose essence at all in this case?

A peg leg wouldn’t. But a cyber leg would. It’s attaching a device that becomes part of your being. Your metaphysical being is damaged by the interference. It doesn’t get fixed by a taking it back. Think of it like how some people after a limb loss have a phantom feeling of the lost limb.  Your being knows what it should be.  A cyber limb gets in that spot and destroys that phantom limb which can’t come back.

Given that there is a magic and a astral form it doesn’t seem that strange to say these things interfere with that form, spirit, being whatever you want to call it. And once interfered with it doesn’t heal on its own anymore than a actual limb loss does. By attaching a cyber dohicky you are lopping off part of your spirit. As your body and spirit are one. So now just loss but interfering with that bodily integrity disrupts the spirit side of things.

Yup I totally get that explanation.. but.. even though your actual limb doesn't heal on its own a clonal replacement is essentially that and similarly why can't your spirit heal. Certainly in the meta-physical sense today people seek to heal their spirits through all sorts of mechanisms (meditation, retreat, asceticism, etc)
Furthermore it doesn't really explain the guy born without an arm, because he doesn't have a "phantom limb" he never had one, so his spirit doesn't lose anything since the cyberware is taking the place of ... nothing.

As I was saying.. it makes much more sense to me that if you repaired your body your essence would come back (in time), then if you lop off your arm you lose no essence. I'm still not sure how one resolves the born-without-arms issue.. but hey.. its a game.

[Shinobi Killfist]

Yup I totally get that explanation.. but.. even though your actual limb doesn't heal on its own a clonal replacement is essentially that and similarly why can't your spirit heal. Certainly in the meta-physical sense today people seek to heal their spirits through all sorts of mechanisms (meditation, retreat, asceticism, etc)
Furthermore it doesn't really explain the guy born without an arm, because he doesn't have a "phantom limb" he never had one, so his spirit doesn't lose anything since the cyberware is taking the place of ... nothing.

As I was saying.. it makes much more sense to me that if you repaired your body your essence would come back (in time), then if you lop off your arm you lose no essence. I'm still not sure how one resolves the born-without-arms issue.. but hey.. its a game.

I’d be fine if it literally only existed for magically active people and the answer was fuck you it’s magic.

As for the people born with deformities chances are their astral form if they could project is whole so it still kind of tracks.

 

[Kiirnodel]

You actually can heal your essence. It takes a long time and costs a lot of money to do so. Check out Chrome Flesh: Genetic Restoration: Revitalization.

Also, if you replace all of your limbs with cloned limbs, then it doesn't cost much (if any) essence. Culture Bioware replacement limbs cost no essence. The trick is trying implant a cyberware limb, then re-replace it with a cloned limb. At that point "the damage is done" and like it has been said, the road to recovery from that point is long.

For most people, though, repairing that essence loss isn't really going to affect them. A lot of people are totally going to go the whole "what did my soul ever do for me?" route and just not care. For magical people, losing the essence in the first place is what loses you the magic, healing it back isn't going to get it back.

[Shinobi Killfist]

Yah I should have specified heal back naturally.

[Michael Chandra]

For most people, though, repairing that essence loss isn't really going to affect them. A lot of people are totally going to go the whole "what did my soul ever do for me?" route and just not care. For magical people, losing the essence in the first place is what loses you the magic, healing it back isn't going to get it back.

Yeah, the biggest impact it might have is that First Aid is a tiiiiiny bit less effective.

[Overbyte]

You actually can heal your essence. It takes a long time and costs a lot of money to do so. Check out Chrome Flesh: Genetic Restoration: Revitalization.

Also, if you replace all of your limbs with cloned limbs, then it doesn't cost much (if any) essence. Culture Bioware replacement limbs cost no essence. The trick is trying implant a cyberware limb, then re-replace it with a cloned limb. At that point "the damage is done" and like it has been said, the road to recovery from that point is long.

For most people, though, repairing that essence loss isn't really going to affect them. A lot of people are totally going to go the whole "what did my soul ever do for me?" route and just not care. For magical people, losing the essence in the first place is what loses you the magic, healing it back isn't going to get it back.

Yah.. for me.. it makes more sense to allow such things as giving up your cyberlimb.. replacing it with a clonal (or genetic) replacement and given time your essence will come back.
It doesn't really hurt anything game-wise and just makes more sense to me.
I realize its not RAW. Just more logical (to me) and perfectly playable/balanced, if you make the time "reasonable".
The Revitalization treatment is 0.1 essence per month. It could be something similar.

As said.. what cyber-guy really wants to just give up his cyberware? But I can see players that want to shift around a bit, do something new.
It would give them more options for fun changes in play. YMMV

[Michael Chandra]

Essence loss has several in-game impacts, the most important one being healing penalties. So it's a price you pay.

[Kiirnodel]

One of the requirements for Revitalization is that you need to have removed the thing that caused the essence loss in the first place. You can't regain essence lost from things you still have implanted. Literally, the thing you are looking for is the geneware treatment. That is the in-setting, in-rules solution for "why doesn't my essence come back?"

Think of it like a broken ceramic vase. Sure you can probably glue the pieces back together, but it's never going to quite be the same. It's always going to have that slight ridge where the seam just doesn't go quite perfectly. Essence loss is a crack in your soul. And particularly if you've already tried to fix it before with something else; have you ever tried to super-glue something more than once? It just doesn't work right...

[Overbyte]

One of the requirements for Revitalization is that you need to have removed the thing that caused the essence loss in the first place. You can't regain essence lost from things you still have implanted. Literally, the thing you are looking for is the geneware treatment. That is the in-setting, in-rules solution for "why doesn't my essence come back?"

Think of it like a broken ceramic vase. Sure you can probably glue the pieces back together, but it's never going to quite be the same. It's always going to have that slight ridge where the seam just doesn't go quite perfectly. Essence loss is a crack in your soul. And particularly if you've already tried to fix it before with something else; have you ever tried to super-glue something more than once? It just doesn't work right...

Except... that makes no sense according to this explanation of essence loss. If the loss comes from the use of cyberware "injuring your spirit", not the removal of the body parts, then "gene treatments" can't possibly be the appropriate solution. If you are saying the damage is to your spirit not your body then a magical/spirit solution makes sense, not a biological/genetic one.

As I said, I totally understand the in-game reasons and the in-game solutions.
All I am saying is that for my tastes, they don't make much sense and other solutions seem more sensible/reasonable/logical.

I think we have to agree to disagree on this.

[theclaw]

I'd say you can always consider that adding something to your body forces your whole body to cope with this addition and work a different way that it's been programmed at birth.

Otherwise, with your example, you could say that "adding a 3rd eye to the back of my head doesn't take my essence as this eye wasn't there at birth"

[Kiirnodel]

One of the requirements for Revitalization is that you need to have removed the thing that caused the essence loss in the first place. You can't regain essence lost from things you still have implanted. Literally, the thing you are looking for is the geneware treatment. That is the in-setting, in-rules solution for "why doesn't my essence come back?"

Think of it like a broken ceramic vase. Sure you can probably glue the pieces back together, but it's never going to quite be the same. It's always going to have that slight ridge where the seam just doesn't go quite perfectly. Essence loss is a crack in your soul. And particularly if you've already tried to fix it before with something else; have you ever tried to super-glue something more than once? It just doesn't work right...

Except... that makes no sense according to this explanation of essence loss. If the loss comes from the use of cyberware "injuring your spirit", not the removal of the body parts, then "gene treatments" can't possibly be the appropriate solution. If you are saying the damage is to your spirit not your body then a magical/spirit solution makes sense, not a biological/genetic one.

As I said, I totally understand the in-game reasons and the in-game solutions.
All I am saying is that for my tastes, they don't make much sense and other solutions seem more sensible/reasonable/logical.

I think we have to agree to disagree on this.

Essence isn't really about damaging a person's spirit, and it isn't quite so disconnected from the body than I might have made it sound. If you actually read the description of Revitalization, the process is a lot more than just genetic manipulation. It involves personalized treatments that work both genetically and magically to restore the subject's lost essence.

The setting says that under normal circumstances essence doesn't come back. Even the description of the Revitalization gene treatment describes it as a breakthrough treatment that is being kept secret about how it fully works. If you want to just decide that at your table it works differently, then yeah, we aren't going to agree. I'm a little curious as to why, but I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

@theclaw,
Yeah, that's a good example. It really isn't about something being taken away from a person's body, but about dealing with an invasive implant. And even if you had one, and then it is taken out, your body has already reacted and changed around that implant, and it won't go back to the way it was originally.

[Cabral]

I'd say you can always consider that adding something to your body forces your whole body to cope with this addition and work a different way that it's been programmed at birth.

Otherwise, with your example, you could say that "adding a 3rd eye to the back of my head doesn't take my essence as this eye wasn't there at birth"

Counterpoint. The digigrade legs cost more essence than normal legs, but if you are a satyr or have the satyr leg metagenic quality, do the cost standard?