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House Rule for Magically Active
by NiteSpawn
I have noticed that mages and physical adepts are sometimes not as powerful as they should be. A beginning street sam can (9 chances out of 10) wipe the floor with a beginning physical adept. To even the odds a bit, (and give magically active the power they are supposed to have!) I allow an unusual house rule that has worked perfectly for my group for over a year now. I allow beginning force points to be used as karma for mages and physical adepts to buy up initiate levels. Now this gives physical adepts the advantage of more magic levels (ie more points to spend on their skills) but it balances out, because they have less to spend on a weapon focus. Same thing with spell casters. Gives them a higher magic, but gives them less for spells. The trade off is well balanced, and improves the ABILITIES of the characters, not just their bad assness (As in a starting physical adept with the most powerful weapon foci he can afford, and only average physical adept abilities). And of course, since they can swap it around any way they want, some will keep it more traditional, and some will go for the initiate levels. Either way, it balances out.
Also, I DO allow magically active people to get bioware, with no essence loss. They must pay much higher prices (All biowares for mages in my games HAVE to be gene typed. Usually 2 to 10 times the cost.) and they must take 2 weeks times the body cost adjusting to their new parts. This makes street sams think twice before trying to mess with them, but doesn’t mess with the game play too much. Consider it the next time you are making a magically active character, and imagine the possibilities!!!
Naturally, if ANY of these things mess with YOUR game balance, then you should toss them out without a second thought, or figure out a way to smooth the transition (Hey, just because it’s BRAND new tech, doesn’t mean the bad guys haven’t found out about it…and it IS still pretty new <Read as EXPERIMENTAL!!!> You just never know what can happen, or what you might run into….)