Pen and Paper RPG's

[Timbrewolf]

Let's talk about our favorite systems and shit.

The RPG industry is doing some peak golden era shit right now. Tons and tons of quality indie systems popping up, "'zine publishing" is a thing, solo gaming has become a thing...there's something good for everyone.

The systems that currently have the most interest from me are

FFG's Genesys system (Specifically the Android setting)
Ironsworn (a completely free solo rpg)
Cyberpunk Red (c'mon release the full version already)

And stuff I'm about to dive into include
Sprawl (PbtA cyberpunk)
SR Sixth World (I still need to learn this)
Mork Borg (Swedish Death Metal Dark Souls)
and Star Dogs (wildly aesthetic space adventure game)

[XSI]

I will always have some good memories of Shadowrun
4th edition mostly but with some others in there occasionally

[Super Aggro Crag]

are RPGS fun?

[XSI]

If you play with fun people, yes
If you play with shitty people, they'll be shitty

[Timbrewolf]

I will always have some good memories of Shadowrun
4th edition mostly but with some others in there occasionally

It's hard for me to pick. I have a lot of good memories of 3rd ed especially so I'm biased as fuck towards that edition; it's the one I played during that heady era of high-school nerdery where you could just dedicate whole days/weekends to the game without care or consequence.

4th is really good too, 5th kinda sucks but only relatively speaking; it's still a pretty good game. I have sixth world and I'm interested to try it out but it seems like the most significant departure from form the franchise has ever seen and I've heard prettymuch only negative things about it.

are RPGS fun?

They require more input and "heart" from the people playing them than any other form of entertainment to be good. It's like XSI says:

If you play with fun people, yes
If you play with shitty people, they'll be shitty

But magnified beyond the normal "You can say that about anything" -ism of it. One person being a stinky can really fuck things up for everyone, disagreements between players are especially potent in this medium. There's a reason why /tg/ is full of so many "That Guy" stories and shit, roleplaying is a really personal thing and it can be like superfuel for drama if that special something is effed up.

Thankfully if you want to get into RPG's it's really quite ideal to get a bunch of people who are all inexperienced as fuck together to just try it out and venture forth. "None of us quite know what we're doing" is a great commonality for a playground to have, and a lot of people's best memories of RPG's are with the groups they first forged out of that learning period. The magic mix only gets harder to put together as people become more experienced, jaded, or just set in their playstyles...so if you haven't played a lot or don't really know how to RP you should find some other people who are in a similar situation and just dive in together. It'll be fun.

[Anonmare]

Studying this system as I plan on running it one day

[Super Aggro Crag]

is that NWOD or OWOD

[Anonmare]

is that NWOD or OWOD

It's based on Chronicles of Darkness rules so nWOD. nWOD has the more interesting fan gamelines, like Genius: The Transgression. Princess has two versions, Dream and Vocation, but I'm focusing on the Dream version

[Super Aggro Crag]

Nwod is better IMO unfairly maligned by grognards pissy that with the death of the metaplot they cant be a 50-year old fat goth fuck larping as a 4th gen elder handing everyone index cards that said "i killed you, you can't talk to anyone else at the party" so they can creep on their girlfriends

[Timbrewolf]

Never

Ever

Ever

Go to any WoD LARP

Playing and enjoying RPG's there are no rules just right. Do your thing, experiment, be creative!

But actually there is one concrete rule.

Never go to a WoD LARP.
Never ever.

[Lumbermancer]

[Timbrewolf]

I have the original edition of that. We played it on our podcast. It originally came with a "zombie brains" white chocolate chip candy bar.

[Timbrewolf]

Also check this shit out. Become your own horror monster/scp/whatever

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/al ... horror-rpg

[Anonmare]

Here's some other systems/settings I know of.

[Super Aggro Crag]

Mutants and masterminds 3rd edition

[Farquaar]

2nd ed. Warhammer FRP was pretty dang great. The expansion books were filled with cool plot hooks and abilities too.

[Timbrewolf]

Cyberpunk Red got a little more preview stuff from the upcoming core book. Tentatively set for June.

Health is HP based instead of stuff like wound levels, but it sounds like there are thresholds at which you suffer increasing penalties.

Hit locations are back and they've added a table of crit effects based on where you've been hurt. Critical injuries become easier to suffer as your overall HP drops.

[Super Aggro Crag]

Cyberpunk Red got a little more preview stuff from the upcoming core book. Tentatively set for June.

Health is HP based instead of stuff like wound levels, but it sounds like there are thresholds at which you suffer increasing penalties.

Hit locations are back and they've added a table of crit effects based on where you've been hurt. Critical injuries become easier to suffer as your overall HP drops.

Cool

[terranaut]

I love Shadowrun, favorite System and Setting for me by far. Started with 4th which was great, 5's good, haven't tried 6 yet. I haven't played in a while but I'm moving next month and hope to pick up a group there.

I've played these at conventions before, they're great, heavily recommend to give them a try if you run into them

[Timbrewolf]

I love Shadowrun, favorite System and Setting for me by far. Started with 4th which was great, 5's good, haven't tried 6 yet. I haven't played in a while but I'm moving next month and hope to pick up a group there.

Yeah same. At the end of the day Shadowrun is still hometown.

Sixth World messes with how armor works in a big way. In previous editions armor provided soak. If you get shot your Ballistic armor rating just knocks down the incoming damage and then you roll to resist it.

In the new edition it's more like a D&D type thing where wearing armor makes it harder for opponents to land hits on you, but if they do then you're looking at resisting the full damage of this hit.
It sounds like it might be more lethal this way but all the damage codes for attacks have been toned down across the board. I think the sum effect is that layering armor isn't as exploitable as before, you can't become invulnerable by throwing on a lined coat and form fit anymore.
This change drives people crazy but I kinda like it?

[terranaut]

I've always liked the concept of super beefed up troll cyberzombies with 11 CON, 70 or so armor and 20hp being able to withstand direct rocket hits coming out just with a bit of soot. It's pink mohawk as fuck and fits the setting really well and its not something you just grab right out of chargen. In fact our GM never had issues hurting our characters when he wanted to and he didn't need to be unfair for it. Sounds like an unnecessary change, tbh.

[XSI]

In 4e I managed to make a troll out of chargen that requires anti-tank weaponry to damage at all, shrugs off small arms fire and has more armour than the tanks in the war splatbook
But he was slow, huge, and incredibly obvious, so there was nothing stopping the police, first responders, etc from just following at a safe distance until he gets tired and said anti-tank weaponry arrives
That and as a one trick pony he would be very boring to play for more than one or two runs
There's other weaknesses besides shooting it and forcing your way through the armour anyway. If everything your GM throws at you comes down to "Guy with gun" or "Guys with bigger guns", then I'd say that's missing a lot of the setting's answers to that situation

I haven't checked sixth world stuff yet but one thing I really liked about SR was how armour worked. It took a bit to learn but it was a lot more satisfying than D&D's 'just makes it harder to hit you'

[terranaut]

Yeah the tank troll archetype just dies to stamina damaging magic that ignores armor.

[Timbrewolf]

There are a bunch of issues with the old system

Chiefly that it made Body kinda pointless. The weediest little hacker/mage archetype could just layer on body armor and then waddle around in combat with impunity, flinging spells or piloting drones around from beneath their nest of kevlar.

In sixth world Body matters a lot more. You can still become a walking tank but you actually have to work for it or give up essence to make it happen vs. just buying an Armored Jacket at chargen.

[XSI]

Body did matter a little for some things like knockdown checks after taking damage (Which get easier with good armour anyway, and don't happen if your armour just reduces it enough) and it showed up in disease resistance rolls and drug addiction tests
Generally not really worth it when you're optimizing with little to no skills attached(Only Parachuting comes to mind) and very few specific uses such as healing naturally(You didn't bring any medical supplies and aren't seeking professional medical aid for massive bonuses?), holding your breath (Buy a mask and o2 tank, they're cheap). Or trying to out-drink someone(Fair), or outlasting torture(Things already went very wrong if you need this)

It's just not that useful if all you're looking at is the mechanical uses, nearly everything can be replaced with just spending money on it and spending money is often the more efficient option too for how much your stats cost. You could bump your body up one point, or you could put those points into cash and buy a lifetime of supplies for the things you would use the body score for

[terranaut]

or you could put those points into cash and buy a lifetime of supplies for the things you would use the body score for

You're not realistically gonna carry everything on you all the time and you won't be able to expect every situation. But I agree that BOD should have more skill checks associated with it. I kinda feel like the physical limit should have been BOD, BOD, STR, REA not double REA.

There are a bunch of issues with the old system

Chiefly that it made Body kinda pointless.

But that's blatantly wrong.
Someone with 1 Body and no cyberlimbs has 9 hp which is criminally low and those weedy little hacker/mage archetypes don't invest in strength either so their physical limit is garbage and they'll just get knocked down all the time.
If someone with an armored jacket with a mod or two and maybe 2-3 points of armor from another source is already a tank then frankly your GM isn't very good at constructing a challenging scenario. Keep in mind that the average low-class ganger should not pose a threat for even a novice runner barring extreme circumstances; that's part of the setting, Shadowrunners are big and evil and scary terrorists and every good citizen should be afraid of these professional monsters and killers-for-hire.
There was also something about armor that's too heavy slowing you down and giving you significant penalties to physical stuff that somehow factors into body but I'm too lazy to look up the specific rule for that.

I have a pretty gamed burnout adept with a full complement of cyberlimbs chock-full of armor with SWAT armor who has something around 50 resist dice for physical damage that I sometimes play in high-power runs and I've encountered someone who took it a (very big) step further and did one of those indian human subtypes with 4 arms (more cyberarms, more armor, whoop) and actually getting the fucking centaur lower body replacement (which can hold armor) that holds 4 legs (which can hold armor). I think they had like 80 or 90 resist dice for physical damage and 18 hp. Honestly it doesn't matter at that point, there's really no point shooting them.

While both of these characters are laughably dangerous when all you have is ballistics they still get dunked pretty hard by a clever mage, and a GM should know this and throw the occasional mage at them to keep them on their toes.

[Timbrewolf]

I dunno "My PC needs to be godlike or the game isn't being played right" sounds seriously insecure to me but hey have your fun.

In 5th ed you can buy an Armored Jacket for 1,000 nuyen that has an armor rating of 12. This is enough to bounce an assault rifles base damage.

Imagine playing D&D and being told by the GM that the only things in the world that can hurt you are Dragons and most adventures probably wont have any in them.
That's not an adventure that's babysitting.

Keep in mind that the average low-class ganger should not pose a threat for even a novice runner barring extreme circumstances; that's part of the setting, Shadowrunners are big and evil and scary terrorists and every good citizen should be afraid of these professional monsters and killers-for-hire.

No, that's the power-level you like to play in. Even a street-level game, where the characters are supposed to be these gangsters, quickly goes sideways when the players have the inspired self-awareness and agency to go get these protective elements or buy bigger pistols while the humdrum average ganger or sercurity guard is still considered to have like armored clothing and a light pistol. It's a janky world where you have to wonder why this nigh-invulnerability is available on a regular store shelf and so many residents of this world just shrug and dont opt for it.

Also:

Someone with 1 Body and no cyberlimbs has 9 hp which is criminally low and those weedy little hacker/mage archetypes don't invest in strength either so their physical limit is garbage and they'll just get knocked down all the time.

You only test for knockdown if someone takes damage. You can throw an Armored Jacket on an old lady and then follow her down the street plugging her with shotgun shells and nothing will happen.

[Timbrewolf]

Being able to become bulletproof and going on these like "Prime Runner" insane adventures into corporate HQ's full of magical threats and attack helicopters firing autocannons and shit at you is cool but I guess what I'm trying to say is that it sucks that the rest of the game leading up to that point stopped existing in recent editions of Shadowrun. The power creep and absurdly effective body armor means every runner should come out of chargen immune to any kind of danger short of that "end game" level shit.

It's impossible to tell a story about some fledgling runners just starting out and coming to grips with simple B&E's against local gangs and like D-tier pop-up corporations with any kind of drama or intensity as those threat vaporize as soon as you strap on the most basic protective items.

Like you can spend all this time crafting your adept burnout and I'm sure you have a lot of stories to tell there but it should throw up a redflag to you that you've done all this and for practical purposes a 12 year old girl wearing a simple helmet, armored jacket, and form fit is as tough as you are when the lead starts flying.

Sixth World's armor redux fixes that. Your tough-as-nails Shadowrunner with a historied career and an inventory of cyberware gets to stand in the limelight now as a real tough motherfucker while grandma in an armored coat better run for cover when the shit hits the fan.

[Anonmare]

Last I heard, /tg/ hates 6e's rules and fluff.

Although the biggest gripe I have with SR is the "magic-run" bent that happened in the later editions where magic characters just become objectively better and mundanes hit a brick wall they can't scale. Not to mention that cyberware is just so damn expensive so the cool, interesting stuff that gives you novel ways to play (like cyberlegs that let you fall several floors without a scratch) will gimp you outside of special builds while mages can just throw karma at it and do the same, but better.

And I am STILL mad that there's 'ware in 3e that STILL isn't ported over.

[XSI]

That's why you ask the GM about it and see what you can work out

I never had any issue dealing with high-damage resisting characters in my games
I did a few times have issues balancing challenges for both the 40+ pistol dice gunslinger and the 'I just got a gun and this is my first time' runner types in the same group, but that is to be expected in any system that allows such gaps in power between people who know the system and its tricks compared to newer players or those who build exclusively for roleplay and character over mechanics
I have had issues with a rigger that got the entire group's starting cash pooled to him and then they just bought a bunch of high grade tank-drones, but I learned the counter to that as well. Everything has a counter somewhere, and that helps make it so the group keeps working together


Definitely agreed on the nonmagical ones hitting the wall though. After a while their only real improvement is 'ware and unless your GM throws loads of cash at everyone all the time you won't be able to afford the really good stuff at the same rate as most magic users can boost their stuff with karma alone

[Timbrewolf]

Last I heard, /tg/ hates 6e's rules and fluff.

Although the biggest gripe I have with SR is the "magic-run" bent that happened in the later editions where magic characters just become objectively better and mundanes hit a brick wall they can't scale. Not to mention that cyberware is just so damn expensive so the cool, interesting stuff that gives you novel ways to play (like cyberlegs that let you fall several floors without a scratch) will gimp you outside of special builds while mages can just throw karma at it and do the same, but better.

And I am STILL mad that there's 'ware in 3e that STILL isn't ported over.

Yeah /tg/ has strong negative opinions on almost everything though. Don't listen to them for no's only pay attention to things they yes.

SR has been on a downward spiral for balance since Magic in the Shadows hit during 3rd edition and introduced metamagic. That may have been when Mystic Adepts got added as well but I'm uncertain.

Magic needs to get nerfed seriously, there's little point to playing an unawakened character in modern Shadowrun anymore if you want to play a lengthy campaign with character progression and shit. It coincides with what I said above about "Prime Runner" being the sort-of default starting point for SR5; there's just little room for progress for sammies and such.

Off the top of my head like:

Remove mystic adepts completely they're busted. The concept of characters that start off weak but have the potential for limitless power later on is imabalanced stop looking at magic characters like this goddammit.

Metamagic like quickening needs to go. Anything that allows casters to just sustain spells for free or make their effects permanent needs to stop.

Buff drain. The only spells that should be effortless to cast should be things with effects similar to D&D's cantrips. Magic characters should not be an infinite resource of manabolt spam.

[terranaut]

I dunno "My PC needs to be godlike or the game isn't being played right" sounds seriously insecure to me but hey have your fun.

In 5th ed you can buy an Armored Jacket for 1,000 nuyen that has an armor rating of 12. This is enough to bounce an assault rifles base damage.

Imagine playing D&D and being told by the GM that the only things in the world that can hurt you are Dragons and most adventures probably wont have any in them.
That's not an adventure that's babysitting.

Keep in mind that the average low-class ganger should not pose a threat for even a novice runner barring extreme circumstances; that's part of the setting, Shadowrunners are big and evil and scary terrorists and every good citizen should be afraid of these professional monsters and killers-for-hire.

No, that's the power-level you like to play in. Even a street-level game, where the characters are supposed to be these gangsters, quickly goes sideways when the players have the inspired self-awareness and agency to go get these protective elements or buy bigger pistols while the humdrum average ganger or sercurity guard is still considered to have like armored clothing and a light pistol. It's a janky world where you have to wonder why this nigh-invulnerability is available on a regular store shelf and so many residents of this world just shrug and dont opt for it.

Also:

Someone with 1 Body and no cyberlimbs has 9 hp which is criminally low and those weedy little hacker/mage archetypes don't invest in strength either so their physical limit is garbage and they'll just get knocked down all the time.

You only test for knockdown if someone takes damage. You can throw an Armored Jacket on an old lady and then follow her down the street plugging her with shotgun shells and nothing will happen.

The only thing here that's insecure is how you seemingly wilfully misinterpret what I've said in some attempt to get a jab at me. But this post doesn't need to be about that. What it does need to be about, though, is your awful understanding of SR5 rules.
Since you mentioned armored jackets and grannies let's construct a not too unrealistic scenario for the sixth world.
Gran-gran noticed that her grandson Billy forgot his favorite leather jacket on the way to school today. The jacket is armored kevlar with a leather finish and Billy didn't go to school, but she knows neither. Reminiscing about her own youth in the 2030s as a young punker girl, she decides to wear the jacket as she goes to deliver it. Unbeknownst to her, it carries gang insignia, and some low-life ganger from a different, hostile gang sees only her backside, pulls out his shotgun, makes a one-liner that's witty at least in his head and pulls the trigger.
Let's construct the dice pools.
Let's say Granny is fit for her age and average as a human, having 3 BOD, 3 REA, 3 AGI, 12 Armor. Other stats aren't really relevant for this. Let's assume she passes the initiative check to avoid being surprised, as does the ganger, both for simplicity and because I don't like the idea that someone who initiates combat will be surprised that it starts and think the rule is poorly constructed.
The ganger, being in his prime age and well-built, has 4 AGI, 2 Longarms skill with a shotgun specialization and a point from a non-implanted smartgun system.
The worst shotgun from the core rulebook is the Defiance T-250, -1AP and 10P base damage. It supports Single Auto firing speed so it's capable of short bursts but I'll ignore that. I'll also say he's using regular ammo, even though APDS is widely available to all forms of criminal scum and should really be the standard ammo you're rocking if you're serious about killing someone.
Granny has 6 dodge dice, Ganger has 9 to shoot, no range or visibility modifiers, so let's say he hits one net.
That's 11P, AP-1, against the Grannies 12 + 3 - 1 = 14 dice to resist. Assuming a slightly better than average roll of 5 hits that's 6 damage; with her 3 Body, that's more than half her hit points gone in one hit. She's seriously fucking wounded before she gets to act, and if the ganger was a better shot or had better ammo he could've easily negated some of her armor and increased the damage he's dealing and probably killed (well, critted and ko'd if you treat her like a PC) her in one shot.
You are not invincible right out of the gate by wearing a fucket jacket and even if the Granny (who has physical stats similar to the average chargen hacker through no accident of mine) had worn a helmet and form-fitting shit and had gel packs she'd have like 6 dice more, so 2 damage less, is still a bit more than a third of her HP gone from just a single retarded ganger.

tl;dr you're an idiot and have no idea what you're talking about, as usual



I do agree with the general sentiment that magic is too strong and that magic users get all the cool and fancy shit to use and that's a problem that needs to be addressed. Whenever I see myself looking to make a fight-y type I just make some variant of adept because adepts get some really cool shit (some isn't even good, but it's just cool) and I can still use 'ware for the most part if I want without suffering much on the adept front.

[XSI]

There are also technically rules for overpenetration, if you're literally using Granny wearing the jacket as a human shield
Most guns worth defending from will overpenetrate Granny and mess you up

[Timbrewolf]

Some good points but a bunch of misinformation

1) I said shotgun shells, this entire example assumes you're loading slugs
2) You're assuming the average ganger has a 9 dice pool to shoot and access to APDS ammo, that's not contradictory to anything we're working with here I just think it's worth pointing out how insane that is and speaks to your lack of understanding a base power level
3) You neglected to convert the base damage from physical to stun since the Armor Jackets modified armor value (17 for shot) is higher than the Defiance's modified DV (12)

You're right at least that I choose a poor combination of things to compare. Assuming a Body 1 Willpower 1 granny and an average (33%) number of hits on her test she's going to take a 6S hit on her track which is only 11 boxes long. She gets bruised badly and knocked over.

A base hit from slugs (DV 10, AP-1) and assuming the average number of hits on her test with only 12 dice she takes (oddly) the exact same number of stun boxes again. She gets bruised badly and knocked over.

Assuming the same results from repeated testing you could murder grandma in an armored jacket if you shot her with a shotgun four(?) times. Less shots as your skill in shooting increased to gain more net hits.

Regardless I think my point still stands that armor is stupidly OP when you consider that without that armor on she goes from needing repeated shotgun blasts to put down to dying in one base damage hit in this system.

[terranaut]

Some good points but a bunch of misinformation

1) I said shotgun shells, this entire example assumes you're loading slugs
2) You're assuming the average ganger has a 9 dice pool to shoot and access to APDS ammo, that's not contradictory to anything we're working with here I just think it's worth pointing out how insane that is and speaks to your lack of understanding a base power level
3) You neglected to convert the base damage from physical to stun since the Armor Jackets modified armor value (17 for shot) is higher than the Defiance's modified DV (12)

You're right at least that I choose a poor combination of things to compare. Assuming a Body 1 Willpower 1 granny and an average (33%) number of hits on her test she's going to take a 6S hit on her track which is only 11 boxes long. She gets bruised badly and knocked over.

A base hit from slugs (DV 10, AP-1) and assuming the average number of hits on her test with only 12 dice she takes (oddly) the exact same number of stun boxes again. She gets bruised badly and knocked over.

Assuming the same results from repeated testing you could murder grandma in an armored jacket if you shot her with a shotgun four(?) times. Less shots as your skill in shooting increased to gain more net hits.

Regardless I think my point still stands that armor is stupidly OP when you consider that without that armor on she goes from needing repeated shotgun blasts to put down to dying in one base damage hit in this system.

1) nobody uses flechette but fair enough
2) yes I do and that's for a good reason https://files.catbox.moe/69oa5s.jpg
3) thats why nobody uses flechette

[Timbrewolf]

1) nobody uses flechette but fair enough
2) yes I do and that's for a good reason https://files.catbox.moe/69oa5s.jpg
3) thats why nobody uses flechette

Doing this exercise has actually made me appreciate flechettes a little more since it makes the comparison between armor a little more dicey, at least on weapons that wouldn't have a normal AP value they're kinda better than regular rounds even in situations where the target is armored but I don't want to have an argument inside an argument so let's just say I find that vaguely amusing how close the damage-resistance test is.

I also find it a relief that even if we're arguing with eachother again it's about something we both mutually enjoy and in a weird way it's nice to see we have Shadowrun in common.

[Timbrewolf]

Balance-wise I think the game needs to move more towards a point where Magic'd up characters and Tech'd up characters are more vulnerable towards eachother.

As it stands Magic > Tech. All that armor and shit doesn't matter when the manabolt comes for you.

The problem is that there's nothing really stopping the magic guy from layering on the same body armor (and really there's not a whole lot of punishment for throwing some cybermods in there either) to also defeat all the stuff the tech guy might throw back at them.

Drones are a way to make the mage really work for it since mana spells wont do shit and physical spells tend to have higher drain codes but most street mages are slinging direct damage shit around without a care for drain anyway so it's not great.
Again Sixth World kinda accomplishes this by making damage resistance rely a lot more on getting mods that buff your Body beyond normal human limits and gaining edge on your defense/damage resistance tests.

In a fight between an ork street sammie with an AK and your corporate wage mage slinging manabolts it's a much more fair fight I think, since in both cases these two combatants are gonna be soaking eachother's hits with raw Body more or less.

In ever preceeding edition the wage mage sustains an Armor spell over their lined coat or vest with plates, whatever, and laughs off every bullet. That don't work no more.

EDIT: I guess what I'm trying to say is that like, Magic is strong against itself, Tech characters are strong against tech threats, but when the two clash it's very violent and visceral and both of them are the antithesis of eachother. It would give a runner team a good incentive to pack both (let the wizzad protect you from other wizzads) but at the same time a runner team of exclusively mages is gonna have a REAL BAD TIME trying to engage with the average mundane security response on their own. At least in 5th (and 4th I'd argue as well) there's no incentive to play a mundane character outside of specialists like riggers/deckers. If you're thinking of being a combat-spec archetype fullstop become awakened, grab manabolt, and then dress yourself up for survival. You'll quickly start to snowball out of control as the karma comes in and you'll be earning tons of nuyen with which to buy all your fancy foci or pay your lodge memberships, buy conjuring components, etc.

Nerfing armor makes cyberware increases to your damage-resistance tests much more necessary to being the kinda character that can just soak the good guns without a care; it gives tech-focused combat-specs their niche back.

EDIT 2 THE REVENGE: Another fluffy-lore way to combat this would be to make the mage's spells harder to target characters with reduced essence thus providing your cybered up sams some measure of insulation against getting mage'd on but it would create an incentive to just start cramming ANY 'ware you can get your hands on into yourself and give you a direct incentive to throw your essence away which is sort-of an antithesis of what the whole exchanging YOUR HUMANITY for cool cyberlimbs is supposed to represent in the first place. Stupidly this already exists for casting magical healing on people but not for trying to magically damage them.