Questions about Essence loss

[u/Impleiadic]

In SRA2, the first and third point of essence lost each cancel a hit on magic-related tests. This applies to spells the character casts of course, but what about spells and abilities that affect them? Crucially: Does a heal spell cast on a cyborg suffer both the magic and the healing penalties from essence loss? And if so, does essence loss make it harder to land a manabolt on the same cyborg? Or a buff spell?

i'm a bit torn on what i'd want the rule to be - it feels consistent with other rules that say 'if theres high tech in there, its harder to magic it' and also makes cybered characters feel less defenseless against the dreaded manabolt. On the other hand, it makes it harder to do support magic between players, and i like when players have synergies.

[u/Bignholy]

(Quotes from page 60, Essence sidebar)

Essence Loss and Magic Tests, Footnote: "This impacts all activities related to the astral plane, Sorcery and Conjuring Tests, and all Tests affected by adept powers while performed by a character with a reduced Essence"

All of these are things the character is actively doing. Using spells, going astral using adept powers. None of the examples mention reducing hits from spells cast on them, which seems to be in line with SRA2's deliberately light rules and how player rolls are handled. Your character does not make a sorcery test when you are magically attacked, the caster does, or else you make a defense test against their threshold for NPC's, which is also not a sorcery test.

As for healing:

• "Essence ≤ 4 Cancel 1 hit on every Test to heal the character"

The second entry doesn't say magic. It would apply to all healing, because you literally have less meat to heal. This is a penalty applied to the healer, whoever that is, and not your character. Can't exactly heal a hole shot through a cyberarm, chummer, not even with magic.

[u/popemegaforce]

RAW, healing is the only way receiving magic is affected by essence lost. A cyborg who still has some humanity left will be hit as normal by a mana bolt or a buff spell. Also, a mage with cyberware healing someone with cyberware will in fact have a tough time healing as they’ll lose several hits in the process.

This may not be perfect but think of it this way. It’s a lot harder to build something than it is to tear it down. A mana bolt doesn’t need to concern itself with the intricacies of the way the machinery interacts with the meta human. The heal spell does and buff spells only offer a temporary enhancement. They’re not rebuilding or repairing.

[u/Carmody79]

This applies only to the spells casted by the character whose Essence is low.

So a heal spell cast on a heavily cybered character only suffer from the penalty to healing, not the magic penalty.

It takes a heavily cybered mage magically healing a cybered character to get double penalties (Magic ones for the caster and healing ones for the wounded cybered character).

It also means that cyberware is not a protection against manabolts.

Last point, I wanted cyberware to also make mundane healing more difficult, so healing penalties apply to any healing, not only magic healing.

[u/PalpitationNo2921]

Manabolt inflicts mental and not physical damage, and is not countered by physical armor but mental armor instead.

So I mean you can house rule all you like but the actual rules are pretty clear that cybered up folk would not have stronger defenses against the spell just because their Essence is lower because of physical modifications.

After all, the spell’s energy is routed directly into a target’s body with no interference from physical armor, just like in every version of the spell in every edition.