SR 5th ed. Adding Foci

[Eneroth]

Okay I am not sure what I am doing wrong here.. and I have been trying to figure it out for over an hour now.. How do you get a foci to work in hero labs. I go to the Gear tab, go the Foci section and buy a Sustaining Focus at Rating 5.

I want to tie this into the Increase Agility spell.

Everything is fine so far, the Sustaining Focus is in the gear tab, and at this point it's has this
- Sustaining Focus - Choose (5)5

I click on the hammer & wrench icon and click the Bind Focus for 10 Karma. It's at this point the Gear tab turns Red and so does the the Focus. It's at this point I am lost, and not sure what to do.

I don't see anyway to tie this into the Increase Agility spell, the only things I see are a Modification, Progroms and Enchant this Item tabs.

None of these seem right for wanting to use this with my the selected spell. Any help would help me greatly as I seem to be missing something here.

 

[Mathias]

In the Help menu, choose "Shadowrun (5th) FAQ", and then follow the "Future Plans" link. You'll see that among the projects on that list are adjustments for the various spells and proper support for sustaining spells.

As a workaround, you can use the Adjustments to add the right amount of bonus to your Agility.

 

[Eneroth]

Mathias,

Thank you for the fast response to my post.

This may sound dumb, but what do you mean by Adjustments? I was just doing the math in my head to increase the skill.

 

[Kiirnodel]

Alright, I think I can answer both of these things for you.

To give you an answer to your first part, I think you need to make one slight adjustment to the way you are buying your focus.

I'm assuming you are doing this in advancement mode, otherwise there would be a drop-down next to the name of your focus where you select the Spell Type for the focus. (This is why it says "Choose" next to the name).
When you go to buy the focus, rather than selecting the focus, increasing the rating and hitting add, you need to Customize the focus as you add it. You can do this by hitting the Customize button on the bottom, or by double-clicking the item from the list.
When you do this, rather than simply adding a basic version of the item, it lets you customize a few parts first. In particular it lets you make changes to parts of the item that are locked down in Advancement mode, in particular, the spell category.
FYI, for Increase Agility, you will want to select "Health Spells" which will let you use the focus to sustain any Health Spell, including but not limited just to Increase Agility.

Next, for your question about Adjustments:

Adjustments are a useful tool for making changes (both permanent and temporary) to a character. Particularly for things that are either unique or not quite working yet in Hero Lab. There are two places to add Adjustments in the Shadowrun Hero Lab. On the Personal Tab, or the Adjust Tab. The Personal Tab, at the bottom of the screen has the Permanent Adjustments, which is for things that aren't meant to go away. Adding Adjustments here means they will always be on the character (but you can delete them, so feel free to play around with what they are).

What you want, since it is for a spell that will presumably be taken down every once in a while or maybe changed, disrupted, what-have-you, is the Temporary Adjustments. These are on the Adjust Tab. Allowing you to make In-Play Adjustments, which can be turned on and off. You can do things like apply an Armor penalty to simulate Acid erosion on you armor, or even add the Combat Maneuver bonuses/penalties for all of the Combat Maneuvers from Run & Gun.

What you want, to simulate an Increase Agility spell, is to add the first thing listed, an Attribute adjustment. Doing this will list an item with a drop-down menu where you can select any attribute. Select Agility, then press the right-arrow button until the number is the correct amount for the degree of the spell you have active. It also has two fill-in boxes for you to make notes of the source of the bonus, and duration (in this case for example: Increase Agility spell; while sustained).

On the left side of this Adjustment listing is a check-box, so you can deactivate the adjustment. You can create several Adjustments and turn them on and off rather than deleting them, that way you can save them for later if you have several spells that you tend to alternate between.

 

[Eneroth]

Kiirnodel,

Thank you so much! Yes you have explained a lot for me, even things I did not know. Like under Personal where it answered another question I had about something totally else.