Tim Zahn wrote a novel with the bizarre premise that on a colony planet, every human develops telekinesis in late childhood, gets peak TK ability in late adolescence, then loses the ability entirely in adulthood. The colony barely survived the second generation, then developed a social structure using older children to control younger children. Faginy is one of the most dangerous crimes.

So yeah, if you're a parent and little Timmy can kill you, then it's time to call for help. And having volunteered with teenagers for years, I'd say that "parents should call in help more than they usually do" is already all too true.

Timmy doesn't have the LOG/CHA and WIL of an adult, so even if he can learn Spellcasting and/or Conjuring, his spellcasting, conjuring and drain-soaking DPs are low enough that you may have *time* to call for help.

Adolescence defined as sexual maturity, and adolescence defined as cognitive maturity, are two things that usually happen around the same time, but I'd guess it's the latter that matters more for Awakening, and I'm guessing that happens at age 2-10 less often than the former.

All that said... there are some possible Shadowrun stories that could take inspiration from Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, which was run by the equivalent of a Manipulation master. Also, there is a possible argument that Awakened adults have a call or even duty to remove Awakened children from the care of unAwakened parents, and to create a culture that properly directs young witches and wizards; cf. the Harry Potter books.

I also think about things happening like, what if the kid is an Adept?

What if little Timmy, a 10 year old who keeps getting picked on by the bully, finally tries to fight back one day? And in his anger triggers and inate Strength Boost and/or Killing Hands, breaks the school bully's arms, turns him into a vegetable, or worse? Parents better get little Timmy under control soon, unless they want to see him turn into a dangerous teenager.

I've just got to say, a stick figure drawing with a red scribble is NOT a fireball spell formula. If you're a mage, it's not about just putting down a vague idea of purpose onto a page or a computer. It's about structuring the threads of mana in an exact way, it's about understanding manasphere, that you, as an awakened being, 1% of the population, slowly begin to access. And even if you manage to thread and order these energies in a cohesive structure, you may have correctly ordered fire, but whoops, those mana patterns LOOKED the same, and now your arm is on fire. Try again, timmy.

So for a shaman it's different right? It's not an ordered and exact science? I'd say it's probably harder. A spell for a mage is perhaps like rattling off PI to five digits or something really quick from memory, for a shaman to learn and come to terms with his power, he has to come to terms with something incredibly abstract. I imagine it's akin to one of those horribly vague things like "getting in touch with your creative sub-conscious. Figuring out that that raven in your dreams wants you to create fire in your hands, and actually having to believe, against the laws of physics, that you can do it, and then to trust that raven when he says "It's ok little johnny shaman, you set your hand on fire this time, but you can try again, I believe in you, man!"

wasn't there that example where a shaman was trying to teach a hermetic a spell by drawing a painting?

Yeah, page 156 in Street Magic. Although it's the other way around. The hermetic mage Winterhawk is trying to teach the shaman Silver Fox how to cast some kind of specialized combat spell, and Silver Fox is translating that to some kind of weird painted picture. So, yeah, totally abstract.

The whole definition of where and when a person can start to cast magic is kinda up to the player and storyteller. I'm sure no one is going to try and introduce a player as a 5 year old that can sling a mean Powerbolt (though I do know someone that desperately would want to). But think of it like this...

A child's mental and behavioral structure and outlook on life are very fluid and shapeable in the first few years. From age 0 to around 6, they learn some very basic, but ultimately amazing things. At that point, anything is possible. They learn to roll over, stand up, walk, run, form words, turn those words into sentences, create semi-cohesive thoughts and ideas, remember things. All of this is taught to them from their surroundings. They can see everything happening and try to imitate it the best they can. That, or they do it out of instinct.

Now take that child, who looks at everything around him, and wake him up. Now you've got children that can 'see ghosts'. Maybe that Boogyman isn't so much a boogyman as it is a Spirit of Man wandering around the closet. Maybe those imaginary friends aren't so imaginary. And maybe, just maybe, in his wildiest dreams and fantasies...that child is able to make his toys move by themselves.

Dragon's can pity us all they want...but when you look at how powerful human potential is...there's a reason dragon's and immortal elves try to keep us down and tied up with mundane things. And as the mana swing continues up, heralding in those wonderful Horrors, meta-humanity will get even more powerful.

"So how do you explain a child making magic like that, and adults needing to be taught?" Easy...as I said, children are shapable in the first few years of their lives. However, after that, it's almost hard-wired in. To be able to disbelieve the reality we live in and understand and grasp the concept of an entirely different reality around us takes a great deal of time, effort, and unlearning. A spell formula COULD be as simple as a stick figure drawing, so long as the kid got it right. Adult magic is different, because we have to shape our reality and thinking into the astral, mana fields, and meta-planes...which is significantly more work.

I think that comparing what adults have to go through and train to manipulate mana is completely different from what a child has to do. While the developers have almost always told us that the ability to use magic comes about around puberty, I do see the possibility on very, very rare occurrences for children to do FAR more than expected possible. After all isnt magic everywhere? Doesn't it permeate all things? If so then arent we just being dumb and ignorant? Why should anyone need to teach us? Its right there!

The problem as we get older is that all those adult things fill our head. We have already been taught how things are and we dont want to listen anymore. For a child, he has not yet learned to block out everything, his mind is still open and accepting. Isnt part of enlightenment to be like a child again? To see things as they are, not as you want them to be. To feel emotion with complete sincerity, like a baby from the womb.

Very rarely do humans surpass what has been set out for them. We are very weak beings, but even then, only we can create miracles.

For my ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. It's energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we...not this crude matter.

I watched a friends 2 year old once walk up to a small boulder in the front yard. He took a look at it and reached down and tried to pick it up. It probably weighed about 90 lbs. The kid grabbed it, couldn't lift it , stepped back and went looking for another rock.
I think that the shamantic paths would be easier for a child for that reason. Their "reality" is already abstract. They have fewer preconceptions about what can and cannot happen.
I have had the honor of attending several sweat lodges over the years and one of the things the has always been mentioned is that for the power to work, you need to let go of the physical world( I.E. your old view of reality) so the spirits can guide you.

anyhoo, I think the Idea of an early awakening is cool and could definitely spice up a game. maybe a run on a pre- sdchool with the runners getting pelted with blocks and toy trucks(grin)

Speaking as an expert, my daughter, 11 months old, is enough of a handful without magical powers. Though her ability to crawl into small spaces,like behind couches, that should be too small to fit in, makes me think she has some adept abilities. She's walking a bit now and that has slowed her up but I suspect this is only a brief respite.

Between that and her ability to emmit an ear splitting scream when unhappy, maybe they all have magical powers when small, most of which fade.

i don't believe i've seen anything in SR4 that indicates a difference from any prior edition in how metahumans learn magic. in MitS (i don't feel like digging through my SR4 stuff), it states that some children Awaken spontaneously.

it also states that many Awakened kids are whisked away to special schools. one imagines that for any family at or above the poverty line, having an Awakened child will never be a problem--because if their child Awakens, s/he won't be their parents' child anymore.

...ah, you hit upon the route I was going to go. Adolescent & teenage Adepts can in some senses be more dangerous as they can develop their powers in a totally mundane setting without the specialised academic training a spellcaster needs. Athletics and Martial Arts are two activities kids are often enrolled in which would be fertile grounds for the awakening of latent adept powers. In KK's backstory, at the age of eleven she seriously injures an older girl who picks a fight sending her opponent to the hospital (manifestation of the Kelly's Critical strike and Killing Hands powers). At the time, she was trying only to defend herself against a fairly malicious attack in which her opponent and several other girls ganged up on her while she was walking home from school. It was out of pure desperation and fear for her own safety she managed to tap into her latent abilities, much to the surprise of her opponent who until then had the upper hand.

I think both sides of this argument are right, and not in that “equally correct� kind of way. You’re both describing aspects of the same thing, iny opinion. Despite the fact that the book says most mages get their power in late adolescence, nothing says they can’t get it earlier or later depending on environment, family, belief, desire, or if they habitually wear blue on Tuesdays. In fact, fluff suggests that early awakening is predictably more likely in high-mana areas, such as Tir Na nOg. So I don’t think it’s unlikely that some kids awaken to their power while still in grade school. I think 3 – 6 is a little young, though, simply because children at that level have difficulty exercising language skills at high levels, which they’re using every moment of every day – sorcery and conjuring are gonna take a bit longer. Let’s say 10-12 for the early end, with 8 being about as young as it’s ever gotten.

That said, there’s one very basic fact that needs to be considered:
Raw will is not enough to work magic.
If all you needed to work magic is to be awakened and want to do it, then all those hundreds of thousands – millions, even – of awakened people who don’t know it (following the stats that only about 25% of the awakened population knows it or can do anything sizable with it) would be able to practice magic of some kind any time the going gets tough. You need more than will – you need to have some kind of paradigm and some kind of modus to work your will within. I think this is the real reason most kids don’t awaken sooner, and mages are made later in childhood rather than sooner. Prior to a certain age, they don’t have enough experience to form a paradigm robust enough to let them work their with any real force or reliability. They might move a cup or give mom a nosebleed or get dad to not ground them, but generally they don’t have the kind of experience in life to really drive their abilities as a mana conduit.

In a strictly mechanical sense, this means they haven’t been able to spend the xp on the skills needed or the magic stat needed. For really precocious kids they might have a sorcery skill, but it’s not going to be very high. Don’t forget that casting spells is a skill not a merit. Any kid can awaken to killing hands, power throw, shit like that – but a kid who wants to cast spells better be willing to learn how to do it well. Their magic attribute would probably be low, as well: think about how rare it is to be a true prodigy. Then compound that with how rare it is to be a functioning spellcaster. It’s going to be extremely rare for them to even have skills above 1-2 or attributes above 3, unless they actually are in high school,[/i] given that 2 is generally high school level. And then there’s the third question. Every now and again you will get a kid who can’t control his shit and unloads on the school bully with a powerball. In cases that like, the kid’s generally gonna give it all he’s got – I.E. he’ll overcast. How many kids who try to cast a spell at the bully *also* get put in the hospital because of that? And of those, how many just jump right back on the horse, as opposed to freaking out that they almost killed themselves?

I’m not saying it wouldn’t be a problem, I’m just saying I don’t think it would be a very widespread problem. Nowhere near as big a problem as 12 year olds doing BTLs and packing automatic weapons. I figure a kid who can control his magic, can work it at a decent level, and who awakens at an early age is literally a one in a billion kid. And for those 7-8 kids? Go watch the Twilight Zone movie. That’s what being around that kid is like.

That alone is not true. A paradigm or symbolic way of thinking is like a bowl to catch and gather the water (water representing magic/mana of course (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) ). Without it you cannot efficiently move and do things with the water. A trained magician learns how to increase the size of this bowl and how to let the water out in certain ways. This does not mean that no one can use water without a bowl though, just that they lake finer control and have limited options of advancement.

What I am refering to is VERY rare cases in which those who are just plain gifted, where the way they already see (whether through a logic filter of not) somehow jives with magic. Kind of Akira (for all those Manga aficionados out there) situation. Im just trying to say that not everyone advances in the same way or at the same rate. This kid might loose all power/ability as he grows older (in fact he almost definitely will), and may have to start from the square one again once his mind and way of seeing things changes.

Still, I feel that if magic is truly the force of the universe (as I believe it is portrayed in Shadowrun), then kids will be more receptive to it, with or without formal training.

I'm sorry, but you're wrong. Without the Sorcery skill, you cannot make a spellcasting attempt. Without Conjuring, you cannot conjure spirits. This is specifically different than almost any other skill in the game, because you can default on any other skill roll (almost), but these skills are specificially prohibited from defaulting.
So no, will alone isn't enough. Skill and practice are required.

He has to practice smoking Billy the Bully's head with Flamethrower before he can blowtorch it in a fit of anger. Or he has to learn the skill from something. But he can't just default on it if he hasn't made some attempt to learn the skill beforehand.

You are using the rules given to model the abilities and advancement of a select set of professional criminals to extrapolate the way things operate in an imaginary world. While this is not necessarily wrong, it only limits imagination. Im not saying that people should be able to play 0-10 year old characters that do not need Sorcery of Conjuring skill to cast major F*cking mojo, Im saying that it would be interesting to have an NPC mage that is a kid without tradition, teaching or anything, but is strangely VERY powerful.

Its not like mage slaves also aspire to get Wired Reflexes and/or eventually save up enough karma to summon an Ally spirit, that would be silly. PC's all have different goals, as should NPC's. To make everyone special is to make everyone average.

I take it you didn't read House of M? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Anyway, You would be surprised at the kinds of things that young children can dream up, and I'm not just talking in a personal retrospective.

One author on FanFiction.net wrote a remakreable piece of Naruto fan fiction. If you didn't have one window open to it and another to Wikipedia at the same time, you'd swear he was nakedly plagarizing Kishimoto. Then you look at when it was posted and compare it to the publishing schedule Weekly Shonen Jump adhered to in putting out chapters, and you realise this guy came first, even compared to what came out in Japan. Next you compare it to the relavant chapters and realise that this guy's take was completely different, usually in ways that made better sense to the situation and characters (Though to be sure, the spelling is rather uneven, the sentance structure is Hemminwayesque, and the punctuation is rather awkward). Finally you read the guy's birthdate and find that at the time he posted this work he was at the ripe old age of 7!

Actually, it isn't the Awakened spoiled brats that really scare me. So long as they get what they want, (or what they know they can get that they want) they aren't a clear and present danger.

On the other hand, imagine a child growing up in an abusive household where the family head just knows the surest way to tell a child is spoiled rotten is how s/he hugs his/her parent and s/he hugs back. The kind who send his/her offspring to millitary school and then pulls them back out again after reading reports about how happy (t)he(y) are there (and if s/he is feelthy steenking reach, procedes to sue the school). To add a little spice to this pot, this family head is sxtremely religious, and when the child tells the Cleric (or even vaguely hints at it) said Cleric tells the parent and says "Honor thy Father and Mother," and "Thou Shalt not Bear False Witness." Now imagine that in the child's dreams, nightmares of remembered beatings and worse are interrupted by a shadowy being who wisks him away from those scenerios of pain, whispering hints of power and revenge...

well, the thing is, there's no canon process for learning magical skills. if you have enough karma (or build points) saved up, you can dump a bunch at once and go from 0 skill to 6 skill in literally no time at all, so long as the GM is willing and/or it fits the needs of the story. technically, you could do the same thing with any skill, but with non-magical skills, there's at least the realism aspect--it's simply not realistic to go from 0 to 6 in the firearms group without spending any time practicing and learning. magic is... well, magic. sudden, mysterious inspiration is a perfectly valid source of skill.

Sandy,3year old awakened pre-schooler
build points: 251

stats:
body: 1
agility :2
reaction:2
strength:1
charisma:3
intuition:3
logic:1
willpower:3
edge:6
magic:4

skills:
climbing:2
spellcasting:1
summoning:1
percepton:4
escape:2
thrown:1
infiltration:2
dodge:3
artisan:1
shadowing:2

qualities:
mentor spirit
spirit affinity (beast spirits)
allergy,mild,common, broccoli

contacts:
mom 6/4
dad 6/4

Gear:
summoning foci force 1, stuffed unicorn named "Magic" who "Scares away all the monsters"

spells:
silence
invisability
wail of the banshee
increase attribute-charisma(used when she is caught doing something she knows she shouldn't be doing)

If she has a Spell Knack then she can only cast that one spell, can't conjure, and can't have a magic higher than 1. (Spell knack rules are very bad).

my bad (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) just playing with the chargen and tossing things in

and now that I know about spell knack,I have to agree. that has to be one of the worst Positive qualities ever. should be put in the negative section,IMHO (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

ok,edited it out. tnks

If you're feeling evil you can set up your own magemask-lite that only works on kids...

http://theteenrepellent.com/

Dear god that's an annoying noise, and I'm 27. I must have good hearing. Lucky me. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohplease.gif)

Oh, I remember when they invented those damn things... so annoying.

Of course, some bright teen had the epiphany "hey, if the adults can't hear it..." and turned it into a "stealth" ringtone, suitable for use during class. The kids can hear it, but the teacher can't... I hear (no pun intended) that it's ideal for covert cheating in crowded classrooms.

Man, Im only 21 and I cant hear it, T.T


Now Ive heard this is a problem but I really cant understand why. Its not like a person can hold a conversation with said caller even if the do know they're calling. Also, whats the issue with vibration? Anyways, any good teacher that is properly attentive to his/her class shouldn't be unable to know when teens are using their cell phones (I for one find it painfully obvious when they are looking at some place in between them and their desk.

I do love the idea of its use for crowd control purposes. Gotta wonder where all the kids go if they cant loiter around their usual places, though. After all, its not like they've given up.