Replace the Samurai Challenge, Hermit backs up his claims... Options

[knasser]

In this thread and elsewhere, Hermit has been proclaiming the brokeness of pre-errata magicians. That they are overpowered, that magic has little cost or downside or counter, that for every limit on a magician a mundane has twice as many and that a magician replaces a TEAM of shadowrunners in being able to fill their roles (by implication whilst still being a capable mage themselves) .

I do not think this is the case so I asked Hermit if he was willing to pit a standard 400BP straight out of chargen magician against an identically costed samurai build and see if he could produce something that would match its capabilities, thus fulfilling the same role in a team. Hermit said sure, so here's the thread and here's my build.

I do not expect this challenge to prove that samurai can beat up magicians or vice versa. Shadowrun is a game of eggshells armed with hammers - typically he who betrays the other first gets the loot. What I expect it to prove is that magicians and samurai are neither better nor worse than the other, but different. That they each have their own, and complimentary roles. Hermit expects to prove that magicians are greatly superior to samurai, able to beat the samurai at its own game.

It's been queried why I proposed matching it against a samurai when I could have picked a rigger or a hacker or a TM to more easily demonstrate that magicians can't replicate what a mundane can do. I chose Samurai because when I say "challenge" I mean it. I've given Hermit the best opportunity to prove his point.

So here is my build. Hermit can post his next and then we'll start comparing their capabilities. I already have some idea that Hermit is going for the notorious voudoun magician (often thought to be broken) with the infamous Task spirit, but we'll see what he comes up with.

I want to be clear that given the nature of the challenge, I'm totally fine with us tweaking our builds following suggestions from others or after discussion in the thread.

Game on, (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Khadim Nasser.