Aspected Magicians, Perhaps there are ways to simulate one? Options

[Xenith]

Well, since there are some people who have asked how to bring back Aspected Magicians (or 'Groggies'), I figured a topic on it might not be uncalled for.

I found as nice way of doing this by taking two incompetence flaws for either Binding and Summoning or Spellcasting and Ritual Spellcasting. So you have a Sorcerer or a Conjurer aspected magician. unfortunately, its rather difficult to do similar things with Elemental Magicians or Totem Casters (or what have you)....

I guess its possible to simply create a Flaw for this... but I want to see if theres a way to simulate it within the current rules if possible. :)

Any ideas on that? :D

[Jaid]

you could take spirit bane a few times to help simulate the spirit part. wouldn't work quite the way you want, but it would help. also, you would naturally specialise in the type of spirit and spellcasting you are allowed to use.

hmmm... as far as it goes, the shamanist (based on totem thing) would only work for a very few totems... most of them give only one magic advantage now, if any, it seems. maybe if you houseruled a few totems to be different for adepts and magicians...

[TonkaTuff]

Off-hand, I would think it fairly simple to implement aspected magicians. Just charge them fewer BPs (5-7, depending on how you think they compare to PhysAds) for the privillage and enforce the restrictions as outlined in SR3 (they're either casters or summoners, and they can't project). Same for Elementalists and Shamanists - if they're not supposed to have access to a skill/spell, don't let them get them. Doesn't seem to require a great deal of rules-fu or particular flaws. And, on the general topic, granting them Incompetence for skills they will never be able to use is just free BP unless you just enforce the penalties w/o the benefit.

[Gothic Rose]

Edit: Should have more thoroughly read the OPer. Nevermind :P

[snowRaven]

[elbows]

It's easy to house-rule aspect magicians by just charging 5BPs, or taking an incompetence flaw, but they end up not being cost-effective. Full mages only cost 15BP now, which isn't much -- the real cost is in buying up your Magic. Even if aspected magicians only cost 5BP, they get the shaft -- basically they get one extra attribute point in exchange for drastically limiting their magical abilities.

In SR3, aspected magicians were a lot cheaper than full mages, and they got more free spell points, IIRC.

[Chandon]

Mystic Adept with no adept powers. The single most relevent property that an aspected magician has is the lack of astral projection.

[NightmareX]

I've being running them like this:

Aspected Magician (7 bp positive quality)
A character with this quality is an aspected magician and starts with a Magic attribute of 1. This may be increased like any other attribute, up to a maximum of 6 + initiation grade. A character with this quality cannot take the Adept, Mystic Adept, or Technomancer qualities.

When this quality is taken, an aspect must be chosen for the character. An aspected magicians has only limited use of magical skills, depending on their aspect and cannot use magical skills not noted as available to their aspect. Available aspects include:

* Sorcerer: An aspected sorcerer can cast spells and otherwise make use of all skills in the Sorcery skill group.
* Conjurer: An aspected conjurer can conjure spirits and otherwise make use of all skills in the Conjuring skill group.
* Tradionalist: An aspected traditionalist can use all magical skills, but only to in a limited fashion. They can cast spells of one choson category, and conjure (and bind) spirits that their tradition links to their chosen spell category. Aspected traditionalists who follow a mentor spirit must choose a category of spells for which they gain an advantage due to their mentor spirit. (Example - Ryker is a shamanic aspected traditionalist who follows the Wolf totem. Thus, he can cast only Combat spells and conjure only Beast spirits). Aspected traditionalists use the Banishing and Counterspelling skills normally.

Like a full magician, each aspected magician follows a specific magical tradition that defines his worldview and how he perceives and manipulates magic. Aspected magicians may also have a mentor spirit as full magicians can. Aspected magicians can make use of astral perception (and can use the Assensing and Astral Combat skills normally), but they cannot astrally project in the fashion that a full magician can.

Though this quality is inexpensive, gamemasters should be careful not to allow it to be abused. It should only be taken for characters that are intended to be played as magicians.

[Gothic Rose]

Actually, yeah...An aspected could be a Mystic Adept without adept powers. I'd go something like:

Aspected Magician: 10pts

Aspected Magicians who cast spells reduce the spell cost multiplier by 2. They may start with Magic x 3 spells.

Aspected Magicians who summon spirits may start with a number of spirits bound to her equal to her magic attribute (each spirit must be of a power LOWER than her magic attribute) for free.


Something along those lines.

[NightmareX]

[Gothic Rose]

[NightmareX]

[FrankTrollman]

[NightmareX]

[Azralon]

The thing is that with SR4's build-point system you can recreate almost every facet of an Aspected Magician simply by not spending points on things they shouldn't be able to do.

If I'm a hermetic "Fire Mage" then I can just choose to forgo all non-Combat spells that don't have fire elemental effects. I can conjure only Fire spirits. This frees up my BPs (and later, my karma) to go into other things because I've self-specialized.

If I want to be a straight conjurer, then I just won't take any sorcery skills. Heck, I could be an "astral adept" by just never taking any sorcery or conjuring skills and instead bumping up my Astral Combat skill.

If you really want tangible game effects, then (as mentioned elsewhere) go nuts with the Incompetent quality. I mean, be Incompetent in the 3 Conjuring skills for your "pure sorcerer" and the net BP cost evens out to zero. Be a full magician who's Incompetent in all Conjuring and Sorcery skills and you have yourself an astral adept who's got 15 "extra" BPs to throw around.

Come up with a 5BP "Fleshbound" negative quality if you want, which denies full magicians (and maybe adepts) the ability to access astral space. Slap that on the pure sorcerer above and you're actually 5 BP in the black. Go spend it on more spell stuff or resources or some such.

[NightmareX]

[maa01]

You still need buy some magic, so its' not totally for free. but you get a nice discount.

[Azralon]

I hear your objection and I don't disagree; I'm just throwing out a solution that satisfied some of the parameters people seemed to want. Also, they'd still need to buy up their Magic rating so it's not like it'd be totally free; they'd get a 5 BP "refund," fill up some valuable Quality point slots, and then have a 1 Magic and very little they could do with it.

I kinda liked the suggestion someone else had to buy Mystic Adept and spend 1 point of Magic on Astral Perception, with the rest going towards the typical sorcery/conjuring combo. I did that myself with a "straight sorcerer" that I'll be playing in a few weeks. I took Incompetent in the 3 conjuring skills, which nets me a 5 BP gain. However, my spellcasting capacity is kinda retarded by a point due to the magician/adept split.

I personally think aspected magicians should have a net cost of 10 BPs, and astral adepts should run at 5. I'd really like it if they were repackaged deals instead of our little "after-market" combos, but then I imagine that's something for Street Magic to address.

BTW, I kinda like "Meatbound" more as a name for that negative quality. Sticks closer to the SR lingo.

[Eyeless Blond]

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Concerning streamlining, this is ungood.

[NightmareX]

[NightmareX]

[Eyeless Blond]

Making a choice will always limit you in another way; what's wrong with that? So an aspected mage gets his own small edge over a full mage. So does a (Mystic) Adept. So does a Technomancer. So does a human over the much-more-BP-expensive elf. Big deal.

Full mages get a lot of things that aspected mages cannot touch, and unless aspected mages get some kind of a scaling discount they will only get a trivially small BP difference for their pain. As you said, it's an off-screen ability; the spell and spirit discount was far more overt.

[Azralon]

I think I'm with NightmareX. The advantage to being Aspected over Full should be cheaper BP cost of your magician-type Quality, under the premise that you can do fewer things than a Full. The saved points should let you afford more of whatever you've specialized in.

I suspect that the problem some folks are seeing is that if the difference between Full and Aspected is 5, 8, or even 10 points and is therefore so comparatively small, then why specialize? If you're saving only 10 points to be a pure Conjurer then you're giving up a whole lot of potential abilities for, say, +1 to an attribute. That doesn't seem like a fair swap.

I'll point out, though, that you're also not going to be spending points on your Sorcery skills nor your starting spells. So you're in effect "saving" those points too. A pure Sorcerer's savings would consist only of the Conjuring skills, so that sounds like it might actually be a "worse" deal. But hey, spells typically cost less drain than spirits, so it might be a wash.

Then someone could say that "well, I can save points on those anyway just by not picking them; I want a bonus for restricting myself in the long-term." My answer would be "If you intend on never conjuring ever, then take the three associated Incompetent qualities and here's your 'free' 15 BPs."

That might seem like "Hey, I can be an aspected mage for free!" but there's a more subtle expense going on. You used up 15 of your 35 possible Positive Quality points and 15 of your 35 possible Negatives as well. From a BP expense point of view, sure, that balances to a net difference. But you're restricting yourself in another way, and I find that equitable.

[NightmareX]