Magic Differences, between SR3 and SR4... Options

[JustSix]

I stopped keeping up with SR3 a little while ago (my campaign ended). Now, though, I'm starting up a new one using SR4 rules at the request of my players.

Anyway, I was wondering if I missed any "in-game" background material that explains why the magic rules have changed so drastically. For example, mages can now have totems (while all shamans don't automatically get one), summoning an elemental is no different than summoning a nature spirit (no ritual required), and shamans can now bind spirits. From a rules perspective, these changes make sense, it streamlines the magic-users. However, it's a pretty big departure from how the Sixth World worked just a few game years ago. So, any official explanation? Did astral space crash too? ;)

[Geekkake]

I believe it was SOTA 2064 that discussed some very exciting 2063 advances in thaumaturgical theory, including mages who could switch between spirits and elementals and were slowly bridging the gap between the two groups. Some kind of unified magical theory.

So if their work was popularized and funded, it may very well have become more commonplace among the magical folk in seven years.

[Brahm]

UMT was the thing. It was a small section in the SOTA book. The basic premise underlying it has been in the game for some time, that dragons for example are not locked into the Hermetic/Shaman moulds so having to Hermetics and Shamans work differently with conjuring like they did was an artificial metahuman constructs created by limited understanding.

[Moon-Hawk]

Has someone worked out how to make a character that hasn't jumped on the UMT bandwagon yet? I guess a shaman would just have to take Incompetance: Binding, right? What about an old-school hermetic? No totem/mentor and an inability to summon unbound spirits? How would that work?

[Brahm]

[Moon-Hawk]

Agree on Shamans. But how to simulate the old-school Hermetic's inability to use an unbound spirit? A mental flaw? How to simulate his belief that an unbound spirit will not obey him even if he has services? It really ought to be worth something, at least as a mental flaw. I agree that it could be done as a RPing choice, but it wasn't just a preference for Hermetics. Generally self-gimping like that is a flaw, and merits some points.

[Azralon]

Old school shamans would be easy, yeah. Incomp: Binding and Mentor Spirit pretty much covers it, although you're going to find yourself capable of summoning Fire spirits now and you'll be unbound by domains. No existing game mechanics to restrict you in those ways, so it'd be flavor declarations to the effect of "I will never summon Fire spirits and will only summon in the appropriate domains."

Old school hermetics can simply not take a mentor spirit and then do their own flavor declarations of "I will never summon elementals of Man and will summon only in my library, Binding every time."

Yeah, it's self-gimping without any BP compensation, but the player and GM are always welcome to come up with their own Qualities as appropriate. Make the appropriate packages worth like 10 BPs and call it "Mystical Retardation" or something. ;)

[Brahm]

How about the Hermetic believes that space aliens are watching intently and will punish them if they order around an unbound spirit. The PC is obviously so delusional about the realities of space that the GM allows them to take the Incompetence:Pilot Aerospace flaw. :silly:

[mdynna]

[Brahm]

[Eryk the Red]

I did find the fact that differences in traditions were so insignificant a little disappointing, though. The Unified Magical Theory business makes sense and all, but it sort of ruins the mystery of shamanism. I at least would have liked some other meaningful differences in the traditions. Oh well. House rule time!

[nick012000]

[Azralon]

[Brahm]

Six types including Watchers, and each traditon has access to 5, including Watchers for Shamans and Heretics. Shamans don't do fire and Hermetics don't do beasts. Man, earth, water, and air they both do, although they are associtaed with different spell categories in each tradition.

[hyzmarca]

The odd thing about the new unified magical system is that countless spirit types suddenly vanished along with elementals while shaman and hermetics alike learned to conjure wujen spirits of the elements for no apparent reaason.

[Brahm]

[Jaid]

flavor is mutable. it's only the mechanics that you really have to worry about too much.

for example:

spirit of water = water elemental to a mage, ocean/river/swamp/etc spirit to a shaman. there doesn't need to be a mechanical difference, you just call it something different.

as another example, consider the relatively small list of drones in the BBB. supposing you wanted a fast, agile, lightly armored attack drone, you could do something like the following:

suzuki mirage
rigger adaptation
weapon mount
toss in appropriate software (prob default rating 3), maybe two from the following: defense, targetting (almost guaranteed to have this), maneuver(groundcraft).

if it's probable that it's been upgraded, you give it better software, 2 weapon mounts, and all software needed for it.

as an extremely high end example: pilot 6, maneuver(groundcraft) 4, defense 4, targetting(automatics) 4, targetting(heavy) 4, clearsight 4, ECCM 4, and two ares alphas with gas vent 3 and smartgun system. (i would assume ambidexterity effectively for a drone, but you may prefer otherwise). toss a satellite link onto it (unjammable now, i believe? danged tough to anyways). also give it a nice sensor package (vehicle sized, remember)... pretty much just choose one item not to get. throw lots of nice enhancements onto the camera and microphone (you definitely want those both, don't forget), and i'd say other major picks would be motion sensor, radio signal scanner, and maybe either MAD or cyberware scanner. all at a range of 4 km. and your players will never laugh at drones again if you send a few of these after them...

now of course, this carries a rather hefty price tag, but there you have it: you've just created a 'drone' of your very own. this can, of course, be done with more or less any of the vehicles in the BBB. just remember, the fact that a specific name is given to something, doesn't mean it can't be used perfectly to represent something else.

[Eyeless Blond]

The somewhat more subtle, but no less important, differences are, for example:

• The average Magic attribute now being 3 instead of (by default) 6, Essence Loss now hits mages roughly twice as hard as before. That, plus the greater role the actual Magic attribute plays in spellcasting, makes the cybermage a much more difficult concept to pull off.
• The change to Object Resistance makes it nearly impossible to stealth your way past cameras and drones unless your character is specifically min-maxed for that purpose. In SR3 such things were comparitively much easier; your middle-of-the-road mage could pull such spells off without too much trouble.

These changes aren't bad, necessarily, but they are departures in the gameworld that are caused by the changed mechanics.

[nick012000]

[hyzmarca]

[nick012000]

Not really. Because then we wind up with proliferation of spirits that isn't really neccessary. Volano spirits, fire elementals, efreeti, archangels (with flaming swords), demons... they're all really fire spirits, so why give them all different stats?

[hyzmarca]

Because their different. Why give the career Red Samurai and the newbie Halloweener different stats? They're both metahuman.

[Dissonance]

Except the manifestation of a summoner's will isn't quite the same thing as two guys on the street.

That's like asking somebody to draw a scary halloween costume and then asking them to draw a triangle.

[hyzmarca]

It is highly probable that spirits are far more than just an abstract manifestation of a sumoners will and are, in fact, closer to being individuals who you would randmly meet on the street.

[Dissonance]

I'm pretty sure that, at least in SR3, the form of the spirit was highly dependant on the views and background of the summoner. I'm pretty sure that the examples mentioned so far were straight up examples from Magic in the Shadows.