Book Club: Street Magic, Finally! Options

[Eyeless Blond]

I'm still saddened by the lack--and ridicule of--a Psionics tradition. It's not like it would take a whole lot to make it a magical tradition of its own; we have easily five different kinds of spirits that could represent different aspects of the human mind made manifest:

Combat: Beasts
Detection: Guidance
Health: Guardian
Illusion: Man
Manipulation: Task (or Air, if you're worried about Psionicism being too powerful as a Manifesting tradition)
Drain: Willpower+Intuition
(Likely Manifesting; makes more sense than Possession)

And most of that new-age silliness would find the astral world far more comfortable than practitioners of, for example, Christian Theurgy.

Atheism is a religion too, damn it! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Cthulhudreams]

I'll agree that most of the qualities in Chapter 2 are craptactular. Latent awakening isn't actually half bad really, not to terrible from the RP front, and its actually a not a bad idea for a cyber/bioware enhanced sammie, 'cause when he awakens he'll have a cool plot line to explore, can sink his cash into upgrading his implants and squeezing new ones into the essence space, and can sink karma into magic. Nice.

Aspected magician though? Urgh.

[Ryu]

(Likely Manifesting; makes more sense than Possession)

You´ve got that the wrong way around - possession(self) would be the way to go. And true psionicism is pretty oddball in a magic world; it should exist, but it should embrace magic theory, based on conscious development of the self. The power of the mind-guys should not deny the existance of magic in face of substantial proof.


Chapter 3:
The traditions are great. I like a more flexible approach to traditions, so the little extra Wicca got (two options for the drain stat), could IMO also be given to hermetic druids, for example.
Good that the ways and paths for adepts are back. Each adept should have a true path, diversification is for samurai only. Now if the price of most powers would have been lower...
Building you own tradition is good. Nothing I would have been afraid to do, but being supported by RAW makes things easier for everyone. And for those missing the hermetic paradigms of SOTA2064, like me, these rules are very important. I was a bit surprised to see the them repeated from the main book, I´d rather have had the base traditions repeated.

Nice section!

[Eyeless Blond]

You´ve got that the wrong way around - possession(self) would be the way to go. And true psionicism is pretty oddball in a magic world; it should exist, but it should embrace magic theory, based on conscious development of the self. The power of the mind-guys should not deny the existance of magic in face of substantial proof.

Wouldn't that be Channeling? Possession is about zombies and cars driving by themselves, which kinda doesn't fit a psionic.

And yeah, psionics kinda get a bad rap in SR. That oddity section ought to have been called "Doubting Thomases" or something like that; psionics really isn't the same thing.

[Ryu]

Channeling is indeed the way to go, but it is a metamagic for possession-traditions

[Synner]

I don't recall anyone complaining about the Latent Awakening Quality. I have heard (understandably so) many complaints about the Aspected Magician and Astral Sight Qualities.

There was a lot of debate between whether we should make the Aspected Magician, a "limited" Talent or a "specialized" Talent - there were good arguments for both options. In the end we opted to include both, with the limited Talent as the main write up, and Aspected Magicians as "specialized" Talents as a possible Tweak (Expert Aspected Magician, p.31) for those that prefer the alternative.

Regarding Chapter 3: The Paths of Magic.

This was the only chapter of the book I actually pitched for as a writer, and I was eager to take a swing at the SR4 traditions - particularly after what Audun and I had done to the Hermetic Paradigm in SoTA64. I'm a bit of a RL Mysticism and Theology geek and I've always been irked by the shoehorning of magic into Shamanic and Hermetic worldviews in past editions. This was a lot of fun to write and the SR4 rules really made developing paradigms, tropes, rituals, magical correspondences, and paraphernalia for each tradition a joy. I'm really happy I got to collaborate with Jay Levine for a number of reasons. We wanted to cover a wide range of traditions and give them the extra ooomph previous editions couldn't. I think we accomplished our goal - I'm seeing alot more non-Hermetics and non-Shamans in people's games in SR4.

On a side note - We did end up cutting about 4-5 traditions from the final version due to wordcount limitations (among which, you may be surprised to know, a full Optional Rule Sidebar for playing Psionics as a tradition). These and a number of left-overs from different chapters have been waiting in limbo for a while to be released as a web bonus - no promises when but we are working on getting that out.

There were a couple of other things I really wanted to address in this chapter:
- the complex relationship between Belief, Faith and Magic not only as regards magical traditions but also on how different faiths/organized religions might look upon magic in general;
- introducing what would become "possession traditions" as really playable alternatives in the simplest and most mechanically balanced manner possible.
I think both of those came out rather well too.

[Blade]

Chapter 3 : The Paths of Magic

I think most of what I could say about it has already been said: it's a great idea and it's been well executed. Sure you can always regret not seeing one tradition or another, but the part about making your own tradition adresses this anyway.

The only complaint I could have is that it's sometimes difficult to see the exact relationships between tradition, ways, faith and totem spirits

[DocTaotsu]

What the hell would an Atheist Shaman/Hermetic summon? Jean-Paul Sarte? Richard Dawkins? George Carlin?

Unless his power was to create thought provoking questions of the inherently non-mystical nature of the world around them... I'm not sure at all what kind of power they would wield (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Maybe they could cancel other peoples spell? Oh wait, that'd be too much like D&D and every player would start screaming "I actively disbelieve!" everytime some mage tries to lay down a manabolt...

Actually... a Psionicist might very well excel at counterspelling, their bizarre magical doctrine devoid of traditional underpinning would probably subtlety warp astral space around them. Could an (atheist) psionicist astrally perceive or astrally project? What would their astral quest look like?

[FrankTrollman]

There was indeed a lot of discussion going into those early chapters. The fact that Astral Sight literally does not do anything for you that the same 5 points of Positive Qualities couldn't get you by taking the Adept Quality and spending your one free power point on Astral Sight was brought up. The fact that the restricted quality of Aspected Magician nails you harder in the dice pools than just not spending as many points on skills and it uses up limitations on Negative Qualities yeah that came up too.

In short, the fact that many readers have come out and said "These qualities are total shit! I can do the same character concepts, better with the qualities already present in the basic book!" is not surprising. Many people on the author staff came up with the same objections.

Basically competing visions for what those qualities should do polarized and paralyzed debate. In the end, the author of the chapter basically just shrugged and left them unmodified even though nobody liked them and literally anything would have been better (including not printing them).

-Frank

[Prime Mover]

When first picked up SR4 and had seen the conglomeration of the traditions I was a leery about the direction magic was going. Conceptually it was hard for my long time players to grasp (in paticular a player who had run shamans since first edtion). It really became more of the players responsibility to "craft" the specifics and flavor of his tradition. Street Magic came along and filled in the blanks. The k.i.s.s (keep it simple stupid) rule set has made my job alot easier. With the ability to use one conception of the rules for two or three casters of differing traditions in the same encounter helps keep pace.

[Prime Mover]

[/quote]
Basically competing visions for what those qualities should do polarized and paralyzed debate. In the end, the author of the chapter basically just shrugged and left them unmodified even though nobody liked them and literally anything would have been better (including not printing them).

-Frank
[/quote]


Any insight into what those competing visions were? Is there a "fix" for using in a better fashion? After looking them over in a past debate a week or so ago got impression they were left in to be used with latent awakening. Interested for any tweaking that would make them more viable qualities.

[Demonseed Elite]

I'm really happy I got to collaborate with Jay Levine for a number of reasons. We wanted to cover a wide range of traditions and give them the extra ooomph previous editions couldn't. I think we accomplished our goal - I'm seeing alot more non-Hermetics and non-Shamans in people's games in SR4.

I do think the collaboration between Peter and I worked great here. He's strong on the historical areas I'm not. So I could focus on the traditions I knew something about and he complimented them with ones he knew well.

[Prime Mover]

Selection of traditions was great and "The many faces of mentor spiritis" section later in the book really helped fill them out.

[FrankTrollman]

Any insight into what those competing visions were? Is there a "fix" for using in a better fashion? After looking them over in a past debate a week or so ago got impression they were left in to be used with latent awakening. Interested for any tweaking that would make them more viable qualities.

Astral Sight: Astral Sight is just terrible. Not only does it not do anything you can't do by spending the same 5 points on being an Adept and then taking Astral Sight as your one and only power, it's completely non-extensible. It was suggested that the Magic of 1 you get from the quality should not go away from Essence loss so long as you have an Essence of 1+, or that you should be able to buy up your Magic at a reduced cost. Another concept was to give it Background Count immunity. None of these were implemented and the quality is a waste of paper.

Personally, I'm partial to the version where your Magic neither rises nor falls, as that allows you to play a street sam with astral sight for a modest and affordable price - creating a niche for an interesting character.

Aspected Magician: Completely pointless as written. It was concepted by the author as something that would allow you to just barely get by in the other schools of magic rather than cutting them off completely as the quality had done in the previous editions. But the fact remains that Magic Skills are TRAINED ONLY. If you don't spend a very substantial pile of build points into Spellcasting and spell knowledge, you can't cast spells. There aren't some sort of inherent spellcasting talents that you can fall back on, if you don't purchase the ability, the ability is something you don't have. And the quality gives out penalties that are equivalent to you having less skill points than you can afford with the points that the quality gives you. So whether you are someone who intends to be a conjurer who has a litle spellcasting on the side, or a conjurer who never casts any spells, you'd never want to take the Aspected Conjurer Quality. The first concept would do better to simply start play with 1 less in their Sorcery Group, and the second concept would do better to take Incompetence in Spellcasting and Ritual Spellcasting. Because damnit, neither one of those setups ruins your Astral Perception dice pool.

The most obvious problem with Aspected Magician is that it is a Negative Quality, and negative qualities are strongly capped. You can only have 35 points of them. So being an Aspected Magician hits you coming and going on the quality caps. You spend points in your Positive Quality cap on getting abilities you don't have and then you use up portions of your negative quality cap as well. The cleanest solution is to give players the quality as a bundle as a Positive Quality. That is, you take Aspected Magician instead of Magician and you only pay 5 or 10 points for it. The fact that you free points on the Positive Quality cap is actually important to some builds, so even though it's not a big overall point difference, it actually matters.

The second most obvious problem with Aspected Magician is that it sucks and sucks hard. Taking the quality is a sad waste of your life. Various solutions were proposed from giving Aspected Magicians the ability to purchase their Magic Attribute at a discount to giving Aspected Magicians bonuses analagous to the bonus Force Points they got in previous editions.

Personally, I use a version of Aspected Magician where they flat don't get certain magical options, the quality costs less BP than Magician, and they start at Initiate Grade 1 with an appropriate Metamagic (which yes, is about what they could afford with the bonus Force Points that they started with in SR2 and SR3).

---

And no, this isn't 20/20 hindsight. We seriously had this exact conversation half a year before the book hit shelves and the chapter author went ahead with the qualities as written anyway despite the total ineffectiveness of the proposition, and there were head-desks all over the freelancer group.

-Frank

[Whipstitch]

Yeah, it's really sad, but I'm one of the people who has been known to make MystAds who only Conjure and I still wouldn't touch Aspected Conjuror in its current state, despite the fact that the characters in question don't even have Astral Projection in the first place. As Frank said the Aspected Magician quality wrecks everything outside your narrow shtick and barely provides the points necessary to buy a Mentor Spirit whereas Incompetent Spellcasting paired with Incompetent Ritual Magic gives you enough points to buy two levels of the indisputably useful Counterspelling and perhaps a specialization on top of that, which is particularly noteworthy since Aspected Conjurer's penalties would effectively wipe out the benefits from any Counterspell skill lower than 5! It's really a no brainer; either way you have buy to off either the Incompetence Quality or the Aspected Magician Quality through karma and likely IC training before your character can get real use of the affected skills, so why the heck would you take the more crippling set of penalties when they give less points?

As for Astral Sight and the Knack Qualities, yeah, they're pretty craptacular, and the only way I could see them being useful is if they were the result of a Latent Awakening in which case you could end up with a cybered Mundane who sees into the Astral, but even then the Samurai's likely going to be disappointed they're not an Adept with Combat Sense and Improved Ability: Automatics while the Face was gunning for Kinesics and Commanding voice, so lord knows it'll hardly be appreciated.

[nathanross]

My thoughts on Street Magic:

I LOVE TRADITIONS!
While I liked SR3, it was lacking so much in terms of Tradition variance. While after MitS, there were plenty to choose from, they always seemed to limited and it was hard to make new ones. With Street Magic, you can create new traditions very easily (though I think Psionics are still elusive).

As for Aspected Magicians, they have always been less powerful and FAR more limited than Full Magicians. This really just forced you to advance in one and only one area. I have always found it more of a flavor choice myself, and have so far only seen NPC Aspected Mages. I do think that the +2/-6 optional rule shows promise though. It will never make up for the lack of the other areas, but you will be Amazing in that one area. You will have so much more karma and an Aspected Conjurer with Plant or Guidance spirits is a force to be reckoned with. I personally want to try one when I come up with acceptable rules for Drakes. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Eyeless Blond]

Even so, it's still not really enough to make up for the massive gimpage. Maybe a free boost to Magic attribute (start at 2 instead of 1), if you don't like the idea of free initiation?

Anyway yeah, I do love how traditions got customization rules, though they seem a little simple considering how important and central they are to the character. Any more, though, and they might be too much complexity.

[nathanross]

The customization/creation rules are absurdly simple, but it sure as hell beats making spirit stats and tradition properties from scratch. Also, most traditions just got lumped into Shamanic (choose a totem that fits!).

As for Aspected, did it always make you suck in Astral and Enchanting? I'd say that also gimps it way too far. Instead of -4/-6, just make it unable to learn and use Sorcery or Conjuring for +10BP (If not more).

Maybe it could also give a 8, 7, 7 skill cap to either Conjuring or Sorcery Group skills. Just some ideas. I don't want the Aspected Magicians to disappear solely because the writer didn't do his/her job.

[FrankTrollman]

Anyway yeah, I do love how traditions got customization rules, though they seem a little simple considering how important and central they are to the character. Any more, though, and they might be too much complexity.

Different authors fell on different sides of that argument, and you can see leftovers from it in the final product. Consider the Toxic Traditions. If you're a Radiation magician, you have unique radiation flavored spirits. That's awesome, but unfortunately there aren't five spirits in the book for that Mentor. You get Nuclear spirits, Abominations, and... what? You can kind of make it work with Harbinger and Sludge, but neither one is a super great fit. And that's still only four. And if you use Corruption on a Plant or Task spirit, what is supposed to happen? No idea really.

Heck, the Task Spirit exists because some of the authors wanted the Insect Spirits to use the normal templates and get their extra powers exclusively from Mentor bonuses.

As for Aspected, did it always make you suck in Astral and Enchanting?

No. When Magical Adepts were first introduced you had the choice of playing a Conjurer, a Sorcerer, or an Enchanter. Each type could use their path and not the other two. Enchanting Adepts were a joke and no one used them. At that time a Magical Adept could Astrally Perceive but not Project. Later on they were renamed Aspected Magicians, and some of them could Astrally Project and others were limited to Astral Perception. As far as I can recall all of them were allowed to Enchant if that's what they wanted to do.

But yeah, the Aspected Magician quality in the 4th edition book doesn't do justice to any of the previous versions and I've never seen it used once people fully wrapped their minds around what it actually did. I predict that by 5th edition people won't even think of Aspected Magicians as an important part of the game world.

-Frank

[Fuchs]

Wasn't there once (I think SR1 or SR2) three types of adepts?

- Physical Adepts

- Sorcery, Conjuring and Enchanting Adepts (No astral perception or projection, fullo access to the specific area (spells, or spirits/elementals depending on tradition, or enchanting).

- Elemental Adepts (Astral projection and perception, could only summon one type of elemental and cast one type of spells: Fire/Combat, Earth/Manipulation, Air and Water on illusion and detection, not sure which was what, no healing adepts at all)

[Ancient History]

You forgot shamanic adepts, obeyifa, wu fa, the "D" priority magicians (and you thought Astral Sight was gimped)...

[Ryu]

Current aspected magicians are useless. The sorcery adept got so many more spell points it was the way to go for spellcasters. Why wasn´t something like that done in SR4? I accept that you may not net-gain BP by being awakened and limiting that. Whoever made the current rules completely failed to grasp that the negative quality reduces not only the value of the positive quality, but of all points spend on general-utility-magic. A discount on bought magic would have been the least that had to be done.

Task spirits are, in my opinion, disturbingly powerful in case of materialisation traditions. But we are still working our way to that section/discussion.

[Ancient History]

Current aspected magicians are useless. The sorcery adept got so many more spell points it was the way to go for spellcasters. Why wasn´t something like that done in SR4?

Because there are no more spell points.

[Ryu]

From most players chargen habits, the conversion of 10 spellpoints into 2 free spells (above the usual limit) would have been fast and fitting.

Conjurers could start with free bound spirits at least, or have a cap of CHA+2 for bound spirits.

Enchanters are what Enchanters have been. I don´t care.

[Ancient History]

<sigh> Okay shadowkids, let's review what aspected magicians are, and are not.

Aspected magicians are much more limited than full magicians. That doesn't particularly mean that they excel in one area of magic, it means they have only one area of magic to excel in. This goes all the way back to 1st edition. The only difference between 4th edition aspected magicians and the prior editions is that the 4e aspected magicians can do things outside their one particular area-they just suck at it. This is still a hop, skip, and a jump beyond what they were limited to before.

What aspected magicians are not are specialist D&D wizards. They don't have any particular bonus in their area beyond the skills that they buy, and they don't have any special powers that can't be achieved by a full wizard. This is because they are gimped. The character concept is of a fundamentally flawed magician, at least compared to a full magician. What you make of your character is up to you, but nobody should bitch when an NPC full magician outcasts a PC sorcerer-if the PC sorcerer, with nothing else to blow their Karma on, can't measure up, that's not because the system is broken. Make your aspected magician be all they can be!