Magic, What can it not do? Options

[CoalHeart]

What can't magic do besides interact with the matrix, and run drones?

Got into a big arguement with my chummers over what it can or can not do. Create life? Like spirit getting pregnant, or getting someone pregnant. Dragons and humans? Man Shapechanges into a woman, can s/he get pregnant? Make gold from lead? Bring back the truly dead? Time travel? All by magic? Combine life forms making catdogs and other freaks?

I told my friend it's not possible.
Yet they keep saying 'It's magic it can do anything' Maybe I'm too much of a realist.
So I look for your opinons on the matter.


P.S. If this post is a repeat of a previous thread can someone turn me into that direction. Thanks.

[Mr.Platinum]

get you r friend to read MITS about the spell creation it will answere all questions.

[Dende]

Being as there is no teleportaion allowed, I think it would be fair to say time travel is out...If you can't move in 3 dimensions with magic, no way in hell should a GM allow movement in 4.

As for frankensteining...I am assuming golems and such creatures could be made with magiic...ala Slayers...but really you would have to make your own custom rules for this, and when gene therapy and slicing are so common, I would think it would be quicker and cheaper to use tech to do such things.

As for life creation and pregnancy...Why the hell should these be issues in your games...wait I don't wanna know. Suffice to say you don't really turn into a true woman when magically altered, so I doubt pregnancy should apply.

PS when I say golems, I mean chimeras, Slayers style...lie cross breed creatures, etc. Golems are just the Chimeras with humans thrown in.

[CoalHeart]

It's not an issue, we were just sitting around talking about what's possible or not. All philosophical like.

Oh and what about perpetual energy machines? The 'mage' thinks that it's possible to do a 'create fire' or 'create lightning' and hook it up to a turbine or powerplant and just quicken it, and Blam infininte energy for the world.

[Ol' Scratch]

As stated, Magic in the Shadow discusses what's possible and not, listing an assortment of topics that are strictly off-limits even to magic.

[CoalHeart]

Nevermind. I'm a friggen idiot. Yea magic is a source of eternal energy. Or close to it.

Take a handfull of photoelectric cells and quicken the 'light' spell and There infinite energy. Or take a few fire elementals and quicken them so they last a year and a day, and have them use thier flamethrower ability on a bunch of boilers and turbines and crank out the energy. Various other things like that. Everyone can forget these posts thanks. They're right I was wrong on that.

[Moon-Hawk]

I was reading something about that, but I don't remember where. Obviously, if such a thing were feasable, it would have been done already and all power plants in the world would be magic. The explanation given in this thing I was reading (don't remember if canon or not, somebody please help me out if this rings a bell) is that someone tried exactly this. They used some sort of sustained/quickened spell to power a turbine. Over time it built up a bit of a background count, and by the time anyone realized that this background count was turning into a warp and the radius was spreading, it took some major mojo to get someone in there with enough power to shut it off before the warp got hopelessly out of control and, I don't know, ate the world or something.
Did I dream this?

[Friggas Ring]

[Moonstone Spider]

Some of those limits on magic from MitS are described as limits on sorcery, not magic itself. For instance it species that spells cannot summon on banish creatures, that's the job of conjuring. Similarly sorcery can't predict the future. That doesn't mean magic can't predict the future (Divining).

[Kagetenshi]

[hobgoblin]

to make a golem, take a look at ally spirits in mits, they have a inhabit power that you can buy for them at creation that enable them to among other things inhabit a clay statue...

the easyer way would be to summon a eath elemental, instant golem in materialised form :)

[The Cheshire Pen...]

Our campaign has progressed to the point that I had to start making up magic. Temporal magic is possible as metamagic (metaspells). I really like the HHH website's rules for magic. In fact, just about anything is possible with metamagic. One character in my campaign has the spell 'retroactive annihilation'... you can guess where he got the idea from and what it does ;)

[Ol' Scratch]

Great name, Cheshire. :D

[Prospero]

I tend to agree with Kagetenshi. Magic is definatly a very big source of power, but it has limits. All magical energy comes from the astral or the metaplanes - beyond that, we don't know how or why. It's limited by how you can harvest it and the conduit it uses. Think of it like the sun - yeah, to us, for all practical purposes, the sun is infinite energy. But how can you harness that energy? With an energy source like the sun right in our back yard (so to speak) we shouldn't have any problems with energy at all, right? But the means of harnessing it can be limiting, even though the source isn't limited (for practical purposes).

So, yeah, you could get mages to quicken a bajillion custom-designed light spells and use them to power solar energy cells, but after a while you have to wonder what such a powerful, constantly open conduit of astral energy is going to do to the world around it. Probably nothing good. The same with keeping hundreds of fire-elementals around - even if they weren't using their powers. Despite the astronomical cost in time, karma, and nuyen, they'd start to get tired after a couple of years and look for ways out of the arrangement or pro-Awakened rights groups (or free spirits of the same type or dragons or Conjurors for the Ethical Treatment of Spirits or somebody) would try and destory your (to them) elemental sweat shop.

And some things just aren't possible. There are no known spirits or magicians (or adepts), even the really bad-ass ones like Harlequin and the Big D, who have ever shown anything remotely like a capacity for time travel (even when it would be really usefull to them). If they don't have that power, some upstart shadowrunner mage is sure not gonna get it.

That being said - whatever fits into your game is what you should do. None of this is cannon. But in terms of "realism" - looking at things with some amount of logic - the answer should be no.

[Eindrachen]

While I'm pretty savvy with the magic system (i.e., MITS was the first supplement I picked up, and has been read and reread repeatedly), could someone better enlightened explain precisely why a quicked spell put on an item like a photo-active device creates background count? I just don't remember anything in MITS that even remotely justifies this sort of ruling; if the spell was being used on a device that polluted the environment or caused harm to someone, maybe, but it's being used to create a clean form of energy that in and of itself has zero impact on anything around it.

Which isn't to say I wouldn't create my own rationale for it, should the given one be weak (ala the "astral template" rationale for lowering Essence when getting 'ware).

[Kagetenshi]

The explanation sounds like it would be that the abnormal draining of magic in the area is harmful to astral space immediately surrounding the spells. This is supported by the fact that the violent events in east Asia are thought to have perhaps been exacerbated by heavy use of the dragon lines there.
Basically, there isn't an infinite supply of magic, and if you drain it too fast it doesn't replenish at the site quickly enough.

~J

[Ancient History]

All magical activites can cause changes in the area of the mana sphere in which they take place. This is why, in areas where heavy spellcasting occurs, temporary and permanent background coutns can form. Places that are the site of powrful magical effects can develop into quite powerful power sites, given a sufficient length of time (example: pre Mana Ebb Crater Lake).

[Kagetenshi]

And on a side note, the relationship between magic and nuclear energy (as collected and organized on AH's site) suggests, or at least so it seems to me, that in some way Magic=[constants]Energy.

~J

[Eindrachen]

Okay, I understand a bit now. And it does mesh with what we know; there are constant references that magic isn't "full strength" in the Sixth Word yet, and that it can (and will) get stronger as time goes on.

I still don't think a background count is the answer, though. A mana void, much like those that happened in Chicago due to the use of FAT bacteria, seems more appropriate. Not only will the machine not last forever, but you'll (more or less) permanently drain magic from the area. Certainly something that would be considered a very bad thing to nearly anyone.

[Kagetenshi]

Background count is currently a catch-all for magic not working right, but I agree that it wouldn't actually be a background count, just have similar game effects.

~J

[Prospero]

Remember, background count is both the lack of mana (a la mana warp), the tainting of mana though some agency, or the "charging" of it. Things that can "charge" the mana, and thus cause background count, are strong or prolonged magical activity (MitS p. 84). And I doubt you would permanently drain mana from an area with only a very-long duration spell, but the background count might last for at least as long as the draining activity did - or maybe twice as long if you feel it warrants it.

[spotlite]

[spotlite]

Something else just occurred to me actually which I suspect has been in everyone's mind but just not said directly. As Eindrachen said, there is nothing to suggest any detrimental side effects - otherwise surely it would be listed under Quickening? 'if the spell remain active for [insert formula here], then this happens for every [period] that goes by' sort of thing. There's nothing.

So I might be inclined to go with the 'suppressed' line than the 'impossible'. That unfortunately means cunning players could do it if they put their minds to it and had the resources and time. But they'd have to stop anyone finding out, and if the corps have done weird metaplane quests or other magic, or deals with spirits, or whatever, which would alert them to the tech being used stopping people finding out might be a bit difficult! If you allow metaplane quests or other things to be so powerful in your games, anyway. Even without that, someone would find out sooner or later and talk about it, and then they'd be got anyway.

H'mm... PLEASE can someone find canon on this? A novel quote, an SR1 shadowtalk, or printed adventure, anything!

[Kagetenshi]

Suppressed really isn't feasible. Remember, this isn't a technology one would have to market to anyone else, it's a technique that any given business could use to eliminate their electricity bills and maybe make some money on the side if they need to. There's no way it could be reasonably suppressed, and it's such a comparatively simple idea that it wouldn't be feasible to kill off the people who thought of it either.
Suppression is, I submit, impossible, therefore it must be physically impossible somehow.

~J

[Dende]

Maybe it is all feasability...
Putting aside all lines of effects, either negative or positive...
Which astral critters flocking to your house maybe be one.
Or negation of magic within 10 city blocks over time...etc etc...

If you think about it, a fireball is just heat, heating a turbine with fire is not a great nor efficent way to make power...hence why very few people use fires to make power anymore even modern... Even sustaining it...sure you could probably heat your house, if you did it right and it was a level 8 or 9 fireball...But a whole corp? you would be dead from drain just casting a fireball big enough to support an office building JUST for heat... That isn't assuming all other elcetronics to power, which even now is a lot. in 2060 the power requirements would be through the roof.

So sure, you could have a magic-car, or a nice space heater for your house...but beyond that, I just don't think it feasble.