Genecrafted magicians? Options

[Xahn Borealis]

So could someone who was genetically modified before birth express magical ability? A lot of fluff seems to indicate that any genetic meddling will interfere with magic, as well as technomantic abilities, and I'm not just talking about Essence loss. Is it just going to make anyone who did express that bit more exceptional, or is it just not going to happen?

[Summerstorm]

Per fluff i think they tried a vague "not really, but maybe".

I myself have it this way: Offspring of mages have a higher chance to be mage, if one sibling is a mage the other one also has a higher chance, and if they are twins it is even more likely.

Clones of mages (and genecrafted artificial metahumans / critters) have a high chance to fail... but still have a higher chance of being magically active than a baseline clone / normal conceived metahuman.

That means that hunting for metagenes and mixing a surged magician IS possible... but produces dozens or hundreds or "non-usable organisms". And since they might be screened for magic only after fully developed (and might awaken a good times after that), everybody who tries has pretty much to have a dark, illigal, EVIL facility with hundreds of cells filled by desperate mutated children/adult clones.

That is my take though.

(But i plan on plothooks involving such efforts, of course: A biotech corporation (full sub of Aztech) is building the "perfect Man" in my campaign - they are magic-resistant and surged AND genetically improved human/ork/elf mixes - Full genetech enhancements for attributes... and then they get bloodmagic fueled anchored spells on most of their attributes and defenses.) The ones who survive the training and show perfect acceptance of the conditioning get possessed by bloodspirits to go completely into overdrive. - Building that threat up now *g*)

[Xahn Borealis]

Perfect man sounds like fun. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/devil.gif)

Specifically, though, I'm wondering if two Awakened parents had their child 'crafted, is it actually impossible or unbelievable that he'd be Awakened? Genecrafted meaning genetic modifications performed in utero.

[Summerstorm]

I think that should be no problem.

Ruleswise i think kids pretty much would count as having "latent XXXX" quality, and when it awakens, no matter if modded or under essence-loss and such should get a magic-rating and off it goes. But of course one could easily think that maybe excessive modification before that time MIGHT impair him. Maybe he just is too off-balance to properly develope his magical abilities. Maybe he needs longer or starts up with a geas or weird restrictions, (we already know he won't be as powerful through his essence-loss).

As a gm or better: The player who plays that character, i think there are lots of possibilities. And there is a lot you can make with that and explain it so it sounds consistent.

[Xahn Borealis]

He's going to be a detective character in some fanfic.

[CanRay]

If they ever found the "Magic Gene", sure. But they haven't, so they can never predict if it'll happen at all.

[Epicedion]

AFAIK, the rules of Awakening follow the rules of Plot Convenience.

[Xahn Borealis]

Awesome. Now I'm just wondering what genemods he'll get.

[CanRay]

AFAIK, the rules of Awakening follow the rules of Plot Convenience.

AKA: Rule of Cool!

[Xahn Borealis]

Rule of Munchkinism?

[Manunancy]

Even after decades of research nobody can tell for sure what gene combination leads to awkening - some gene are know to be strongly linked, other weakly but nobody as yet figured a safe way to sort it out. Just to make things worse, the mundane bits of the genome also interact with the awakened genes and that part of the mess is even less understood.

Add to that the odd intearction between ambiant magic and the awakened gene, and you a get the sort of cat's cradle nobody can sort out. Which means tampering with the awakened bits of the genom tends to be a rather hit-or-miss proposition, with results heavily biased toward misses. Some of which can get very nasty.

Which mean that basically the results can be anything the plot demands, though a safe, faultless procedure is still straight out. The canon rsults for that sort of experiments tned toward an handfull out astonishingly good results, a few good ones, some acceptables and a lot of rejects, failures and gruesome disasters.

[Xahn Borealis]

I'm not trying to imply that the genegineering is responsible for him being Awakened, just that he was genecrafted for some nice traits, and then he Awakened.

[Rasumichin]

I'm not trying to imply that the genegineering is responsible for him being Awakened, just that he was genecrafted for some nice traits, and then he Awakened.

Well, that isn't a big issue. There's an optional rule somewhere in Augmentation that makes geneware a bit more sketchy for mages than cyber or regular bioware, but even then, it's just an additional risk of magic loss during the treatment, not a total incompatibility.

The character in question would just awaken normally with a reduced maximum for his Magic attribute.
It would take years for him to even notice that restriction, as long as he doesn't get overconfident and gets too much additional 'ware.
Which is a decent possibility when you think about.
People must have been telling him all the time how the tampering with his genome would endanger his magical abilities while he advances just as well as his non-augmented colleagues.
Wouldn't surprise me if he goes all "nah, i can take some more bioware, it's not the big deal those luddites make it out to be".

[Xahn Borealis]

I see him having cybereye with ocular drones too. JUST BECAUSE.

[Ascalaphus]

Doesn't nearly everyone end up Awakened by the time Earthdawn levels of magic arise? That makes it very hard to isolate a "mage gene", if secretly most of the population has the potential to Awaken, given a sufficient mana level, but isn't showing it yet.

[Xahn Borealis]

Maybe it's just a 'easy mage' gene. Or maybe some bloodlines lost the ability.

[Kerenshara]

Pretty much what Rasumichin said.

Keep in mind that Awakening usually doesn't happen until puberty AND this is the first version of Shadowrun that hasn't had an Awakened character BEGIN with a MAGic Attribute of 6 and lose down. As a result, the point of "Awakening with a lower maximum MAGic Attribute" means unless and until the character drops below the magic "full point" of ESSence loss they could add small other amounts of various 'ware without having to deduct from the "paid-for" MAGic rating.

On that note, under the heading of buying bioware as geneware, wouldn't it stand to reason at least from a Fluff perspective that most of the Fluff drawbacks to bioware would be negated if it was a part of your actual genome? I.E.: if you were to take Synaptic Accelerators as a piece of geneware (remember, only standard grade available), you wouldn't tend to be as jumpy, etc. And the old stress/damage rules from SR2/SR3 wouldn't really apply... At least that's my thinking on it.

-Kerenshara

[Xahn Borealis]

Possibly. He has Vocal Range Enhancer, Hearing Enhancement and Echolocation bioware as geneware, so he grew up being able to hear ultrasound as well as 'see' in the dark.

[Glyph]

Crunch-wise, geneware only affects Magic by reducing Essence, and thus, Magic.

Fluff-wise, keep in mind that the awakened gene is elusive, and magical ability is rare and fragile. So if this guy had two awakened parents, they should be concerned about the possible consequences of messing with his genes. "Gee, it would be great if our kid was genengineered to be a superior being, but if we give him all of these in vitro modifications, we could risk messing up his potential to awaken." Obviously, the character in your fanfic does awaken. But his parents don't have the omniscient author-view, though. The decision to risk his potential awakening, by giving him these other modifications, should not be taken lightly.

[Xahn Borealis]

It wasn't their choice. His Awakening is just a coincidence.

[Whipstitch]

So could someone who was genetically modified before birth express magical ability? A lot of fluff seems to indicate that any genetic meddling will interfere with magic, as well as technomantic abilities, and I'm not just talking about Essence loss. Is it just going to make anyone who did express that bit more exceptional, or is it just not going to happen?

I would think it should be possible. Even someone with Latent Awakening can handle having a fair amount of cyberware before their magical potential is utterly snuffed out, and as was pointed out in previous editions people never started out with 1 Magic either, so burning out isn't necessarily THAT easy in most cases.

I would also point out that there's an awful, awful lot people don't know about Awakening and how important specific genes really are relative to other factors-- after all, Street Magic says it's genealogical studies that led to a correlation between Awakened parents and Awakened children, not the mapping out of a Magus factor. So to touch on what Ascalphus was mentioning earlier, it's hard to even say how much of the population is biologically incapable of magic (at the current mana levels, at least...) and which ones simply never capitalize on whatever genes may be present. I mean, just consider the human brain and how plastic it is for a moment, especially at a young age. The brain changes so much in that relatively short period of time that it becomes exponentially harder to even master new accents or to imitate brand new sounds beyond a certain age even if that sound is integral to some languages and comes easily to native speakers. But yet, even so, people's brains can and do change even into adulthood and beyond. So it's perhaps possible that some people could have Awakened but didn't simply because the mana level is low that their brain ended up configuring itself to roll their Rs or draw straighter lines or whatever.

That li'l pet theory would also tie into cloning a bit, given that Augmentation says that even "slow growing" a clone in containment doesn't result in a normal functioning non-magical person given that the brain just doesn't get a chance to develop the requisite toolbox. Even if two people are genetically the same, biologically their brains can be a bit different depending on the sum total of their experiences and thus could be said to develop into somewhat biologically different people. So potentially even a wildly successful (by current SR standards, anyway) clone of Awakened stock could possibly end up as a mundo even if the latent biological potential was there but undeveloped. And that's before even touching on Shadowrun/Earthdawn metaphysics! If magical potential is tied as much to your Pattern and to what you are "supposed to be" or "truly are" as opposed to just your meat 'n' bones biology, then it may very well be possible that two biologically identical people may have differing levels of magical ability simply because on some primal level magical aptitude is second nature to one of them and irrelevant to the other. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

[Whipstitch]

Damn, I spend way too much time thinking about Shadowrun.

[Xahn Borealis]

Damn, I spend way too much time thinking about Shadowrun.

And Earthdawn, apparently.

[Tyro]

Damn, I spend way too much time thinking about Shadowrun.

My immediate biological family & my wife are very nearly permanently maxed out on Shadowrun, the biofam especially. If I even start talking about something Shadowrun related, I get shot down FAST as soon as they realize what it's about.

[Manunancy]

Possibly. He has Vocal Range Enhancer, Hearing Enhancement and Echolocation bioware as geneware, so he grew up being able to hear ultrasound as well as 'see' in the dark.

At what stage did he get those ? If they were picked qwhen adult, well, his pick. If that was an in-vitro mod by his parents, I wonder why the heck thys would pick that sort of packages over things like improved brains or looks which would make far more sense from an 'I want the best kid money can buy' angle.