Naturally limiting magician characters, without it seeming like your picking on them Options

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Urm... I said Aspected for them. That means it is good for them, bad for you.

I believe that Halinn's point is that it is likely that the Corporation's mages may not be that particular Tradition either. Mages being as rare as they are, it is likely that some of them will be of a different tradition, which impairs their abilities on Corpoorate properties, just as it would possibly impair the Shadowrunner mage's abilities.

[Neraph]

I believe that Halinn's point is that it is likely that the Corporation's mages may not be that particular Tradition either. Mages being as rare as they are, it is likely that some of them will be of a different tradition, which impairs their abilities on Corpoorate properties, just as it would possibly impair the Shadowrunner mage's abilities.

Not when it is corporate policy to be a certain tradition. Or you can use the Similar Aspect sidebar or whatever, where it is Aspected for people who revere nature (druid, shaman, great wheel, ect.) and that would affect the party hermetic (or vice versa).

[Halinn]

I believe that Halinn's point is that it is likely that the Corporation's mages may not be that particular Tradition either. Mages being as rare as they are, it is likely that some of them will be of a different tradition, which impairs their abilities on Corpoorate properties, just as it would possibly impair the Shadowrunner mage's abilities.

Exactly. The fluff has it that corporations are quite active in 'hiring' mages, which seems to imply that they aren't extremely picky about what their traditions are. They might favor one tradition, but they sure won't say no to a mage of another tradition.

[Eratosthenes]

Exactly. The fluff has it that corporations are quite active in 'hiring' mages, which seems to imply that they aren't extremely picky about what their traditions are. They might favor one tradition, but they sure won't say no to a mage of another tradition.

That's not to say though that you couldn't have a group of mages, working at a particular facility, aspect the background to facilitate their work. Be they hermetics, chaos, etc. magicians or shaman. It would also facilitate things for the corp to have those mages form an initiation group, etc.

[Neraph]

That's not to say though that you couldn't have a group of mages, working at a particular facility, aspect the background to facilitate their work. Be they hermetics, chaos, etc. magicians or shaman. It would also facilitate things for the corp to have those mages form an initiation group, etc.

Right. Magical Group MCT-13 or whatever illustrates this. The corp can hire all the hermetics, shaman, and wujen they want, but they are more than likely going to assign them to teams following similar tradition ideals to assure work efficiency.

[Cheops]

Problem with a lot of the advice that these guys are giving you also become deadly for the rest of the team too. Until they get their hands on some AV rounds those drones are just as likely to machine gun the Sam to death as the mage. Ditto with all the physical traps and what not.

The best ways to deal with mages are:

1) Sit down and have a discussion with your table about the issue. This works well. Mage players in my games usually play sub-optimally just to not dominate a session. Once things start turning against the team then they step in and cheese everything out.

2) Focus on splitting the group up. If the whole team can't always focus 100% of their resources on a single target then the mage can't dominate everything. Force the mage to focus on astral overwatch and he takes a sideline like the decker. This allows the stealth and combat guys to do their thing without the mage dominating their specialty. Since it is all astral the mage is the only one who can harm/be harmed by the encounter. It is also riskier since everything is physical. Nothing fucks up a run more than an astral tail.

In your case you have 2 mages but it sounds like the second is the group's only Face so he'll be busy doing Face-stuff instead of boosting everyone else. That means astral security for the team needs to fall on the abusive mage.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Not when it is corporate policy to be a certain tradition. Or you can use the Similar Aspect sidebar or whatever, where it is Aspected for people who revere nature (druid, shaman, great wheel, ect.) and that would affect the party hermetic (or vice versa).

Except that you cannot mandate a Tradition. Corps are going to take what they can get. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
And while you can grouip like traditions together, organizationally, when the chips are down, it is likely that you will have a Corporate mage in the Aspected Domain that does not favor his Tradition. Which is BAD for the Crorp. And lets not even go into what happens when the Tradition of the Shadowrunner happens to coincide with the Aspected Domain of the Corporation. Sucks for the Corp.

[Draco18s]

Except that you cannot mandate a Tradition. Corps are going to take what they can get. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

"Good news! Your hired. But since you're a shaman, we're transferring you to our research base in the Ozarks."
"Why the Ozarks?"
"You really want to work in a background count aspected towards Chaos magic? 'Cause if you do, we can keep you here in corporate headquarters."

[Halinn]

I also imagine mages of above average power level to have a bit more leverage against their corporation. "I want to work in Seattle, or I'll accept the job offer from Ares" (except not as brazenly as that)

[Bearclaw]

"Good news! Your hired. But since you're a shaman, we're transferring you to our research base in the Ozarks."
"Why the Ozarks?"
"You really want to work in a background count aspected towards Chaos magic? 'Cause if you do, we can keep you here in corporate headquarters."

Which is exactly what a mega would do. Not always in all places. But for a small secure location doing ritual magic research, there's no reason why the head researcher wouldn't ask for 8 more hermetic mages to complete his circle. He'd get 5, and that would be more than enough to form an initiatory group and aspect the mana in the area. Actually, a small secure area within a large location you could do the same thing. Lots of secret labs are located in the middle of large facilities.

[Irion]

The major issue here is, that the rules on BC are at best vague...
There are some sights of power, which haven an BC which can be aspected. Thant there is emotional BC which probably can't be aspected.

So you would need to build the headquaters on the sights of power or somehow produce BC which is already aspected to your tradition...

[Draco18s]

So you would need to build the headquaters on the sights of power or somehow produce BC which is already aspected to your tradition...

Not really. It's implied that most of Seattle is a R1 area, with the barrens being an R2.

As for aspecting it, all you need is a single Geomancer...and a few months.

[Halinn]

Practically any office building would have the emotional background of boredom, I reckon. The problem with ubiquitous background count is that it will probably feel like you're singling out the magic characters. It wouldn't feel fair just to say to an adept that they suddenly have less powers than they planned on having, because they're playing in a city, or that mages can't do very much in the way of spellwork.

[Mordinvan]

Urm... I said Aspected for them. That means it is good for them, bad for you.

I can't see any rules for that. Geomancers can aspect a mana flux, but doing it to an entire corporate property is prohibitive in terms of time and resources. So much so, I'd call shenanigans on any GM who told me it was happening anywhere but small, highly secretive, and very important compounds, as otherwise the resources to devote to such endeavors simply would not exist.

[HaxDBeheader]

I just ran my first game and I noticed the magician character was constantly "stealing the show". I knew in advance that his stunball would going to cause some problems and gave a few of the grunts a shaman with a decent counterspelling skill, but he just ripped through them one or two shotting a couple of groups.

At other times, Levitate was just used all over the place, even one another character wanted to actually do something (ie: use his gymnastics skill and some of the gear he had bought). One of the guys even said "You've had your turn, let us do something".

So my question was; how do I cap a magicians power without seeming like I'm picking on them, I don't want to just give all grunts high counterspelling and put mana barriers up all over the place (although I do plan for the group to head to Tir Tairngire for their next run).

Also, what are the limits to Mind Control, this spell popped up a few times and was generally used in a thoughtful way, but I ruled out NPC's being controlled to put a bullet in their own head (although I couldn't find any rules to back up my "ruling").

First & foremost, magic has been common knowledge for 50+ years so security common practice would be roughly as good against mages as against mundanes.

Watcher spirits roaming corp grounds & alerting mundane security if it spots anything magical: sustained spells; other spirits, or even just a mage out of designated areas. Watchers cheap like borscht.

For cash comparable to a security guards's daily wage they could have full-blown bound spirits patrolling for similarly suspiscious activity. They are much more perceptive and can use various powers to boost their effectiveness. Again, focused on alerting security before engaging.

For lesser parts of larger corps the security alert would trigger an upgrade in magical response (bound spirit travels at slightly faster than mach force if I recall correctly). High threat response teams can be choppered in with minimal delay, also.

As for mind control, it is not true puppeteering so it is completely reasonable to not permit trivially forced suicide: you need control actions for that. Control thoughts lets you add/remove thoughts. People don't always instantly act on their thoughts, especially ones that trigger intense opposing emotions. For example: you may think it is a great idea to smack this player upside their head with your sourcebook but that triggers emotional cautions (fear of repercussions, guilt, concern for your book, etc depending upon personality) that your thoughts have to navigate around to create action. Thinking "I don't need to check these guys credentials before I let them into the secure area because I know they are an in-house black ops team with authorization" won't trigger opposing emotions and may in fact trigger supporting emotions "holy crap, if I slow them down they'll get me fired or disappeared". Now, once the guard figures out he let a runner team into the secure area it might be easier to get him to off himself rather than waiting for head office to use him as a test subject in the lab...

Also, mind control has a social stigma somewhere between torture & rape, but that topic was covered in the explicit mind control thread a week or so ago.

[Draco18s]

I can't see any rules for that. Geomancers can aspect a mana flux, but doing it to an entire corporate property is prohibitive in terms of time and resources.

Not really. For a background count of 2 and less it takes like 30-60 days, and the monetary investment is largely meaningless.

[VykosDarkSoul]

Where are the rules for BGC anyway?

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Where are the rules for BGC anyway?

Street Magic

[VykosDarkSoul]

Street Magic

Danke

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Danke

Mit Vergnügen

[Chainsaw Samurai]

Not really. For a background count of 2 and less it takes like 30-60 days, and the monetary investment is largely meaningless.

it takes like 30-60 days, and the monetary investment is largely meaningless.

the monetary investment is largely meaningless.

And we've just hit the nail on the head as to why dealing with corporate security, to ward off anything in particular, is a slippery slope. A nasty slippery slope that if you get carried away can make this game borderline unplayable.

Remember that Corporations are practically, for all intent and purposes, nations. They have borders, they have laws, they have "serfs," they have their own security forces which can use any amount of force for practically any cost the corporation sees fit to defend a particular interest. Different interests require different amounts of fortification.

I'm not going to get to heavy into this rant, but if a piece of pay data is worth paying a team of disposable shmucks 100,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) , that is because that paydata is worth billions to whoever gets that data and is capable of exercising proper force and resources upon the situation.

In this case we're not even talking about anything heavy duty or keeping up with the fast paced world of technological intrusion, we're talking about essential Magical defenses from companies that employ the exact sorts of people who know how to implement them.

But don't think about this stuff too much. It is true that there is nothing so secure that you cannot compromise it, but you can build a system that would take years of social engineering, infiltration, and dedication to steal from (there are a few real life examples of this as well) and no one wants to play THAT kind of Shadowrun. Leave that stuff to the high paid, high risk corporate espionage personnel.

[Psikerlord]

Udoshi - what are those "break the concentration" rules you referred to? I'd be very interested to have something like that as an option in some circumstances.

Following on from Cheops' post - you can always "split the party" more literally... Not something you would usually want to do as a GM (in my experience of D&D, for example), but splitting the party in SR would be a surefire way to give other PCs the spotlight. If mage and friend are chasing down one lead, the other 3 PCs will be chasing down something else. You do end up with the usual split the party issues however (mainly the real time problem of half the group doing nothing while you deal with the "active" characters... but even this can be curbed if you kinda bounce back and forth regularly)... and I suppose possibly the non-mage group will have no counterspelling.... but thats not always a problem.

Mind control spells - I think you need to build in a notoreity-ish penalty for using them - very bad mojo, a kind of "mind rape", security who investigate to find evidence of mind control go out of their way to catch the offender, increasing the heat with each passing module, affecting the team rep (ie giving the mage an in-character reason make those spells "emergency" style spells rather than "go to" spells).

Probably the best solution is as some have already commented - an OOC talk with everyone focusing on fun for everyone.

[Cheops]

You do end up with the usual split the party issues however (mainly the real time problem of half the group doing nothing while you deal with the "active" characters... but even this can be curbed if you kinda bounce back and forth regularly)... and I suppose possibly the non-mage group will have no counterspelling.... but thats not always a problem.

Actually not such a big problem with the improved thinking about AR. If the group is networked together through AR or Tortoise Mode (SR3 and earlier) then they can all still interact even while in different parts of the city. The mage can't cast any of his spells but he can still roll Knowledge skills and offer advice. Let's everyone interact with the current situation while only allowing those present to physically interact. Basically what deckers always used to do but extended to the whole party.

The other sweet part about spliting the party is that you can send the mages to the site that is important enough to have magical defenses while sending some of the physical guys to the seconday site which doesn't have magical defenses. Also neatly handles groups that refuse to make equally competent characters -- 2nd tier ones get the easy parts of the jobs while the top tier does the heavy lifting.

[Mordinvan]

Not really. For a background count of 2 and less it takes like 30-60 days, and the monetary investment is largely meaningless.

So your corps are tripping over the only places on earth where this is possible, and have more geomancers then I can even contemplate?
Shenanigans.

Edited for spelling

[Draco18s]

So your corps are tripping over the only places on earth where this is possible, and have more geomancers then I can even contemplate?
Shenanigans.

Given that all cities are a BGC of 1, aspecting a section of it to "favorable" is pretty much a given.

And you only need one geomancer to do that. If you need another foothold somewhere, you hire another mage, get him to learn geomancy off the first guy, and voila.

Repeat ad nauseum.