Advanced Divination, Ploting the future Options

[Kesendeja]

Advanced Divination
Prerequisite: Divination
This variation on the divination discipline allows the mage to track the key events for a desired outcome. Determine the threshold using the charts below, then roll Intuition + Arcana + Initiate grade.

CODE

Time Frame Successes  
1 year              1
10 years           2
100 years         3
1,000 years      4
Each additional success raises the time by a factor of 10

Detail       Successes
Vague             1
General           2
Specific            3
Detailed           4

Key Points                           Successes
Up to 25% of initiate grade           1
Up to 50% of initiate grade           2
Up to 75% of initiate grade           3
Up to 100% of initiate grade         4
Each additional key point requires an additional success.

[phlapjack77]

idk...divination tends to be really powerful, i'm not sure giving this kind of power to PCs is a good idea, esp for so cheap (2 inits)

[Kesendeja]

what other metamagic abilities would you suggest as prerequisites? I'd appreciate any help I can get.

As an alternative to the regular time is this more balanced?

CODE

Time Frame Successes  
1 Day            1
1 Week          2
1 Month          3
1 Year            4
Each additional success raises the time by a factor of 10

[Ixal]

idk...divination tends to be really powerful, i'm not sure giving this kind of power to PCs is a good idea, esp for so cheap (2 inits)

To be honest, Divination wouldn't really work in game either (unless the GM can actually see into the future and knows what the players will do and how the dice will fall).

[Falconer]

I divine detailed information on tomorrow's lottery ticket. And of course I'm lucky with lots of edge... :P

Pay up...


Not a good pick for a metamagic... Now say put this on a Great dragon with 20odd intuition skills in the teens... and initiate grade of about 20.... with 50'odd dice... that's about 12 successes conservatively... what DON'T they know simply by virtue of divining?

Also brings up the Dune problems... 'the trap of absolute prescience'.

[Tanegar]

The GM should be as vague as possible when giving out information that the PCs have gained through divination. Couch everything in symbol and metaphor, the more esoteric the better. The target is heading north by airplane in two days? "The screaming bird flees toward the frost at second light." Or something like that.

[Pendaric]

There is a president that the Seer's Guild have a form of advanced Divination- this was in Shadows of Europe I think.

Pulling this off in game though is tricky tricky tricky.

[Lionhearted]

First of this breaks one of the fundamental tenets of magic in SR. "You cannot predict the future with any great certainty"
Secondly, are you willing to accept a world where everything is predetermined, thus eliminating free will?
Because that's the only circumstance where divining the future would be possible, either that or you see every possible timeline and every possible outcome... Consequently your head implodes from information overload.

[toturi]

If the GM is one who is cooperative and willing to share and/allow his plot to be changed or hijacked by the players, then Divination and the proposed metamagic work.

If the GM is unwilling to do so, he can be as vague as he can possibly be while telling the truth. Heck, he can pull an Obiwan and do a "point of view" thing.

[darthmord]

If the GM is one who is cooperative and willing to share and/allow his plot to be changed or hijacked by the players, then Divination and the proposed metamagic work.

If the GM is unwilling to do so, he can be as vague as he can possibly be while telling the truth. Heck, he can pull an Obiwan and do a "point of view" thing.

Also do not forget that just because Result A is true at the moment does not mean that future actions make Result B more likely and Result A unable to occur.

Yoda said something to the effect that the future is always in motion and uncertain.

[Kesendeja]

As a side note, would the same set up work for a kind of postcognition?

[phlapjack77]

I think that's already covered with the psychometry metamagic?

[Shaidar]

It might be more in line with the SR world for the Advanced version to only grant information on significant secondary and tertiary dependent events to the event asked about in the standard type of Divination. If an extended timeframe is the primary goal of this, I'd say it should apply a negative dice pool modifier for each multiple of the diviners current age times their initiate grade.

(Age x Initiate Grade) months in the future = -0 DP
(Age x Initiate Grade) x 2 months the future = -1 DP
(Age x Initiate Grade) x 3 months in the future = -2 DP
and so on.

Thus, your 30 year old 2 time initiate could look up to 60 months (5 years) in the future at a single event and glean the 2 or 3 most important casual events at no modifier. Or look 10 years for a -1 DP, or 15 years for a -2 DP.

While Falconer's proposed Great Dragon (say 2,000 years old) could look up to 40,000 months (give or take), some 3,333.333... years in the future for 0 DP mod. Said dragon will no undoubtedly intuitively understand that a prediction that far in the future is far from certain and will inevitably change many time before the event in question occurs.

Additionally, I'd say the thresholds given in Street Magic for the standard variety of Divination should be exponentially modified by the absolute value of the above DP modifier. Thusly:

Divination question was Threshold
Vague (Are my old enemies catching up to me?) 1^|DP mod|
General (Will I get hurt if I go on this next shadowrun?) 2^|DP mod|
Specific (Will Mr. Johnson take a bribe from Yakashima?) 3^|DP mod|
Very specific (Is Mr. Johnson picking up his bribe this evening?) 4^|DP mod|

Advanced Divination may also allow more information about the end result event by getting around the "+1 threshold for additional questions on a single event" modifier by virtue of being able to ask a question about the precursor events.

Of the available metamagical techniques I'd say having Geomancy or Psychometry as an additional prerequisite could work. Garnering the understanding that the location and trappings (items) relevant to the event in question can allow one greater insight into the situation of the inquiry.

[Lionhearted]

Uncertain the future is