Campaign ideas for 4th age items, Calling for R&D ideas. Options

[Graywolf]

Alright here is the set up. I'm working on a campaign with high level characters and am thinking about incorporating some relics from the 4th age in Shadowrun. Now whether the PC's every figure out how they work (or if they will work at all) is undecided as of this time. I'm a little rusty on magic in SR. So what I'm asking is if anyone is interested in creating 4th age relics could you let me know? If you are could you please include a description and stats? Thanks and have at it.

[DrJest]

The major problem with ED-era "magic items" is that all the PC's in Earthdawn were Awakened.

Let me emphasise that - all the PC's. Most of them were physical adepts of some stripe, true, but they were all magically active. That gave them the ability to bond "foci", which is basically what these things were. In ED you wove Threads to the item; in SR you spend Karma. However, more on that in a moment.

The second problem is that the ED era, being much higher in mana levels, breaks the "rules" of the SR universe. Physads, as I said the PC's largely were, could bond items that actually gave non-physad type powers.

If you're going to use the relics in SR, you have to break the rules as well. I'd re-use the Thread magic idea, were I you. Stage the abilities of the Artefact and require an appropriate deed for each.

Some of the old items may be impossible to activate past a certain point now. The one that springs to mind is Lorm's Axe, which in order to activate the final power had to be used to kill one specific Horror, the one from the opening short story (of course, you could decide that monster is still around, which would lead to an interesting Indiana-Jones style trek into the Black Sea area). I'd tend to use either items that had generic requirements or invent new ones. I'll try my hand at a couple later on.

Best of luck with this, let us know how it turns out.

[Botch]

TO my thinking there should be some 4th World artefacts that would function, just not those found in ED. Mana exists in wave form, none-some-lots-some-none; so some keeb should have created lower-mana artefacts at the end of the 4th world. With a lot of their magic failing, the socio-economic powerbase would do a lot to retain that power and with millenia of magical research behind them they should function more effectively at a comparible mana-level to 206x. Just my 2 :nuyen:

[draco aardvark]

:vegm:
use Blood Charms :-]
They cause permanant damage to the wielder to give you something
Example: the targeting eye - it's an eyepatch of hollowed out quartz with a worm in it, when you put it on the worm burrows into your eye and destoys it. You could activate it to increase damage on a missile weapon. The damage to your eye can never be healed, and the eyepatch can never be removed.

hehe, that'll teach 'em to play with unknown magic

[Backgammon]

[toturi]

What if they try to kill the worm? Or use it on a cyber eye? Gee, damaged? Just replace it, man.

[Herald of Verjig...]

You could get around it with SR technology, but would require surgically removing the affected eye and some of the optical nerve at best. As for cybereyes, either the worm would just not burrow, or it would try to find a way around the eye and directly link up with the optical nerve.

You could also have fun with the old trinkets that are effectively quickened magic on objects. Such as the hat (of questionable style) that will perfectly fit any creature whose head is anything near the initial size of the hat. And/or windling sized gloves that increase the TN to notice sneaky fingerwork.

[Ancient History]

Most ED artifacts, if they survived, can probably be used as tiered foci of various types...you could plausibly use Psychometry to figure out Key Knowledges and specific Deeds you need to do to unlock certain powers.