Looks like he'll fit right in.

Into what? My awesome, awesome game? Hell yes!

Updated Johnathan's character sheet.

Which magical tradition should Shen have? I was thinking Buddhist, vaguely, except he isn't that much into the writings of Buddhism as the overall message of enlightenment and understanding.

So?

I'm sure there are plenty of people with "Christian" (just to use an example of a faith most of us Westerners are familiar with) written on their real-life character sheet, that are more into the basic overall lovey-dovey message than they are memorizing the Bible, right? Why can't Buddhists be the same way?

Or that whole old testament smiting.

You know people wrote "Christian" just so they could give Sam Jackson's speech from Pulp Fiction before they shoot people....

And those people who say they're Buddhist just so they can set themselves on fire... wait, that doesn't happen.

His philosophy will be one of objective self-discovery and improvement, if indeed there is need or room for improvement without damaging the self.

He should get along with shamans with this kind of philosophy.

There's nothing wrong with a character who isn't doctrinaire about their faith - but such a person would be less likely to have their magic manifest through that faith. They would be more likely to keep their faith and their magic as two separate things.

Even if they did use their religion as the basis of their magic, you would either have to make them a general shaman or come up with a new tradition - someone who doesn't follow "traditional" Budhism wouldn't use "traditional" Budhist magic, either.

He'll still have Intuition as his drain stat.

If he aspected a power site, who would he use as part of his ritual team?

I'm thinking of remaking his background story.

Up until Halley's Comet passed by Earth, he was an old human who was the town's elder. He lived outside the village and financed the modernization of the village with his own orichalcum money. One day, he was asked by a young boy, "What's a friend?" To which he answered, "Somebody who you need even when you don't need him, and somebody who needs you when he doesn't need you." The boy then asked, "What's an elder?"To which Shen answered, "Somebody who will always be there when you need him," the implication being that Shen had no friends. This was made up on the spot, and it sparked quite the little crisis of faith for him.

He left his village shortly after, since he felt he couldn't maintain his duties any longer. He SURGED into an elf while in the UCAS, and he has resolved to start a new life for himself as a young man. Up until the SURGE incident, he was a very weak mage who managed to only make about one or two units of orichalcum a month.

Do you think it would be balanced to make Johnathan Crowley's spirits a bit more powerful but with the curse on him? How do you see it biting him in the ass if the spirits don't want to hurt him but will still cause trouble? Do spirits have the astral signatures of their summoners?

At the risk of waking the sleeping elephant ...

You cannot SURGE into an elf. All elves are born as elves, as are all dwarves born as dwarves. You could change from a human to an orc or troll, or from any metarace into one of the metavarients, or even from one of the metavarients back to the normal metahuman, but elves are born elves.

While we're prodding sleeping pachyderms, with a strength of one, a reaction of two, thirty-five points of physical flaws, twenty points of things chasing him, no contacts in the region, no friends at all (and few social skills to change that) and no ability to defend himself without leaving an astral signature the size of a small moon...

How the hell is this Shen dude supposed to rule the Barrens? He wouldn't last fifteen minutes, and he can't even run away.

He ruled a small part of the barrens, and he telecommuted.

Should I be worried that

1. I read this thread.

2. I have 9 characters of my own currently statted, and am in a total of 1 game
and
3. I know why emo posts to himself?

I don't quite understand you, lorechaser. PM me with explanations please.

As for the SURGE thing, sure you can, as long as it's a year in which Halley's Comet passes by.

Well, I was giving up on the SURGE thing anyway; it was only tentative.

Fair enough.

So what do you think of my characters? I'm stealing hyzmarca's idea of Faustus and having Crowley be a spirit pactician.

I think that you have given your characters a great deal of thought.

I'll introduce them into my own game.

I'm thinking of changing Shen's backstory. This is after having recently read Runner Havens and remembering "The Dream Hunters" by Neil Gaiman. In that book, a Buddhist monk falls in love with a kitsune, or Japanese fox demon. Shen will change from a nobleman to a street monk, providing healing, advice, and funding for his disadvantaged fishing neighborhood in Hong Kong. He uses spirits to tend a plot of dirt to provide food for people and enchants orichalcum to financially provide for his neighborhood.

He was left on his predecessor's doorstep as a baby boy and manifested the talent at the age of ten. His adoptive father died while he was 14. Shen was well-loved by his people for his compassion and quick mind.

This all changed when several corporations noticed that the feng shui around his neighborhood was incredible due to his efforts to improve the neighborhood. Around this time, he fell in love with a girl. Somebody in one of the corporations decided that this would screw with the qi of the neighborhood and had her killed with a discrete neurotoxin. Shen decided to leave to develop his talents and build up enough contacts and skills to find her killer and exact revenge.

He still sends money back to his old neighborhood and takes calls from people in need of advice.

I find this plausible because all the corporations in Hong Kong are incredibly competitive when it comes to Feng Shui.

Edit: I've decided to not change Shen's backstory and make this dude a new character.

I have a new character idea. It'll be an orcish aspected spellcaster in a formula pact with a force 12, edge 4 free spirit. He'll be a voodoo houngan who is frequently ridden by his free spirit friend. The free spirit will be a Loyalty 6 contact who has known him since he was 14 and has been with him for 20 years. Since he's the only working formula for the free spirit, he'll be its high priest of sorts; his leadership: religion skill will be really, really high, and the free spirit will have a shitload of powers. I'll be taking Frank Trollman's suggestion that we offer aspected magicians one free point of initiation. His first metamagic will be Channeling.

The spirit will be Edge 4 with 4 different powers; I have trouble deciding what those will be. Maybe ones that will ensure his survival, like Regeneration and Armor.

The reason the spirit chose him was that he has spellcasting power without being able to bind him easily the way a full mage or aspected conjurer would.

Anyone have ideas for a mundane character? All my characters have been mages so far.

His primary function is to convince people to give his spirit karma in exchange for miracles. They'll hold his hand and they'll have a little religious experience.

I'm thinking of making a toxic mage character. I don't know his name yet, but his basic outlook on life is that the way of man is to sacrifice the beauty of the many for the beauty of the few. Corps take down forests and build arcology gardens, core out cubic miles of earth to get at a few pounds of diamonds, opiate the masses to fund a few research projects. He follows this path because he believes that to do anything else is to deny reality, so everything he does emphasizes this principle. He owns his own greenhouse, and after every bloom, he siphons all the energy from every plant in the greenhouse and feeds it into the prettiest flower, only to ignite it a minute later.

So why is he running the shadows? You have a lot of interesting character ideas, but most of them seem to wind up being NPCs, because they lack either the need or the motivation to run the shadows. A character for shadowrun needs either a burning desire to accomplish a certain goal, or a character flaw which keeps that character from pursuing a more traditional vocation. Especially a mage, since they are both comparatively rare, and in high demand for their abilities.

For mundane character ideas, there are all kinds of possibilities. Maybe a hacker variant of the investigator, who uses matrix searches and camera drones to help him track down leads. Maybe a cool elven face who used to be a Johnson until his company got swallowed up by one of the more racist megas, leaving him to do what he used to hire other people to do. Maybe an Amerind bounty hunter, good at tracking people down in the city, but even better out in the wild. Maybe an assassin who looks like the most ordinary person imaginable - a pudgy, slightly balding man is a slightly dated suit. But he has a fingertip monowhip, a sniping rifle, and a lot of 'ware that isn't immediately obvious. All kinds of options.

Cool...

I think he'll move over to my campaign thread.

Shen's been updated with Frank Trollman's Houserules De La Santa Cruz. He's now very, very good at social skills; other than that, there's very little change, except for his huge spell list.

You do realise that there is nothing in Frank's rules that removes the cap on the number of Spells available at chargen, don't you?

There's shit in MY rules, goddammit.

Maybe I should temper his huge-ass spell list, just so he can afford Intimidation.

And his social skills are now 1337, same with his Charisma 8.

I think Shen's goal is now to create a world in which no man or woman's will is subordinate to any other's. Ironically, he will accomplish this with the binding of free spirits, all of which he will acquire through deals or mete out as punishments to particularly malicious spirits.