For Hermetics it is more a roleplaying choice, they always Bind after Summoning without getting the spirit to first perform tasks. That means they need roughly 50% to 100% more karma for their conjuring Skills than the shamans do. Which nicely simulates the edge prior Shamans had.

Once Shamans initiated they could get Great Spirits. Maybe take the Incompetence:Binding but allow it to be bought off with karma later once they Initiate?

Shamans in SR4 cannot summon Fire spirits anyways. If the spirit isn't on your list of associated domains you cannot summon that spirit type. There are only 5 types of spirits outlined in the SR4 BBB (woefully few IMHO). Each tradition can only summon 4 spirit types. Hermetics can't summon Beast and Shamans can't summon Fire.

Enter Street Magic, unless you want to design your own.

Umm... there are spirit types in the BBB, and each tradition can summon five.

What was the SR3- shaman list, again? Sky, Land, Water, Man...? There is mental fuzz.

But yeah, SR4 has six spirit types (not including watchers), and each tradition can do only 5: shamans can't do Fire, hermetics can't do Beast. Mea culpa and stuff.

Hermetics still summon fire elementals. The generic term is Spirit of Fire, but for a Hermetic that would be a Fire Elemental. For Shamans Spirits of Man are City and Hearth Spirits, Spirits of Air are Sky and Storm Spirits, Spirits of Water are Ocean, River, and Lake Spirts, and Spirits of Earth are Mountain and maybe some of the Forrest and Desert Spirits. Spirit of Beasts are some sprinkled in the domains, like Forrest.

6 types not including watchers. Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Man, and Beast.

I can give you a steaming bowl or dog turns and call it chocolate ice cream but I don't think you'd like it.

Much of the flavor is a product of the mechanics. There should be some difference between the spirit of a swamp and the spirit of a lake. There should be some difference between the firey spirit of a raging volcano and an abstract elemental of fire.
And don't even get me started on bugs.

IIRC: In SR3, the elementals and their spiritual analogs had identical stats (except for the Water Spirit and Water Elemental's Reaction).

Unifying them wasn't that big of a stretch.

does not compute. just because something is stronger and smarter doesn't automatically make it more violent or hard to control.

SR4's magic system makes magic both more and less homogenous than SR3. more because individual traditions don't have many options in terms of mechanics-backed flavor; for instance, it's pretty hard to reproduce SR3-style voodoo in SR4, or obeyifahs, or a lot of other 'weird' traditions. on the other hand, players--especially new players--are not bound by the rigid shaman/mage split. what it boils down to is, you can make anything you want--but whatever you make is going to be nearly identical to anything anybody else makes.

Heh.

Sure the stats are the same, but the group I'm playing with as a tribal Amazonian Wise Warrior shaman and a hermetic mage in the group and I guarantee you that no one thinks of them as the same. The numbers on the page are very similar: the mage has one extra point of magic but the shaman has a mentor spirit. Other than that, they're almost identical (okay, the mage is uncouth with the shaman is uneducated).

The stats are the same for spirits, but I as the GM make the difference between the shaman's spirits and the mage's spirits apparent to them and the group when I describe them. The mage's spirits are raging elemental fury loosely tied to a humanoid form while the shaman's spirits are described as mammalian beings with correlations between the element and the animal: water spirits have been giant anacondas (they hunt in the water), air spirits have been eagles and vultures, beasts have been jaguar and other great cat hunters of the amazon.

Does the book tell me to do this? No. I do it because the is a difference between shamans and mages and the way in which they deal with the spirits of the world. The states for the shaman's spirit of the sky (an eagle) may be exactly the same as that Air Elemental that the mage just whipped up, but the way the move, act, think, and use their powers is vastly different.

I've even noticed that the optional powers that the two players give to their spirits also help to differentiate them. The mage tends to use his spirits for combat while the shaman uses hers for support roles. Thus she likes concealment, movement, etc. while he's often going for venom, noxious breath, and the like. Thus, the optional powers may help to provide me with some insight into the spirit's potential and personality. Do I spend a great amount of time describing them to the group, no. But I do work toward making sure that there's a difference, not because the stats tell me there is one, but because the text in the traditions -- that have no mechanical basis on the stats at all -- tell me there is one.

I don't know about either of these. First of all, I've yet to see a magical character without a Magic attribute at anything but one of two levels: 5 or 6. Buying the Magician quality and a magic of 5 uses up 55 BP, a roughly equivalent sacrifice to an A priority in SR3; if anything, it's less, in terms of attributes or skills. The Magic attribute may be lower, on average, but it's because most magicians have 5; the cybermage may give up more, but not twice as much as the last edition.

As far as stealthing past cameras and drones, you need to be built for it, but you hardly need to be min-maxed. A mage with Spellcasting 4 + Magic 5 can easily expect to get past cameras (Threshold 3), and may have to spend Edge to get past drones. It's not trivial, as in SR3, but it's not hard.

that's laudable. i wasn't saying that the SR4 setup is bad, just saying what it is.

My only issue with UMT being the in-game justification is that I just don't see 'all' mages/shamans having converted to a UMT based premise as an underlying principle behind their magic. I've always been under the impression that being a magician is, among other things, very tightly bound with belief, a level of belief that allows you to take advantage of your genetic legacy and impose your will upon the physical world. Didn't matter if you were hermetic or shamanic, that belief had to be there.

The upshot of this is that there should still be many magicians in the SR world that are still using old-school 'limited' magic because that is how they were trained and how their belief structure is oriented. Some of the older 'generation' of magicians may have adapted to the new-way and most newer magicians are likely trained in techniques that were the result of the increased understanding of magical theory (such as the development of UMT), but given the level of belief and ingrained learning that I perceive as being involved in working magic, I would think most magicians trained pre-UMT (mid-to-late-2060s?) would still be 'hindered' by the old style limits.

Going with this idea would also add an interesting social-economic change to the magical culture, especially in corporate and academic circles. Magicians trained in the 'new-way' can be argued as being more flexible and more capable than 'old-way' magicians and thus represent some level of threat to the less flexible 'old-way' trained mages in the work force. The 'old-way' mages are still too valuable to just be dumped, but would they still be able to get the 'good' jobs?

Based on this I'm thinking that I will add something like the following qualities as an option in any SR4 games that I end up running:

Please note that I just came up with these so they may not be particularly polished. I'm also not too worried about them being 'fully balanced' since I'm trying to reflect an aspect of the world that used to be represented in the rules.

Old-School Shamanic Magician (10 BP)
Possessing the quality counts as having the Magician quality.

Replace the second paragraph of the Magician quality with this:
You are a magician trained in the older, pre-UMT, style. You were either trained before the mid-to-late 2060s or by someone else who practiced that style of magic and have been unwilling or unable to adapt to the UMT-based techniques that your newer colleauges use.

As an Old-School Shamanic Magician, you follow the Shamanic tradition and must take the Mentor Spirit quality and Incompetent: Binding. You must also be in an "appropriate environment" to summon any particular type of spirit (for example, someplace people live to summon a spirit of man, near a river to summon a spirit of water, etc.) This limit does not apply to watchers.

Old-School Hermetic Magician (10 BP)
Possessing the quality counts as having the Magician quality.

Replace the second paragraph of the Magician quality with this:
You are a magician trained in the older, pre-UMT, style. You were either trained before the mid-to-late 2060s or by someone else who practiced that style of magic and have been unwilling or unable to adapt to the UMT-based techniques that your newer colleauges use.

As an Old-School Hermetic Magician, you follow the Hermetic tradition. You may not take the Mentor Spirit quality. With the exception of watchers, you cannot gain any services from a spirit you have not bound. Material (or an accepted symbolic equivelent) appropriate to the spirit summoned must be present in order to summon said spirit (for example, a bonfire for a spirit of fire, a bowl of water for a spirit of water, etc.)

Edited Old-School Hermetic Magician as per suggestion from mfb

Good suggestion! I was kinda fighting with how to put that.

Sr3 Mages can get Mentor Spirits. Take a look at elementalists and the like.

I was looking at this as simulating the core Shamanic/Hermetic magician rather than any of the many variants (including but not limited to Houngan, Wu Jen, or elemental mages (your elementalists I suspect)).

Beyond that, in the specific case of the elemental mage, to me it seemed that they are hyperspecialized in the magic associated with a specific element...they don't really have a 'spirit mentor' per say...they are just really good at (for example) 'fire magic' and weak in the use of the opposite magical forms (whether by simple lack of training or due to some sort of spiritual or symbolic reason).

On the other hand, I do agree that the basic spirit mentor mechanic is a good way of simulating this effect. I'd be tempted to rename it 'Elemental Specialization' and write up a handful of elemental specializations along the same lines as the spirit mentor writeups.

Apparently I am in an adapting and homebrewing rules mood this evening...

This probably isn't the best place to put this, but going off the idea I mentioned earlier regarding elementalists I came up with this:

Elemental Specialization (5 BP):
This quality is only available to characters with either the Magician or Mystic Adept quality. This quality is also limited to characters who follow the Hermetic Tradition. The character is hyperspecialized in the practice of magic associated with a specific element. They are correspondingly weaker with that element's opposing element. A character may only ever have a single Elemental Specialization. The player must select one of the following specializations for their character. This choice is permanent for this character once made. It is not unusual for a magician with Elemental Specialization to begin manifesting personality characterists commonly associated with their element of specialization.

(Note: This quality is based off the Spirit Mentor quality of SR4 and the Elemental Mage of SR3 found in MitS. It does not gain the hint giving benefits of a spirit mentor nor does it suffer penalties for not following the mentor's philosophy.)

Air Specialization
Air mages tend to be cerebral and thoughtful.
Advantages: +2 dice to Detection spells and +2 dice for Spirits of Air
Disadvantages: -1 die to Manipulation spells and -1 die for Spirits of Earth

Earth Specialization
Earth mages tend to be materialistic and practical.
Advantages: +2 dice to Manipulation spells and +2 dice for Spirits of Earth
Disadvantages: -1 die to Detection spells and -1 die for Spirits of Air

Fire Specialization
Fire mages tend to be willful and aggresive.
Advantages: +2 dice to Combat spells and +2 dice for Spirits of Fire
Disadvantages: -1 die to Illusion spells and -1 die for Spirits of Water

Water Specialization
Water mages tend to be intuitive and emotional.
Advantages: +2 dice to Illusion spells and +2 dice for Spirits of Water
Disadvantages: -1 die to Combat spells and -1 die for Combat of Fire

Very true...though I would point out that as far as I can tell your example tradition can still summon and bind spirits, may or may not have a Mentor Spirit, is not bound by domains, etc. They are different in flavor and style from a hermetic or a shaman or an elementalist or whatever which is very cool, but they are still an SR4 UMT-based magician.

Just creating a new tradition within the standard SR4 rules does not seem to recapture some of the differences between a pre-UMT (SR3) and a post-UMT (SR4) magician. I don't have a conceptual problem with the SR4 magic rules themselves, I am just in favor of providing an specific option that better simulate the earlier style of shadowrun magic in SR4 terms.

I probably wouldn't even worry about coming up with a way to represent it if the in-game time gap between the versions had been longer. I just can't see all magicians alive in 2070+ having swapped over to the new-fangled Unified Magic Theory model of I can do anything magic (that most likely didn't become this widespead until the late 2060s). A lot of NPC magicians and possibly even PCs are likely to have been trained pre-UMT. Some would adapt aquiring the new techniques, but many wouldn't...that is just human nature.