??

While you're making suggestions, I suppose you should sit down and correct all the typos you're going to make in November, too, right?

Or do you not see the logical flaw in asking for corrections to something the public could not have read yet?

I think (and I may be way off here) but I think what he meant was that they should've answered people's questions regarding the core rules before they created/published even more rules.

I don't think your position (on this) is irrational.

However, you don't have to initiate and create the ally at the same time. You can initiate, take the ally creation metamagic, and at the same time improve your ratings in, say, shielding and centering while you keep working towards the karma for the ally itself.

On the subject of ordeals, one of the best things about Street Magic are the rules on the Sacrifice ordeal.

"I'd give my left nut for another grade of initiation!"

"Really? Prove it."

er, i was talking about SR3, not SR4. in SR3, you do have to initiaten and create the ally spirit at the same time, if you're using the ally spirit creation as an ordeal.

Yeah, but see, this is the SR4 forum.

And while this is supposed to be an SR4-SM related thread, I seem to recall something about the ordeal needed to have a karmic value at least equal to the initiation.... again, *that* I could be misinterpreting. I know it was something we did here at least just to make sure some things weren't "twinked" incorrectly.

I'm wanting to make certain I'm paying attention correctly here.

In SR4-SM, you can obtain the metatalent without having to actually summon an Ally. Let's all be glad that there is nothing in the rules about "learning a metatalent doesn't require testing it first".... gives me all sorts of ideas there.

Anyway ... with that said and such, I also wanted to take a moment to say "OH WOW" to the actual Ally Creation stuff now. New Allies should be able to stomp the old ones into the ground with regards to versatility, function and capabilities. Karma costs for stuff I've not done in-house comparisons with yet, but I'm sure we will in time.

I also reread the Metaplanes information today and got confused by various things.

Deep Metaplanes - the idea that magicians have limited "time" in a place where time is nothing but subjective gets me all sorts of headaches. Reminds me of the whole Star Trek Temporal Paradox conversations ... definitely going to give both GM's and Players more mechanics/events to keep track of.

Metaplanar Quests - It would be nice to actually see some truly new stuff in regards to what you can do with them. I did appreciate the example of linking various quests of concealment and what one would do with them in order to hide things. I thought it was also interesting to see that how many of these one could do were limited (linked?) to the initiates grade. Makes me truly wonder if the quests of concealment stuff can be done by an initiate for someone else who may/may not be initiated because of that reference to limitations.

Various critter things ... FAB, Vines, etc ... this was all rerun material with new mechanics. Nice to have and enjoy having these included as before.

Ebbs, Pools, Shallows, Rifts, Storms, etc ... very nice to have a new bit of material on Mana Storms with regards to domains of origin. Again, gives me all sorts of ideas. If one were to for instance discover a way to trigger/generate a mana storm from an aspected region of background count and send it out on it's merry way (vague guidance/direction at least) ... then any magicians to whom have been benevolently associated with the domains background count are going to get that count in their favor for all things in the storms path.

The *ideas* that this gave with me regards to Welsh Druids, Righ Elves, and Aboriginal Dreamtime mystics were just giving me all sorts of jittery feelings. I know the players here will not find it a nice first encounter or two.

ON THE OTHER HAND

The book made me feel as if an argument one of our players expressed a week before Gencon is established even more by this book.

If a mage is involved, especially a prepared initiate magician, and your group doesn't have one of comparable capabilities ... your group is toast. Great Form/Invoked spirits used to be faster to aquire in the SR2/3 rules than SR4 (which require rituals now... who was it on these forums that said there was no ritual conjuring???) actually have as much if not more power than the previous edition versions. Anchorings no longer require physical items (both good and bad here).

Definitely a book worth having from both the good-for-gaming aspects as well as the bad-for-gaming aspects.

I'm starting to see a pattern in your posts, Cynic. Might as well just save it to a text file and paste it in when you want to post.

That would be me, but it was in the context of using multiple mages to summon bigass spirits.

i wonder, should someone summon bull now or right away?

im just glad summer is over, as it seems im not the only one that needs to find something else to do besides visiting this place

Personally, I'd rather have a friend with a Logic of 4 and a First Aid of 2 and a Rating 6 Medkit. It doesn't cost potentially lethal drain and provides the same degree of stabilization.

-Frank

That's right, and you could do that. But you won't have access to another spirit while you're doing that, it has to possess someone (or a limited and specially build class of something), and it will have basically no combat or astral patrolling abilities, even if you want to burn services on that while you wait for someone to get hurt.

Do you convince one of your buddies to be possessed and miss out on the run as the spirit follows you around waiting for something to happen? Possess a homonculus that doesn't look human and will attract a lot of attention? Possess some third party, who you will either have to kill or leave behind as a pissed off witness afterwards?

It's useful, but quite limited in practical application and with tradeoffs in other things you could be doing with your summoned spirits. Having one "on the team" is almost certainly inefficient. And waiting a complex action to summon, another to possess (if it even succeeds), and only then getting to work in an emergency is also problematic.

Nothing's free.

If you're a psychotic killer or were going to kill them anyway, that third option isn't actually that bad.

do everyone a favor and check the context of a post before shooting off about it. if you don't like the fact that the thread had momentarily detoured into an explanation/discussion of the SR3 familiar ordeal rules, maybe you should bring that up with the guys who started discussing it in the first place, instead of the guy who's just following the thread's course.

for the familiar ordeal, that is true. that's not a huge deal, really; simply raising the ally's force to a useful level costs 15-20 karma. add spells, skills, and the fact that you lose a point of magic if the ally goes free... i wouldn't say the SR3 familiar ordeal is all that twinklicious.

one nitpick that irks me about SM--part of a larger beef i've got with the SR4 setting, i guess--is that, from what i've skimmed, there doesn't seem to be any real prejudice against Astaru. Norse magic nearly ended the world, y'know? you'd think aesir-worshippers would be getting the same kind of treatment japanese-americans got during and after WWII, arab-americans received post-9/11, etcetera.

There is a direct reference to this effect in the Norse/Asartu magic tradition section. Unfortunately we lacked the space to devote to how various traditions are percieved by the cultures they exist within.

Asartu is still one of the minority pagan religions in the world (as compared to say Wicca, Native American shamanism, and even Islamic animism), and pretty much rooted in Northern Europe and to a much lesser extent North Am - norse magicians are a small fraction of that number. Also Asartu (more so than most other pagan religions) as depicted in SR is primarily an "outsiders" faith, its congregations exist on the fringes of society (ie. eco-radicals, back-to-nature types, violent gangs, racist policlubs, etc) and as such it is self-isolating from mainstream society to a certain extent.

If/when we revisit Scandinavia or the NEEC I'm sure there'll be more opportunities to address the situation, but in places like the UCAS and CAS their numbers are insignificant to actually draw any sizeable reaction following Winternight's actions - but still subject to the hostility and suspicion surrounding other traditions like Voudoun and Black Magic.

To make it easier, their body is the time reference (so, Earth-time). A magician should be able to feel their astral form weakening and that will give them an idea how far along they are, even though what has only been three hours to their Earth-body may feel like it has been three days in the metaplane.

The limit is meant to curb the number of times a single item can be redirected in the Metaplanes. Otherwise, theoretically, you could get some absurd situations where you have to undertake dozens of metaplanar quests to track down one item.

Hey, Haven Lilies are new!

Indeed. *evil grin*

good 'nuff.

In your gameverse maybe, in ours a plant that does similar properties known as "Christhorn" has been around for years. Sorry, should've said "new to the whole game". My bad.