Some disagree. There's a good enough karma trade off for one metamagic at the price of a couple of skill points that you can justify a pretty good wack of people with a single grade of initiation. Mages could still have average skills of 3; they'd just have a couple less skills and the ability to Quicken or whatever.

well, not really. that's the nice thing about extraterritoriality; the laws of your host nation don't apply inside your walls.

and even in the government sector, i don't believe that mind probe and the like are actually illegal, they're just a) very tightly restricted, and b) can't be used to convict the probe-ee.

I view the various references that appear, to me, to suggest that wage mages spend whatever karma they have to anchor spells, make wards permanent, or bind spirits for a year, to be something that doesn't happen in my milieu except, perhaps, for the CEO of a megacorp or similar ranking person, basically a group of less than 100 individuals worldwide.

There is only so much karma available among extant NPC wage mages, and if all the people in the SR milieu who could easily afford, say, 100k nuyen per point of karma expended binding spirits for year long service did so, every NPC wage mage on the planet would be sucked dry of their available karma. Some people do, of course, have the authority to order karma expended, regardless of payment, but that only makes the scarcity situation worse.

(I've only played in about a half-dozen games, some short, but I've never seen these types of options used by PC mages.)

Wage mages use whatever karma they do have to increase skills, bond foci, and initiate. Initiated magi are super-valuable to corps, having a guardian wage mage around with shielding could be quite a bit more useful than having a bound spirit.

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As for what wage mages do?

• Create Wards (permanence w/Karma would be super-rare, IMO).
• Patrol Astrally.
• Bodyguard/Shielding Duty.
• Summon Elementals (binding w/Karma would be super-rare, IMO).
• Summon Watchers.

Things like anchoring spells or attaching Anchoring Foci would also be super-rare, IMO.

Summoning Elementals would practically be an industrial operation for megacorps. They have many personnel and sites that need guarding. I bet there are ranks of wage mages who spend eight hours a day summoning Force 4 elementals. Hmm, I bet there could be Metamagic powers, enchanced Hermetic Circles, and other types of Elementally-related Foci that could all aid in this "assembly line" summoning of elementals.

Hmm, one could take the idea of "assembly line" and Hermetic Circles to mean that it is possible to build large Hermetic "Constructs" (large expensive structures, say, Force x Large Amount of nuyen) that aided the summoning process, typically reducing the time required.

I seem to recall a topic about group Conjuring. That could tie in with the above, as well.

In real world terms, I could quite easily spend my day studying foreign languages, working out, meditating etc. In SR terms, these would all be opportunities to spend karma and develop my skills, attributes or initiation level (respectively). Sadly I don't because I need to work, my energy (karma if you will) goes to my employers who give me in return.

I see this as the same for wagemages. Initiation is a big chunk of karma (a lot of sitting around doing nothing), when the corporation wants the employee to be setting up those spirits, warding areas, etc.

As to a guardian wage mage being more valuable than a bound spirit. Well yes she is. But really - all the time that your wage mage is following your executive around playing bodyguard (and maybe being useful once in three years. Maybe), is time that the same mage isn't churning out spirit guardians on other employees or areas (perhaps in shifts with other mages once their bound limit is reached) and communicating with and re-organising existing spirits. The economics of having a wagemage bodyguard just don't bear out for anyone other than the most critical CEOs (who will already have some high force spirit protection).

And all this is aside from the average attribute being 3 and a skill of 3 representing professional level of competence. It might be nice to initiate once you've hit magic 6, conjuring 5 or 6 and sorcery 5, but these represent much higher levels of achievement than the typical mage so there's plenty of room for improvement in ways that are more directly useful to a wagemage's career than initiation. Also these improvements are incremental which are the more natural progression path for abilities than a sudden radical enlightenment. If karma represents effort and energy, then remember that initiation is the equivalent of going from never-tried-it to karate black belt.

I see initiates in a corporation as being either specialist researchers or wildly gifted upstarts and mavericks getting away with murder because of their sheer brilliance. The standard professional, as the book says, is a guy with Magic 3 and Sorcery / Conjuring the same. Shadowrunners are exceptional people. Many people may not even have the potential to initiate. We can all study hard or train hard, and we'll get good, but how many of us can become Einstein or Bruce Lee?

People keep saying this, but identify something that mages can do to make money that technology can't do better. There simply aren't any mass magical occupations that make sense other than security/law enforcement fields. Long haul trucking with an earth spirit is the best idea I've seen so far. Now there's something more glamorous than security! Well, magical healing is a better answer, but then you've got to explain why 90% of magicians aren't healers and why they haven't displaced a lot of medical fuctions performed by doctors. They should, but it's hard to retcon that into a game that doesn't anticipate such a thing.

Or you can make very expensive foci and orichalcum to sell. To sell to mages, who make the money to buy them...how?

Research? Research what? Ways for magicians to do new magical things that still won't make money for anyone else? Fine, but how do other magicians pay your researchers for their discoveries? It's just intellectual foci/orichalcum, a continuation of the great magical circle jerk of building a vary narrow sort of personal power that isn't very marketable.

To mundanes, magic is a threat without many benefits.

Don't tell me other uses of mages are more profitable. Tell me how they are more profitable. Tell me what uses. Name a spell or a spirit ability that they can use several times a day (and not a lot more, due to drain) that is worth much money, is legal, and can't be done cheaper by technology or other mundane methods. The only exceptions are security against other mages, health spells that are faster (Heal) or more generalized and without side effects (anti-poison/disease) that medicine would have, and transportation services provided by spirits with Guard and Movement.

I think that works. The corporation will support it and like it, but it's something for the high-flyers. The reality is that once someone has become successful and comfortable, they very seldom break their back trying to achieve more. At least not in their career. Mages are humans too and any wage mage already has a cushy thing going. The corp might always be pressuring them for greater output, but both parties know that the reality is the mage is hard to replace. He earns a high wage, can impress most people he meets in a bar and he can go elsewhere if he can get away with it. The truly dedicated will pursue initiation but the rest will eventually start a family, watch the trid and do all that stuff people do once they've attained High Lifestyle.

I realy dont get how people can still think this. The developers have come around several times and posted that most mages with any amount of education DO initiate at least once or twice. I realy wonder where everyone is getting the idea that it is rare.

Internal consistency and logic. I've explained my reasoning in my earlier post. If the designers wrote themselves into a corner, it's not my fault.

Seriously, though - people can play how they like, but bog standard initiation as part of the career just doesn't extend logically from what is written in the BBB, in my opinion.

• Increase Attribute? Can you name any senior executive that wouldn't want himself and his people to be a little smarter, more observant, stronger willed, charismatic?
• Mob Mood. Make all those overworked, underpaid, unappreciated slobs happy without having to actually improve conditions. Pacify angry rioters. Encourage bigwigs at the fundraising dinner to be appreciative.
• Magic Fingers. Good for working in an absolutely sterile (or dangerous) environment, since you don't ever actually touch anything.
• Analyze Truth/Mind Probe. Who's stealing from the company? Who leaked the bad test results to the press. No one will every be truly anonymous again. More importantly, the employees wouldn't even try, since they know there's no way to hide.
• Detect Human. Are there any survivors left in the caved-in mine shaft? Now you'll know the truth before making an expensive rescue attempt.
• Heal/Treat/Antidote/Cure Disease/Stabilize/etc. This is obvious. Faster and more complete than any treatment you could get in the hospital. It also means you don't have to spend millions on hospital equipment or have every concievable antidote/antibiotic/etc. on hand; just a couple spells cover almost all the possibilities.

I can't imagine a single senior executive that wouldn't want a fair godmother and hot and cold running blow jobs plumbed into his bathroom, but wanting doesn't make it happen. Is it worth 9 karma to quicken people to genius level? Or less karma to push average people to 6's? In a world with bioware that already has bioware to increase charisma and logic? I presume it's not worth it have the mage sitting around sustaining this stuff temorarily. Stronger willpower absolutely has no benefit in the corporate world with SRs skill links. Pretty much the same for intuition.

Mob mood defenders get to reroll willpower every Force*3 seconds. How many times can your mage recast it before he falls unconscious. Riot control is DUM-DUM-DUM...security work. This also falls under the heading of "illegal." Or if you invoke corp extraterritoriality, "stupid." One presumes they don't torture their wageslaves to get better performance, either, even if it might work in the short term. The bad PR and long term morale isn't worth it.

Now you're just fucking with me. Hiring a mage to use magic fingers instead of an robot manipulator or drone? Can I get Paul Bunyan to lay some track, too?

Seee-cure-i-tee. And/or illegal. Or stupid, because a police state atmosphere among all of your employees and resulting productivity losses aren't worth catching the few. Except, of course, for specialized instances that employ a handful of magicians.

I hadn't realized that disaster rescue was such a big employer.

Yes, this one is obvious. A majority of mages should work in magical healthcare, because that's the only place where they have a clear advantage over mundane methods and can be productive by casting just a few spells a day and not fall over with drain.

Well yes. The mage mage isn't the guy you hire to do day-to-day work. He's the guy you send in to troubleshoot and to inspect. He's the guy you call in when you need something extordinary. Wagemages would probably be multi-discipline except for a few highly specialized individuals like medical doctors.

At that level, in a megacorp, they probably can get hot and cold running blow jobs plumbed into their bathrooms if they want it (as long as it doesn't distract them from their jobs too much). And yes, I think it's worth ten times that much karma to quicken intelligence boosts to company VPs, Presidents, CEOs, etc. These are guys who can cost the company tens or hundreds of millions if they make a bad decision. (Since I work for Verizon (formerly MCI) I can say I sure wish somebody had boosted Bernie Ebbers's smarts a few points before he drove us into the ground...

Or several...

It seems to me that comparing the time it takes for a mage to learn a spell versus the time it takes to train and equip mundane to do the same task makes a magician a lot more cost effective in many areas. Even if you factor in the (much) higher wages of a mage. I refer you to my earlier post of an entertainment spell replacing an audio/visual presentation.

What about simple aura reading? "You're wearing him down boss, I think he's about ready to sell."

Invisibility: go look over some shoulders and see who's looking at internet porn.

I agree that one mage is going to be doing a lot of these things, bouncing around from the board-room to the oil-rig to the training center whenever a situation calls for abilities beyond the mundanes. Of course you aren't going to have a line of mages with magic fingers instead of assembly robots. But if one of your more critical robots breaks down, and maintennance is dragging their ass until these contract negotiations are setlled, then you might call the Mystic Resources office to see if they can help until the end of the shift.

However, the four main area I see are:
1. Security
2. Health services and environmental safety.
3. Negotiation and promotion.
4. Entertainment.

It isn't canon, but:

For Karma-Bound Spirits (1): Excess Services from prior to binding act as a pool of "side-trips" the spirit could take to the metaplanes to get past the astral barrier formed by the ward.

Also:

Wards and Spirits Serving CEOs: Wards around important meeting rooms for major corporate executives are likely to have one of the casting mages on hand to "allow" through whoever is necessary.


(1) I still think this would be super-rare. Wage mages aren't going to have a lot of spare karma to use for this purpose. Spirits serving normally will certainly use up a service to follow the target they are guarding through a ward if they have been instructed to do so.

What about just hooking them up to a polygraph? I'm going to guess negotiations tend to stop once one of the participants spaces out and his eyes go vacant.

you said it before me. Also in negotiations they can be watching auras "Ms. Smith is my secretary. She'll be taking notes " to get an idea how straight someone is being.

Before security, how about looknig for missing things/people? "We found Miller sir his car went into a lake near Renton. The file was in his head, intact."

Magical recon of a site that they corp may want to aquire without letting on that they are looking- for example in the 1960's when Disney was looking for land in Florida he set up shell corps to buy land. He knew that once word got out it was for Disney the prince would sky rocket, he was right. Mages astrally can have a look at areas without anyone knowing what they are about "Boss it's swamp land" or The factory is clean but the place is falling apart, they just slapped paint on it"

Offical SB's talk about magical reserach. My guess is like growing crystals in space they want to use magic to change the laws of physics on earth- cheaper for a small corp than paying for a lab on a bigger corps satilite/station

The holy grail of magic- Time travel and teleportation.
Suppose you can even create a time bubble that changes time for the creature inside, a la Tom Bakers City of Death. Put a fertilized egg in the bubble and accelerate it's growth so that a year's growth happens in an hour. you've created a source of real meat for those who can pay. Put an elderly woman in the field and reverse years of age. famous models stay untouched for decades. actors didtto. Politicians, corp ceo's.

Why would mages do this? Because they are geeks too and a corp pays for them to look into stuff they want to do anyway- like scientists or archelogists who never got out of achedemia.

Oh, I like it!!!!!!!!

I guess i spend too much time doing that for real to think of magic.

Step 1: Short Stock on Corp Y
Step 2: Issue Negative Prediction on Corp Y
Step 3: Sell Stock on Corp Y
Step 4: Profit

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I can easily imagine some SEC officials (pre-NAN/UCAS/CAS split) issuing regulations banning the use of magic in securities trading. It would represent an unfair form of insider trading.

It may have been modified later (although I doubt it).

I bet there are also rules against making public divinatory-related statements about real securities.

If a Force 3 spell is illegal without a permit, then making a magic-based statement that can adversely affect the fortunes of the world's wealthiest individuals, then we can bet there are rules on a larger scale, as well.

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There would have been, without fail, both public and private experiments using divination to try and predict various markets because there would be so much potential for making money.

Just as teleportation or affecting the fabric of space and time is beyond the ability of magic, we also know that divination is not reliable.

The experiments would have borne out the "divination is not reliable" maxim, because if it hadn't, the consequences would be profound.

If divination were reliable, then the most powerful mages performing divination would be ruling the world* because they could precisely choose the correct course of action in all situations.

Personally, I would allow teleportation prior to allowing reliable divination.

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* By that I mean a select group of magi, possibly resolving to just one eventually. At that point, any corporate executives attempting to control the magi are going to be outmanuevered.

That's just considering the spells that are in listed in the SR magic books, which are meant to be useful to Shadowrunners.

A research mage could have specialised spells that modify the properties of materials, for example, making research into new types materials like polymers and cements.

Mages that work with dangerous materials that are acidic or radioactive could have special containment spell. Or, in the case of acids, could boost the acidity with spells to make them more effective.

Also, consider complex problems, like maybe a big math problem, or any other kind of research problem. A mage could go hop into the metaplanes and look for insight there. The alien insight could produce ideas light-years ahead of what mundanes can come up with.

The profit that comes from wards is PEANUTS compared to the billions high-end research yields.

Yes, I also decided there would probably be secret research projects into divination just as into teleportation.

In my milieu: After twenty to thirty years of generally fruitless projects (by 2050), extant projects are few and far between, and doubly secret. They are usually funded by wealthy individuals who believe or megacorporate splinter factions, and the research is conducted by individuals on the fringe of the awakened world. Divination research has become something of a minor disreputable laughing stock in academic circles after so many dismal failures.

That's an excellent idea, but very difficult to simulate in a way that doesn't upset the proverbial applecart of the milieu.

Also, the number of magi who are also that good at math (rating 9 and up, I would say) are few and far between.

That would make them optimum extraction targets.

Um, I don't know what that means