Do I pick one (like Manipulation: Water in buddhist tradition, for example), and can only cast manipulation spells and conjure water spirits without penalties?

If I have a mentor spirit, can I choose to aspect my magic towards the spell/spirit type that mentor spirit gives boni for (even if they don't correspond)?

Or I am getting this wrong, and I can choose a type of spell and different type of spirit?


Also, I have no clue what is meant by

Yes.

No. The sugestion is that you only be allowed to take the Aspected and Mentor qualities if the selected mentor does fit your setup. So an Aspected Category magician could take the Fire-Bringer mentor if they were a follower of the Paths of the Wheel (way of the bard), but not if they were Hermetic.

Ideally you're supposed to pay actual build points and Karma to get the skills and spells that you suffer a four point dice pool penalty on. Even though, um, partially overcoming that penalty costs more than the quality is worth. It would be better if you were going that route to model your aspect by sinking less Build Points into Sorcery or Conjuring.

All in all, the Aspected Magician quality kind of sucks. There were a bunch of various proposals and a lot of them were even worse and a few of them were completely broken. And the one that they ended up with is just... crap actually. It's a cool roleplaying hook, but there is honestly no reason to take Aspected Magician for 5 points when you can take three incompetences for a magical skill group for 15. It's less crippling and it's worth more points. I'm really disappointed with the way that quality came out in the book.

If it had been up to me, Aspected Magician would have been a positive quality that cost 10 points, gave you a smaller list of things you could do than being a full magician did, and came with an Initiate Grade of 1 (to represent the old flavor that Aspected Magicians were better at their limited forms of magic than generalists were).

Choices would have been:

Soprcery Aspect (no Conjuring or Astral Projection)
Conjuring Aspect (no Sorcery or Astral Projection)
Category Aspect (choose 2 spell categories and the appropriate spirits, those are the ones you can learn/conjure. Also, no Astral Projection).

---

But it wasn't up to me, and they went with this instead. And from a mechanical standpoint, there's honestly no reason why any player character would ever have any of the ones in the book. It's sad, because Aspected Magicians used to be a major part of the setting and appeared in many games.

-Frank

Unfortunate. I actually was thinking of having Fire-Bringer as mentor, in a non-shamanistic approach (meaning another attribute than charisma as second attribute). That would mean the islamic tradition, which typically doesn't have mentor spirits. Or I could create a different mentor spirit, or a different tradition.
Fire-Bringer fits my concept basically like a glove (altough fire-spirits aren't exactly the most versatile), and I prefer to stick to the sourcebooks as close as possible .


Re-reading the negative quality's description, those options are just examples. So it would be viable to create one option where you aspect to your mentor's advantages, wouldn't it?

If that is true, that's unrealistic nonsense.

Of course I did realize taking a few incompetences would be better in a min/maxing way. I plan on using aspected magician anyway.

Which is why it suprised me that this quality was included at all... as it was perfectly possible to emulate aspected magicians with Incompetence.

I wouldn't use the word "viable" since it's just a 5 point quality and you're essentially dropping off your ability to use Magical services from bound spirits in addition to the hefty penalties involved.

All you really need is to include the spell category incompetence flaw, in which you can't summon one kind of spiritor cast the associated kinds of spells and you're good to go I should think.

The Aspected quality in Street Magic is more than a bit of a disappointment. :shrug:

Oh well, the inclusion of bad options doesn't hurt the game as much as the inclusion of uber options does. After all, you can just not take a bad option. Still, I'm dejected that they gave this particular crap option the name of a very important and legitimate character choice from 1st, 2nd, and 3rd editions.

-Frank

I have a Sorceror Aspected Mage. However, I also used the optional rule where they get -6 dice for anything not in their field, but +2 dice for (in his case) his Sorcery Skill Group. I considered going the Incompetent route, but I figured I'd just deal with it this way instead.

You could try following Agni instead, which, IIRC, is a Indian god of fire (not Native -American Indian BTW).

Hyzmarca, that's an awesome idea for a character! thanks!

Actually, the specific option of aspected magician I asked about is worth a whooping 10 points. Also, it doesn't affect spirit binding at all.

Apart from -4 for other spell/spirit categories, it has penaltys on assensing, astral combat and enchanting, and partially for arcana. Assensing and astral combat is no biggie, since I want to play a mystic adept without astral sight, and I don't want to do enchanting or arcana.

True .

I think that's what Synner meant earlier. I'd buy my GM a beer if he went that route .

Fire-Bringer stole the secret of fire from the gods. A fire god just can't replace that. My char will be a thief also, and not be afraid to steal from the mightiest (please, tell me if I sound like Emo). Like I said, fits like a glove.

When I hear indian, I think of those real indians, not the native american ones .

Yes it does. It costs you a -4 penalty when conjuring spirits of other than your special spirit type.

So you'd be able to conjure Fire Spirits, who can only use Magic Services for Combat Spells. And cast Manipulation spells, which only Earh Spirits can use Magical Services to enhance.

See the problem? You've essentially lost Aid Study and Aid Sorcery and Spell Binding in exchange for... nothing at all.

-Frank

are you trying to summon Satan?

Yes, but then you could just take the quality straight from the book without sucking ass any more than normal.

I mean, you take a penalty to assensing. Holy shit!

-Frank

Heh. That was the point I stopped reading that section and resolved never to reread it.

Just because I'm a sadistic asshole doesn't mean I'm not a Player's GM.

Satan? Dude, the entire pantheon of Elder Gods is pissing itself at the thought.

Yeah, I may have to house rule that out for lack of stupid on my part. Sadly, this reminds me that SR4 makes me more eager to houserule stuff than just go with the rules as they're written (outside the Optional Rules).

The basic problem is that being a mage is too cheap in build points for this to work. As you said later, it works only as a positive quantity that is a lot less than a a mage. And as "magican" is less than 4% of a basic characters BP, reducing it an itsy bit without a major additional cool thing added makes no sense to a rational Player designing a character.

You still have to buy the magic points and skills, you just can't do as much. No an efectie way to get a few points back.

Oh heck yes. The little thing about the suggestion for it to be a positive quality that granted additional bonuses not achievable otherwise through build points was totally serious and the result of a lot of thought on the issue.

Here's the deal:

The Magician Quality does not, by itself, take up a tremendously meaningful amount of your total Build Points. Once you factor in the fact that you have to buy Magic and you get frozen out of Cyberware, the total cost is significant, but the cost for the quality itself is something you may or may not notice.

But the cost of the Magician Quality does count against something that does matter - your maximum number of Qualities. Taking the Magician Quality uses up almost half of your points of Positive Qualities. That's potentially a big deal. Therefore, a small reduction in the cost of being a Magician, while it wouldn't make much difference to the build point situation overall, would allow you to make characters you otherwise could not (for example, a Magician who had Lucky and anything else), and that would at least be interesting.

On the flip side, the maximum number of points from Negative Qualities also looms very large in the life of a potential Aspected Magician. So much so that throwing in a Negative Quality for being one likely as not does not give you any points. There are plenty of appropriate negative qualities, from Geasa to SINner, there's really no shortage of them at all - nor would we expect there to be. And as previosuly noted, most Aspected Magicians can already be done well enough with the Incompetence Quality, so again we really aren't seeing a need for a Negative Quality here.

---

That being said, while we've established that throwing down a 5 point reduction in the cost of being a Magician can be much more rewarding than even the 15 point s of Negative Qualities offered by Incomptences, we still have not actually established why one would care. In the scheme of things, Sorcery and Conjuring are both extremely powerful and useful. And while Manipulation Bloat is a serious problem (has been since the beginning - you can bypass the need for Illusions by "manipulating senses", you can bypass the need for Combat Spells by "manipulating dangerous effects", and so on - what a crock!), every other path of magic has something to offer as well. Even if you can't conceive of your character ever learning a Health Spell or taking up Conjuring, spending 1/7th of your starting Quality limits to have the option of doing it later is not a bad deal.

So really being an Aspected Magician needs to com with something awesome, some incentive, or it's just a Roleplaying hook that makes your character suck (and we don't approve of those). Now what could the benefit be? Well, the suggestion in the book is to give people a floating unnamed, uncapped dicepool bonus to whatever their limited specialization is. That's.... unfortunate. The only time that's really unique or interesting is if you're using it to bypass the limits of the game, and we generally speaking don't want people to do that. In previous editions, Aspected Magicians were gifted with extra "Force Points", which last I checked we were all pretty happy with. These points were likely as not spent upon getting Initiated as a starting character, which is something Full Magicians (who had less Force Points and more things to spend them on) rarely did.

So why not? If an Aspected Magician started as a Level 1 Initiate, they'd have a Metamagic technique that I'm fairly certain would tie directly in to whatever it was that they did. For example, I could plausibly see an Aspected Conjurer begin play with Invoking or Channeling.

Now the Aspects themselves, let's consider them:

If you're giving up more than a single branch of magic, you seriously have to question what the hell you're doing with your life. I have never seen anyone be an Aspected Enchanter (or Enchanting Adept as they were first called), because the entire idea is retarded. Enchanting only makes things for magically active people to use, if you can't do anything magical except Enchant you aren't even a Player Character and I don't want to talk to you. Maybe you can throw that in as flavor text or something, but the Enchanting Aspect is not now, nver has been, and never will be a viable player option. So that one is right the fuck out. That leaves the Sorcery Aspect, the Conjuring Aspect, the Path Aspect, and the Astral Aspect.

Sorcery Aspect: This one is easy. Giving up Conjuring is a big deal, as if giving up Astral Projection. Getting a Metamagic Technique can be pretty handy for Sorcerers, so that's a reasonable trade. Verdict: No Astral Projection, no Conjuring Skillgroup, 10 points, 1 free Initiation at start.

Conjuring Aspect: This one is also easy. Giving up Sorcery is a big deal, and getting somme of the Conjuring related metamagics can be a big deal as well. Verdict: 10 Points, No Astral Projection, no Sorcery Skill Group, 1 free Initiation at start.

Path Aspect: This is more difficult, mostly because the people this is representing are mostly the folks of the old "Shamanic Adept" paths from previous editins. What hey used to do is to have access to all the magic that a Totem gave bonuses to. And while that doesn't sound good to people who play 4th edition, recall that the old Totems were nothing like balanced. There were totems that gave bonuses to 3 paths of magic and several kinds of spirits. And while there were also Totems that provided bonuses to one or even no paths of magic, if you were going to be an aspected Shaman you weren't going to take one of those! So there are established canon aspected magicians who have access to a cuple of paths of magic. And you know what? That's fine. 2 paths of Magic is still less than half, and you still have to buy Sorcery and Conjurng skills to use all your stuff.
Verdict: 10 Points, you may only learn and cast spells from 2 schools, and you may only conjure Watchers, Allies, and the 2 kinds of spirits who are associated with your 2 schools of magic in your tradition. No Astral Projection, and a free intiatin at start.

Astral Aspect: Again, difficult. Astral Adepts have existed at lleast since Awakenings and they have never been good. And why is that? Mostly it's because a big swathe of magical techniques actually add to astral combat one way or another. A regular magician has access to Stunbolt and a pile of Watchers so if you go toe to toe with that guy, you're toast. So you only do one thing and you aren't good at it. That has got to change. Characters with the Astral Aspect are supposed to be pretty fly on the Astral and never in any previous edition has that been "true".
Verdict: 5 points. You cannot cast any spells on Physical Targets, nor can you conjure any spirit that has Possession or Materialization (Watchers are still OK). You can still cast Mana spells on Astral Targets. You begin play with one Initiation grade, and your threshold for Assensing tests is reduced by 1.

This isn't rocket science, but there is math involved. The goals are:

1. Maintain consistency with past fluff and the stories generated by the games people played in previous editions.

2. Be a balanced and useful character option in the current edition.

The writeup in Street Magic does neither, and I don't understand why it saw print.

-Frank

I wouldn't allow a mundane to take Incompetence in any Magical Skills, but I figure it's fair game for Awakened.

Does the canon RAW (any at all) forbid it?

If so, then yes, by all means.

If not, then it is just a house rule.

I always figured that all characters had at least 15 free BPs, due to the fact that the Awakened could always take Incompetence in the Resonance skills and Technomancers the Awakened skills, while mundanes could do both.

For incompetence to have any meaning it must actually be possible to have learned it so that you're actually giving it up. The only way you can seriously propose this is because you suffer either from a serious mental deficiency or a complete lack of any sense of ethics, morality, or other limits on your behavior. Depending on which cause I suspected, I'd have to react to an attempt to sell this line of bullshit to me at a game session either by calling your mother to take you home and give you fresh underwear or spit in your face, knock a few teeth out, and warn the police you're probably molesting your children.

Edit: I forgot option three - too young to have developed proper socialization and a sense of ethics. In which case I'd tell you grow up, and warn you that once you got to high school and/or college that "hey, she was passed out and never going to know, and besides I used a condom" wouldn't be an acceptable defense, even if it was a direct outgrowth of a gaming philosophy you'd almost gotten away with when you were 12.

1. No, obviously there is at least one other person who for some reason likes this setup - the original author. Zing!

2. I think a lot of people like the idea of a character who in an emergency can do things outside his mana manipulation rnage. Unfortunately, that's not what you get with the Aspected Magician Quality in Street Magic.

Magic in Shadowrun is, as noted above, trained only. To be able to cast a spell you have to purchase a Spellcasting Skill. And you have to purchase spells. These cost Build Points. More Build Points than the negative quality is worth! So purchasing yourself some Sorcery and taking Aspected Conjuring is "retarded". You're in the hole on build points and at the end you're actually worse at spellcasting than if you'd just taken a minimum investment in the skill group and not taken the quality.

If you want to represent someone who is "really bad at spellcasting and doesn't like to do it" you buy yourself a spellcasting of 1. You don't buy yourself a real Spellcasting skill and then take an Aspected Magician Quality - that costs more points and gives you less dice.

Casting spells and conjuring spirits isn't something that you can just do. It requires a very heavy investment on your part to do it at all, let alone do it well. A small negative quality that makes you do one or both of those astoundingly worse makes you better off just not spending the points for the ability in the first place - or buying up less.

You can represent an aspected Sorcerer cheaperr and better with the magician quality and 15 points of Incompetencies for Conjuring. If for some reason it was important to you that yu be able to perform the rites of conjuration extremely badly, you'd still be better off just buying yourself a Conjuring Skillgroup of 1 and not taking any quality at all.

Coming and going, the Street Magic quality isn't good for representing any character. There is always a better combination of build points to represent whatever it is that you want to do with your character. Do the math, it's really sad.

-Frank

Thats a bit drastic of a response. It is after all, merely a game.

Anyways, Toturi's actually right, there really is nothing written in the rules that prevents that, and by his view of things, that the rules as written "RAW" are equivalent to the Quran, or the Holy Bible, and thus can never be wrong or changed, it makes sense. There is a reason, that his .sig is what it is, after all.

However, in the RAW, there are also numerous references that the GM has final say on anything, and can change the rules to fit his/her game. Also, common sense might inject a little bit into this and not permit Toturi's interpretation.

He is following the letter of the rules, if most certainly not the spirit, though, and if that works for his game, then that works. I certainly wouldn't allow it as a GM, but that's a different matter.

Now that I'm all for. A magician who is incompetent in casting has sacrificed. I have a mystic adept who is incompetent in Ritual Spellcasting. It indicates a focus for her abilities - magic to her is solely a personal thing. She won't play nice with people. We have another mage that is incompetent in summoning and binding. He doesn't do spirits.

It's just when a street sam tries to pick Inc (Spellcasting) that I'll get out the cluebat.

Please read the first 3 lines of my post. Read them? Good. House rule all you want. But do not tell me that is the rules as written. Yes, it seems abusive to me, but there might be people who do not think so and I am not going to tell them (if any) that their POV is wrong especially when the books are do not state so. If I was to run a totally canon RAW game, I would allow it. If I was running a game with house rules, then most probably I won't.

I have written on this subject many times. EVERYTHING in a game is subject to the GM's approval. You can make the Ares Predator do 999P damage if you wish, just because you are the GM and you are well within your rights to do so. The baseline to which we may have any meaningful discussion are the canon RAW. If you want to house rule, GO AHEAD. But unless you are really Awakened and know Read Thoughts or are the writers(and I know who they are and their forum handles), you are not going to convince me that you know "What The Writers Intended" ™.

You know if stuff like that was said in congress I'd watch C-Span.
Is it relevant? No. Amusing yes....
I love message boards, the egos involved are staggering.

Slithery D's interpretation is correct as regards the writer's intention and this will be addressed in upcoming errata and FAQ. Even under the current RAW a GM can put a check on abuse of such Qualities as Incompetent through his approval/veto following character creation- if he doesn't do so it is his choice.