I can understand no allowing people to take Blood Spirit invocation. Oh joy, infinite energy drain! But really, are the metamagics so broken? Potency's gone, so they have to initiate just like everybody else, and the ones that they give don't seem so overpowered. And since we're talking about shadowrunners, morality shouldn't be a problem.

In case you're wondering, I'm thinking of making a toxic mage character.

In short my answer is No.

A longer answer is Possibly, but there are several problems...Blood Mages, Insect Shamans have huge bounties on their heads, there is the problem of madness and alien intelligences twisting and tearing your brain, to name a few...

That said, I am in a game where an insect summoner is going through the path of the burnout (gotta love cyberware) just to remove the threat of the magic within her. I am still waiting to see how it plays out...

Toxic Mages and Insect Shaman aren't conceptually a problem.

Mechanically, it's a problem. Not because Toxic spirits are overpowered, but because there aren't any fucking rules for them!

I know, to first approximation, it looks like there are rules. There are some pages with text on them that look kind of like rules but here actually aren't any. The Gamemaster gives Toxic Spirits whatever powers and attributes hefeels like giving them. Then there are examples, examples that don't have a 1:1 correspondance with any spirit type.

So when a Toxic Magician enters play or conjures a spirit, there are no rules anywhere for what powers that spirit has or even what its attributes would be. That's... problematic.

Insect spirits aren't nearly that difficult. I mean, you can just ignore the problem where Evanescence takes effect every day and Inhabitation takes most of a week. I happen to know that the author intended for Evanescence to shut off s soon as the Inhabitation process starts - and so do you, it's totally obvious.

From a character perspective, you're going to be killing a lot of people anyway and you can put spirits into pigs without anyone caring. So it works pretty well. The rules are cumbersome and often hard to understand, but they can be made to work.

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Verdict: Being a Toxic Mage is a problem only in that being one requirres your GM to write up five balanced spirits for your character, and that's bullshit. Other than that, there's no reason to keep players from playing them.


Being an Insect Mage is only a problem in that the rules are more complicated than they need to be. They are actually playable.

Blood Mages are an infinite power loop and totally unsalvageable as PCs or villains.

-Frank

I could see allowing players to play magical threats. But not in a PC way.

More like the PC would be a "Assistant GM" or a "Opposition Player."

Not like in allowing a Dragon or Master Shedim to be on a runner team.

It would depend on the threat, but it could work in the proper campaign. I wouldn't let Joe Mage in an otherwise normal Mercenaries for Hire campaign play one.

It mostly depends on the kind of magical threats...

Insect Shamans: Ewww, really not. Mostly because of the Revulsion factor, and since these guys are far too alien in outlook.

Toxic magicians: the avengers extreme eco-warrior/terrorist brand looks quite playable for me. Nothing really different from your average obsessed murderous vigilante. The poisoner type is more questionable, as it's far more defficult to give the character any sort of sympathetic light. Well-covered by the rules.

Blood Mages: what, aren't they assumed to be standard PC option already ?? With the possible exception of Invoking Blood Spirits, which may rise legitimate game-balance issues and should proably kept off-limits to PCs, blood magicians and adepts look quite playable to me. Ethically, their modus operandi is not really different from contract killing (standard shadowrunners fare) and blood metamagics are verll well covered by the rules and quite playable by PCs.

Necromancers/Faustian Mages/Zealots/twisted adepts/Demonlogists: same as blood magicians. Standard PC fare. Dark paths are an integral paths of many mystical traditions.

Assuming that my game wasn't set up for standard shadowrunning scenarios, but was more player driven, then I'd have no real problem with a toxic PC.

Some blood mages and any sort of twisted path type that could summon shadow spirits would be out for balance reasons.

Insect shamans would be out not for balance, per se, but because the player is logically going to start building a hive and the game becomes a war-game / strategy game of managing your troops. Don't want that.

My experience of allowing threat-type characters in the past has been that they tend to be quite self policing. If they are too obviously evil around their team mates they tend not to last very long. Even if whatever little accidents that start happening aren't immediately fatal, the player soon gets the message and retires the character.

Non-metahuman magical threats would require special rules for non-metahuman characters. Obviously, playing a team of Wraith is right out unless you want to make some massive changes to Chargen mechanics.

However, there is a reason why Street Magic doesn't explicitly disallow PCs from playing magical threats. Toxic and Insect traditions are handled like any other tradition. The blood metamagics can be found on the list of metamagics that are available to PCs.

In previous editions these things were explicitly disallowed to PCs because they were sick and twisted and PCs are supposed to be idealized Robin Hoods. The fact that Street Magic doesn't disallow them shows a shift away from the paradigm of the paradoxical good and selfless professional criminal who happily kills innocent people because the were in the wrong place at the wrong time to a more diverse shadow ecosystem.

Blood Spirit Invoking can be fixed by stating that changes in essence augment Force rather than altering it.

So, if you summon a Force 6 blood spirit and it drained 6 points of essence, its would force would be 6 (12) instead of just 12 and its essence would be 6(12), as well. Likewise, if this spirit lost 7 points of essence its Force would be 6(5) and its essence would be 6(5). Since augmented essence is limited to twice base essence this compromise makes Blood Spirit Invoking viable.
It also makes Free Blood Spirits viable. Really, under the canon rules there is no reason for a Free Spirit with Essence Drain to ever have less than a quintuple-digit Force.

The succubus can be especially nasty, as a smart one can go into business and rake in karma and cash without getting shot at (much). A few years of stealing karma under the radar is more powerful than blowing up a mall for power.

I would definitly allow Faustians and Necromancers and various other twisted paths (I have no idea WHY Faustians are listed as a twisted type, it sounds like the defining characteristic is that they make bargins with Free Spirits . . .). Blood mages I would allow characters to learn Sacrifice (but would expect them to use their own blood or animals) but only Sacrifice, other blood magics are clearly for villains. Insects or toxics no way in hell.

Insect Shaman do not have to owe allegiance to their totem. Some could see it as simply a way to obtain magical power. In fact, insect shaman with this perspective are probably far more useful to their totems than the ones who whole-heartedly embrace the hive as they can infiltrate human institutions far more easily than the classic stark-raving lunatic insect shaman. Likewise, this is probably the best perspective for insect shaman who aren't possessed of absolute loyalty in the face of imminent betrayal. History shows that summoning a Queen is pretty much a death sentence.
The most long-lived insect shaman will be those who have never summoned a queen. Their hives will remain small due to the limit on the number of spirits that they can have, but this may not be a bad thing. Small hives are far less conspicuous than large ones and small bands of flesh forms under the leadership of a metahuman can infiltrate high society far more easily than Scientology can.

The biggest problem is that many Inave have nothing but disdain and contempt for the shaman that summon them and will not be loyal beyond that which is required by the summoning process. Queens and Mothers, since they can summon others of their kind, will probably kill the shaman at the first opportunity. Many insect shaman will not know this but those who actually bother to do a little bit of research will. This does not engender loyalty to the hive. This promotes self interest. As tempting as it may be for the male mantis shaman to summon a female for that promised sexual liaison he probably should know better.

Yeah, Insect Spirits are no more powerful than allies (and there is no upper limit on the number of allies you can summon, unlike insects which should still be limited by Charisma). Since all flesh form spirits get Aura Masking by default, it should be possible to pass your bugs off as real people in most situations and as allies in many other situations.

As FrankTrollman pointed out once, you should forget about the sammies and the plasteel golems, grab a vampire magician. Not only does the flesh form have its skills and memories, it also has all of its the vampire powers.

Just grab Dracula when he's out on one of his all-night benders.

...I find just letting them play mages is enough of a magical threat.

I think I must be missing something here as two long term players seem to think allies are balanced with insect spirits, but I really don't see this at all.

To whit: (I heard that in a Shakespeare play, once)

A normal shaman must be initiated and have spent a metamagic slot on ally summoning to create an ally spirit. An insect shaman gets this straight out of the box.

A normal shaman must spend a minimum of 8 karma for each single ally spirit. Insect spirits are free. Meaning that the insect shaman is never in a position where he can't summon up some more for want of karma. And he isn't on a permanent loss compared to where he would have been should one of his servants be killed. You can get a lot more use out of your servants if you know that they're expendable.

An insect shaman's good merge has the spirit power of Masking (equivalent to the Extended Masking metamagic). This is unavailable to ally spirits as no standard spirit has the power. This makes ally spirits stand out clearly to astral inspection whilst insect spirits can be highly effective spies, infiltrators and bodyguards.

An insect shaman has the option of creating very powerful hybrid forms. A force 5 hybrid form Troll samurai is terrifying. The equivalent ally would cost 40 karma. And of course the insect shaman can have multiple servants like this.

No matter how powerful an insect shaman's spirits are, they are always totally devoted once the inhabitation is complete. This is true even with whopping Force 7 monsters. The same is not true for ally spirits.

And bear in mind that the insect shaman can go all out on Force and binding and get himself a true form. This would be harder to achieve with a low force ally and the result would be nowhere near as powerful. Effectively, the insect shaman has permanently bound and totally loyal spirits at his beck and call.

I think that's a good start to why I wouldn't allow an Insect Shaman PC in all but the oddest of campaigns.

EDIT: And contrary to common thought, a shaman can summon a Queen and stay in control. It's a free spirt and he has its formula. With a successful binding ritual, it will be prevented from harming him until services are discharged. Which of course they never will be. It's hideously risky, but it can be done and it will net you a private army of servants.

An Insect Magician's spirits are also essentially not expendable, while a Hermetic's or Houngan's spirits are transient. When you sacrifice a human and get a flesh form, you get something awesome. But you also get something unique. Something that cannot be replaced.

A shaman can legitimately sit in an armored van outside an installation with a friend with a first aid kit and chain summon. Make a spirit, send it on a remote service suicide run, get healed, and repeat as soon as the enemies take your spirit down. Sure, if your opponents can back trace your spirit or call the cops it's not an auto-win, but for a notable number of missions it really is. And an Insect Mage can't do that.

An initiated Shaman can sort of duplicate an Insect Mage's best trick, but there is no metamagic for an Insect Mage to use disposable spirits under any circumstances.

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That being said, is the Insect Magician's trick balanced? The answer, unfortunately, is "It depends." Sorry, that's the answer.

A Flesh Form spirit is composed of two elements: a spirit (which has hard, fast, and underwhelming traits for a spirit), and a host (which brings whatever to the equation). If the gamemaster allows you access to a tranquilized great dragon, that can be your host. If you have to get by on rabid dogs and diseased orphans - those might be your hosts as well.

To a certain extent, nothing that you can use as a host can be more impressive than what your team is capable of taking down. And to that extent, a new fleshform is always going to be an evolutionary rather than revolutionary bit of power creep no matter what he gamemaster is doing. But if the team has clever plans or lucky breaks or any of the million zillion other things that can case Shadowrunners to drop more powerful opponents, it is quite conceivable for an Insect Magician to be able to make a flesh form out of something that is better than she is.

And that is - no doubt - a potentially destabilizing element on the campaign. Any magician with the Ally Spirit metamagic can destabilize the campaign the same way, but an Insect Magician can destabilize the campaign like that right out of chargen. The first mission could potentially involve taking down a big bad villain that required the entire team to scarcely triumph over and the very next adventure could feature him showing up with Immunity to Normal Weapons as your love slave. Or.... that could never happen. It deppends upon the team, the runs, the oppositon, and the pace of the game.

Is that like the fact that a rigger "could" steal a stonewall as part of her first run or a hacker "could" end up with the launch codes for a Thor Shot? Kind of.

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But at least potentially an Insect Magician can be a balanced and interesting part of the team. He has a conjuring system that is more powerful (in that he has more spirits out at one time and can fall back upon their powers more freely), but is also more vulnerable (in that a lost spirit requires time/money/livestoock to replace rather than just snapping your fingers or clicking your shoes). It's a viable dynamic - potentially.

An Insect Mage has a posse in his car that is pretty scary. But if he gets made on the cameras using that posse he endangers the team. And if he takes any casualties to that posse they don't come back. It leads to a more careful, less spirit reliant form of shadowrunning that occassionally unleashes a zombie apocalypse. With the right GM, it's an asset.

-Frank

knasser: What makes the average case of inhabitation any more powerful than possession?

The insect shaman seems, to me, like the magical equivalent of the drone rigger.
And what about that hive mind disadvantage, where the shaman has to roll Will + Magic (2) to surpress the alien voices in his head. Or else what? Does this cost an action? How often must the check be made? This is a potentially rebalancing mechanic and I don't understand exactly how it was intended to be used.