A mage is a 3-4 point power site that is only good for him or his hacky tradition..Is scarey.More so than I am spirit of man with bad breath!

The UMT info in this thread is mighty interesting.

It does, however, make me glad that none of my players have magician characters!

well... maybe not info, but certainly points of view.

Exactly what the UMT is all about.. point of view.

I personally do not like the way magic has been unified in SR4. I don't like the idea of every magical tradition being just like the next with some cosmetic differences. I partially resolved it by having alot more differences between magicial traditions tothe point that people construct their own.

Magical Tradition Creation System

There are many possible traditions available to magic users. Instead of having all the traditions just mirrors of each other this will provide more versatility in constructing magic users. These rules apply for all kinds of magic users. These rules replace all magic related qualities.
Players and GMs can build the abilities of their magical characters in a modular format, instead of picking a premade tradition. You can even grow beyond the limitations of your tradition once you initiate. You pick a series of magicial abilities that you have access to. This includes astral perception and projection. You can choose what level of Sorcery and Conjuring you want as well. Characters gain magic points when they gain certain abilities. In this version you must have a point of magic for each ability. If you loose the point of magic you loose access to that ability.
Mystic Adepts are built now by picking physical adept quality and other magic. Physical Adepts can gain astral perception and/or astral projection by just taking those qualities. Effectively each magical ability (sorcery, conjuring, astral projection, etc) requires a magic point it is tied to that point just like an adept ability. This means that in constructing a Mystic Adept you can't spend those linked points.
A tradition can also have limitations on it. These reflect the paradigms of the people in the tradition. These negative qualities con only reduce the cost of the tradition by half. Any other negative qualities count against the character's limit of 35 negative qualities. These can be Geasa or even requirements on using Foci. Focus addiction is not used because I want to encourage it's use. Geasa are replaced by a ofter version. Failing to keep up with your Geasa just reduces your magic rating temporarily but will never casue magic point loss. Latent Awakening is not used. If you get Astral perception at character creation then you can choose a tradition later.

Magical Qualities
Astral Perception (5 BP/+1 Magic) - If you take no other abilities then you can't raise your Magic rating over 1.
Astral Projection (10 BP/+1 Magic) - Gives you access to Astral Projection, Perception, and Combat.
Physical Adept (5 BP/+1 Magic) - Gives access to Adept powers.
Dual Natured (5 BP) - requires Astral Projection
Astral Chameleon (5 BP)
Focused Concentration (10/20 BP) +1/+2 for drain tests
Astral Beacon (-5 BP)
Gremlins (-5 BP/lvl; Max 4) Some magicians don't combine well with technology
Sensitive System (-15 BP) Total Rejection (-20 BP)
Painful Conection (-10 BP) Your magic and cyberware don't get along. -2 pain penalty when using cyberware. Obviously must have cyberware to get this.
Burning Mana (-15 BP) Magic causes pain when it flows through your body. You feel pain in your arms when directing energy or pain in the eyes when using a detection spell. -2 pain penalty when using magic in the physical. No pain in the astral. For -10 BP it can be linked to a specific type of magic or energy.

Sorcery (+1 Magic)
This gives the magic user access to spellcasting and the Sorcery skill group. Casters can be limited to a few catagories or have access to them all. If they have limited access then they are at a -4 to cast other spells. Choose one:
One catagory (10 BP)
Two catagories (15 BP)
All catagories (20 BP)

Beliefs about Magic
(-10 BP) Backlash occurs with all aggressive magic. Any 1s count as a hit from the same spell on the caster. Caster can resist with countermagic as normal.
(-10 BP) Magic is random and unpredictable. Any 1s cause strange sideeffects that are not directable by the caster but not necessarily harmfull.

Conjuring (+1 Magic)
The gives the magic user access to conjuring spirits and the Conjuring skill group. Summoners can call upon a few spirits or all. The limitation is that you must limit the spirits and how your tradition views them.
Choose one:
One spirit (10 BP)
Two spirits (15 BP)
Five spirits (20 BP)
All spirits (25 BP)

Spirit Affinity - you must have these in your conjuring list
One spirit (5 BP)
Two spirits (10 BP)
Five spirits (15 BP)
All spirits (20 BP)

Spirit Bane - you can't have these in your conjuring list
One spirit (-5 BP)
Two spirits (-10 BP)
All spirits but your list (-15 BP) - can't have the all spirits list

Mentor Spirit (10 BP)

Beliefs about spirits
(-5 BP) All spirits are creations of the mind (can't take spirit affinity, -1 dealing with spirits)
(-10 BP) Only one or two kinds of spirits are acceptable and all the others are enemies or evil (only have spirit affinity with those kinds of spirits, all others at -3. Likely to have spirit banes.)
(-10 BP) The spirit you call upon is better then you and you should only make one request of them per summoning.
(-10 BP) Must have the aid of a spirit to cast spells (-3 to cast without a spirit aiding you)


Visibility
Secret Caster (5 BP) no obvious actions needed
Secret Summoner (5 BP) no obvious actions needed
Flashy Caster (-5 BP) Always a glow of energy when casting
Flashy Summoner (-5 BP) Obvious area effect glowing circles and energy

Tradition Qualities

Geasa on Tradition
One geas (-5 BP)
Two geasa (-10 BP)
Several geasa (-15 BP)

Tradition Foci
Requires fetishes (-5 BP)
Requires one foci (-10 BP)
Requires a foci per spell catagory/spirit type (-15 BP)

I must say I am glad that you wrote those out as I think that some people may like a magical tradition system like that, but I personally don't. With the Magic Attribute being raised with the other qualities it completely jacks the way the attributes are bought in SR4 and it allows for far too much twink building of magical characters. I am a big fan of the UMT and the tradition sytem in SR4, as it is the logic progression of change in magical growth. It is all the same mana, it is all the magic, we all are cellularly the same (with differences in DNA), so why should we all have different rules for magic.

Right now only bug spirits are completely off the curve of magic spirits, but that is because they are not from out gaiasphere, not eve from the metaplanes that we normally have any access to. Bug spirits come from deep deep in the metaplanes and thus follow the rules of those metaplanes, which is why they have Evanessence while in our gaiasphere. They don't belong here naturally because they don't follow the same rules of magic as here. It is like the biology of creatures in the deepest depths of the ocean compared to us at sea level, neither of us can exist for very long at all in each other's climate and thus we die a lot quicker there. Same with Bug Spirits, they have to latch onto to us to survive this plane because they can't survive here on their own. It would probably work the same way if we were to go to The Hive, we would need something to latch onto to survive there for any extended length of time.

Also Garrowolf, I don't mean to be negative against your work, this has just been IMO.

It doesn't make it cheaper then normal. The way it is you get all that for 1 magic point at start for 15 pts. Then to get a 3 you pay 20 bp. That's 25 pts.

It cost 55 pts to get 3 magic points and the normal set of things from UMT. You have the ability to change that but at most you can halve it to 28 if you take a lot of limits. Then you still have to raise it beyond 3 as normal.

Now you can create adepts that make sense and are fine tuned to how your character sees the world.

For toxic traditions just create some additional beliefs. Increase the number of available spirits and restrct them to those who give off this "belief energy" or are crazy enough to use them.

It is an interesting take on things, but I feel it actually makes being a magician (at least as they are in the book) too expensive. Aslo I think your maths are off. 15+20=35, not 25. Of course I could be misunderstanding what you're getting at.

My general feeling is that magic should be relatively unhindered (at least by rules). Magic can be limited in game by insisting that the player decide on his tradition and stick with that tradition's paradigm. As they're written a mage can be a generalist, and not be great at any one thing, or a specialist and really suck at anything he's not bought the skills at high levels for.

With your method the mage has to decide whether they ever want to be able to do something, buy it for a whole bunch of build points, and then spend yet more BPs on the skills to actually do those things.

Of course I've not tried to make a mage with your method, so I don't know how well they come out. I suspect that in an effort to prevent twinking out, you've hamstrung people that just want to play a mage, and yet it may still be possible to abuse the character creation system to make an uber-twink in one particular field. I'd be interested to see some examples of, say, a generalist mage vs. a specialist mage.

okay I admit I made a math error. I still think that the system works better then the base system.

Generalist Hermetic:

Astral Projection (10 BP) +1 magic
Sorcery All catagories (20 BP) +1 magic
Conjuring 5 spirits (Elementals) (20 bp) +1 magic

belief all spirits are creations of the mind (-5 bp)

Tradition Foci - one foci: Wand (-10 bp)
Tradition Geas - one: Latin (-5 bp)

Totals: 30 bp 3 magic

Specialist Flame Weaver:

Astral Projection (10bp) +1 magic
Sorcery: Combat, Manipulation (15bp) +1 magic
Conjuring: 1 spirit Fire Spirit (Elemental) (10 bp) +1 magic
Spirit affinity: Fire Spirits (5 bp)
Spirit Bane: Water Spirits (-5 bp)
Flashy Summoner (-5bp)

Tradition Foci- one foci: Fire (-10bp)

Totals: 20 bp 3 magic

Shamanic Spirit Master:

Astral Projection (10bp) +1 magic
Sorcery: Health (10bp) +1 magic
Conjuring: All Spirits (25 BP) +1 magic
Spirit affinity: all spirits (20 bp)
Mentor Spirit (10bp)
Belief: Must have spirit aid to cast (-10bp)
Flashy Summonor (-5bp)
requires fetishes (-5 bp)
several geasa (-15bp)

totals 40 bp 3 magic

Religious Mystic:
Astral Perception (5bp) +1 magic
Sorcery: Detection, Health (15bp) +1 magic
Conjuring: Spirits of Man, Air Spirits (15bp) +1 magic
belief: Believes that spirits of man are ancestors and air spirits are angels, all others are evil spirits. (-10bp)
Spirit Affinity: Spirits of Man, Air Spirits (10bp)
Spirit Bane: All but those two (-15 bp)
Belief: Air spirits are angels and better then the summoner so only one request per summoning (-10 bp)
Flashy Summoner: (-5bp)

45 - 40 but can only half the cost so cost is 25 with the rest of the cost counting against the character's negative quality total. 3 magic

Mystic Adept:

Astral Perception (5bp) +1 magic
Sorcery All (20bp) +1 magic
Physical Adept (5bp) +1 magic

Totals 30 bp 3 magic (2 magic points for magic and 1 for physad stuff, can buy more for each from there)

Does that help?

That is mighty interesting. It could work well with an experienced group, but ultimately the core system is probably better for newbs, who might otherwise be confused by having two categories of -ve qualities.

Of course some might suggest that newbs only play street sams with big guns to save them worrying about all those pesky hacking, rigging and magic rules!

actually I tend to do just that with new players in my games. Playing a fighter first in a game means they only have to learn the baseline.

Great Garrwolf, wonderful job. Take simple rules that work and throw them out hte window and then bring in the parade of broken rules. Just really what we need in shadowrun, more broken rules.

Maybe you could post examples of how they are broken, and possible corrections or suggestions?

Seriously? All spirits?

cherry pick the best and screw the rest? Are you saying that someone might power game in shadowrun????

I think that having more choices and making magical character less alike would encourage role playing. If they want to make an expensive character that can't really do much beyond what a RAW character could do then go ahead. This actually opens up alot more magical characters. As it stands we have one type with some different shirts on. There is no real difference in any other magic users. This is a bad thing.

Now you can create any number of traditions. If you don't want to give this power to your players then don't. Make up a list and let them choose. At least this wy if you have a good player and they want to create a specific concept then you can allow it.

This also opens up aspected magicians to use. Now they make more sense and there is a good reason to pick them.

Bland and balenced are not the same thing.

Interesting. The mechanics this way seem to actually allow you to create whatever tradition you want to. Otherwise we have traditions stuck to 5 spirits that are arbitrarily connected to 5 catagories of magic. It allows you to have a healer tradition with 2 spirits and health only or 1 spirit and a couple of catagories. This allows you to come up with whatever makes sense. Now we have a system where if you actually know anything about the religion that your character follows you have to force it to fit thier little formula.

By the way, you can still buy up the magic rating as normal. You just start out higher because you have learned more. It also limits mystic adepts a bit but makes them more versitile.

Hey, if you don't see a problem with it don't use it. If you see things from a hermetic point of view then go for it. I personally hate the Hermetic point of view but this edition seems focused on it. The hermetic point of view is that everything is the same and any differences are just flavor. I could see them working up a UMT and this game seems to support it. I personally think it is a load of crap. People are different. Allow them to be.

It was a valid response to the question.

I'll reiterate this because its becoming an all too common misunderstanding. In the setting UMT developed as an attempt to address the underlying fundamental laws of magic, regardless of the trappings of traditions - hence it is in fact not Hermetic, in fact it contradicts the basic Hermetic cosmology by openly stating it is a fragmentary view. The fact that UMT was developed by a hermetic research group, or that its banner has been taken up by a younger generation of hermetics doesn't mean it

Note also that UMT is being bandied about as new standard for all the traditions (because of the new unified rules). This isn't the case either. The fact that the core mechanics are the same does not imply that the traditions of 2070 have all accepted UMT (including the mainstream Renewed Hermeticism). Many will simply have adapted /expanded their own cosmologies to describe why one particular shaman or wujen or shinto magician exploring the principles of UMT is able to call upon spirits the tradition previously believed unaccessible.

If one "traditional" shaman working in conjuction with the UMT research group manages the feat of summoning something new, it's only a matter of time before someone who doesn't fully believe in the UMT trys it and find out they can too, and from there it is only a matter of time until the tradition's central doctrine/beliefs as a whole adapts to explain the "new" correspondence as part of its own cosmology. After all UMT as a ur-paradigm of magic is still fundamentally incomplete (and quite possibly flawed). Were it not so, then all the traditions should be able to summon not 5 but 10 types of spirits - not to mention the currently inexplicable uniqueness of metaplanar entities and toxic threats.

Actually, I think your are confusing an in game bit of fluff (the Universal Magical Theory) for an out of game piece of mechanics (unified magical rules). The two are not the same.

The unified magical theory explains, to its adherents, the similarities between traditions. However, it falls flat on its face in a number of areas... summoning being the primary one. Mechanically, a Shaman's Fire Spirit, a Hermetic's Flame Elemental, a Islamic Mystic's Djinn of Smokeless Fire and a Christian Theurgre's Angel of Flame, have the same stats. That doesn't make them the same critter. Further, most traditions have access to only 5 of 10 mechanical spirit types, making them different at a metagame level.

Then there are the "threat" traditions: Blood, Toxic, and Insect.... the UMT fails completely to explain them.

Look at it this way, in D&D Divine Magic, Arcane Magic, and Bardic Magic all operate on the same mechanics. They even share some spells, some feats, and some other "toys" from a mechanical standpoint. They are wholly different techniques "in game" however, and sharing resources from one to the other is explicitly a "No-No." (Although some GMs may make this easier.)

In Shadowrun, all the Traditions operate on the same mechanics. They share spells, they share rituals, they share summons, on a mechanical level. They are radically different "in game" however. Sharing resources is implicitly allowed, but challenging, and the GM can tweak this to be as easy or difficult as he wants.

UMT = fluff, that doesn't really work.
unified magic rules = metagame that really does work.

There are clear cut mechanical differences between Shamans, Hermetics, and the rest.

Shamans summon their five spirits, have Lodges, have Totems, have Shamanic Masks, and so on and so forth. Hermetics summon their five elementals, have Libraries, don't have totems, don't have shamanic masks, and all that rot. The other traditions have their unique cultural and mechanical twists too.

Unified magic rules, and unified magician rules, do not make unified characters.

All Riggers, all Samurai, all Hackers use the same rules... that doesn't make them clones.

I'm sorry, but youmight just have to roleplay the differences between traditions, rather than let the rulebook preprint them on your character sheet.

IF the idea of the setting was to include references to real world belief structures then SR3 did that and SR4 failled. It was a step backward.

Having actually studied some of these things I can tell you that most religions and traditions described in the game are not well represented because they have been forced into a formula to make it easy on the designers. IF shadowrun were based on a different planet with alien ideas or complete fantasy I wouldn't care.

Shadowrun has always taken a stance that it is our future with some amazing things that happen later on. They have been using real world things in it since day one. This is the whole basis for any conversations about any of the technologies in Shadowrun.

From a game design stand point I think that the formula they have reduces the variety of character types too much. This was fairly easy to fix and it takes less time for me then trying to decide on what kind of tradition to follow by going through all their lists.

Cetiah is totally correct in that there is no specialization in magic users but there is in the fighters. I consider fighters to be one character type and they have way too much stuff.

If you don't want more then hermetics with some beads then go for it. That is what shadowrun is giving you. Believing that everyone is the same and that they are just confused IS the basis of hermetisism. The elemental theories and kabalah just change with the ages. There is no reason for shamans to have that many spells or be limited to what kind of spirits they can talk to. There is no reason for everything to be based on the number five. There is no reason for each catagory to be connected to a spirit type. One spirit could be the spirit of magic and the others have nothing to do with it. There is no reason for a Pagan to have one mentor spirit.

SR3 made a good attempt to show that there was a good deal of difference between various traditions. SR4 fell down on the ball trying to unify too much.

Yeah, that 2042 entry is silly.

For money! Don't forget that bit.