My basic gripe with the rules as they stand is that barring the gaining of the skill at character creation (something that does not really make sense as they have yet to acquire the powers to practise) it takes between 14 and 30 additional karma to make these metamagics worth having. This is in addition to the initiation and if you have the pre-requisite linked skills.
Now I know predicting future events is a pain to a ref, I know centering can be quite powerful when it works but the power's descriptions and mechanics do a good job of curtailing any game breaking problems before having to learn an entirely new skill.
At low to mid levels you could initiate again for this amount of karma!

I would like to make these worth having as metamagics that work right out of the box.
So my first question is does the average dumpshocker agree with this?
My second is how to reform the rules?

Would having the linked skill (latin, singing, dancing etc), capped by willpower for the metamagic's use, replace the divining and centering skill be a good idea? Or not?

OK lets hear your take.

Personally, I'm against both metamagics you want to de-nerf.

I dislike "future-predicty" stuff in SR, because it just rubs me as too fantasy.

I dislike centering because it's something that every player that has ever taken it in my games has tried to abuse it by linking it to skills they already have and that goes against my interpretation of the metamagic, rather than taking a skill such as those describe in the book. It's way open to munching, and when I put the kaibash on some ridiculous attempt at twinkage, it turns into an argument that turns into tension at my table.

Am sorry to hear the level of twinkage you have suffered. I am lucky in that my players don't power game. On the rare occassion one has been tempted they knew it wasn't going to get passed me and graciously let it slide.

Divining is a two edged sword, can be great and atmosphereic for fore shadowing. Can be a bitch when asked to come up with sometyhing on the fly. But I think the folk lore background of SR makes it true to type.
Then of course you have the Seers Guild.

Centreing is a power gamers choice, pure and simple. Hence it's description constraints.
I just believe the developers ran to far with the ball here and ended up NERFing an otherwise balanced power. Something that could add atmosphere by re enforcing a tradition style.

IMO, centering needs to be nerfed badly, so I can't really understand the POV of powering it up. I reject the idea that any "denerfing" can happen, as that would require it to be already nerfed, which it painfully isn't.

~J

I always figured Divination was useless for a PC magician. The GM is only going to give a level of knowledge they feel like giving anyway, as they are allowed in the RAW. Divination is a metamagic for NPCs, either to advance the plot or give some foreshadowing.

Centering is powerful and the high costs balance it out nicely.

That's pretty nifty, cetiah. I probably still wouldn't use it for Divination, personally, but overall it's a cool abstraction. I can definitely see using this when you want a "faster" game, and especially when you don't have a lot of time to prep the week's run, etc.

(Not saying it can't be an in depth game if you use it, merely pointing out added bennies.)

I agree centering is powerful but you had to initiate to get it.
Is it any more powerful than reflecting or absorbtion in a game context? Both of these means the opposition is going to be resisting with less dice or resisting more dice. In each case there is not an additional karma cost associated with the metamagic.
Breaking divining and Centering away from one another, as centering obviously has a case for an additional skill, why NERF divining even more than the vague high success table for information already has?
I do not understand the logic of taxing an already karma hungry character.

Even centering can only really give one to two extra successes bar karma intervention, useful but not game breaking. The appropriate Knowledge skill could easily replace the Centering skill with little to no loss of game balance. Is it really that much better than say a smart link 2 for statistical advantage?

I don't mean to play devil's advocate here just raising whether these powers are really more powerful than something like invoking or channeling or even as useful as masking?

I usually handle divination as an inexact science. That is to say, it could predict the future, but only a possible future. That, or the results would be in general terms.

For example: if the character asked if they would get hurt on a run, the answer could be yes. Now, just how badly hurt is open to interpretation. Maybe it means they will nearly get killed or maybe they'll just bang their funny bone. For that matter, the hurt may be psychologial in that a fellow runner is hurt or dies, or they learn something on the run that hurts them.

Another example: if the runner asked if a certain meeting would be dangerous, the answer could also be yes, which tells them very little. It could, however, result in them changing their plans or taking more precautions. Does that make the meeting safer or are they playing in to the prediction of a bad outcome?

This way, the results are very unclear. The same would apply to very specific questions. If they ask if they will find a particular item at a particular place, they might get a yes. That says nothing about the defenses of the place or if they are walking into a trap or even if they will be able to keep it. For that matter, they might only find information leading to the real location of the item and not the item itself.

What I have done is to use divination to spook characters that have it. One might see fragments of a scene in a dream or in a vision that forces itself on the character. What exactly that scene or place is is open to interpretation. Maybe it has nothing to do with the danger at all, but it merely a way of putting the character on their toes and making them paranoid. I've also used this to give very general clues but not every mission or more than once, maybe twice on a given topic.

An example was a character whose team would be ambushed later in the mission. His first vision was of a specific place, though not very clear and with no emtional context to it. The team encountered that place and were wary, but nothing happened. Later, a other little vision happened about an event, kind of like deja vous, but regarding a not important event. By the time the ambush came around, they were alert enough to survive what would have killed them otherwise. The balance to this was drain on the mage that left him very tired after the fight.

There are 2 ways to gauge the success of the Divination, just like everything else in SR3.

1) The TN, the more specific the question, the higher the TN.

2) The more successes at that TN, the better the actual effect.

So if someone were to roll at TN 20 and make 6 successes, I'd not begrudge him having the chip truth of the future.

The higher the TN, the more specific the answer. The more successes, the more accurate/unambiguous the answer. Half the problem is knowing what to ask and the other half is having the dice to get those successes.

So to take Thane's example: A low TN vague question like "will I get wounded?" with lots of successes, at best will get an answer like "Duh... Hell, yes." Or a high TN question like "will the J wear his lucky red underwear to the meet with us tomorrow?" but has 1 success may see the Johnson wearing his lucky red undies on his head!

But a specific question with high TN but also with many successes, will get a clear picture of the future. The problem is when a Diviner has the capability to ask specific questions and get many successes. But that problem is not limited to Divining only.

The problem is there is questions the GM will not know. "Will I get hurt?" is difficult, because it's not the gm's choice, it's the outcome of a dice roll. This also makes it broken to PC exploit, because the players will know what kind of questions the GM can answer, such as "is this a treacherous Johnson?". But then again, that kind of info can also be ascertained from a succesful Matrix search, so why deny the awakened their own vague, confusing, slice of the pie?

Centering is awesome, and I don't think we need to get into a NERF/De-NERFing debate about it. It also doesn't necessarily have to be an active skill, because it can be speaking a certain "arcane language". I bent this a little for a crazy Ork fenrir shaman, and had his totem speak through him in incomprehensible wolf tongue/growling to center. The skill did not represent him being able to speak to wolves, but how effective the channeling is.

Also, metamagic is not the only or even the greatest advantage of initiation, you also get that extra magic point and astral pool, and access to the Metaplanes, so you're not JUST spending karma for Centering, but for the whole intitiation. The centering skill is worth it.

There is one basic limitation to divination and it can be summed up quite nicely with a single sentence.

"If I could see that then I'd be in my giant mansion eating caviar and wiping my hoop with gold-leaf toilet paper instead of sitting in this dung-hole reading entrails for forty-five nuyen a pop."

Divination can't give you reliable future financial information. If it could then all diviners would be rich.

Divining results, when accurate, should be vague and plot-centric.

Simple way to avoid problems with Divination - rule that it can't predict the future. Does that make it broken? Not at all! It can be used to make good guesses at the future by asking about what is current. You can't ask will the Johnson betray me. You can ask is he intending to. You can't ask will I get hurt. You can ask if the enemy knows you're coming / is stronger than you / has powerful magic.

If a player in my game (not that anyone has ever wanted Divination) asks am I going to be attacked, they may be told there is an enemy seeking for them. If they get more successes, then they may get "there is an enemy near to you," or even "I see a terrible serpent that means you harm... with a german accent." But they don't get - you will be attacked tonight, because then they'll spend the entire night at home surrounded by spirits with an LMG pointed at the door.

Works for me and avoids questions that a GM cannot answer.

I find divination a useful but dangerous tool. Both good for atmosphere and foreshadowing, perhapes helping but can be a bitch if unprepared. So to be trite I prepare. Used well it really high lights the mystism of the character that they spy a sliver of what is to come. Just don't make it too big a slice.

However divination seems hated/liked by equal turns and so does wether it should have a skill or not.

Maybe the gods in charge of divination are nasty and mean and say things which are techincally correct but which are calculated to be misinterpreted in deleterious ways.

Or else they are wishy washy and say things that can be interpreted in many ways, i.e. "a wooden wall will stop the persians".

If the PC doesn't get a helpful roll they're just pessimistic. "Watch out for a bus crossing the street on the way to the meet."

"Save the last bullet" thats got to be a favourite.

Woah. Your players go to all the trouble of getting the karma up, initiating, and choosing a metamagic. They read the description and think it could be helpful, so they choose divination.

Then you GM's (you know who you are) go "hold on! I don't like this" and use the ability completely as a tool to kill, maim, arrest and generally freak the hell out of the player.

Essentially your players probably just bought a 20 good karma flaw.

The problem with Metatechniques in general is that you're powering up an already powerful thing, magic. As most people know, I'm a Quickening kinda guy. I think it's the coolest/best technique around.

How to 'fix' the overpower of the techniques.....

Divination: This is the easiest fix... FLASHES of insight. Don't show scenes, show a security guard with a hole in his head, a dragon's head with fire coming out, a team member resting in peace, and at least 1 'image' that's a good clue.

This 'fix' lets you do all sorts of stuff while not screwing the players. Security Guard might be a clue that you have to kill someone, or someone else beat you there and killed him, either way, you're getting the blame somehow. The dragon's head could be a 'gargoyle' apparature on a building that goes up in flames or has an explosion. The resting in peace could be death, hospitlization or succesfull aftermath sleeping it off. But the key is, always provide at least 1 invaluable clue in the jumble so that they're not wasting that karma. Such as an obviously insect spirit hiding behind a wall (uh oh, we're fighting insect spirits...)

Centering is easy to fix as well. We force people to use a sensable Active skill only. Too easy to have a wasted knowledge skill be used for centering. I had to 'master' Tai Chi when I opted to due meditation once. The GM wisely refused to let me Meditation knowledge be useful.