ok here is my problem , and I really hope I'm not opening some bizzar can of worms but here it is :
Astral Sight
the character undergoes a limited Awakening , aquiring a magic rating of 1 . This awakening allows her to open her perceptions to the astral plane and assense , just like a magician. she can also learn the magical skills of aura reading and enchanting . she cannot astrally project , however , nor does she gain access to any other magical abilities or skills.
so here is my question , can said character initiate , it doesn't say you can't improve you magic rating , also would this give the character the ability to pick up metamagics , I know it says you do not gain access to other magical abilities but is that just out of the gate , in other words you don't gain access to say becoming an Adept or an Aspected mage of somesort , but what would stop some Street Sam from Surging gaining this , picking up a grade of initiation and grab something like masking to keep the his new ability under wraps or to use his new sight to pierce an other initiates masking? again just wondering have a player wanting to pick this up in my game and I'm hoping its not going to become some twink tool

You can either enforce the no other magical abilities or skills outright or allow him to get metamagics. Personally I feel it is a GM call, simply because it is not very explicit on not being able to initate and gaining metmagics. However, even if you do bar the Sam from Metamagics, he should be still allowed to Initiate.

I don’t consider it that much of a problem. What metamagics are actually going to be available and how usfull to you.

Cantering would be useful if taken in the adept variation but I don’t think you could.

Divining would be as useful as to any other character (that is to say not very)

Masking would be good but mostly because you want to hide your awakened nature, penetrating masking don’t come up all that often.

Nothing else in the main book qualifies at all. Will any of those hav an adverse affect on the game balance.

Without having a magical tradition you wont be able to join an initiatory group do the karma cost will be quite significant.

I don’t see it as being unbalanced, the question is dos it fit the flavour of surge, I am thinking not but others may disagree.

Edward

Psychometry. And the main problem with Astral Sight has never been with metamagic, but with the increase in Magic that initiation brings. By initiating, a street sam could increase the Force of the Cyber Spur/Weapon of Choice Weapon Foci he decides to bond. Now, that's the problem.

Because initiation is not an ability or a skill per se, no more than increasing any other Attribute is. However, as a GM, there is nothing stopping you from ruling that it is, though that is somewhat arbitary IMO.

The increase of a stat is nothing more or less than character development. I say let them initiate, but the canon limitation should apply to metamagical skills. And by that I mean all metamagics.

Another question is how would you rule the effects of cyber and bioware on that magic rating of one?

Just going off of memory, I think several cases could be made by the rules lawyers.

1. The Munchkin gets the first five points of essence reduction for free, since he does not have the magic to loose.

2. The Munchkin’s connection to magic is a thin thing at best, as represented by only having a magic attribute of one, and so any cyber/bioware that would cause magic reduction reduces it to zero.

3. Any cyber/bioware the Munchkin has prior to surging has no affect on the magic rating since the rules says he gain it at one. Any cyber/bioware added later would have one of the above affects.

So, depending on how you rule that would make a difference on how appealing initiation is.

I would go along the lines of 1 and 3.

Basically, If the characters Essence is already below 1 then ANY addition of Cyber or Bio from that point onwards would cause the character to lose their one and only point of magic. But if they are say at an Essence of 2.3 then they can go down to 2 with no further loss.

And as to Iniating, i would allow it, but the only Meta-magic technic they could get would be Masking (which would be Very weak anyway) and any other that require nothing more then a Magic Attribute. I would allow it to increase the magic Attribute so as they can get better at masking and it would allow more Bio and Cyber as per a normal magican.

when i asked th FAQ guys about this very subject, they told me that the edge does not allow initiation, and that any essence loss subtracts from the point of magic. i'm cool with the first part, but i don't use the second part; it makes the edge less useful, since only completely uncybered mundanes could use it.

Fortunately, it is much more difficult for cybered mundanes to make SURGE rolls than it is for unmodified mundanes. Not to say that it doesn't happen, but I'll bet that if you enforced the SURGE test, the heavily cybered sammies (or riggers) would fail the roll.

I would not let the person initiate (after all, initiation means contacting an astral avatar or joining a group, and what tradition are these SURGE characters part of?), unless they make a deal with a free spirit, become a serviteur (joining a voodoo initiatory group), or something similar... it would have to be very well defined. The character is likely to be a low-cyber mundane, so I'm more likely to cut the player a break as the GM.

My interpretation -

I'd allow someone with it to initiate, but remind them that the prohibition against magical skills applies to the various skills metamagics require. This would leave them with, at best, a handful of different metamagic techniques usable(Or rather, useful) to them. I'm not sure what I'd do about tradition - Either I'd say they're a tradition all their own(And thus need to find other people who Awakened in this way) or let them pick one according to character's outlook(Some of the minor traditions, like Psionic, would certainly work in this case).

If they already had cyberware or bioware, it applies regardless of when they took the cyberware. You'll note that there are canon references to what happens to people who have cyberware before they Awaken, albeit they aren't very explicitly game mechanically - Pg 28 Rigger 3. "There are even some examples of people with Awakened potential who spoiled their Talent with rigger cyberware before they even knew they had it."

I don't think there's any reason to not let them take Geasa to offset the magic loss from cyberware if they were really gung-ho about this.

They could do a few things magically, but I honestly doubt it would break the game or be in any way unbalancing. It'd make a great little bit of flavor for a character or NPC with Talismongering and Spell Design skills.

heh. we had one character, on shadowland, who dutifully rolled for SURGE for all his characters, even though he personally didn't like SURGE. every single one of them--20+, as i recall--failed, except for his street sam. the character with the single lowest essence rating out of his entire stable got a success on the SURGE test.

well something else I'm looking at is spell pool , technically if he gets a magic rating of 1 he would get access to that which on its own isn't that bad but think about a 6 intel and your average willpower 3 street sam , grabs a level of initiation and picks up either shielding or reflecting , now he's got a spell pool of 3 (6+3+2 = 11 /3) which for reflecting wouldn't be too bad but suddenly with shielding the guy becomes invincible to magic , least to your average mage , I don't know just throwing more wood under the fire , that and I like to work all the angles before I let my players have anything =P

The Spell Pool requires the magician to know Sorcery...which isn't the case here. So no Spell Pool, no Spell Defense, no Shielding.

I'd allow initiation. I'd allow the character to learn metamagics...from a limited list. That list being (from my Metamagics page):

Centering - Only applicable toward Enchanting and Divining.
Divining
Focus Blocking
Masking - Hey! I'm normal, really!
Psychometry
Sensing
Severing

not only does it require knowing the Sorcery skill, it requires being able to use Sorcery to cast spells. adepts can learn Sorcery for use in astral combat; they don't get spell pool.

Centering and Divining are magical skills, so you couldn't have them either, could you? Well, I suppose you could take the metamagic, but you're prohibited from taking the associated skill, so it wouldn't matter anyway.

Yes, as I previously mentioned, the Centering and Divining Active Skills are listed as Magical Skills, and therefore could not be used by the SURGEling.

I would be perfectly willing to allow someone to Initiate after gaining the effects from SURGE.

Of course, I'd also be willing to allow someone to Awaken if they defered it after taking the priority or BP, or paying a buttload of karma, and probably karma pool.

Depending if the GM is being an asshole and ruling that Aura Reading is a Magical skill (although non Awakened can take it), I would say Sensing and Psychometry.

well thanks to everyone who posted to help me out with my situation , and I had guessed that the surge effect wouldn't give him some crazy gamebreaking edge , though I just wanted to see what you guys could come up with I kinda like to check all the angles with aspects of the game I'm not too familiar with so again thanks to everyone who chimed in to help me out

One Effect for surged characters with Astral perception is, that they can create wards, and to build an effective ward, they need the initiation to raise their magic attribute.

Fortune: I will check and correct as needed.

Back on the subject, I feel Centering and Divining should be allowed because they allow all magicians access to new skills...namely Centering and Divining. But that's just me.

So it is a matter of skill required for metamagic versus metamagic provides skill to you, correct?

Technically, you can't learn the Active Skills of Centering and Divining (although you can learn the associated Knowledge Skills) prior to actually acquiring the Metamagics.

Personally, I wouldn't allow the SURGEling to learn those Metamagics, as the rules specifically state that Magical Skills other than Enchanting and Aura Reading cannot be learned.

If they can use Enchanting, then they're magicians. Technically speaking, it's a matter of interpretation of the text in YotC. I reckon if you're going to allow them to take metamagics, there's no reason to preclude them from taking Centering and Divining...we're not talking game-breaking ability increases here.

Is the process of enchanting described in any of the magic books more accurately than, "all you need to do is see in the astral?"

How is enchanting not a magical skill? That feels broken to me.

This SURGE effect isnt all that grand. Cant have any cyber/bio, cant learn any new magical skills, *may* be able to initiant depending on your GMs interpretation (we play that you cant, but even with the lists posted here Id classify it as almost not worth doing)... really all it does is give you Astral Perception at the cost of a boatload of other things.

The thing that keeps this from getting out of hand is all the stuff you have to forego to get it. Namely cyber/bio. Even if you could learn a limited list of other abilites (and again, we play that you cant but ymmv), that restriction alone keeps it from being cheesey. Youd wind up with a mage that had more build points but less magic, and not at a very good exchange rate imo.

My GM allowed me to make a SURGE character with Astral Perception, and said as follows:

1. No new magical skills that the book didn't list. (this included metamagics)
2. No initiating because you are only minutely awakened not fully awakened. This is like having a taste of the magic, not the full meal.
3. I could bond certain foci. Mainly weapon foci are the only ones of real use since there aren't any ward foci. Which by the way makes a street sam uber pimp now because he doesn't have to worry about spirits near as much before because he doesn't have to carry huge weapons to defend against decent sized spirits. now a set of brass knuckles will allow a street sam to go hand-to-hand and possibly win without defaulting to willpower (which I always thought was a lame excuse to say there was always an option in the past.......)
4. I was allowed to make a ward, which is maxed out at a force 1. (anyone who says this isn't effective is in my own opinion an idiot. This allows a street sam a whole new world of possibilities for preventing snooping mages and spirits from prying. All the basic uses of a ward such as setting off alarms, keeping watchers from tracking you, preventing a spirit from getting the drop on you, limited protection from ritual sorcery, etc... is a huge advantage for a street sam.) For having a low magic rating though, this makes it tough, because power foci don't help here either.
5. Aura reading is bad ass for a street sam if he is interrogating or intimidating someone. Remember, 5 or more successes and you pretty much know their entire family tree. And let us not forget that Astral perception is one of the better sights to have in most vision modified scenarios against living targets.



As a general comment though, since your PC wants to obtain this power in game, I would also make them obtain some negative effect too that balances it out. Possibly giving the character a 3rd eye. You could make it a role playing thing where the eye opens when looking astrally or something. To gain the astral sight bonuses as listed above, he/she could get social penalties because of looks. Don't forget that anyone who knows the PC is a SURGEling looks at them as freaks with social penalties.

Wow I totally agree with the points above. Go figure.....LOL