I expect that rules-testing or rules-tweaking builds for Awakened characters will take Magic at 5 or 6. When building a PCs to play for the fun of roleplaying in a party, do you ever take Magic at 2, 3 or 4? or even 1? Do you imagine your PC has having Awakened with a Magic of 1 and then developed until they became a 400-point character (or whatever you're using for chargen)?

As GM, do you write NPCs with Magic of 1-4? Do you stipulate mages and adepts with Magic of 1-3 as part of the background, perhaps the majority of Awakened people but not the ones that PCs tend to interact with in the specialized world of shadowrunning?

Have you played an Awakened character with a chargen Magic of 1, and a lot of mundane skills (and good non-implanted gear), then invested most or all of your Karma into rapid development of magical potential?

I frequently use a magic of 1-4 to represent new awakened types who haven't reached their full potential. I've had some builds of PCs this way, too. Not many; like you say, most will go with 5 and a few with 6, but I've seen those with less, too.

How did that work out for you? I've toyed with that concept myself a few times, but I always worry I will pull the group down a bit. I think the developing mage(or adept, or mystic adept for that matter) would be an interesting character. I've also always wanted to play a Latent Awakened character, but I fear the GM screw because the one I play under would be quite likely to just forget to write it into his plot ever.

-Chris

There's the question of why a Magic 2 character would be on the team. Why would a shadowrun team recruit a magician who wasn't much good at magic? It would have to be a gang or urban tribe campaign.

Not necessarily.

Some magic is still better than no magic at all. A Magic 3 character isn't Harlequin, but he's still better at magic than a cybersam. Some spells are plenty effective at low Force. Even a F:3 spirit can give you an edge over a bunch of no-Magic mooks. And an adept can still be pretty formidable with only a few points worth of powers.

Plus the points you save not buying up Magic can be spent elsewhere: another attribute, another rank in a skill group, two levels of one skill, a mess of specializations, more goodies...

And you could easily turn the question around and ask why one of the exceptionally-rare high Magic shadowrunners would agree to join some team of scrubs with no reputation to speak of when he provides a hot commodity in a seller's market.

Magic 4 is pretty competent in that area. Force 4 spells are nothing to sneeze at, and if you want to overcast to 5 or 6 it's not a MASSIVE jump, albiet a bit more dangeous.

Ive seen some folks with magic 3. the Occult Investigator has it; to me Magic 3 says a character who uses it as support for his regular, known skills, rather than rely on it exclusively. (which is kind of how the Occult Investigator strikes me.)

Magic 4 and you can probably toss around spells as your main ''schtick''. Of course, even magic 6 can rely mostly on their regualr, mundane skills and only use the magic when they want/need/etc. Im sort of thinking on what i've seen in action.

I do agree, though, it seems that most people playing magically active characters dump a 5, or even a 6(its one of the attributes, Edge being the other, that people don't seem to mind maxing out, especially with an Adept.)

Ive ran 4-6 with my magicians in SR4 so far(well, ok, a shaman, a combat mage, and an adept), but playing a low magic character could be really cool too.

My mage has a magic rating of 3 right now. That is actually sufficient for many tasks, as "overcasting" at low force levels does not necessarily result in drain. He´s even a 2nd grade initiate. You need a high DP for drain tests, but that seems to be par for the course anyway. Illusions tend to work if no enemy mage is present, and that one can be identified as target for the team easily. It is a more balanced approach that does not force the GM to consider magic defenses all the time. YMMV.

I went the same route as fortune, only at a higher magic rating. Paying 9 karma (and tons of cash) allows for a large number of small but useful implants without loosing magic. Magic might be weaker, but overall ability increases. Much. My best friend plays a pretty maxxed spellcaster in the same group and is now strongly considering taking this approach next time.

I started my Elven Face adept at Magic 4. He has turned out fine. Some chrome and a couple of initiations later, major player.

Magic 2 is enough to allow summoning of Force 4 Spirits, and a reasonable chance to resist the physical drain. Force 4 spirits are useful. So a summoner focused character with Magic 2 can be useful. And then you can get counterspelling! and a few odd spells.

Tradeoff is with all those BP in magic to begin with you tend to be a rather focused character otherwise.

Mentioning the focus of a character with high magic; this is why i dont mind taking that magic 4, or even 3. I like sometimes to play a more balanced character.

In SR 3, you didn't have to worry about the Magic stat....but you had to worry about Attributes and Skills(remember, skills cost more if they went over the Attribute rating.) With Magic eating up priority A for a full mage, you had B, C, and D. If you were Hermetic, chances are B or C was cash for the damned libraries, unless you didn't care about it at the start(i skipped it a few times.) But you ended up having to decide whether or not to max your casting attributes and skills as opposed to other stuff...or balance the points.

In SR4, you now have to worry about all of that AND the damn magic attribute. Taking magic 4 instead of magic 6 saves me 35 BP, and a Willpower of 4 instead of five another 10, taking Conjuring Group 3, or even 2 rather than 4 saves another 10-20, for a big ol 55-65 BP that i can drop into Physical/Social attributes, combat and social skills for a well-balanced, but still effective all around, mage. Sure, he won't be casting force 12 manaballs or summoning alot of giant spirits but he'll be able to still hang in many areas, where a Magic 6, Willpower and Logic 6 and 5, Spellcasting and Counterspelling 5/5 Conjuring Group 4 mage probably can't fight, shoot, or talk/con his way out of a wet paper bag.

EDIT: Forgot also, even though in SR4 you don't have to pay extra for the skills that run over attributes, it can also be rough due to having to buy Perception(unless you want to default), Assensing(ditto), and Astral Combat(where in the old days you used your normal skill). It usually only takes a couple of points each; and Assensing did work a bit differently back then.

Sure, a Magic 2 character can summon Force 4 spirits. Sure, a Magic 2 character can cast unresisted spells to good effect.

So can a Magic 5 character. But the Magic 5 character can also summon and cast at 10, so, that's better.

It sure is better. But that doesn't change that a Magic 2 character is quite playable, and can specialize in other, non-magical, disciplines.

Well, my hacker in our last game is having one point of magic or two (?)
Being the geek/hacker that he is he hasn't realized he's awakened (late awakening) and no-one who knows he has an aura simply presumed that he knew about it.

He's got multitasking & Sustenance and he hasn't realized that he no longer need very much sleep and the twinkies he munches on are enough, and the soft drinks of course.

He has started wondering why he can work for hours and hours before sleep so something is starting to make him nervous.

And no, I flat out refuse giving him bonus dice for hacking skills, it just seems wrong with hacker adept - perhaps that's just me, magic SHOULDN'T work in the matrix.

Low magic often works will characters that have cyber abilities too. The Johnson who's hired the runners in the game I run has a little cyberware, a little magic, and a lot of problems. Unfortunately, his magic is restricted to a single aspect (mind control) since he's a businessman and not a mage, but it's still useful.

One advantage of Magic 5 is that you can bind Force 2 spirits without a chance that they'll attack you if you fail.... unless you push this to the point that your GM takes anti-abuse methods (eg you get onto the Most Hated list of the Association of Force 2 Spirits, and they take up a collection to hire a Force 10 Toxic spirit hitman). Until that point, even if you have Charisma 1, you can rebind and rebind that one spirit as long as you can afford the material components. (Then again, if someone Deathbolts your Force 2 spirit with 37 services, what a shame.)

I gather that drain resistance is a big factor, so an elvish shaman with maxed charisma, or a dwarven spellcaster with maxed willpower, is also something to watch for, regardless of Magic.

Just seeing how my players play, having the ability to Astrally Perceive and Project is huge to our group. Don't need anything more than a Magic 1 to be a very capable scout...

Magic 3 works for anything except combat (you can defend yourself, but killing power should come from mundane means) and mind control (repeated resistance rolls eat up your allowed successes, fast). Healing of extreme wounds is a problem too. With deliberate use of overcasting, this problems can be made to go away.

A creative player can change the world with illusions - if the GM is flexible enough, that is. Most support spells work, too. It is often more efficient to use spells like foreboding than a simple area damage spell. Net successes = willpower can easily be reached if you didn´t force the GM to have spell defense going on by throwing Force 9 mana balls.

The ability to have some implants is the key advantage here. Fortunes magic 1 takes extreme advantage of the linear scaled costs of replacing the lost point (should actually have done this from a base of magic 2, but I think thats what he actually did?!). The other players always told me that sensitive system flaw was a no-brainer for any mage, and I just needed to prove that opinion is wrong. With some attribute enhancements even a spellcaster can have useful (5-6) physical attributes.

The shaman I'm currently running started the game with a Magic of 3 and a bunch of 'ware. It's been kind of a pain in butt only being able to overcast up to 6, but at that level, drain is pretty manageable. If I were overcasting to 12, I'd probably be dead by now, so that's nice. And I still get a pretty big bang for my buck out of a force 6 Slaughter Humans spell (taken mainly to piss off the Human Supremacist in my group). I haven't gotten much of a chance to use my magic much, though, because as a City Shaman (we made the tradition up), I've got a geas that only lets me cast in the city, unless I want to be working with a Magic of 1 (I've got another geas), and we've been out of the city for all the runs I've been in on.

It really makes you appreciate individual pieces of cyberware, though. I still feel like a badass with a little under 3 essence worth. So far I've managed to hold my own in every fight I've been in, even without magic.

The problem I'm going through now is that I just got enough karma to initiate after having formed a magical group with the other shaman and the adept. So now I need to think of exactly how my shaman's going to change (from a role-playing perspective) now that he's initiated. Luckily, he's got a Group and went through an Ordeal, so I've got those angles to work with, because I have no idea how I'd play it if he had paid full price ("Hey guys, I just woke up this morning, and now I know Metamagic!"). But what I lovelovelove about shamans is that with geasa and initiation ordeals, they lend themselves more to "fluff" roleplaying than street sams. Not saying mundane characters CAN'T have depth and quirks and personalities, but now that I'm playing the new edition, it's nice that I was sort of forced to have quirks at the beginning, rather than being able to wait until I'd found my "comfort zone," by which point I'd have been playing a one-note gun monster until I got the rules down enough to concentrate on other things.

Also something to remember is that most Mages in the Sixth World has ( Magic 2-4 ), so as long as you aren't up against one of the extremely rare and pricely Magic 4+ guys then it's perfectly ok to have ( Magic 4 ). Sure, you aren't on the same level as the ( Magic 5 ) big dogs, but you are still a bad-ass when compared to most of the magical world as well.

Honestly I have never had a player take anything below a six in magic at chargen. Granted most of my players grew up on 2nd or 3rd edition SR so their views of what was done to magic in 4th ed is pretty unflattering.

*Shrugs* True, but remember that with the exception of Adepts everything got hit with the "Old Six = New Four" stick, personally I like it, but then again I don't like rolling bucketfuls of Dice either.

Of course I do use a house-rule that makes it not quite as painful for Mages to load up on implants as well so that too helps encourage smaller Magic Stats.

Yeah basically, although I also put a hard cap on Magic as well, normally it's 6 ( 9 ), but I allow an edge that boosts it to 7 ( 10 ). (The Edge can only be bought with Karma after Initiation.) The hard cap ensures that there is at least some cost to implants and the way of the burn-out is still possible.

It also serves as a reminder that metahuman Mages are still at heart flesh & blood creatures of the physical realm who dabble in a much larger, deeper, darker, and frankly scarier realm then they oftentimes allow themselves to realize, and no amount of mystical wisdom gained from multiple Grades of Initiation is ever going to change that.

But then again, in my games Immortal Elves either went to asleep like the Dragons or turned to some really dark and scary mojo in order to keep thier local Mana Field at a level to sustain themselves.