Full Version: Shadow Census
| QUOTE (kzt) |
| And that's why the crime problem in England is out of control. |
I just sincerely hope you're posting from somewhere like Norway and not the USA. Crime in the UK can be pretty grim, but it's not in the same league as a lot of places.| QUOTE (kzt) |
| What I mean is that that they ignore the law in their daily operation, but they don't ignore the police. They try to understand how the cops work and act. Who can be paid off and who can't, and who can be scared off and who can't. Who they can use to get info on what the cops are doing, and how they can plant agents in the police. They use this to avoid being caught. If caught they will hire people who can use the law to let them walk or people who can apply pressure to the people who can let them walk. |
And that fits a definition of contempt pretty well and a definition of respect pretty badly. Exploiting the police forces' weaknesses, legal loopholes, blackmail, coercion and intimidation of witnesses, lawyers and even police officers themselves. Most people would be afraid to try these things. They have a healthy respect for the Powers That Be (though not always a regard for them). This respect is lacking in the organised criminals who do the things you mention.
| QUOTE (kzt) |
People who have total contempt for the cops may make a living from crime, but they will not be "professional" criminals. |
I do not think contempt and respect mean what you think they mean. You seem to be taking contempt to mean stupid and respect to mean ruthless exploitation.
Looking it up I think we are both wrong as [to] the word usage. But I understand where you are coming from.
I think you can have contempt for someone's motivation and still respect their capabilities. I mean, they're antonyms, but you're dealing with different aspects of the relationship. You may think that enforcing the law is a foolish thing to do (why mess up good business?) but that's not the same thing as thinking law-enforcement are fools.
My numbers are based around magicians being more rare than non-magicians. The community of freelancers may have 15,000 out of 500,000 SINless to pull magicians from, but it has 485,000 SINless non-magicians to pull from. (I'm not really using those numbers myself though. I usually estimate it as 5000 magicians out of 500,000 people.) With a little training, luck and gear, almost anybody can be a hacker, sammie or rigger; esp an inferior one, that takes relatively little effort. But if you're not magical to begin with, you're never going to be a magician. Even so, the number of magicians in the freelance community is pretty high, they're roughly equal to the number of hackers or riggers. (Adepts were left off my original list, but added in with full magicians they comprise 20% of the shadow community.)
It might cost 30k to be a sub-standard sammie (or hell, let's just say "Average"), but its not like a person has to scrape together that much cash, take it down to Sammies'R'Us and get the basic package. That's just the cost in character creation; in the character's background he might have gotten where he is without ever actually touching a single nuyen.
You could switch it around so that each area of specialization comprised 25% of the total pop, so that sams, riggers, hackers and magicians were all pretty much in equal number. I prefer to keep magicians slightly more rare and sammies more common, but its really a question of personal preference.
My numbers are based around magicians being more rare than non-magicians. The community of freelancers may have 15,000 out of 500,000 SINless to pull magicians from, but it has 485,000 SINless non-magicians to pull from. (I'm not really using those numbers myself though. I usually estimate it as 5000 magicians out of 500,000 people.) With a little training, luck and gear, almost anybody can be a hacker, sammie or rigger; esp an inferior one, that takes relatively little effort. But if you're not magical to begin with, you're never going to be a magician. Even so, the number of magicians in the freelance community is pretty high, they're roughly equal to the number of hackers or riggers. (Adepts were left off my original list, but added in with full magicians they comprise 20% of the shadow community.)
It might cost 30k to be a sub-standard sammie (or hell, let's just say "Average"), but its not like a person has to scrape together that much cash, take it down to Sammies'R'Us and get the basic package. That's just the cost in character creation; in the character's background he might have gotten where he is without ever actually touching a single nuyen.
You could switch it around so that each area of specialization comprised 25% of the total pop, so that sams, riggers, hackers and magicians were all pretty much in equal number. I prefer to keep magicians slightly more rare and sammies more common, but its really a question of personal preference.
The critical thing the mage has is that they don't need any money to become good. An instructor, a classroom and an empty field is all they need. They don't need the Matrix 24x7, they don't need illegal weapons, they don't even need power.
They don't need a trained surgeon using high-tech sterile gear to install complex and expensive hardware into their brain or replacing nerves. Even wired 1 is 11,000
and you can't be more than marginally effective as a sammie without at least that second IP. That's two years of squatter lifestyle, or 6 months of low.
They don't need huge amounts of expensive training ammo. I've fired about 5000-7000 rounds in training courses to reach an moderate level of competency with a pistol. That's 10-14,000 worth of ammo. Again, that's over two years of squatter or 6 months of low lifestyle.
They don't need high performance cars, bikes, or (god help us) helicopters or expensive software/comlinks that require continual updating and need reliable high bandwidth connections to the Matrix.
It's a huge advantage. (Which I didn't think of until Frank pointed it out, but he's right.)
They don't need a trained surgeon using high-tech sterile gear to install complex and expensive hardware into their brain or replacing nerves. Even wired 1 is 11,000
and you can't be more than marginally effective as a sammie without at least that second IP. That's two years of squatter lifestyle, or 6 months of low.They don't need huge amounts of expensive training ammo. I've fired about 5000-7000 rounds in training courses to reach an moderate level of competency with a pistol. That's 10-14,000
worth of ammo. Again, that's over two years of squatter or 6 months of low lifestyle.They don't need high performance cars, bikes, or (god help us) helicopters or expensive software/comlinks that require continual updating and need reliable high bandwidth connections to the Matrix.
It's a huge advantage. (Which I didn't think of until Frank pointed it out, but he's right.)
They don't need any of that stuff, but if they're not magically active to begin with, it doesn't matter how much stuff they don't need (so to speak). My feeling is that the number of people who have access to the cyberware and tech is larger than the number of people who are inherently magical. If the effort is similar but more people have access to a particular route, there will be more that go that route.
A samurai doesn't need money to be good. He needs cyberware, guns and training. These things cost money, but that doesn't mean the sammie has to pay that money to someone (except in character creation). As an example, I've heard that it costs roughly 100k to put one recruit through Marine boot camp; but the people who go to Marine boot camp don't have to pay 100k. (In fact, they're actually drawing salary while they're there. They're actually making money while expending hundreds of dollars worth of ammo.)
I would imagine that most shadowrunners go a similar route (not Parris Island MCRD necessarily) and pick up their skills and tech OTJ. Relatively few think, "I want to be a samurai" and then apply for a small-business loan to cover their start-up costs. (I mean, I think that would be a neat background, but not a common one.)
Anyway, this is all going the long way round to explain why I like and use my numbers. (An equally good explanation might be, "because I made them up".) If you like different numbers, you can switch them around. I don't think we're going to hit a specific percentage that's going to work for everyone, since its a matter of preference.
A samurai doesn't need money to be good. He needs cyberware, guns and training. These things cost money, but that doesn't mean the sammie has to pay that money to someone (except in character creation). As an example, I've heard that it costs roughly 100k to put one recruit through Marine boot camp; but the people who go to Marine boot camp don't have to pay 100k. (In fact, they're actually drawing salary while they're there. They're actually making money while expending hundreds of dollars worth of ammo.)
I would imagine that most shadowrunners go a similar route (not Parris Island MCRD necessarily) and pick up their skills and tech OTJ. Relatively few think, "I want to be a samurai" and then apply for a small-business loan to cover their start-up costs. (I mean, I think that would be a neat background, but not a common one.)
Anyway, this is all going the long way round to explain why I like and use my numbers. (An equally good explanation might be, "because I made them up".) If you like different numbers, you can switch them around. I don't think we're going to hit a specific percentage that's going to work for everyone, since its a matter of preference.
But there are more magicians than armed forces personnel. By a huge margin. And while every single member of every single armed force is in some tied to an agency, magicians are just born and can do anything they want.
In 2007, the United States has the third largest and most technically advanced army in the world. It is also third largest in population at about 300 million. Its armed forces of 1.3 million constitutes about 0.43% of the populace. Almost half as many as are magicians who can astrally project. Compare to China, which has the world's largest armed force at 2.8 million, but has a population of 1.3 billion, which means that as a percentage they only have 0.21% under arms.
World total is almost 20 million, out of a population that is over 6 billion. That's less than a third of a percent. And that's armed forces personnel, it includes people whose job description doesn't even include flipping out and killing people. Statistics pulled from Here rather than my ass this time.
So seriously, magicians are substantially more common than military personnel. Also, they have longer careers because if a magician happens to be an old man, hell if a magician happens to be twelve that doesn't disqualify him or her from the team. If some punk kid happens to be twelve years old, but she can summon a Force 5 Earth Spirit, she is on the team. Contrarywise, even if a twelve year old kid can shoot straight, hell especially if a twelve year old kid can shoot straight, I don't want him on the team.
-Frank
In 2007, the United States has the third largest and most technically advanced army in the world. It is also third largest in population at about 300 million. Its armed forces of 1.3 million constitutes about 0.43% of the populace. Almost half as many as are magicians who can astrally project. Compare to China, which has the world's largest armed force at 2.8 million, but has a population of 1.3 billion, which means that as a percentage they only have 0.21% under arms.
World total is almost 20 million, out of a population that is over 6 billion. That's less than a third of a percent. And that's armed forces personnel, it includes people whose job description doesn't even include flipping out and killing people. Statistics pulled from Here rather than my ass this time.
So seriously, magicians are substantially more common than military personnel. Also, they have longer careers because if a magician happens to be an old man, hell if a magician happens to be twelve that doesn't disqualify him or her from the team. If some punk kid happens to be twelve years old, but she can summon a Force 5 Earth Spirit, she is on the team. Contrarywise, even if a twelve year old kid can shoot straight, hell especially if a twelve year old kid can shoot straight, I don't want him on the team.
-Frank
I'm not saying there aren't that many magicians in the world, I just think there aren't that many working as freelance criminals. The number of magicians hovers around 1% (whereas the number of hovering magicians is somewhat lower), but the numbers of shadowrunners in the population is around .01%. So if the population of North America is 300 million, there would be 3 million mages, but only 30,000 shadowrunners. Statistically, the number of magicans who are shadowrunners would be 300 (1% of the 30,000), but because its an activity they are sought out and suited for, I went with a figure 20 times higher than that. Of the 30,000 shadowrunners in North America, roughly 6,000 of those will be mages. To look at my numbers another way, every shadowrun team has 1 Mage, 1 Hacker, 1 Rigger, and 2 Sams (in much the same way every family has 2.5 kids).
Also, keep in mind that for my numbers (based on role rather than strict adherence to mechanics), Physical Adepts are lumped in with sammies. You could change the name of the group to Physical Combat Specialists, since its about the job they do rather than how they do it. So a certain percentage of Sams are magically active, even if I don't lump them in with Magic Users. That'd bring the percentage of magically active shadowrunners up to around 30% (if one quarter of the physical combat specialists are in fact physical adepts). Around 1/3rd of shadowrunners are magically active, as opposed to the 1/100th of the general population. I don't really see how much higher you can raise that percentage without flooding the market, effectively making magically active runners more common than the non-magically active.
Also, keep in mind that for my numbers (based on role rather than strict adherence to mechanics), Physical Adepts are lumped in with sammies. You could change the name of the group to Physical Combat Specialists, since its about the job they do rather than how they do it. So a certain percentage of Sams are magically active, even if I don't lump them in with Magic Users. That'd bring the percentage of magically active shadowrunners up to around 30% (if one quarter of the physical combat specialists are in fact physical adepts). Around 1/3rd of shadowrunners are magically active, as opposed to the 1/100th of the general population. I don't really see how much higher you can raise that percentage without flooding the market, effectively making magically active runners more common than the non-magically active.
You are doing statistics wrong.
Remember that people don't become shadowrunners and then either develope magical talent or not. The order is that first people are born, then people train, and only then do people get jobs.
So the question is not "how many shadowrunners developed magic?" The question is "How many people with the skillset to become a Shadowrunner actually became one?" By demonstrating that the pool of mages is (by your calculus) hundreds of times the size of the Shadowrunner pool means that there are enough available that you could have every shadowrunner be a magician and not seriously deplete the demographic.
The skill set to become a successful Shadowrunner is very rare. But more of the people who have it are magicians than aren't. To say that magicians are less than half the shadowrunner population you are already positing that Magicians are predisposed to avoid criminal lines of work. And honestly from what we've seen of magician psychology I am unconvinced that is true.
You can't just wave your hands and say that because a majority of the total population is mundane that a majority of the shadowrunners will be mundane as well. Because a majority of the population also aren't accomplished hackers or trained killers. You have to look at the specific subset of people who have one of the needed skilll sets to be a shadowrunner as your whole demographic. So maybe that's all the military personnel (unlikely, but it's one third of one percent) and maybe it's all the professional teamsters (fat chance, but it's 0.46%), and it is most definitely every single Magician (1.0%).
So seriously you're saying that a magician with the skills to pay the bills is less than one tenth as likely to be a criminal or freelancer who doesn't wear a white shirt and go to work like The Man wants him to because that's not how he rolls than is a rigger? Because that's what the statistics you are throwing around actually say.
-Frank
Remember that people don't become shadowrunners and then either develope magical talent or not. The order is that first people are born, then people train, and only then do people get jobs.
So the question is not "how many shadowrunners developed magic?" The question is "How many people with the skillset to become a Shadowrunner actually became one?" By demonstrating that the pool of mages is (by your calculus) hundreds of times the size of the Shadowrunner pool means that there are enough available that you could have every shadowrunner be a magician and not seriously deplete the demographic.
The skill set to become a successful Shadowrunner is very rare. But more of the people who have it are magicians than aren't. To say that magicians are less than half the shadowrunner population you are already positing that Magicians are predisposed to avoid criminal lines of work. And honestly from what we've seen of magician psychology I am unconvinced that is true.
You can't just wave your hands and say that because a majority of the total population is mundane that a majority of the shadowrunners will be mundane as well. Because a majority of the population also aren't accomplished hackers or trained killers. You have to look at the specific subset of people who have one of the needed skilll sets to be a shadowrunner as your whole demographic. So maybe that's all the military personnel (unlikely, but it's one third of one percent) and maybe it's all the professional teamsters (fat chance, but it's 0.46%), and it is most definitely every single Magician (1.0%).
So seriously you're saying that a magician with the skills to pay the bills is less than one tenth as likely to be a criminal or freelancer who doesn't wear a white shirt and go to work like The Man wants him to because that's not how he rolls than is a rigger? Because that's what the statistics you are throwing around actually say.
-Frank
I wonder if we can use the statistics on current military personell quotas for comparison with mages.
Anyone who ever was in the military has had a useful runner skillset developed for free. What percentage of current americans does serve for a term? Countries with a drafted army come to mind, one switzerman one rifle as an extreme. Besides that I think the number of corporate military and security forces in an environment that almost casually accepts the existance of runners multiplies the population-currently-in-armed-forces (all) severely.
Mind you, I´m not speaking against Franks argument for more magicians in the shadows, I´m just saying that the quota of magicians in the runner population would be lower. And the overall runner count correspondingly higher, because many people would like to do runs that pay several months of lifestyle in a few days.
Anyone who ever was in the military has had a useful runner skillset developed for free. What percentage of current americans does serve for a term? Countries with a drafted army come to mind, one switzerman one rifle as an extreme. Besides that I think the number of corporate military and security forces in an environment that almost casually accepts the existance of runners multiplies the population-currently-in-armed-forces (all) severely.
Mind you, I´m not speaking against Franks argument for more magicians in the shadows, I´m just saying that the quota of magicians in the runner population would be lower. And the overall runner count correspondingly higher, because many people would like to do runs that pay several months of lifestyle in a few days.
I highly disagree that everyone who did military service qualifies for shadowrunning. The training given to most grunts around the world is mostly just looking like training, but is more like wasting time while waving with a gun.
What it might give is confidence, but since that isn't really backed up with skill, it is probably going to kill you on the street.
What it might give is confidence, but since that isn't really backed up with skill, it is probably going to kill you on the street.
One thing to remember when factoring in shooting range costs, you can always just load up a firing range sim on your commlink to practice for free. If you have Cold-SIM you would be able to feel the kick, weight and other effects just like you would feel at the range, sans the cost of bullets and fire range fees.
So that 14000 nuyen cost is moot.
So that 14000 nuyen cost is moot.
| QUOTE (FrankTrollman @ Dec 30 2007, 01:06 PM) |
| You are doing statistics wrong. Remember that people don't become shadowrunners and then either develope magical talent or not. The order is that first people are born, then people train, and only then do people get jobs. |
Funny. You just rephrased one of my arguments from earlier to exactly the opposite conclusion.
Your contention is that people with the skills to become Shadowrunners are more likely to become Shadowrunners. Actually, if there's a statistical flaw, it's in this, not in Mercer's post.
My point earlier is that the only people who become Shadowrunners are those driven to through unusual circumstances. Anyone talented enough to be even an average Shadowrunner should be able to find better paying, more reliable, safer work elsewhere. That's true of Samurai, it's true of hackers and it's true of magicians. At this point, let us say that skills are irrelevant, aren't they? (though I'll come back to this). If you're out for revenge against Renraku because they killed your sister, that's true regardless of your skillset. Let us say that X% of people have reason to be a Shadowrunner. Let's say X = 0.02%. Shadowrunning is a pretty extreme career, after all.
Now again, your contention is that if you have the skills to become a Shadowrunner, you're more likely to become one. This is reasonable enough. Let us say that Y% of people have the skills to become a Shadowrunner. You're saying that if you're a magician, you auto-qualify, whereas most mundane people do not. Therefore the Y% break down to have a high proportion of magically active individuals. significantly higher than the proportion of magically active people in the general population.
However, there is a sneaky flaw that you have overlooked which is that Y is only applied to the set of X, not of the general population. I can say this because it is reasonable to dismiss people's skills leading them into Shadowrunning independently of necessity. You may cast spells for a living, but almost no-one is going to willingly choose to do that whilst being shot at for less pay instead of in a nice office somewhere with a fast car and a retirement plan. X is going to strike across the general population and the proportion of mages in X will be the same as the general population (actually less, though I'll come back to that). Only if the proportion of mages that made up Y were overwhelmingly higher than the proportion of non-mages would your conclusion about many mages hold up, but I don't think that can be supported. This is all a little abstract, so I'll plug in some numbers to show what I mean.
Let us say that 1 in a 100 people are awakened. This is the figure we are given in Street Magic (pg 8.) and are told that it encompasses everyone from minor league adepts to those with the mojo to frighten dragons. Let us take half of these to be actual mages, so we've got 1 in 200 people is a magician of some degree of power.
Now the burning need to be a Shadowrunner might strike 1 in 5,000 people. This is to line up with Mercer's figures in the beginning. So in a city of 5,000,000,000 (again based on Mercer's first post population for Seattle), you'll get 1,000 wannabe Shadowrunners. Now applying our number for Y (the percentage of the population that are mages), we find that this gives us 5 mages (1000/200) who we have decided automatically qualify to be a Shadowrunner no questions asked. That's going to leave us 995 non-magician wannabe Shadowrunners. Even if we say that only 1 in 10 of those wannabes actually gets to be a Shadowrunner, then that still leaves ninety-nine people and a severed torso to make up the numbers. And given that we're asking for a few combat and stealth skills and the ability to stump up 30,000¥ to qualify as basic muscle, I think 1 in 10 is actually conservative.
The factor of mages being more qualified to be Shadowrunners by virtue of their rarity and ability is dwarfed by the factor of their being such a small portion of the population. Your mistake is in thinking there are lots of people queuing up to become Shadowrunners and that supply outstrips demand. In the opening post, Mercer said that he had artificially inflated the number of mages to account for their increased aptitude for Shadow work - essentially your point. It's already in there and accounted for. Mages are a rarity in the Shadows.
Finally, I said I would come back to something and that is the issue of the need to become a Shadowrunner striking the population at random, our figure for X. I assumed that it was random, but in practice, I think it would strike magicians less. The simple fact is that they do have Lofwyr's Golden Ticket to get out of bad circumstance. I think they are less likely to find themselves driven to Shadowrunning to eke out their existence than mundanes, so that's another factor against them. I've been vaguely aware of this issue in my own campaign, though I hadn't really formulated it conciously until Mercer began this thread. My own way of artificially bumping up the number of magicians in the Shadows (though their still a minority), is to associate magical ability with a certain lack of stability. Not all the time of course... but if you were the child growing up on your block who was talked to by spirits that only you could see or hear... well I think it might drive you a little crazy, yes?
If I wanted to do wetwork today, all I'd really need is the contacts. It doesn't take a particularly large amount of skill to walk up to someone and shoot him in the face at point plank range unless that person has a rather large amount of security. Even when obtaining smuggling or obtaining a firearm is improbable, there are other possibilities. Anything from an ice-pick to a rear naked choke will do. Then there might be the costs associated with an amburdly large amount of plastic wrap, a hack saw, and a box is disposable garbage bags. The real difficulty is finding someone who will pay to have someone killed who isn't an undercover cop or a lunatic.
I wouldn't be able to assassinate the president of anything with any reliability, of course, but I'd be able to take out small fries without difficulty.
The same is true in Shadowrun. There are little leagues and there are the big leagues. Anti-social people with few skills and desperate people with few skills can both start out in the little leagues. They can be apprentice legbreakers in the mafia and do on the job training under the tutelage of a master legbreaker or the can be gangers
I wouldn't be able to assassinate the president of anything with any reliability, of course, but I'd be able to take out small fries without difficulty.
The same is true in Shadowrun. There are little leagues and there are the big leagues. Anti-social people with few skills and desperate people with few skills can both start out in the little leagues. They can be apprentice legbreakers in the mafia and do on the job training under the tutelage of a master legbreaker or the can be gangers
There is also the minor issue, that, contrary to fiction, killing people doesn't pay well. How much does a mafia guy get for a hit? Nothing, it's part of his job. He might get something extra, but he gets "asked" to do this "favor". It's part of the price for running the numbers operation or whatever criminal activity he runs that allows him to live the good life. If they are lucky they will get their expenses reimbursed.
For the street gangs it's typically a couple hundred bucks.
If someone is offering you big bucks it's almost certainly a guy with a wire and 10 of his best friends 15 seconds away.
There were exceptions, like the Texas banks that had a no questions asked policy on the reward for robbers at the early part of the 20th century, but they stopped that when it was pointed out that paying big bucks for the murder of a random drifter who hadn't ever robbed a bank wasn't a very effective way to reduce the number of robbers. And yes, that was what was happening.
For the street gangs it's typically a couple hundred bucks.
If someone is offering you big bucks it's almost certainly a guy with a wire and 10 of his best friends 15 seconds away.
There were exceptions, like the Texas banks that had a no questions asked policy on the reward for robbers at the early part of the 20th century, but they stopped that when it was pointed out that paying big bucks for the murder of a random drifter who hadn't ever robbed a bank wasn't a very effective way to reduce the number of robbers. And yes, that was what was happening.
Need isn't why people go into crime. Extraordinarily few people get arrested for stealing food to feed themselves, etc. Some go into crime because it looks like a way to get money without working for it. For many it's what the successful people in their 'Hood do. For others it is the whole work is boring, crime is exciting part. You get to hang around with people who have big bucks and throw fun parties, etc.
The fact that there are certain penalties associated with this doesn't matter, because at the age they do this, they think they are immortal and know everything and are smarter than the cops.
The example of this group of idiots is what you get with people who are not "trapped into a life of crime" but wanted to get rich without effort and think they are geniuses.
So I can certainly think that a lot of people who have magical talent but nobody has offered them a golden stairway would be willing to go into a seemingly glamorous criminal life and would be sought out at a much higher rate than people who "played a lot Halo 23 and are really good shots - see my scores!".
The fact that there are certain penalties associated with this doesn't matter, because at the age they do this, they think they are immortal and know everything and are smarter than the cops.
The example of this group of idiots is what you get with people who are not "trapped into a life of crime" but wanted to get rich without effort and think they are geniuses.
So I can certainly think that a lot of people who have magical talent but nobody has offered them a golden stairway would be willing to go into a seemingly glamorous criminal life and would be sought out at a much higher rate than people who "played a lot Halo 23 and are really good shots - see my scores!".
| QUOTE (Zak) |
| I highly disagree that everyone who did military service qualifies for shadowrunning. |
I brought up military service not as an example of a way people become runners, but as a way someone can get 100k worth of training without having to write a check for a 100k. My samurai character may have spent 100k in character creation, but that doesn't mean he ever earned that much money and paid it to someone else to make him a samurai. It just means he has 100k worth of stuff in him, which is largely a game balance concern.
For example, my sammie who spent 300k on cyberware in character creation could be a ganger who cobbled his tech together doing favors for organleggers, and has never touched a certified credstick in his life. My mage may have gotten his doctorate in magical theory from Harvard at an average cost of 80k per year for 8 years. But that doesn't change character creation costs.
As for the ratios, I just don't see the majority of Shadowrunners being magically active. I see it capping out at about 30%, and thats providing plenty of mages. Making most shadowrunners magically active seems like a radical departure from the fluff. Part of what makes mages so sought after is their rarity. The reason you take the 12 year old who can conjure a Force 5 spirit is partly because Force 5 spirits are cool, but also because not that many people can do that. If there were, you wouldn't have to settle for a mage that had to be home by 8 on a school night.
The player character rations are about 1/3 to 1/2 mages and about 1/2 metahumans. And for Shadowrunners, that's about right.
-Frank
-Frank
This is an interesting thread, hence why I'm inflicting necromancy on DS.
One factor that hasn't been addressed is how magicians get the training they need to sling spells and summon spirits. This is at least as hard to get hold of as weapons training, probably moreso since the training has to match the tradition and probably won't be widely available as softs.
The equivalent to a magic 2 magician with spellcasting 2 could easily be considered a mook with artificial muscles, a handblade or spur, and a cram habit. Not expensive or highly trained, he's still pretty dangerous to Joe Public, and in my book would qualify as a street sam.
As far as the game ratio of magic users conflicting with the fluff, that's why I restrict the number of magically active PCs I'm prepared to accept in my group. Of course, that comes down to my personal preference, but I don't think the fact that lots of people want to play spell slingers is really justification for saying that magic users should make up a larger proportion of runners.
One factor that hasn't been addressed is how magicians get the training they need to sling spells and summon spirits. This is at least as hard to get hold of as weapons training, probably moreso since the training has to match the tradition and probably won't be widely available as softs.
The equivalent to a magic 2 magician with spellcasting 2 could easily be considered a mook with artificial muscles, a handblade or spur, and a cram habit. Not expensive or highly trained, he's still pretty dangerous to Joe Public, and in my book would qualify as a street sam.
As far as the game ratio of magic users conflicting with the fluff, that's why I restrict the number of magically active PCs I'm prepared to accept in my group. Of course, that comes down to my personal preference, but I don't think the fact that lots of people want to play spell slingers is really justification for saying that magic users should make up a larger proportion of runners.
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