Okay, laptop died and had to be resurrected...but hey, now everyone has read the first chapter of Street Magic, right? Ready and willing to talk about it?

I know it's a rarity, but let's start by looking at the JackPoint login page. Some poor bastards went to a lot of trouble to put this together, so it's worth a gander. Savvy readers might realize that some of the news items foreshadow upcoming plot points-like the Manadyne/Mangadyne bit and Project Monad in Emergence.

Chapter 1: The Awakened World
I think Rat (Robyn King-Nitschke), who y'all might recall wrote part of Seattle in Runner Havens and the adventure On the Run, among many other things, really likes these interview-style comments.

When you talk about magic supplements in SR, you're really talking about three books: the Grimoire, Awakenings, and Magic in the Shadows. The Grimoire (first or second edition, they're practically identical for most purposes) had, like several early books, was chewy.

Sidenote-> most RPG writing falls into three categories: fluff, crunch, and chew. Fluff is pure in-character fiction. Crunch is pure out-of-character mechanics. Chew is when you have out-of-character fiction, often mixed in with the crunch - this generally covers all non-mechanical game information. End sidenote.

Awakenings was a major step apart by featuring a decided gap between fluff and chew/crunch. It also featured a much more in-depth look at magic from the viewpoint of characters in the game. MitS was another chewy book. Street Magic takes a different format - less chew, and a resurrection of the fluff/crunch division. The main difference is that in SM, the fluff/crunch divisions are made by chapter, so instead of saying "Okay, the front half of the book is fluff and the back half is game infor/chew/crunch," each chapter (mostly) is front-fluff and back-crunch. Which I think works out nicely, m'self.

Personally, I'm a fan of this section. Most of the material was covered to an extant in previous magic supplements, but it's nice to have it gathered all together in one place and expanded on.

Note that Rat tends to use longer posts for shadowposters in her sections; I find that's usually because they have something to say.

p.18 is where older players should remember that they're reading a new book, not just a rehash of old material. You'll see more from Alchemix, Manadyne, and XPR in the future, doubt it not.

I´m fine with SM, but didn´t we agree to do AUG first?

I really enjoyed SM. I don't think I analyzed it as in-depth as you did, Ancient. I think it's a top-notch book all around. Kudos to the folks who put it all together. I also liked the fluff/crunch format. It keeps all the information you might need near the fluff for ease of use.

...Okay shadowkids, we're going to employ FiF protocols. This thread is up, so we do SM first. Augmentation next, promise.

I agree that the format was easier to read through, but I wish they had all the crunch at the back. It's just easier to have the rules handy in the middle of the game. If they keep this style I'd like to see tabbed or color coded page edges.

I think this was first time I read the Jackpoint page. Nice but who got matrix in my magic (j/k )

The Awakened World was nice refresher. It was the first impression that the paths would take a more religious spin. I miss some of the crazy psionics etc., but more on that when we get to paths.

I particularly liked the short fiction at the beginning of the chapter. The story of the kid's awakening probably couldn't have been more down to earth. None of the flashy "Totem chose me to lead the cause" (whatever that means) or the "unnaturally gifted talent for magic" you find in so many character histories. Just a kid who has no idea what just went on, and a decent backstory for what could become a mage runner in the near future.

The part where it goes into the relative rarity of spellcasters I think is somewhat important. It gives a good insight into the general misconceptions about magicians and many of the Saturday morning cartoon style characters we have all seen as a result.

As AH said, a lot of what is here has been passed down through time in the various incarnations of magic and main books, but has the beginnings of what looks to be possible meta plots sprinkled in.

One of the things that has bothered me about the Awakened ever since FrankTrollman pointed it out is that it appears that as time wears on and the Mana Level raises, full Mages seem to actually be becoming rarer since the fluff is still using the same 1% of the population is Awakened line but has increased the number of ways which a person can be Awakened.

Now I suppose it could be explained that Mages were more likely to Awaken first and that now the people with a weaker magical connection are begining to express, but I wish that something would actually appear in print to at least address the issue.

Something tells me we'll probably have to wait for some metaplot adventure book to hear even part of the explanation...

Well, remember, we're only 60ish years into the awakening. Mana cycles last thousands of years. The percentage of people who are magically active still being low is actually rather in line.

This is not the case. Your problem lies with the fact that the "fraction" of 1% the Awakened population that are not full Magicians has never been defined. In SR4, the rules themselves just make it more obvious that there are numerous levels and types of Talent out there and that while the most common full Magicians are just one of them (it also helps that not all magicians are now "born equal" and there are varying degrees of magical talent).

Chapter 1 is really mostly information that had been given before, being the magic 101 primer. As Awakenings was one of my favourite books for its fluff, that is not bad at all.

I use to visit sections like "corporate mojo" when I search my next character background. The mundane preconceptions on magic are useful if a GM wants to play up how special the awakened in his group are.

Chapter 2: The Awakened Character
I gotta admit, this is my least favorite chapter in Street Magic. I can be kind of hardassed about these things, but the first half of this chapter is full of really common sense stuff-the type of thing players should be able to figure out after one or two readings of the basic rules. If it was to be done over again, I would probably suggest a greater emphasis on the individual magical skills instead of the skill groups.

There was considerable debate about the new Magical skills of Arcana and Enchanting. On the one hand, we hated to have players create their characters and then pick up a new book and find that they were completely lacking in skills they needed; on the other there was no room for these skills in the main sourcebook (which, to its credit, already had rules for initiation squeezed in).

Arcana had a twofold purpose: replace the annoying Divining Skill introduced in Magic in the Shadows, and replace the Magical Theory/Spell Design skill(s). This is actually a considerable simplification, with the minor downside that it minimizes the many non-Active magical Knowledge Skills like Magic Background somewhat. But then, Arcana is hardcore applicable theory while Magic Background is common knowledge, so not much of a loss, though none of the character examples in SR4 have the skill.

Enchanting was originally slated to be its own skill group, but given the limited use it was much more cost-efficient to players and easier all around to make it a single skill. The original skill group breakdown made it into the Optional Rules at the end of the chapter.

The qualities...ah, yea gods, the qualities...I'm not fond of them. I know why they were limited, I just don't particularly agree with it. For the Astral Sight, Spell Knack, and Spirit Knack qualities the limitation on only having a Magic of 1 basically prevents the character from ever taking implants ever, unless they choose to go with a Latent Awakening or take my patented Technically Legal But Debateable Interpretation Of The Rules™. Which was pretty much the point. Spirit pacts also mislike me, but we'll look at that farther on.

I actually like the Aspected Magician, Cursed, Focus Addiction, and Geas qualities, go figure.

I like sympathetic and symbolic links, I think they work well. If this chapter had had a fiction section preceding it, it might have included some fluff about the Laws of Sympathy, Synecdoche, and Contagion. I wish ritual magic as a whole had been given more wordcount, though. There was a really big debate about material links, and whether or not they had to contain the DNA of the subject (where appropriate). Ultimately it was left out.

One pattern I've noticed in SR of late are Optional Rules: the ones the writers assume the players will use, and the ones we assume they won't. Case in point: Acquiring Geasa During Play (we assume you'll use this) and Tweaking the Rules (we assume you won't). The latter really are a collection of ideas we were throwing around but were ultimately decided not to be used for balance' sake.

Chapter two, or what makes an awakened character. The general description of how to build an awakened character missed to point out some basic knowledge of character building.

- It should have been stressed that Banishing and Astral Combat are skills that require mastery if they are to be used (or a weapon focus). Those loose on the lower end to a single combat spell, as enemies that seek astral combat will usually win.

- More could have been said about interesting ways of augmentation. The philosophical background of "no-implant-fanatics" are nice, but I would have wanted for this section to be more crunchy.

Enchanting I can live with, but Arcana I hate. That is a natural knowledge skill, it has no place being an active skill.

The qualities are not good. Astral Perception for Magical Adepts. Forbidden, but would have been the best (only) use. Latent Awakening... do you want a shiney car or a ticket for the great lottery? A Rover 2068 and Latent Awakening both cost 5 BP. The only danger here is you never awakening unless you nag the GM about it (getting to be a Shaman of Skunk in the process). I admid it COULD be pretty cool. SR4 is what you make it...

I don´t like aspected magicians, thats stupidly few BP. I guess you could not have gotten a free magic point with that, or even two? The rest is good, geasa being my all-time-all-systems favourite.

The crisis of confidence - magic reduction in the "Aquiring geasa ingame" section works well without ever getting a permanent geas. I´d count that more on the not-using side of things

First chapter is good. Nothing exceptional, nothing new, but it does a good job of summing up everything that has been said about how magic is considered in the 6th world.

Chapter two has some good ideas: bringing back aspected magicians (maybe not handling them the best way, but it's hard to find a good balance for something that could so easily be abused). I really like that geas can't help get back magic lost because essence loss which led to awful munchkins in previous editions.
The crisis of confidence is also interesting and can lead to some nice roleplaying situations.

I've been mulling over the 1 magic pnt edges sight and knack. Was wondering about your "interpretation" mentioned above. Other then latent awaking seem pretty poor choices for a PC. I might consider allowing these to be purchased after char gen or late in char gen (in situation similar to a latent awakening) as possible fix. (char would have to have at least 1 full essence pnt to qualify)

Edit: After going back and looking at this again it seems like a reasonable trade off. Yes you could have a Sammie with astral sight or ability to cast a force 1 spell but he'd also always be limited in only being able to spend 5 essence on enhancements. In the long term his contemporaries will still have the other .9 essence to spend. Reasonable trade off?

Chapter 1
(Sorry, I'm late.)

My biggest beef with this section is that I really wish the "Magic and the Law" section was much longer, and much crunchier. After all, much of what a shadowrunning magician will do is risk interacting with the law; it could have been a pretty big focus of this book. I'd also like to know more about the various "registration" schemes that magicians face in the world.

Chapter 2

I notice that under the heading "Creating an awakened character" they state that to be awakened, you must be an adept, magician, or mystic adept. Does that mean that those with Spirit/Spell Knack, etc, don't count as that 1% awakening? This seems at odds with, e.g. Latent Awakening.

I'm with Ryu on Arcana. I don't see anything at all that makes this an active skill. It seems only useful for creating formula, which to me seems no different than using the knowledge skill "civil engineering" to make a blueprint for a bridge. This is one of my biggest problems with this section.

I'm very glad the designers decided to go with Enchanting (magical B/R ) as a single skill, rather than a group. It might downplay the skill a bit to make it a single skill, but as a skill group no shadowrunner is really going to have much access to it. Mages are already stretched enough on Karma as it is. Besides, unlike all other B/R skills, Enchanting takes karma to actually use, in many cases. Much of the extra cost of a skill group will already be paid, as each focus is a unique creation experience requiring its own karma expenditures. Basically, I'm glad the designers left it the way it is, rather than the way it appears under "Tweaking the Rules" -- for all the reasons they list there.

Astral sight I hadn't read through as closely before now. It might make for a very limited NPC who uses weapon foci to defend himself from spirits by astrally perceiving. But all in all, this suffers from the same problem that the "knack" abilities do -- as a player character, the choice to give up all cyberware and all magic just isn't a real choice, unless you're in a very, very low-powered campaign.

Latent awakening I think is a very cool quality. I do love the concept of a character finding out he has magical talent as the game goes along; it's a great storyline hook. I worry a little about the fairness -- a latent awakening character can get quite a few magic points for "free" that other magical characters with cyberware would have to pay for. I think this is mostly balanced by the fact that the latent awakener would have no magical skills worth speaking of for some time. All in all, I think it's a good quality, though it might require a lot of extra time with the GM discussing what both the player and GM are looking for to avoid hurt feelings.

The spell and spirit knack power are more like fluff than crunch, as they have so little use to player characters. As I said above, giving up cyberware and magic both is not a good road to go down for most characters. As fluff, though, it does make for the occasionally interesting NPC ability. However, even there it is not that useful -- most interesting NPCs won't be essence 6 mundanes! These qualities can go good with latent awakening, though -- assuming both the GM and player are in agreement about it.

Spirit Pact -- or, how to have your character live forever!

Aspected Magician -- I loved aspected magicians in 2nd edition (never played much 3rd edition) I would never take these qualities in 4th edition. There is just no way they are worth the points. I guess the only advantage is that they are equally cheap to buy off with karma later, though I can't say that makes a lot of sense. Do all the aspects that give a -4 to Sorcery dice pool also affect counterspelling? That would be even worse.

Cursed -- love this. I'm glad there is a magical variant of "gremlins" in the game. It's a great way to inject some humor into magic, which is always good at the gaming table. At all but the first level, it has a significant impact on even more powerful magicians. At higher levels, though, it can be very disruptive -- nearly every use of magic will draw it out, no matter how powerful the mage. In fact, due to dice mechanics, a more powerful mage will glitch more often with this flaw! At lower levels, though, it's a great addition to the game.

Focus Addition -- This is almost a great flaw. I like the story aspect, I like that magicians can get 'addicted' to their power, in a way. The -2 to drain per level, though, may be a bit too much. Without that, the flaw is probably too easy for the points, but with it it might be too much. It might have been better if it was more limited -- for instance, -2 to drain tests where a focus isn't used. As is, it very quickly eats in to the extra dice you get from a focus, so you come out better off to have avoided focii altogether. I feel flaws should be a tradeoff, not a complete negation.

Geas -- I'm glad these are back in the game. I think these are well done flaws, in that they add drawbacks for a magician, but at the same time add a good amount of story and character. There are some balance issues between types of Geas, though -- for instance, performing only magic your mentor spirit gives a bonus to is surely much more harsh than praying towards mecca once a day. The latter requires only that you are conscious (you won't be casting spells if you aren't) and know which direction mecca is! Heck, you don't even need that, just pray in every direction.

I'm also very glad to see symbolic and sympathetic links brought back. It really helps with making ritual sorcery as useful and powerful as it should be. Though, I wonder if "recently handled" objects make it too powerful -- but the idea of a cabal of magicians setting up shop in the freezer room of a Stuffer Shack in order to take advantage of those rules is funny enough I let it slide. Besides, it requires metamatic to use, which itself balances things nicely. I do wish it was a little more clear for those of us who are a bit slow -- the first time I read the symbolic link section I missed the very first sentence, the one that begins with "Initiates with the Sympathetic Linking metamagic..."

I have one writing pet peeve under "acquiring geas during play." The character is not "literally under the gun" when summoning a powerful free spirit -- his is figuratively under the gun, which is the exact opposite. Using "literally" with a figure of speech grates on me.

I do like "acquiring a geas during play" but I'm not sure how I feel about "way of the burnout." I know these are "optional" rules, but way of the burnout worries me. It really affects how characters view Geas. Without burnout, they are a hinderance -- taking a character out of his element or comfort zone and it decreases his abilities. With burnout, they are a ticking time bomb; a one-way road to mundane neighborhood. As each one is a ten-point flaw, maybe that's appropriate. I'm still undecided. I guess that's why I'm glad it's an optional rule.

I'm a little sad that Adepts and Geas got put in the Tweaking the Rules section -- I rather liked that rule in previous editions. It was, though, a little too easy to abuse. ("The adept must be in combat to not break this geas. Woohoo, killing hands for 75% cost!")

I also liked the Spirit Edge idea under Tweaking the Rules. This helps even out low power and high power spirits a bit. Then again, I guess high power spirits are supposed to be frightening.

I think the "More common Knacks" idea is fundamentally flawed. The cost of the knack is minuscule compared to the cost of raising magic and the skills to use it. Using the "More common Kacks" rules would result in characters that spent just a few points less than a full mage to get a single ability. Few characters would stop there, rather than just spending those last few points.

For Ritual Magic, I would also have liked the suggested possibility of all magicians knowing the spell and having the same drain attribute.

Sorry my review is so long, but this section was very crunchy, and I tend to look at rules closer than I do fluff. I do like fluff, I just don't scrutinize it as closely.

I like the arcana skill because it took a bunch of diverse skills (some active and some knowledge) and made them into one overarching and logically coherent skill. It's used in a wide enough variety of ways to make it worth getting and yet isn't absolutely the most necessary skill to have. a good skill to have at 2-4
I also liked the geas, but most of the other edges and flaws I found to be annoying and or useless. Spirit pack has potential, but as it literally a list of ideas from the back of a cocktail napkin, it's limited in how thouroughly it's thought through.
I still miss the ability to use ritual sorcery to sustain spells for a certain number of hours, but I like that they brought back using it to hunt down someone you have a link to.

...I don't think that Arcana should be required of Adepts for the purpose of finding an adept group. Arcana is basically the theory behind magic which pretty much relates to spellcasting and spell design. Adepts (unless they are mystic Adepts) really don't deal with that aspect. To them it would be Ki, Chi, or some other term for the channeling their inner power. It would make more sense that an Adept had to prove herself to the group though the use of her adept talent and not some "academic" skill.

Group Houserule update: We just agreed on making Arcana a knowledge skill.

Shall we go on with the book?

Er...quite right. Things get ahead of me and then I'm behind. Ahem. GOing on.

Chapter 3: Paths of Magic
Shadowrun's magic rules and the associated fluff are inseperable, and over the years they've agglutinated with each sourcebook and edition. The paths and paradigms of magic really started proliferating in Magic in the Shadows, and that has been carried on and expanded here-with a difference: SR4 introduces a single shared system to handle the mechanics for all of the traditions. While this does take away part of the flavor of diametrically opposed magical paradigms, it does make things easier.

Okay, blather aside, the first page or so is actually material to address gross aspects of magical traditions-vital, and a good refersher for older players, but principally beneficially to new players. The new traditions range all over and hit about every major and minor magical tradition today (and a few more). There's a lot of love given to these descriptions, a damn sight more than in MitS; some of them are highly reminiscient of material from the SOTA books.

A word: every author has their own biases, preferences, areas of specialization, favorites, yadda yadda. You'll notice some writers will use a particular poster more often, or like to discuss food, prostitution, magical goods (cough, cough, hack, sputter, 'scuse me). These things tend to creep in, is all I'm saying.

(Personally, I kind of miss the Yin/Yang bit from Shadows of Asia, but I know why it wasn't connected).

The adepts and oddballs sections are about what you'd expect; primarily updates and expansions of previous takes, sans the weird rules. Much more heavy on properly thematic suggestions.

The section on building your own magical tradition was more-or-less to make people who had their favorite magical paradigm not included happy. An interesting note is that the example given, the Korean mudang, was an actual tradition cut for space...or something else. It's a little hazy now, but I think Olivier Thieffine originally came up with it.

I don't understand why people seem to be so down on the Latent Awakening quality. Admittedly, it is a 5 point merit and you then need to buy magic afterward, making it an expensive proposition, but the opportunity to actually play your own backstory as you realize you're gifted with something and dealing with the consequences of that is a phenomenal addition to the game. Certainly, it doesn't make a ton of sense in a standard 400 BP game, but if you ran a low-level 300 BP game, it could be a great story-telling and role-playing opportunity.

I don't recall anyone complaining about the Latent Awakening Quality. I have heard (understandably so) many complaints about the Aspected Magician and Astral Sight Qualities.

I'm still saddened by the lack--and ridicule of--a Psionics tradition. It's not like it would take a whole lot to make it a magical tradition of its own; we have easily five different kinds of spirits that could represent different aspects of the human mind made manifest:

Combat: Beasts
Detection: Guidance
Health: Guardian
Illusion: Man
Manipulation: Task (or Air, if you're worried about Psionicism being too powerful as a Manifesting tradition)
Drain: Willpower+Intuition
(Likely Manifesting; makes more sense than Possession)

And most of that new-age silliness would find the astral world far more comfortable than practitioners of, for example, Christian Theurgy.

Atheism is a religion too, damn it!

I'll agree that most of the qualities in Chapter 2 are craptactular. Latent awakening isn't actually half bad really, not to terrible from the RP front, and its actually a not a bad idea for a cyber/bioware enhanced sammie, 'cause when he awakens he'll have a cool plot line to explore, can sink his cash into upgrading his implants and squeezing new ones into the essence space, and can sink karma into magic. Nice.

Aspected magician though? Urgh.

You´ve got that the wrong way around - possession(self) would be the way to go. And true psionicism is pretty oddball in a magic world; it should exist, but it should embrace magic theory, based on conscious development of the self. The power of the mind-guys should not deny the existance of magic in face of substantial proof.


Chapter 3:
The traditions are great. I like a more flexible approach to traditions, so the little extra Wicca got (two options for the drain stat), could IMO also be given to hermetic druids, for example.
Good that the ways and paths for adepts are back. Each adept should have a true path, diversification is for samurai only. Now if the price of most powers would have been lower...
Building you own tradition is good. Nothing I would have been afraid to do, but being supported by RAW makes things easier for everyone. And for those missing the hermetic paradigms of SOTA2064, like me, these rules are very important. I was a bit surprised to see the them repeated from the main book, I´d rather have had the base traditions repeated.

Nice section!

Wouldn't that be Channeling? Possession is about zombies and cars driving by themselves, which kinda doesn't fit a psionic.

And yeah, psionics kinda get a bad rap in SR. That oddity section ought to have been called "Doubting Thomases" or something like that; psionics really isn't the same thing.

Channeling is indeed the way to go, but it is a metamagic for possession-traditions

There was a lot of debate between whether we should make the Aspected Magician, a "limited" Talent or a "specialized" Talent - there were good arguments for both options. In the end we opted to include both, with the limited Talent as the main write up, and Aspected Magicians as "specialized" Talents as a possible Tweak (Expert Aspected Magician, p.31) for those that prefer the alternative.

Regarding Chapter 3: The Paths of Magic.

This was the only chapter of the book I actually pitched for as a writer, and I was eager to take a swing at the SR4 traditions - particularly after what Audun and I had done to the Hermetic Paradigm in SoTA64. I'm a bit of a RL Mysticism and Theology geek and I've always been irked by the shoehorning of magic into Shamanic and Hermetic worldviews in past editions. This was a lot of fun to write and the SR4 rules really made developing paradigms, tropes, rituals, magical correspondences, and paraphernalia for each tradition a joy. I'm really happy I got to collaborate with Jay Levine for a number of reasons. We wanted to cover a wide range of traditions and give them the extra ooomph previous editions couldn't. I think we accomplished our goal - I'm seeing alot more non-Hermetics and non-Shamans in people's games in SR4.

On a side note - We did end up cutting about 4-5 traditions from the final version due to wordcount limitations (among which, you may be surprised to know, a full Optional Rule Sidebar for playing Psionics as a tradition). These and a number of left-overs from different chapters have been waiting in limbo for a while to be released as a web bonus - no promises when but we are working on getting that out.

There were a couple of other things I really wanted to address in this chapter:
- the complex relationship between Belief, Faith and Magic not only as regards magical traditions but also on how different faiths/organized religions might look upon magic in general;
- introducing what would become "possession traditions" as really playable alternatives in the simplest and most mechanically balanced manner possible.
I think both of those came out rather well too.

Chapter 3 : The Paths of Magic

I think most of what I could say about it has already been said: it's a great idea and it's been well executed. Sure you can always regret not seeing one tradition or another, but the part about making your own tradition adresses this anyway.

The only complaint I could have is that it's sometimes difficult to see the exact relationships between tradition, ways, faith and totem spirits

What the hell would an Atheist Shaman/Hermetic summon? Jean-Paul Sarte? Richard Dawkins? George Carlin?

Unless his power was to create thought provoking questions of the inherently non-mystical nature of the world around them... I'm not sure at all what kind of power they would wield

Maybe they could cancel other peoples spell? Oh wait, that'd be too much like D&D and every player would start screaming "I actively disbelieve!" everytime some mage tries to lay down a manabolt...

Actually... a Psionicist might very well excel at counterspelling, their bizarre magical doctrine devoid of traditional underpinning would probably subtlety warp astral space around them. Could an (atheist) psionicist astrally perceive or astrally project? What would their astral quest look like?

There was indeed a lot of discussion going into those early chapters. The fact that Astral Sight literally does not do anything for you that the same 5 points of Positive Qualities couldn't get you by taking the Adept Quality and spending your one free power point on Astral Sight was brought up. The fact that the restricted quality of Aspected Magician nails you harder in the dice pools than just not spending as many points on skills and it uses up limitations on Negative Qualities yeah that came up too.

In short, the fact that many readers have come out and said "These qualities are total shit! I can do the same character concepts, better with the qualities already present in the basic book!" is not surprising. Many people on the author staff came up with the same objections.

Basically competing visions for what those qualities should do polarized and paralyzed debate. In the end, the author of the chapter basically just shrugged and left them unmodified even though nobody liked them and literally anything would have been better (including not printing them).

-Frank

When first picked up SR4 and had seen the conglomeration of the traditions I was a leery about the direction magic was going. Conceptually it was hard for my long time players to grasp (in paticular a player who had run shamans since first edtion). It really became more of the players responsibility to "craft" the specifics and flavor of his tradition. Street Magic came along and filled in the blanks. The k.i.s.s (keep it simple stupid) rule set has made my job alot easier. With the ability to use one conception of the rules for two or three casters of differing traditions in the same encounter helps keep pace.

[/quote]
Basically competing visions for what those qualities should do polarized and paralyzed debate. In the end, the author of the chapter basically just shrugged and left them unmodified even though nobody liked them and literally anything would have been better (including not printing them).

-Frank
[/quote]


Any insight into what those competing visions were? Is there a "fix" for using in a better fashion? After looking them over in a past debate a week or so ago got impression they were left in to be used with latent awakening. Interested for any tweaking that would make them more viable qualities.

I do think the collaboration between Peter and I worked great here. He's strong on the historical areas I'm not. So I could focus on the traditions I knew something about and he complimented them with ones he knew well.

Selection of traditions was great and "The many faces of mentor spiritis" section later in the book really helped fill them out.

Astral Sight: Astral Sight is just terrible. Not only does it not do anything you can't do by spending the same 5 points on being an Adept and then taking Astral Sight as your one and only power, it's completely non-extensible. It was suggested that the Magic of 1 you get from the quality should not go away from Essence loss so long as you have an Essence of 1+, or that you should be able to buy up your Magic at a reduced cost. Another concept was to give it Background Count immunity. None of these were implemented and the quality is a waste of paper.

Personally, I'm partial to the version where your Magic neither rises nor falls, as that allows you to play a street sam with astral sight for a modest and affordable price - creating a niche for an interesting character.

Aspected Magician: Completely pointless as written. It was concepted by the author as something that would allow you to just barely get by in the other schools of magic rather than cutting them off completely as the quality had done in the previous editions. But the fact remains that Magic Skills are TRAINED ONLY. If you don't spend a very substantial pile of build points into Spellcasting and spell knowledge, you can't cast spells. There aren't some sort of inherent spellcasting talents that you can fall back on, if you don't purchase the ability, the ability is something you don't have. And the quality gives out penalties that are equivalent to you having less skill points than you can afford with the points that the quality gives you. So whether you are someone who intends to be a conjurer who has a litle spellcasting on the side, or a conjurer who never casts any spells, you'd never want to take the Aspected Conjurer Quality. The first concept would do better to simply start play with 1 less in their Sorcery Group, and the second concept would do better to take Incompetence in Spellcasting and Ritual Spellcasting. Because damnit, neither one of those setups ruins your Astral Perception dice pool.

The most obvious problem with Aspected Magician is that it is a Negative Quality, and negative qualities are strongly capped. You can only have 35 points of them. So being an Aspected Magician hits you coming and going on the quality caps. You spend points in your Positive Quality cap on getting abilities you don't have and then you use up portions of your negative quality cap as well. The cleanest solution is to give players the quality as a bundle as a Positive Quality. That is, you take Aspected Magician instead of Magician and you only pay 5 or 10 points for it. The fact that you free points on the Positive Quality cap is actually important to some builds, so even though it's not a big overall point difference, it actually matters.

The second most obvious problem with Aspected Magician is that it sucks and sucks hard. Taking the quality is a sad waste of your life. Various solutions were proposed from giving Aspected Magicians the ability to purchase their Magic Attribute at a discount to giving Aspected Magicians bonuses analagous to the bonus Force Points they got in previous editions.

Personally, I use a version of Aspected Magician where they flat don't get certain magical options, the quality costs less BP than Magician, and they start at Initiate Grade 1 with an appropriate Metamagic (which yes, is about what they could afford with the bonus Force Points that they started with in SR2 and SR3).

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And no, this isn't 20/20 hindsight. We seriously had this exact conversation half a year before the book hit shelves and the chapter author went ahead with the qualities as written anyway despite the total ineffectiveness of the proposition, and there were head-desks all over the freelancer group.

-Frank

Yeah, it's really sad, but I'm one of the people who has been known to make MystAds who only Conjure and I still wouldn't touch Aspected Conjuror in its current state, despite the fact that the characters in question don't even have Astral Projection in the first place. As Frank said the Aspected Magician quality wrecks everything outside your narrow shtick and barely provides the points necessary to buy a Mentor Spirit whereas Incompetent Spellcasting paired with Incompetent Ritual Magic gives you enough points to buy two levels of the indisputably useful Counterspelling and perhaps a specialization on top of that, which is particularly noteworthy since Aspected Conjurer's penalties would effectively wipe out the benefits from any Counterspell skill lower than 5! It's really a no brainer; either way you have buy to off either the Incompetence Quality or the Aspected Magician Quality through karma and likely IC training before your character can get real use of the affected skills, so why the heck would you take the more crippling set of penalties when they give less points?

As for Astral Sight and the Knack Qualities, yeah, they're pretty craptacular, and the only way I could see them being useful is if they were the result of a Latent Awakening in which case you could end up with a cybered Mundane who sees into the Astral, but even then the Samurai's likely going to be disappointed they're not an Adept with Combat Sense and Improved Ability: Automatics while the Face was gunning for Kinesics and Commanding voice, so lord knows it'll hardly be appreciated.

My thoughts on Street Magic:

I LOVE TRADITIONS!
While I liked SR3, it was lacking so much in terms of Tradition variance. While after MitS, there were plenty to choose from, they always seemed to limited and it was hard to make new ones. With Street Magic, you can create new traditions very easily (though I think Psionics are still elusive).

As for Aspected Magicians, they have always been less powerful and FAR more limited than Full Magicians. This really just forced you to advance in one and only one area. I have always found it more of a flavor choice myself, and have so far only seen NPC Aspected Mages. I do think that the +2/-6 optional rule shows promise though. It will never make up for the lack of the other areas, but you will be Amazing in that one area. You will have so much more karma and an Aspected Conjurer with Plant or Guidance spirits is a force to be reckoned with. I personally want to try one when I come up with acceptable rules for Drakes.

Even so, it's still not really enough to make up for the massive gimpage. Maybe a free boost to Magic attribute (start at 2 instead of 1), if you don't like the idea of free initiation?

Anyway yeah, I do love how traditions got customization rules, though they seem a little simple considering how important and central they are to the character. Any more, though, and they might be too much complexity.

The customization/creation rules are absurdly simple, but it sure as hell beats making spirit stats and tradition properties from scratch. Also, most traditions just got lumped into Shamanic (choose a totem that fits!).

As for Aspected, did it always make you suck in Astral and Enchanting? I'd say that also gimps it way too far. Instead of -4/-6, just make it unable to learn and use Sorcery or Conjuring for +10BP (If not more).

Maybe it could also give a 8, 7, 7 skill cap to either Conjuring or Sorcery Group skills. Just some ideas. I don't want the Aspected Magicians to disappear solely because the writer didn't do his/her job.

Different authors fell on different sides of that argument, and you can see leftovers from it in the final product. Consider the Toxic Traditions. If you're a Radiation magician, you have unique radiation flavored spirits. That's awesome, but unfortunately there aren't five spirits in the book for that Mentor. You get Nuclear spirits, Abominations, and... what? You can kind of make it work with Harbinger and Sludge, but neither one is a super great fit. And that's still only four. And if you use Corruption on a Plant or Task spirit, what is supposed to happen? No idea really.

Heck, the Task Spirit exists because some of the authors wanted the Insect Spirits to use the normal templates and get their extra powers exclusively from Mentor bonuses.



No. When Magical Adepts were first introduced you had the choice of playing a Conjurer, a Sorcerer, or an Enchanter. Each type could use their path and not the other two. Enchanting Adepts were a joke and no one used them. At that time a Magical Adept could Astrally Perceive but not Project. Later on they were renamed Aspected Magicians, and some of them could Astrally Project and others were limited to Astral Perception. As far as I can recall all of them were allowed to Enchant if that's what they wanted to do.

But yeah, the Aspected Magician quality in the 4th edition book doesn't do justice to any of the previous versions and I've never seen it used once people fully wrapped their minds around what it actually did. I predict that by 5th edition people won't even think of Aspected Magicians as an important part of the game world.

-Frank

Wasn't there once (I think SR1 or SR2) three types of adepts?

- Physical Adepts

- Sorcery, Conjuring and Enchanting Adepts (No astral perception or projection, fullo access to the specific area (spells, or spirits/elementals depending on tradition, or enchanting).

- Elemental Adepts (Astral projection and perception, could only summon one type of elemental and cast one type of spells: Fire/Combat, Earth/Manipulation, Air and Water on illusion and detection, not sure which was what, no healing adepts at all)

You forgot shamanic adepts, obeyifa, wu fa, the "D" priority magicians (and you thought Astral Sight was gimped)...

Current aspected magicians are useless. The sorcery adept got so many more spell points it was the way to go for spellcasters. Why wasn´t something like that done in SR4? I accept that you may not net-gain BP by being awakened and limiting that. Whoever made the current rules completely failed to grasp that the negative quality reduces not only the value of the positive quality, but of all points spend on general-utility-magic. A discount on bought magic would have been the least that had to be done.

Task spirits are, in my opinion, disturbingly powerful in case of materialisation traditions. But we are still working our way to that section/discussion.

Because there are no more spell points.

From most players chargen habits, the conversion of 10 spellpoints into 2 free spells (above the usual limit) would have been fast and fitting.

Conjurers could start with free bound spirits at least, or have a cap of CHA+2 for bound spirits.

Enchanters are what Enchanters have been. I don´t care.

<sigh> Okay shadowkids, let's review what aspected magicians are, and are not.

Aspected magicians are much more limited than full magicians. That doesn't particularly mean that they excel in one area of magic, it means they have only one area of magic to excel in. This goes all the way back to 1st edition. The only difference between 4th edition aspected magicians and the prior editions is that the 4e aspected magicians can do things outside their one particular area-they just suck at it. This is still a hop, skip, and a jump beyond what they were limited to before.

What aspected magicians are not are specialist D&D wizards. They don't have any particular bonus in their area beyond the skills that they buy, and they don't have any special powers that can't be achieved by a full wizard. This is because they are gimped. The character concept is of a fundamentally flawed magician, at least compared to a full magician. What you make of your character is up to you, but nobody should bitch when an NPC full magician outcasts a PC sorcerer-if the PC sorcerer, with nothing else to blow their Karma on, can't measure up, that's not because the system is broken. Make your aspected magician be all they can be!