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SR4 Shaman:
In name only.
A stock standard shaman and hermetic are identical save for the title you put on your paper and the RP you include (if you do). If you want to make a more 'traditional' shaman it costs you 5 more build points, however it is clearly an advantage with few disadvantages. (which is good since it costs build points)
However odd it may be a Hermetic can also decide to have a Bear Mentor spirit.
Street Magic goes into the many faces of mentor spirits (and not totems per se), what a mentor represents and what they mean within the paradigm of various traditions. Bear is an "archetype" mentor, meaning that for a hermetic this might translate to a representation of a set of ideals associated with a healer archetype - manifest in a higher spirit he calls "Aesculapius", "Gabriel," or "Dr. House" for that matter (note - this is no different from the way Totems were addressed by different "Shamanic traditions" in SR3).
I should also clarify that the same form of differentiation between mechanics and actual applies to other spirits in SR4. While fire elementals, spirits of the fiery firmament, the spirit of Mt. Rainer, the hosts of the archangel Michael, etc are all mechanically grouped as "Fire Spirits," in the setting they are all different entities with different appearances, different forms, different personalities and mannerisms.
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So my question is:
Are Shaman/ Hermetic only a state of mind in SR4. Does this encourage RP, discourage min/ maxing. (I never saw an issue with Shaman min/maxing in SR3)
And yet there were balance issues. In
SR3 Shamans could call up spirits at will for 0 cost pretty much anywhere they went. Hermetics had to regularly spend nuyen to bring elementals into play. Shamans got totem modifiers that potentially provided min-maxing bonuses that hermetics could never have, and most of the restrictions totems imposed were false limiters or simply roleplaying directions. Shamans didn't also didn't require magical libraries.
Many people did prefer it that way, that the roleplaying elements were underscored by mechanical differences. However, balancing became increasingly more complex when further traditions were added such as Voodoun (inherently weaker from a purely min-max perspective than the original two), Wuxing (almost halfway between Shamans and Hermetics), and Path of the Wheel (again a bunch of free bonii for elven magicians). Every other tradition that was introduced into the game needed either entirely unique mechanics (
a la Voodoun) or was shoehorned it a "variant" of the two original traditions -again some people liked that but it was never inherently balanced or particularly logical given the way the setting was represented.
With SR4 we took the opportunity to wipe the slate clean. It's long been established in SR canon that the magician's beliefs, cultural background, and his inner nature that determine his magical expression and the tradition he follows (though some believe Totem's grant magical power there's the issue of Magus gene). It follows that all traditions are therefore inherently equal and no better than any other; they are paradigms, mental constructs, symbols and tropes that a magician is trained in and that provide the tools to channel mana - and that's how we addressed them in SR4.
Street Magic introduces another 20 or so traditions that follow the same mechanics base as the original two, adding only one fundamental twist to the system - possession traditions.
Mechanical imbalances are minimized (though some will argue the spirit associations make certain traditions more or less useful to shadowrunners) even between normal traditions and possession traditions (introduced in
Street Magic) - and the differences (besides the different magical associations and Drain attributes) are essentially defined by how the character's understanding of his magic and how the player roleplays it. This may not seem like much differentiation, but ultimately even in SR3 a shaman was throwing stunbolts just like a hermetic - we just followed that through by saying magic is mechanically the same whatever form it takes and streamlining the rules into a single consistent (and relatively balanced) set.
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Lastly what is the benefit of a physical adept in purchasing a mentor spirit? Friendly conversation?
There are few Mentor Spirits that do give non-magic skill bonuses but for the most part it would be a RP gimmick for a follower of the Animal/Totem Way.