Hey all,
I'm a relatively new Shadowrun player. Sticking with 3rd edition due to GM preference so please don't tell me that i should switch versions, not really my choice, i just want to play the game.
I'm having trouble refining a character, a rigger/Aspected Conjurer. Hermetic Mage.
I've done at least a dozen searches through the forums and there is a lot of discussion around the topic of ally spirits. A lot of it has helped me get a better feel for the magic system and how it can be tweaked but a lot of it deals with full mages and of course that makes sense as it seems there are few aspected mages out there? the path seems unfavored for good reason.
If i create an ally spirit at character creation, give it skills ect. pump its force up ect. Obviously as per the ally spirit rules it can only have skills that i can teach it, so only skills that i have and upto or below my skill lvl. Now what about the sorcery skill? I'm an aspected conjurer, SR3 says i cannot have the skill/use it.
Does this mean i can have the skill and learn spells but not use the skill to actively make checks? as in cast the spells? So therefore I can teach my spirit spells still? Or does it mean i cannot have the skill period and My spirit cannot learn the skill period.
The problem i've had with accepting this fact, is that aspected mages are designed to be limited but stronger in their specific area of expertise are they not? otherwise why would they be so point expensive? Especially if you are being limited in a critical area like teaching your ally spirit (seems to me to be one of the most critical areas of being a conjurer) spells?
I figured that if i gave my spirit a knowledge skill i could help it learn new spells for itself. If my gm agreed that i could slowly upgrade its sorcery skill, while i had none.
I suppose the other option to avoid all of this is to become an elementalist? But that is not fitting to the character and might produce some serious problems.
The rules are somewhat unclear in Magic in the shadows, while they reference like SR3 to aspected magicians they don't do that when looking at the spirits in particular. All of the examples seem to be full mages so it is hard to pin down this problem. Do people avoid playing aspected conjurers for this very reason?

Cheers, and thanks for any helpful advice.

Aspected magicians are less than full magicians. It's only 5 bp (or one rank of purchase), but they do cost less. They get more spell points to start, but in general, it is only the fact that they have less abilities that gives the appearance of them being stronger in the ones they have.
As for teaching it spells, you need to pay the karma, but no spell research is needed. (Sorcery power description, referenced in ally spirit sorcery and spellcasting section)
Even if the GM does not make any allowances for an actual sorcery skill, the spirit will have a spell pool equal to force (until it goes free, then it can learn from anyone/anything, not just you).

I can see a strong reason to not allow a conjurer's ally spirit to be able to learn the sorcery skill, otherwise you could almost get a full mage worth of character with two sets of actions for 5 less bp.

As for other advice, see if you can convince your GM to let you initiate with the Familiar ordeal with those chargen spell points (and any you buy) for the Invoking metamagic. This leaves you with an ally, great form spirits, and a magic rating of 7 (before cyberware). Riggers are fairly powerful, but when that drone is also under the guard of a potent spirit, you become remote overkill incarnate (and inmetalate).
Last note, if you can get away with invoking at chargen, a shamanic conjurer will have more tricks available, but a little less brute force, which you can easily compensate for with drones.

Consider yourself lucky—though you've chosen one of the main character types that make that difficult

The latter, as HoV says. I'd have to review previous editions to have an idea of what the designers might have been thinking, but my guess is that that no one actually put serious thought into conjurers (at least not Hermetic conjurers).


Well, if the GM agrees you can do pretty much whatever, so it isn't really a solution as such.


Well, I'm not sure I'd say "for this very reason", as in "because Ally Spirits of Conjurers can't use spells", but yeah, they tend to be avoided because they got screwed bigtime. The only one I've seen in live play is a riggerdeckerfaceconjurer.

Put it this way: can you describe the sort of character you're envisioning? There might be a less-crippled way to express him or her in the rules.

~J

Thanks both, Talked to my GM earlier and he agreed much upon the same lines. I'll be able to get the spirit spell training through other sources ie: cooperative mages. I'll still need to pay karma obviously but it'll probably turn into something i'll need to figure out in character. It just seems to me that loosing access to sorcery and astral projection is somewhat worth more than 5bp? Never mind the effect it has on ally spirits.
Thanks again.

You get more than a 5 point discount on a conjuror. You also get 35 spell points, which you don't need for spells, meaning (if you use the SR Companion rules) that you have several options with them - turn them back in for build points, use them to initiate (if the GM allows that option), or bind a nice conjuring focus. If you turn them all back in for build points, the conjurer actually only costs 18 points, which isn't bad.

Since we are talking SR3 Companion rules, then it is straight legal to take your starting Force Points and spend them on Initiation and Ally Spirits. And that's fine. Centering and Invoking are quite nice.

Hermetic Aspected Conjurers are very powerful. I had a Conjurer/Rigger that was a lot of fun. Remember that you can take Geasa for all kinds of crazy crap because your magic will only be used in specific circumstances where you will have a lot of time to kill.

-Frank

If by "straight legal" you mean "straight legal provided an optional rule is used", then yes.


Eh, that depends entirely on the amount of cash you have available to play with—the costliness of Elementals is a lot easier to deal with if you have spells as backup. An Ally Spirit can fill in to some degree (I'll avoid being too definitive here, as we're into an area I generally don't deal with), but that's an option for the Full Mage as well.


This is the truth. Depending on what you're going for, you can also just lose a few points of Magic and be less affected by it than, IIRC, any other magical character type.

~J

A previous discussion on this topic.