I am just wondering if there is any rule about pixies being technomancers? They have a magic attribute but I don't see anything about them not being able to take the technomancer Quality so long as they have not also taken any of the magical qualities.

No. Pixies (& other Sapient Critters) are Awakened. Resonance (Technomancer) & Magic (Awakened) are mutually exclusive. I am sure someone else would be willing to provide a rules quote - I am lazy.

That's true, but many GMs will allow you to entirely lose the point of magic in return for being a TM. RAW they can't, but in practice many can.

Personally i make a distinction between an inherent magic rating and being able to use magic.

Creatures that have a magic attribute purely for abilities they are BORN with would be able to take the technomancer quality and have 1 point of magic.

They cannot on the other hand have any other magical abilities...

This would mean that the Pixie wouldn't loose his flight ability just to be able to talk to machines.

What about the poor Pixie that was in the Matrix during Crash 2.0?

*Sniff*

That one is now an AI. ^_^

Sell her to a bunarku parlour?


I guess you could have pixie technomancers, which would then involve the question of why.

Would be an interesting roleplaying theme as to the poor pixie who is compelled to move from nature into the sprawl to get their resonance connection...

Not to mention the hillbilly pixie learning about the matrix...

Just because Tinker Bell can't get 50 channels of porn in Never Never Land does not meant she has to relocate. Although I do wonder how large is a pixie and do small hands really make for light work?

They're about 17-18 inches tall.

I would allow a Pixie technomancer with a great backstory. I'd also focus lots of roleplaying attention on the downsides of being a pixie. Custom armor, etc would just be the beginning...

Xykal

I would allow it provided the critter was willing to lose all of her magical powers. (Well, except for the "power" of Intelligence.)

*EDIT*

But then again I would allow a Techno or a Mage into my campaigns with the backstory that he used to be the other but forever lost all of his former powers when the new ones kicked in.

Technically, there is a loophole to produce a Pixie TM:

So a normal Pixie can be a latent technomancer by chargen.
Then it has to lose it's default point of Magic (any kind of Essence Loss will do), becoming mundane... then emerge as a TM.

Of course, being a Pixie without Magic sucks - no more flying, no more powers.

I'd rather build a pixie hacker adept- you can still fly, you can still use Concealment, you get adept powers, with that Charisma and the Chatty quality, you'd be phenomenal at gathering information from virtual contacts, your high LOG can be of good use in Hardware, Explosives, Chemistry and First Aid tests...

Might be tough for a pixie to fly around with a commlink. The smallest thing I've seen them described as fitting into is a pair of glasses. And what would a pixie use as an imagelink?

A toddler-sized trode net?

As far as the link is concerned, they can implant the damn things.
Most are the size of a PDA, so even when you're only 45 cm tall, you can just put a sling on them and let them dangle around your waist like one of those 2050ish cyberdecks.

Can I just say I love this mental image?

Of course.
I recently thought a lot about introducing a 2050s revival fad to my game, with people who get glue-on datajacks and repackage their commliks in knockoff Fairlight Excalibur casings.

The precedent has been set with Leonardo being a TM as well as a skilled magician, so just ignore those pesky rules.

Having not read the Leonardo novel, I have to ask, does it make it clear—in an out of universe fashion—that he really was both magically active and an otaku? Or is it possible that he was skilled enough at one to fake something like the other? (and therefore appearing to be both to others)

I wonder, because I know he was into optics to a level that technology still has not matched, and there is that old phrase about advanced tech and magic being confused.

If you want a strict reading, then no. Leonardo claimed to have their skills, that's about it.

FWIW, it was remotely possible to be an otaku with a Magic rating in SR3 if you SURGEd appropriately, but it was horribly munchkinny. Any reference to such 'Ascended Masters' in canon are probably the ravings of a delusional mind.

SR4, pg 73, Magic/Resonance section, first paragraph, last sentence...

"A character can only possess either Magic or Resonance - never both." (emphasis added).

Actually, though the Pixie's flight is supposedly magical according to fluff, Pixies have no Flight Power to lose (in fact, there is no magical Flight Power).


This issue, I believe, is one of the many difficulties created when they decided to give all awakened critters magic ratings. I don't believe that anything prevented you from having an otaku ghoul in SR3. This is now impossible. Shapeshifters couldn't have datajacks due to their regeneration, making otakuism impossible, but there is nothing else to suggest that they couldn't be Otaku, either. I understand that using Essence as the base for powers was no longer viable due to the system change, but there are major far-reaching consequences to this.

I would rather remove their magic rating and call their abilities Metatype powers.

Then they wouldn't be shafted just because they wanted to be Technomancers or streetsams.

The only problem with that distinction is that Concealment relies on Magic Rating in its calculations, forcing one to replace it with a different stat. Since Magic no longer starts at 6, Essence is right out. This leave us with the unenviable duty of creating a new special stat (unless one were to decide that such Powers are based on Edge, which isn't a terrible solution except that it makes Edge that much more powerful).

This.

I get really annoyed when they force a Magic rating on a character for having a magical knack. It pretty much makes those qualities and traits useless unless you're a magician (and then, more often than not, you can't even be a magician if you have such a trait). It's not a phenomenom limited solely to Pixies. Take a look at any of the qualities in Street Magic. At best you can be an unaugmented mundane with a single trick up your sleeves. And yet you still have to pay for the skills to use your feeble ability to boot.

And to reply to the above response, Concealment is pretty damn useless with a Magic of 1 anyway. It gives a -1 dice pool penalty to tests to spot them. Whooptido. Hardly the invisibility they're renowned for possessing.

Except Awakened Critters may increase their Magic normally. They do not receive as much benefit from it as they would if they where an Adept or Magician, but it is not restricted to 1.

Well, a good example is the free spirit PC. The amount of powers they can have is based on edge but the effect is based upon magic rating.

Edge and Magic rating for a spirit is THE most important stat which makes them kind of boring.

One could base their abilities on Essence if one wants to call it Metatype powers. This would impact the characters if they go stretsam or just getting cyberware.

A pixies magic rating of 1 is rather puny and almost makes the concealability power useless. Unless you make them into magic users and raise their magic rating then they have a concealment power that is usable.

Another good example is the negative changeling quality of Astral Hazing which effect is the Essence of the character (but not the power of the effect - merely the radius).

The silly thing about Pixies by RAW is that as magicians they are almost literally invisible as anyone LOOKING at a pixie mage with magic rating 6 have a -6D6 to ALL perception tests...

So what do you have if the pixie has Concealment, Imp.Invisibility and Silence...

You cant see him, at all, not even his astral form or the active spells unless you have LOTS of perception.

Isn't that MORE broken???

There's only one way to find out: Burn out Pixies.

That's pretty much been the trend for quite a while now, and arguably from the beginning of the game: magic requires magicians. There were some loopholes in the beginning but things have really tightened up over three editions. I used to track it with my Mundane Magic page (which, like the rest of the site, is in sore need of an update).

That's not to say that if you're mundane and want a taste of magic there aren't options - but it pretty much relies on external foci, quickened spells, magical compounds, and spirit pacts - but yeah, if your innate trick is to summon a watcher or cast Ignite, you're a magician. End of story.

maybe just maybe not everyone has to play twinked out characters who throw 15 dice at everything *AND* can cast one spell just because they think that having a magical knack is a substitute for coming up with a realistic background for their munchkin wet dream that they desperately want to play because for them shadowrun is all about being the best at something but their GM tells them that it's unrealistic and then they whine and throw a hissy fit.

sorry, i've just met a bunch of really REALLY atrocious gamers in my life but yeah, the magical knack quality is definitely not there to just be a generic magical splash to an otherwise already impressive character. And of course, being an unaugmented mundane sucks so much and nothing interesting ever happens to them and they aren't capable of being good at anything. Just ask everybody alive today.

Oh I know, I know. It's just frustrating to see things rendered so relatively useless when the very potential they're supposed to represent is rendered moot. It would have been better if the rule was more like "a Magic rating equal to your starting Essence + 1" or even "use the character's Edge attribute for Magic for purposes of these powers." Or pretty much anything else at all.


There's more than two extremes when it comes to creating a character. It's not "unaugmented mundane" vs. "borderline cyberzombie possession-tradition mystic adept gun nut."

I mean, these knacks are pretty much the worst negative qualities you can have on a character. You can never be a magician if you have one. You can never be a technomancer if you have one. If you run into any critter with Essence Drain or get so much as a biocompatible deltaware datajack you lose the knack. Even a 15-point negative quality (Sensitive System) doesn't hit you this hard. And all so you can do one tiny little trick that, honestly, you could easily do by just being an adept or mystic adept (which costs the same as most of said knacks).

I'm going to have to agree on that. I completely understand the reasoning why at the time limiting it to Magic 1 seemed a good idea, but I never agreed with it. I really think that with the Astral Sight and the Knacks, you really should be able to increase your Magic normally so that you can take a bit of 'ware or at least get the most out of your limited magical abilities - which I'm all about. I'd love to write up a character that made the most of their off-beat minor magical talent.

Would really love for you to do that. IC at least that would give people a mental idea of where the limits of those talents were meant to be.

With a bit of house ruling similar to what I mentioned in my last post, I was able to make a really great Occult Investigator using only the Astral Sight quality. He turned out remarkably well and, to this day, is still one of my favorite characters.