I've got a new player joining my group. She wants to play a pyrokinetic character in the vein of Witch Hunter Robin. So I was wondering if it would be more effective to have her take Spell Knack and have one fire spell rather than the Magician quality.

Any inherent weaknesses to Spell Knack that I should be aware of? The limits on the characters Magic attribute in particular seem really harsh, but I'm not well versed in the SR4 magic system.

Thoughts? Options to consider?

Maybe I'm not being creative enough but if you take Spell Knack and you're not a magician, you'll be wanting to either be a technomancer or getting implants of some sort. Both of which are realistically, mutually exclusive to spell casting.

Just my $0.02 worth.

- J.

The Jake has hit the problem with Spell Knack right off. Your Magic rating is stuck at one, and will be lost the moment you install any 'ware.

The low magic rating makes your spell almost ineffectual since the highest Force you can cast at is 2, and the most successes you can apply is also 2; not to mention that in order to get more dice for the spellcasting test you need to buy a skill that you can't use for any other purpose. Similarly counterspelling may only be applied to that spell, and how often is the PC likely to be subject to that firespell?

Potentially it could work, but you'll need to invest significantly more than the 5BP cost to make the knack remotely worthwhile to have (4 or 8 BPs worth of the spellcasting skill, + more for counterspelling if you want to squeeze every last utility from the knack). The PC will also need to avoid any implants to keep the knack, which is possible, but limiting.

But it's not all bad news. The PC could be a Magician with the Aspected Magician -ve quality, bringing the cost of being Awakened down to 5BP, and specialising in combat spells. Have her learn a couple of fire based spells. She can buy her magic up as normal, and can even trade a few points of essence - and thus magic - for some 'ware. She can even choose to conjure, assense and use other spells with a -4 dice penalty, which is better than not being able to use them at all, which spirit knack would do.

You might consider allowing her a blood fetish at character creation as a houserule handwave. Those glasses, for example. Doesn't all the juice they jam into her make her weak or something? (Excuse me, it has been a few years since I've seen any anime.)

You could also think about allowing the player to improve her magic rating, as per Tweaking The Rules in SM p.31 (more common knacks).

Spell Knack RAW is crap. It's not significantly better if you make some houserules for it that allow you to buy up magic and/or install ware. Have her go Mystic Adept or Magician with Aspected Magician. You could aspect it around Fire spirits and the spells goverened by Fire spirits (assuming a tradition with Fire Spirits is chosen) or you could just aspect to combat spells (though I really like Manipulation for the character, because Ignite and the various Elemental Aura spells seem like a much better fit from what I recall of the anime).

In my world a character wanted to be a phys ed but in the MIB line. In an old challenge magazine and in a first or second edition source book there was an ability to be able to cast one spell inatelly. It was cast at magic -1 power with dice equal to magic rating/2 His power was to mind wipe people like in the movie. He didn't want the temptation to expand his spells. He was working on breaking the munkin habit from his D&D days.
You have to sit down with the player and GM and look at what you really want to do with the character's past and future and what outline the Gm wants to work on. My player really worked on it and became a great roleplayer and learned how to roleplay his characters known history and supposedly unstopaple powers. He became the face and let the reall mages handle the magic.

Spell/Spirit Knack as written is on par with Astral Sight in value - aka if you take this, you are a fucking moron. Even if you house-rule it so they can improve their Magic attribute, it is still by far the worst quality in the game (excluding Astral Sight).

If all your player wants to do is throw around a few Fire spells, I suggest going Mystic Adpet with a 0/all Adept/Magician Magic split. It will cost 5 Buid Points more if they just want to summon Fire spirits, or 8+ BP more if they also want to use spellcasting, but the advancement potential is greatly worth it.

Magician, or Mystic Adept with everything in the Magic aspect. Then buy up 3 ranks of the Geas flaw with the condition being fire magic and your magic will be 3 less when dealing with anything but fire magic.

The best way to do it is to either houserule Knack to not be stupid (not difficult) or to houserule Aspected Magician to be even more extreme (also not difficult).

Knack Houserule

Cost: 10BP (5BP)

Awakened characters with the Knack Quality are both extremely limited and extremely focused in their magical talent. As a result of this extreme focus, characters with the Knack Quality have an initial Magic Attribute of 2 and an initial maximum magic attribute of 7 (Essence +1). Knack cannot be combined with any other Quality that grants a Magic Attribute, Aspected Magician, or any Quality that grants Ressonance. Knack can be taken multiple times with each Knack after the first costing 5 BP. Characters with Knack may bind focuses, raise their Magic Attributes, Initiate, and learn any metamagics that they have the prerequisite abilities for.

Spell Knack: The character knows a single spell, chosen at chargen and cannot learn any others.
Grants use of: 1 spell
Skills: Spellcasting, Ritual Spellcasting;

Spirit Knack: The character can summon and bind one particular category of spirit Summoning and Binding for this purpose. They cannot use their skills on any other type of spirit, or on Free Spirits.
Grants use of: 1 type of spirit
Skills: Summoning, Binding

Astral Knack: The character is able to use Astral Perception
Grants use of - Astral Perception; Skills: Assensing, Astral Combat;

Defense Knack: Characters with the defense knack specialize in defeating magical attacks, rather than making them. They focus on the use of Counterspelling and Banishing to the exclusion of everything else.
Grants use of
Skills: Counterspelling, Banishing

Power Knack: A character with the Power Knack can use a single Adept Power. If the character has any other Knack he must split his magic rating between Magical Skills and Adept Powers, just like a Mystic Adept.
The character may take multiple levels of his Power, if available, but cannot use any other Powers.
Grants use of 1 Adept Power

How would a houserule saying that with a Knack you use your Essence (rounded down) as your magic score for that one ability affect things? Would that make it reasonable? Too powerful for it's cost?

In SR3, it is certainly reasonable. In SR4, I don't know yes.
It used to be that all Critter Powers ran off Essence, but that was back when Magic Rating started at 6. In SR4, 6 Magic is the most powerful a starting character can be. Combine that with the low cost and there'd be no reason not to take it.

Personally, I'd want to keep the knack weaker than the spells that a full-blown uninitiated mage can throw. Even most (at least in my games) magicians don't have magic 6 at chargen, so starting a knack from magic 6 seems a bit strong.

I'd cap the magic at 3, but then again, I'd also use BPs to up it from 1. You're of course free to do whatever fits your game :)

My vote goes to Shalimar's idea, though maybe aspected magician might work better than geas. Seems like no matter what route you take, you have to bend the rules a bit, or just agree to limit the character to fire-spells without this being directly enforced by rules.

Thanks for all the advice. We finished building her character today, and she can't wait to play it on monday. Thanks.

EDIT: oh the character is a Magician with a Magic of 6, all the fire spells in the Core and Street Magic, geas x2 (conditional fire magics), SINner, and Reduced Vision. Pretty fair approximation of the character I think.

Don't forget the distinctive style - she has to dress up as a gothic nun whore at all times, after all, with handlebars. And reduced vision doesn't work too well, given that it only occurs when she uses her powers. I'm rather fond of the fetish bit, but that's just me.

Alright, you made me dig it out and watch a few episodes. Happy?

spell knack seems decent for sapients who have a magic rating but who aren't taking another magic quality, since they CAN raise their magic attribute, and they get a little screwed from the 'ware side anyway.

i think this works, right? there seem to be a few contradictory "cans" and "cannots" with spell knack and characters with a natural magic attribute...

I just always assumed the Spell Knack gave you a magic rating one for that single spell and was not affected by essence loss. So, you can dump as much 'ware in your character as you want, but you still have a Magic 1 for that single spell. Granted, you will have to spend BPs to get your spellcasting up...

Even if this is not the case in RAW, I don't see how this method would unbalance anything. I mean, worst case is you have a sammy with .01 essence, 'wared up to the max, casting a force 1 (or force 2 overcast) spell...and assuming he dumped extra BP or karma into spellcasting, what, that gives him another 6 dice? Not that big a deal for the investment and with the cap on magic rating, never will be as good as a full-blown magician or adept.

The big problem is the Force cap. That means you cannot get any more than 2 successes, which is easy to avoid.

First, I would question why someone would take a Knack if they wanted that to be a central part of their offensive arsenal. But even if they did, just use edge and you can ignore the cap. It would still max out as Force 2, but it is a knack...nothing more.

I have no problem with this ... up to a point. Fully awakened characters lose their Magic upon dropping below an Essence of 1.0. Why should that fully 'wared up sammy be any different?

Our house rule (from a house rule in the general rules for magic loss) have a knack'ed characters magic be capped by his essence, so (as he can't raise his magic anyway) he loses it as soon as his essence drops below 1.0, but is unaffected beforehand. This makes it a useably, if expensive quality (the effect of a 2 hit spell could mostly be gotten through ware for cheaper, but it's a nice diversion and character flavour).

When a player takes the spell knack quality, I have them choose one attribute: intuition, logic, or charisma. I have their effective magic(before essence loss) equal that attribute with a max equal to their essence. I also give them one rank in spellcasting for free. That way your knack can actually be useful as long as you don't go too heavy on the 'ware.

You know, the Defense Knack could be pretty useful for designing mundane "magic hunter" characters, or as an alternative to the "Magic Resistance" Quality.

Yeah, that makes the most sense to me and how I would run it if this scenario occurred.