Can anyone break down the idea of a Focus?

Is a Focus a physical object or some sort of constant spell?

How do you get one and what do you use to get one with?

What is a Weapon Focus?

The corebook isnt real specific on any of this.

A focus is an enchanted item, like a magic wand or amulet, that improves a magician's magical abilities.


All foci (one focus, two foci) are physical objects. In fact, they can look like anything, because anything can be enchanted as a focus. Highly processed and technological items are more difficult to enchant, however, so are rarer.

"Constant spells" are called quickened or anchored spells in SR, and are another kettle of fish.


You can buy them from a talismonger, or you can make them yourself with the Enchanting Skill presented in Street Magic, or you can capture them from enemies, steal them from people, dig up an ancient burial ground, etc.

Foci don't generally require excessive physical manipulation: all that is required to activate their magical abilities is for the magician to touch them.


A focus that improves a combat skill (the one associated with the weapon), and which can deal damage to certain critters and spirits immune to damage from normal weapons.

It is an enchanted physical object (often a jewelry piece) that must be attuned to you with Karma (see Bonding p191), then carried on your person to be used. Rules for creating them can be found in the Street Magic supplement.

Acquiring a Focus is just as easy as acquiring Weapons, which is to say they are expensive and legally restricted, but since when has that ever stopped your character? The availability and cost of a particular Focus (as well as it's Karma cost to attune/bond) is based on it's Rating, per the chart on p.340.

The Rating of a focus is also how many dice it will grant you on the tests it modifies. Note that Power and Weapon focus are the only two focus types that are general, all others must be specific to a specialty. That is to say, you cannot purchase a Summoning Focus, you must purchase Summoning (Spirits of Man) or Summoning (Spirits of Air). See the focus descriptions for Spell and Spirit foci on p.191 for more information.

A weapon focus is a bit different from the other foci as it does not add to Magic Tests. Instead, it adds to Melee Combat tests when using the weapon focus, which is literally an enchanted weapon, traditionally a sword of some type though any weapon type can be turned into a Weapon Focus. You could even technically turn an Assault Rifle into a Weapon Focus, but you would only get the bonus dice if you were using it as a club and beating someone over the head (Melee tests, remember). The other advantage of a Weapon Focus is that it is the only type of weapon you can carry into Astral Space. All of your Active Foci will be available to you when you are projecting Astrally.

Finally, Sustaining Foci are worthy of specific mention as these are a must have for anyone who hopes to keep a spell constantly active. Normally, Sustaining a spell gives you a 2-die penalty to everything else you are doing, as sustaining is a very distracting activity. A Sustaining focus - which must be Sustaining (Health), Sustaining (Manipulation), etc - can sustain a single spell with force less than or equal to its Rating, so that you do not take the 2-die penalty. I encourage any mage to consider acquiring a R4 Sustaining (Health) Focus and the Increase Reflexes spell as soon as possible.

Finally, it is worth noting that Foci are active on the Astral Plane as well, and are very noticible to Astral Perception. Also as a result, it is difficult to carry them through Mana Barriers (see pp.185-186, Passing Through Barriers). How often those barriers will be encountered is entirely up to your gamemaster of course.

Ok, so whats the difference between a Focus and a Fetish?

Foci have been pretty well described above, so I won't rehash them.

Fetishes are physical objects, much like foci, and they can be similar things, such as wands, amulets, etc. They are much more minor enchanted objects, though. When you learn a spell, you can learn it with the limitation that you can only cast that spell when a fetish for the appropriate spell category is touching your body (holding the wand, wearing the amulet, lucky rabbit's foot in your pocket, etc.). In exchange for taking this limitation, you get +2 dice to resist the Drain for that spell. Fetishes are reusable, and are much cheaper than foci are.

Foci cost karma to bind, but improve some aspect of your spellcasting when active, kinda like magical cyberware(but with karma instead of essence). Fetishes are just little tokens required to cast limited spells(but grant +2 dice to drain resistance). A key difference is that an active foci projects onto the astral plane, a fetish does not.

You just made me think of something that I've never really considered before, OOB. If you're projecting, and you have a spell with the fetish limitation, can you still cast it? I suppose that the fetish could be, presumably, still in contact with your body, but I don't know if that really matters so much, since you're not in, at the moment.

Don't you take an "astral form" of all foci and fetishes with you when you project?

Only *active* Foci have an Astral Form - bound but inactive Foci will not project with you. I'm not sure about Fetishes, but I suspect most GMs will say that RAW, they are on your body so you satisfy the requirement. It's an interesting question though.

In SR3, it stated that astral copies of your foci and fetishes went with you when you astrally projected, but SR4 is more ambiguous about it.

Ah. If that's the way it was in older editions, then that's probably why I never thought about it in SR4. I probably just automatically filled it in, in my head. I'm mostly posting from work, these days, though, so I never have my books handy for reference.

Well, there do seem to quite a few instances in SR4 where stuff that hadn't changed from previous editions just didn't get mentioned. Makes it tricky for newcomers.