Ok, so here's the deal. You guys all seem to be the most knowledgeable on Shadowrun and game mechanics so I'm hoping to pose this question here and get some concrete feedback. Preeeese halp

I am playing a technomancer pixie in a tabletop run. Now before you double over from a heart attack and your "this is different therefore by nature I must destroy it" kicks in lean back and take a ponder on this.

The one rule that sticks out for everyone is stated "A character can only possess either Magic or Resonance—never both." (pg.75 Players Guide).

On page 85 (87 of 186) of the runners companion it states the following : Sapient Critters are Awakened, but they are not magicians. Those sapient critters with the Dual Natured or Enhanced Senses(Astral Perception) may learn assensing and astral combat, but otherwise they cannot learn or use magic skills astrally perceive or project, initiate, or bond foci unless they take an appropriate quality such as adept, astral sight, magician, or mystic adept.

Then, back to pg.75 in the players guide it states "In order to possess either Magic or Resonance , a character has to first purchase either the Adept, Magician, Mystic Adept, or
Technomancer qualities (see Qualities, p. 77)."

page 80 in Sr4 goes describes the technomancer quality, which states that a character with this quality cannot take adept, magician, or mystic adept qualities

So here's the rundown: Sapient Critters (pixies) aren't magicians at birth. They have an arbitrary point magic which can be lost during chargen (which also releives them of all magical powers) or otherwise, therefore appeasing the resonance vs. magic rule and the technomancer quality taken. The other route is taking the "latent technomancer" quality from unwired which is for people who picked up resonance after birth at some point.

Now if you're thinking "This would be awesome to create a twink!!" hang on for a minute, this is an EXTREMELY expensive way to create a technomancer. Have to buy off uneducated for 20bp, 35bp for pixie race, 5bp for technomancer quality, then you also have to purchase things to drop your magic point. If you buy cyber to lose your magic point not only do you have to pay delta prices but it would drop your max resonance by a point. PLUS lifestyles cost an extra 50% and gear after chargen costs 125% for sizing

For those of you out there who need a little bit of fluff here is some stuff from unwired:

> I’m not worried about metahuman technomancers any more, but
what I am curious about is technomancers of other species. Remember
all of those efforts to make datajacks for dolphins, satyrs, dragons, and
whatnot? Those projects all went mysteriously silent after the Crash
2.0. You have to think some of them were successful. So is there a
chance we have non-meta technomancers and the like out there?
> Ecotope

> There’s a sasquatch performer in Vegas, stage name of Little Foot,
part of a magical variety show on the Strip. He pulls a lot of clever magic
tricks, including knowing non-public details of audience members, and
some funny routines with animated commlinks and other devices. It’s
all supposed to be illusion and clever use of AR, of course, but some of
his material seems awfully similar to things a technomancer could do.
> Cosmo>>>> Thread Posted By User: FastJack

There's also a little bit about a pixie named Grace:
Grace
This female pixie, of unknown origin, has been on
life support in Portland Hospital for the last six years.
The only known pixie with a datajack, Grace was apparently
jacked into the Matrix during the Crash 2.0
and the trauma of a viral attack caused her to enter
a comatose state. The local pixie tribe in Portland
continues to pay for her care and medical expenses
and visits her often. On slow news days, the local
stations like to remind viewers of “Little Grace.�

Given, she's not a TM but in the book there is discussion about people developing resonance after being trapped in the matrix during the crash. There is also fluff spackled about in the book about the mystery of resonance. People beleive it is "magic evolving to the 6th world".

I'm playing a TM pixie because its fun, and it sure brings interesting RP to a run. : )

Well anyway, what do you all think?

Diz!

It's creative. That alone makes it worth doing. It's also pointlessly expensive, which proves it's not intended to be exotic for the point of eking out every last die possible, but more for RP potential.

Here's some feedback for fluff; you're going to have to post more crunchy bits if you want build advice (other than "pick a stream which lets you use your highest attribute to resist fading").

To explain both the missing point of Essence and the fact that you're not in the British wilds, perhaps your pixie was kidnapped and experimented upon by a megacorp. Perhaps they took her, used a vampire (or some such) to suck out her essence (which, perhaps, they then used a revitalizing gene therapy to replace), and stuck her in a room with four deeply submerged technomancers. Perhaps those technomancers had a group of sprites track down the empty hole in the Matrix that would be the pixie's "biological node" if she had one, and then went on a Resonance realm search to find the bit of Resonance that would allow her to Emerge as a Technomancer. My point is, you can bet your last nuYen that at least one corp (Evo comes to mind, or Universal Omnitech) is interested in whether or not magical sapients can be Technomancers, and that's how I envision an experiment that could well create such a thing. It would also be an interesting RP angle; was the pixie fooled into signing up? Many of them are known to be fascinated by human technology, so I'm sure some of them would jump at the chance, particularly if they were being lied to about the true cost. Now that she's a TM, does the pixie resent the corp, or has she embraced the Resonance? If she's escaped, she'll have to be seriously on the run from a Wanted quality on steoids; if not, her life as a corp experiment will offer different challenges from traditional shadowrunning.

All the possibilities I can think of for losing Magic involve essence loss except one; broken geasa. However, to break a geas, you have to think of yourself as a mage, and that would leave with a character who has useless spellcasting skills, so we'll ignore that.

Perhaps your pixie ventured out into the sprawl to experience urban life (some of them do that), but the pollution, poverty and racism drove her to do two things; abuse drugs (to the point that she damaged her Essence) and spend most of her time at home, online. From there, Emerging would only be a matter of factors "clicking," as sometimes these things do.

Anyway, good luck!

I'm all for original concepts and this will hardly break the game. If you pay the points, go nuts.

You might want to pick up some kind of drone with a pixie sized seat on it though.
Remember, pixie flight is fueled by mana manipulation, not physics.

No magic= No fly

Keep in mind, if your GM allows it, that losing that point of Magic will not only cost you all of your pixie powers, but also a point of Resonance - it doesn't merely lower the max, it costs you a point. In other words, to start out with a 5 Resonance, you would have to pay for a 6.

Is it a high BP game? Because honestly, technomancers are already extremely expensive, and adding pixie, enough cyber to lose one point of Essense (btw, ask your GM if he is using the "chrome critters" optional rule, which could help with that), etc. might make it too expensive.

I'm all for roleplaying interesting concepts, and while I personally prefer effectiveness, I will still make some sub-optimal choices if they fit that character. However, you do need to give some consideration to the rules of the game, and whether they let you create the particular concept you have envisioned. For instance, in some anime, they have "normal" humans who duke it out with robots and what have you, but in Shadowrun, an uncybered mundane in a purely combat role will be terribly ineffective compared to a cybered killing machine or an adept martial artist. You might want to run some rough numbers first, to see if this build is even possible or not (I don't know how many BP you start out with, so I couldn't say for sure).

Personally I like the concept but would require that you lose any and all magical abilities the moment you Emerge.

The verdict. A few more arguments followed, but that´s mostly it.

Somewhere in the world, William Gibson just shat out something about the size of small compact car....

I don't like it personally. I wouldn't allow it. But that means shit. At the end of the day, its your game.

- J.

Ancient History's solution was fairly simple and would lead to some cool role-playing. I'd let you do it that way.

Brrrrr... i think i just had something running down my spine.

Well... i wouldn't allow it either. Pixies are too "new" in this world and too inherently magical (Born with astral sight and some critterpowers is pretty magical, maybe less then beeing dual but still).

MAYBE if you were a player in a group with very few freaks... and very good, and if you are willing to completely destroy all the magic inherent in the pixie... MAYBE. And storywise... no idea where and how a pixie technomancer could be born in this time and age.

And yeah i see the temptation in the concept. Pixies are born Mages and technomancers... i mean really +1 on Logic, Intuition, +2 on Cha and Will? HOLY cow.

That sounds pretty good for a backstory. Actually NeoNet is the only corp to recognize sapient critters and give them SINs so perhaps it was NeoNet and she might still have a tie to them. Or they're tracking her down. The other route I was thinking was perhaps my pixie had some family tie to "Little Grace" the hacker pixie who is in a coma, lost in the matrix. Little Grace could be a ghost in the machine since the crash and reaching out to her family somehow. That would go with the latent technomancer quality perhaps.

For everyone who has posted "well she'd have to lose her magic" and "she's inherintly magic" I did mention in the original post that it says in the critter section in a few paragraphs specifically about making a critter adapt to the technical world that if she loses her magic she loses all her powers that she was born with. I'm 100% with you there.

As far as a pixie being inherintly "magic" well.. thats where it gets grey. The core rulebook says that in "in order to posess magic or resonance they must take the adept, magician, mystic, technomancer quality". So they don't "posess" magic... they're born with some "mana controlling powers".

NOW HOWEVER if there was a line in the book that said flat-out that no one can be both awakened and a technomancer then I think that would seal the deal. It does say in the critter section they are awakened but not magicians. The latent technomancer quality allows anyone to become a latent technomancer as long as they purchased no "magical qualities". Critters start with no "magical qualities". So if the GM wanted to make it SUPER expensive then they could make you go the latent technomancer route and slowly buy up TM skills with karma as the game progressed. Up to that point you'd pretty useless though. Have to be some good RP ;3

Diz

great idea
i have toyed with a cybered pixie idea

but....

in SR4A, page 82, in the section titled Magic/Resonance, 1st paragraph, last sentence:
A character can possess either Magic or Resonance—never both.

don't have my runner's comapnion on hand, but i do believe it states that if certain critters lose all their magic, they die
might be vampires and essence

still great idea and one that may be playable in a few years.

just depends on the game you are in

Please see ALL of the counter argument to this above




Also, please see the counter argument above... well since you don't seem to be reading the thread or the books heres the exact excerpt from pg 84 of runners companion:

Magic
Every sapient critter begins the game with a Magic attribute
of 1, which may be increased with BP or Karma as any other attribute
to a maximum of 6 (+ initiate grade), as normal, and is
used for any tests involving its innate powers. If a sapient critter’s
Magic attribute goes to 0, it loses the use of all its powers except
Sapience, Natural Weapons, and Armor, if any.


Diz

Though why're ya laughing at your own joke? ; )

Better. Get an anthroform drone and put a seat in the chest.




-karma

And so, per the line developer, the answer to your pixie is no.

*EDIT* Of course, it is your game. Do what ever you want and what ever the GM lets you get away with. It is a nice concept, even if I don't like it personally. Cheers bro, have a toke.

Uh-huh, the problem is that we have a direct quote from Runner's Companion in this very thread that directly counterdicts Tiger Eyes, not to mention that as I remember the first discussion the devs didn't exactly see eye-to-eye either.

You know, its wierd. Every other new Character Type in that book specifically says that they cannot take a Resonance Quality.







And AI cant because of restricted Qualities. So maybe this is possible... hmm... I was initially in the camp that it should not.

I want to play an AI TM... only so I can just tell people I'm an ATM

Make your AI have the Home-Node in an ATM and you can do that anyway . .
And personally, that's more or less what i would AI/TechnoMancer/Hacker for.
Telling them:"Go there, get us some money, we need to do some shopping for the run"

With the removal of most paper money (Atleast in most countries) I cant really see there being any ATMs. Plus any ATM is almost certainly not wireless, and has a direct connection to the Banks mainframe. Good luck hacking a Bank without anyone noticing.

LQTM (laugh quietly to myself)

also, to the OP, I like it, run with it, Have a tinker bell from hell !

Yeah, there is that problem . .

If you have a Magic Attribute you cannot have a Resonance Attribute. There is a difference between Magic 0 and not having a Magic Attribute. Even at Magic 0 you still have a Magic Attribute despite the fact that it does nothing for you and - as a Critter - most of your powers cease to function. So, regardless of having Magic 0, a pixie cannot have Resonance.

What if it's really an AI, rigging an advanced drone that looks like a pixie, and doesn't realize it?



-karma

haha, I think William Gibson needs to lighten up about Shadowrun.

Besides, didn't he have voudoun-flavored AI fragments in Count Zero or Mona Lisa Overdrive?