I was GMing shadowrun and found magic, for something rare, a little too common. To solve this problem, I decided that magician does not exist, and mystic adept is an initiation grade instead of a qualities.

The result was magic was something exotic and not mainstream. Basically you have characters that were better at what they do because they were "spiritually attuned". Balance wise, I did not have to stick someone with counterspell capabilities in every single encounter because their was a mage in the group, only to have that annoying reminder that only one in a million people are attuned and only one in those million can really do stuff with their magic.

What does the rest of the community think of this tweak to the rules?

I think Mages are pretty f*cking powerful. I don't always get why everyone seems to have so much difficulty. For all that mana-spells are overpowered, Summoners are worse I think (or better, depending on what side you're on).
Mages are generally physically weak, and need LOS to cast spells. No enemies (obviously there are exceptions in tough-as-hell-bastards, drug-courage'd gangers and fools) should be hitting cover in the first rounds of Combat, and even those with more stupidity than training will be seeking it after seeing/hearing/feeling some autofire and fireballs. If the guards have control of a camera, drone or even a Smartlink, they can sit completely out of sight and fire out, taking the penalties in preference to damage.
Therefore making it harder for Mages draw LOS without exposing themselves to return fire.

Androcomputus, do you have adepts from chargen, who then initiate into mysticism? If so, does this not just change the form of expression of magic, rather than limiting its occurence.

Your point about the fact of the prevalence of magic in the game not corresponding with the rarity claimed in the fluff is inarguable. Maybe, though, as has been argued elsewhere, shadowrunning is one of those 'professions' that attracts magicians, and that if one looked at the whole population in the game, the percentages would approach those of the fluff.

Yeah, Coyote Shamans have a hard time with the "Half-hour Lunch Hour" rule that Corporations have.

Nene Shamans, on the other hand... Nasty.

It's why the phrase geek the mage first exists. A good sniper drone at a distance equals things out quickly.

Wait, you always took half an hour? Pssh... I'm still on my lunch break. I'm sure my job at the corp'll be there.

I dont think the player playing the mage would like rolling a new char for every run...

How many essence 0,0x armed to the teeth combat monsters live in an average neighborhood? More than 1% or less? And how many hackers that can take one high-end ICE? There are ten AAA corps. Do dragons rule 10% of the global economy? Are 10% of the world's population dragons? One of them was even president of the UCAS for one day. How likely was that?

How likely was Dunkie to become president?

Well, look at the alternatives. I'm surprised the race was as close as it was.

Yeah, we could have had a Mantis Spirit as the president. Wouldn't that have been fun?

"I think... We're gonna drop the wall in Chicago." "But... Madame President, what about the bugs?" "Meh."

Magic is rare overall in the game world, although becoming more and more common. But it will not be rare either in shadrunner teams, or in the targets that they typically go up against. Doctors are rarer today, even in developed countries, than the percentages given for awakened metahumans. But go into a hospital, and you'll see lots and lots of them!

You can do whatever you want in your own game, but you're not bringing the crunch in line with the fluff. You're making magic more rare because you want a game with less magic.

Your proposed house rule seems wonky to me, though, because it would make any wannabe mage have to start out as an anemically weak spellcaster/conjurer, who can't even begin to be a mage before char-gen, while sammies, and adepts get to start out powerful right out the gate. I couldn't imagine ever wanting to play a mage with such a house rule. I mean, you have to initiate, raise your Magic to have an effective Magic of 1 for magician skills, then buy several skills at rating: 1? It would take several more initiations, and Magic increases, and several skills being raised - in other words, tons of Karma - to be a mediocre mage. Most players would say "Screw it" and become more powerful and well-rounded adepts, instead. There is a difference between "rarer" and "unplayable".

Yeah, much as I'm wary about mages, I'd be concerned that this particular approach would make them less viable at starting levels. Sure they'd be able to get better over time, but they wouldn't quite start off at equal footing.

That said, I'm still not a fan of the 'yeah mages are rare, but...oh look, PCs will run into them ALL THE TIME cause that's how megas roll."

To go a little further, Johnson's would favor Fixers that have a mage on call, and therefore Fixers would strive to have access to mages.

I suppose the circular arguement could then be that every team/threat/group wants/has access to mages, but the glass cannon model of SR guarantees no one is safe or too powerful anyway.

Basically, in all my years of gaming I'd say SR is the most challenging to a GM and players on a variety of levels I won't bother to list.

You want basic system complexity, look for a game called Aftermath with its "Missile Special Effects" tables and flowcharts for attacking AND damage.

But I'd say SR is king for complexity for a GM and players looking to engage in excellent roleplying, possible death because of miscalculation, possible "wow,my char just got seriously mechanically boned" because of miscalculation, and "dang you just got wacked semi-accidentally by dice/odd rule/overpowered game mechanic...

IMO those aspects of the SR magic system that set it apart from other rpgs are precisely the components that cause the most headaches. One of the most annoying for me is the distinction made between Mana vs. Physical spells. Personally I'd like to see that division completely eliminated because I don't feel it really adds anything of value to the game and I can't recall a single piece of fluff where the distinction was important or really made a difference.

Uh, unless they fixed that, mana spells are the only ones you can use while projecting. That's the biggest thing I can think of where you have fluff distinction. YOu can argue that the whole "mana can't affect non-living spells" and the like can be just written into the description, but the Mana only when projecting is kinda a big one.

Astral is just another area that needs to be re-worked because its full of headache inducing silliness as well.

Probably to go along with Redcrow's sentiments is the idea that oodles of fluff paragraphs that kinda/sorta tells you how things work, or open up wide doors of interpreting how things work, should be clarified (?) with clear bullet statements, or tables, or whatever.

If you make wizards really rare, won't that just increase the out-of-control problem when someone does manage to build a functional one? You can harldy justify having enough NPC wizards to keep them in check at that point.

Or conversely, the players will get pissed whenever they encounter an NPC mage, since that house rule makes it so close to impossible for them to be mages.

"I'm sure they'll see reason and support peace."
"..."
"Maybe they just want a hug?"

There are less cops on the streets than awakened. Why on earth do they happen to appear at every crime scene?

You could double the cost of all the main magic qualities. Both for adept and aspected magician but not astral chameleon or magic resistance because it does not give you a magical ability. Alternately you could very slightly raise karma costs to learn spells and initiate. 1 more karma to gain a spell. 2 more karma to initiate or maybe 10% more expensive rounded down. Magic is not wildly over powered but it may be a little over powered.

If it's working for your group, great. I don't think it's necessarily a "fix" because that term implies that something is universally agreed upon as being broken, and as such needs repair. As house rules go, though, I guess it's a reasonable one -- if you and the players are having fun, and like the feel of that world better, then more power to ya.

I personally don't think it needs a fix but it it got one it should be a small one.

But I do like that other thread where the party started at a really low build point level. They were not allowed to have mystic adept or magician qualities at the start but were able to buy them later.

You could have them all start at 350BP and buy latent magical awakenings. Then let them awaken after they save up enough karma.

If you see the problem as being the frequency with which you run into magic, I'd direct you to all the statements above about shadowrunning being a job where magic is much more common than usual.

If you see the problem as being the potency of magic & magicians, I'd point you to any thread about overcasting, and possibly direct spells, conjuring, and the shapechange spell. People have some pretty reasonable house rules for those things.

And in many cases house-rules may not even be necessary. A health dose of "realistic consequences for actions" can keep a magician that is CAPABLE of pumping out F10 Stunbolts using them at a more reasonable force. They have entire sections on magical tracking and detection for a reason, don't be afraid to use them.

I restrict spell formula in my games. They are secrets, so that any ole person can't just learn it online. In order to learn a spell you have to join an order (pretty much a magical group), and you get to be in one at character creation. If you have a mentor spirit you don't have to join an order to learn their spells, but not all spells can be learned from a particular mentor.

For example, Stunbolt and Stunball can be learned by being an initiate of The Grand Chamber of the Eleusinian Mysteries (yes this is from Castle Falkenstein). They are an order which pretty much all security mages join. So a LoneStar mage would be an initiate of the Eleusinians.

I got tired of all sorcery being the same, whether you are a shaman, druid, hermetic, or shinto. I had to ask myself: why does everyone know stunball/bolt, heal, and some kind of inviso spell. Really? The first things the Magic professors at Texas A&M&M teaches are the ways to turn someone's brain into mush?

If you really want to contain magic in your game, beef up the drain tests. I know that as the game has gone on, drain is less and less of a factor, but in 1e it was killer. Made the mages think about what they were casting instead of just churning out the manabolts.

The Eleusinian Mysteries were an Athens-based mystery cult that promised salvation in the afterlife. It was devoted to the goddess of wheat..

Funny how they end up..

I wonder do you stop people buying F rated weapons too? They are supposed to be ultra rare outside of tactical military units for most of it and as such unlikly to be seen on the streets?

Further more do you punish a group for doing stuff that draws attention to themselves? Grenade launchers in the high street are just as bad as a man ball.

My point is there are parts drawn into the game to show people the error in their ways if they over step the bounds of what is doable. In the real world someone with a high powered rifle welking down the street will warrent a high level of interest from the authorities in about as much time as it takes to say it. Granted we are talking in the future but the idea stays the same maybe the levels change. A pistol wont get much attention if the licence is showing in the AR but if you have a LMG strapped to your back expect swat to turn up.

The same goes for magic, all combart spells are forbidden this means that if your caught using even a F2 mana bolt there will be questiones asked if its noticed if its something more over the top display wise (IE something that will show up on the cameras like a lightning bolt or a gout of flame) then there will be questions asked regardless if you cleansed or otherwise removed the astral imprint.

Take this example a mage and a face are in a stuffer shack which gets robbed they both sit back and do nothing letting things play out as its not their problem but suddenly the owner gets shot and they decide to intervene. If the face pulls his legal and licensed light pistol and puts one in the ganger and scares him off the cops wont ask many questions as the weapon is legal and self defense. On the other hand if the mage cast a low level lightning bolt and scared him off the cops will be asking where he learned that and for what reason with a marker being put against that sin (fake or otherwise) that he is a known combat mage.

Magic if played right by the GM can be rare as the come back from using it for every little thing will cause much grief and noteriaty for the team, where as used as if its special will get much more milage without the grief

Just round around with a multi sense improved invisibility spell, and call it a day.

I've been looking through my books but I can't seem to recall where its listed which spells are Restricted and which ones are Forbidden. I'm sure there must be a listing for the availability of spells like the ones for weapons but I can't seem to find it.

Back of the gear listings under the focus stuff,

but it breaks down to this all spells are restricted apart from combat which are forbidden there are no legal without licence spells as far as I know

Thanks, I knew I remembered seeing it someplace. Always seemed odd to me that as rare as practicing mages are supposed to be and the fact that all spells are either restricted or forbidden, that they all would have such a low availability scores. Also since not all spells of a specific category are created equal, I would expect them to be broken down by individual spell rather than by category. Seems rather odd to me that a spell like Mind Probe would be no more restricted and as easily available as something like Heal.

Given that the avaliabilty is something a GM can change to suit the game I think its pretty much up to the GM to give you it when they want you to have the spell. It gets more complicated if the only copy about isnt for your tradition and you need to convert it then learn it. You order a gun through your fixer it turns up pretty much good to go, you order a spell from atalismonger contact and it might take you a week to get ready to learn it and even then there is a chance it migth go wrong (hand wave applicable in most instances).

Edit for extra comment

There is I believe a way for a mage to write the spell himself if he has the skills with bonuses for if you know a similar spell (like making a lightning ball spell if you know lightning bolt) and if you have assensed the spell your trying to replicate. But this again takes time and effort to make and time can be hard to get if the GM doesnt want you to have it.

And from what I can gather, mages make up about ~1% of the awakened. They simply should not be common. If they comprised the proportion of the population people want to give them credit for, then they would likely be much better understood by the public at large. I mean as you say, MUCH less then 1% of the population are police, but very few people are totally mystified by them.

functional mages are actually really expensive. Might as well ban them all together.

Again we come back to the problem with statistics, your comparing the statistic for the whole population compared to a very select group of people. I think if we had a statistic for runners in general you would find the average is higher then 1% thats been given previously. If you took the average for a particular gang for example you would get very wildly different answers if you compared a hacker gang to a wizgang (obvious I know but you get my drift).

My point is really I can see why some people might see mages being common but then it depends where you go if your breaking into a stuffer shack or a mom and pops place then no mages will be a rare issue in the security (if any) where as if your breaking into somewhere nice and shiny and pricy then you will do (they have the money and the prestige).

In the real world I work for a security company doing bids for some of the major corps of today and I'll tell you this sometimes they over egg their security partly because of the prestige they want (you look bigger if you have some real godo security) and sometimes just because the place is that inportant.

And besides, if we're going statistics... Lessee, let's say there's 5 billion in the Shadowrun world (don't remember the actual statistic, that's just something gong with the 1/3 removed due to VITAS I and II and then popping up a bit more)

1% of the world's population would still mean that there's 5 million people with magic potential in the world running around. That's larger than the population of most states.

To make a worthwhile mage, you need roughly the following:
Magic 4+ (5+10+15+20 = 50 karma)
Spellcasting 3+ (4+4+6 = 14 karma)
4 spells or so -> 20 karma
Summoning 3+ (4+4+6 = 14 karma)
Binding 3+ (4+4+6 = 14 karma)
Assensing 1+ (4 karma)
= total of 116 karma

You might as well give up on getting to play a mage. The numbers I've given here don't even really make you a powerful or very versatile mage.




Using that line of argument, why does any equipment have listed availability?

Giving a different Availability for Heal vs. Improved Reflexes (same spell class, Health) is actually a reasonable idea for a house rule.

The point is its a guide to what you should expect then adds the complexity of GM approval / timeline its not just spells but everything can have its avaliability altered by the GM but that doesnt mean it needs it. IF the GM wants it you also have the issue with who to get it from just as 'Bobs guns and Ammo' proberbly wont be carrying sniper rifles that fell of the back of a military lorry 'Sam's magical illusions and spellcraft' Proberbly wont have that nice new combat spell your after. Avaliability is a very good guide but everything is fluid.

One thing to keep in mind though is that a security Mage is not going to be onsite 24/7. If we assume a facility has 24/7 security and an average security shift is 8 hours, then thats going to be a minimum of 3 Mages required just to cover one facility 7 days a week with no time off. Larger facilities may even require more than a single security Mage per shift. Cities like Seattle may have on average a higher number of practicing Mages per capita, but they also have a much higher number of facilities that might need onsite Magical Security. Given the number of locations in which it would be highly necessary to have some form of Magical Security 24/7 and the low percentage of qualified Magical Security personnel, it seems to me there just wouldn't be enough to go around. So whats left is to start by securing the most sensitive areas and rely on more mundane security everywhere else. Typically the "everywhere else" is likely the kinds of places where most starting runners are going to hit. At least its not common in my games for most starting runners to hit the R&D labs of a AAA Mega-corp.

If I can throw in some real world security here

Odds are they will only have on site magical support if its a very secure location even now days with low security sites you have remote monitering of the mundane with mobile support coming in if alarms are tripped. With a astral projecting mage this is lightning fast and there are a number of astral alarm systems. Add in the number of dual natured animals used in the security field as security dogs and you could manage to have the astral covered pretty much as well as the numdane with a few patrols.

Hell one idea I did put forward is a site with a ring of the glowmoss lights aaround it so if a spirit or projecting mage crosses the line it lights up setting off a alarm. The alarm could trigger anything let out the hellhounds up to call in the projecting mage who can manifest to speak to the guards then summon and such with no real issues.

In the real world you can have a dozen contracts being serviced by only a couple of mobile guys with a car or bike. Unless you have multiple callouts all at the same time you can cover them quite easily. This does lead to the ability to cause false callouts to keep the area clear for the real run but sometimes thats the fun.

If your charging 50k a year coverage plus callouts on top ten callouts will pay forthree or four mages to be on call as it were in a nice safe rigger cocoon style setup and thats a very conservative cost (depending on your pay level).

Also I guess it will depend where you run and who against the big A will have some pretty good magical defense but then Ares's might have less magical but a shit load more drones which can be just as much of a bitch for a mage.

I use the "mages are as rare as doctors (good mages being as rare as surgeons)". There aren't that many doctors out there compared to the population as a whole, but if I take a walk down the street, I'd probably see half a dozen doctor plaques. There might be a shortage in small villages and in third world countries, but in big cities, there might even be too many of them.

I guess the point I was going for was that it wouldn't make sense to have Magical Security onsite 24/7 in every facility that runners may be trying to infiltrate. Which means that any mundane guards present wouldn't have the benefit of a team member who can help them out with counterspelling at all times. Certainly, if an alarm is raised a Security Mage might be able to show up quickly, but whether or not its quickly enough to do anything other than clean up the aftermath is debateable. Even if they show up in Astral, they are really only 1/2 there in regards to bringing the full measure of their abilities. It also is completely dependant on an alarm being triggered or in some way being alerted to a break-in, which is what most Runners hopefully have some skill at bypassing or avoiding considering thats basically what they do. I imagine that even the use of bound spirits to patrol would be somewhat limited and probably reserved for high security facilities. In previous editions it was much easier for a Mage to have multiple Elementals "on-call", but in 4e its a little more restrictive. Dual-natured critters are a deterrent but are really just as limited by their physical bodies as a mundane guard animal and can't provide anywhere near the same type of magical support as a Security Mage.

It just seems that PC Mages have quite a big advantage against the opposition in runs against all but the most secure of facilities where they might possibly expect to encounter an onsite Security Mage.

Thats pretty close to my thinking too,

There's a shortage in some First World countries as well. One of the reasons I moved away from my home city.

Magicians, however, would go where the work is. It all depends on their line of work.

In terms of magical response in a security breach, you don't have to have a team of mages for each facility. Most facilities seem to belong to a network of holding corporations, subsidiaries, etc., and there would likely be a strong economic argument for pooling resources. So, a team of mages could do their shifts covering several facilities. And yes, distractions then become useful runner tools.

What glass cannon model? Mages can easily wear fully kitted out milspec armor (on top of their armor spell), and be invisible at chargen with nuyen leftover for focuses. And it's not like mages don't have the points to increase body (or be a troll/orc/dwarf - the mental attribute cap is not a huge problem once you have 6 Magic) since they only need a couple stats to be effective.

I wouldn't exactly use the word "only" with needing 3 stats as high as you can get, none of those being one of the stats that raises your iniative(unless your of intuition tradition)