I have a strong feeling that the UCAS Army would have an overwhelmingly Hermetic bent (the entire Shamanic mindset to me doesn't seem to combine well with the extreme discipline of military life; compound this with the fact that one mental artifact I have from earlier editions is the notion that only Shamans can have mentor spirits) while say the Sioux military and the army of the other NAN would have a (disproportionate) amount of Shamans/casters with Mentor spirits.

Well of course they would prefer Hermetics (or Black Magicians, which are quite similar to Hermetics. or Chaos Magicians, which, since they believe mana is the computer code of the world, are strangely more orderly than most other traditions). They aren't going to kick out Shamans and such though, simply because theyre too rare to pass up. Especially since, as we noted, the private sector is much more enticing for the awakened.

Again though, what would the army do with adepts? Mystic adepts would probably get treated the same as mages (depending on how much they devote towards adept powers), but what would happen to Physads (assuming a warrior path, since the other paths would get put in intelligence/other)? Would they be integrated with the normal troops, since their function isn't terribly different, or would they have their own section within the Thaumaturgical branch?

I am suddenly reminded of Jeff Bridges character from The Men Who Stare at Goats.



-k

Yeah, was someone drunk when they were coming up with that one?
"Okay, we have this writeup for a tradition that treats magic like the ability to hack reality and act more like computer programmers than normal mages, but we don't have a name for them yet. Any suggestions?"
"Yeah, Chaos Mages!"
"What, they are the least chaotic tradition we've made so far."
"Well, throw in some random stuff about them using holy symbols and rituals from other traditions, that makes them random."
"But..."
"Here, have a fifth!"
*5 minutes later*
"Alright, the Chaos Mages are in!"

It's VERY easy for me to believe that alcohol, hallucinogenics and methamphetamine were involved in most of the decisions on SR background stuff.

I dunno. Black Magicians are bad new for employers. It's literally the tradition for people who want to bargain with demons and focus only on the advancement of their own personal power. You can't be sure of their loyalty at all; that's what makes them Black Magicians, pure egotism.

Shamans.. I think the army wouldn't really like people with a magical tradition so strongly tied to the culture of the enemy nextdoor. As well as loyalty to their totems. That's like the US army employing card-carrying members of the communist party.



They're probably trained as anti-spirits. Since weapon foci and Killing Hands bypass ItNW, they're just the right thing for it. They're also good for extremely rapid, low encumbrance deployment, since they're less dependent on heavy equipment.



Chaos Magic is a real-world thing, which has next to nothing to do with the SR equivalent.

If anything, I'd let the military use Psionics. To me, psionics represents an attempt at a clean, superstition- and fantasy-free magical paradigm, with even less fancy fluff than the Hermetics. Think PsyCorps from Babylon 5. Why they called it deluded in Digital Grimoire is a mystery to me.

Adepts would probably get fast tracked to SF or Rangers or whatever is the equivalent to the branch they join. Within reason of course, social adepts would probably be psy-ops.

In regards to the comments about psionics: While it might be a preferable approach from the military's standpoint, you can't force someone into a tradition and with psionics regarded as a joke in 2070, there'll be pretty few psionic traditioned awakened around.

Mostly a following-of-precedent from Street Magic, I'd assume, where they were pretty severely gimped by Kenson.

No, they'd be the political officers on the fast track to General/Admiral that get promoted because of whose hoop they kiss, and how well they do it.

They are Pornomancers for a reason.

Yeah, but why are they a joke? If you look at 4th edition, magic is pretty sterile, you don't need higher beings or religion at all. Psionics is a perfect fit for the game mechanics.

The government is an attractive employer for a couple of reasons.

1/ They don't kill you (much). If you follow your orders, you can count on a lot of safety & stability from your superiors. Unlike the typical Runner, you can pick up your paychecks without needing a sniper covering your position.

2/ They have the best toys. Even if the toys were developed by a private corporation, the goal of the private corporation is usually to sell those toys to the military, so working for the military gets you access to everyone else's toys. This should be true for magic as well, since the means to identify awesome talesma pre-dates the current power of megacorps. (Dragons might have the best toys of all, but they are somewhat less likely to let you play with them.)

3/ Tradition. If you're from an Army family, you may have grown up very comfortable with the lifestyle.

4/ Social Mobility. They will train and educate you way better than the typical Barrens kid could achieve. Poor people have been using the armed services as a tool for bettering themselves for a long time in this country, no reason they'd stop that in the future, especially if prospects are as bleak as they seem and the general social welfare net is as tattered as it looks.

Cheers, -- N

I've always wondered that as well. Magic has been shown to work regardless of your belief system, so long as you believe that your magic will in fact work. Thus Psyonics would not only work, it is also potentially correct. Whatever else Magic is, it is controlled by the (meta)human mind (/spirit/will/whatever). The fact that it is Magic and not Psyonics seems more due to the fact that people who called it magic found it first.

So, what you're saying to me is they're like corp suits.


Anyway, I think it's important to remember that in shadowrun "psionics" is no longer just a general term but a label for a specific movement whose proponents weren't able to keep up with the times and got lapped by the other traditions due to their own self-imposed limitations. After all, it is entirely possible to be a very pragmatic Chaos or Hermetic who views ritual as a useful template/tool with which to channel their abilities without buying into any particular belief system. Such people probably don't even refute Psionic's core hypothesis.*

Hard-line Psionicists, on the other hand, sound like they were a bunch of guys sticking their fingers in their ears and yelling "LA LA LA YOU'D BE A BETTER MAGICIAN IF YOU DIDN'T BELIEVE IN ODIN," even if that isn't strictly true. The real progressives have probably simply branched out under other labels like Unified Magic Theory and the like in order to disassociate themselves from some flawed ideas. For example, I've ran a UMT magician who borrowed the notion that Spirits are manifestations of the collective unconscious and summoned Jungian archetypes, but other than that he approached magic more like a Chaos Magician or Hedge Witch than a psionicist. He was the sort of guy who'd wear a Lakota Sioux headdress with a toga if he thought it might make Invoking easier. He also dropped a lot of acid. Maybe he usually doesn't believe in Marduk, but ask him again after enough peyote.

*That being that the mind is capable of inducing phenomena.

Hehe, centering requirement: drop some acid

Psionics lost whatever cool factor they might have had when all magic dropped gestures and incantations as part of spell casting. In previous editions you had to mumble and move the hands at least a little bit even if it was subtle, which is where much of noticing spellasting came from. 4e you noticed it because he was like staring hard, 4a added sparkles. Psionics was gimped previously in that you could only summon like watchers, had a limited spell selection(only psionic like powers) but hey it wasn't visible. Now psionics is not really gimped that much anymore though it is somewhat gimped and looked down upon.

I forget which novel first added a mage who didn't need any chanting etc. I think it was the one where he got caught in Chicago when it became bug city, I forget the title though. I really liked the book, even if I did not like some things in it like the no chanting bit.

The GURPS Magic approch to that always seemed reasonable. If you were really good you didn't need all the crutches like the chanting and gesturing. You could just think someone dead. But the average starting spell caster needed all the help he could get.

I dig that.

It's too bad Shadowrun 4e went the opposite way, and allows you to add the chanting etc. back in as an experienced mage (via Centering).

That's rather wonky yeah. Maybe one day I'll sit down and create an actual aspected wizard or something, someone who does use all that stuff. I wonder if the BP benefit will even be noticeable?

Which totally makes sense.

Reminds me of Eragon. Magic is done through speaking the language of magic, but if you're really good, you can just think and make it happen, but if you get distracted you can mess up when just thinking. Speaking prevents that, but has obvious problems.

Ugh, the Aspected stuff is terrible. You majorly cripple your character for 5-10 extra BPs.

Which you could have gotten in a way that didn't cripple yourself, since it is a negative quality as opposed to a reduction in your cost of being a mage.

Lion looks custom made for the Military, with +2 to banishing and +2 to combat spells.. until the small, but oddly significant drawback of requiring a composure test to forgive a slight (Don't yell at precious, drill sergeant), back down from a fight and retreat or refuse a challenge. The last one could be GREAT for bootcamp. The others, on the other hand..

Yeah, I quit describing them somewhere halfway down. I thought the point was clear; mages with mentor spirits are a nightmare for the army because they all have special problems.

I think of Magicians in the UCAS Army like Hawkeye and company in M*A*S*H

They're just too damn good to throw out because their military discipline sucks balls.

I propose that mages are used by the military in two ways:

"Square" mages, are the mages who take orders well, have a "straight" style of magic that the top brass doesn't get uncomfortable about. These are assigned to army units to provide magical protection and assistance; they're considered fit for fraternizing with the troops.
In the UCAS/CAS, these are Hermetic, Psionic, Christian Theurgy (double as souped-up chaplain), relaxed Qabbalists and Hedge Wizards. In Japan, Shinto and Wuxing wizards. In the UK, NDM Druids are deeply in bed with the government still, including the army. In the NAN, Shamans, Wiccans and Hedge Wizards replace Christian Theurgists and Qabbalists, and Hermetics are rare but still welcome.
These mages can become pretty popular, like a unit's mascot. They're often in it to serve their country (because the corps would pay a lot more). The military probably sponsors initiatory groups for them.

"Trouble" mages , are mages that don't fit into regular military units. Some have Mentor spirits that essentially make them Lone Hero types, which is still pretty okay. Others have Mentor spirits with subversive tendencies or widely mistrusted traditions. These mages ill often have a custom unit assigned to support them, rather then the mage being assigned to something. The military sees a brilliant but troublesome person, and finds a use for them, rather than trying to fit them into an existing structure that won't work. (Of course, if a shaman in the UCAS army starts behaving really oddly, and the brass thinks he's a spy for the NAN, he'll still be terminated. That's another part of what that custom unit is for; keep an eye on the troublemage.)
These guys are kept at a distance from the troops, because they're essentially untrusted and creepy. They'd undemine morale and discipline, but they can be spectacular black ops.

Heh, just like SR3 it made real sense to take a geas like Gesturing, if you got to keep your magic up with it, and now the Geas is just a stupid negative quality.