It does.
It says they are driven by sociopathic forces. It also says they wage a war of mass murder.
More over, it says they are acolytes of entropic forces. Justice isn't entropic, there fore if you follow Justice, you aren't following an entropic force. By the transitive property, you aren't a toxic shaman.

It's like saying the fire spirit's I conjure don't have a weakness to water.

That is your interpretation of Havoc.

My definition of Havoc is bring down
symbols of authority and order and seed chaos

symbols of authority and order = Megacorps

Seed chaos = only within megacorps' properties and projects

My Havocs are nothing like your anarchists .. instead they are deep conniving schemers who practices the most powerful path of magic in the world.. yep they meditate, do yoga and stuff.. hehehehe

Let me put this another way.. My Havoc organization is actively recruiting people into its fold.. if we are mass-murderers like you suggest, how are we gonna grow?

We aim to become as big as the megas if not even bigger.. so it would be contrary to our objectives if we become mass-murdering sociopaths hell bent on destroying everything..

Though each toxic magician is unique in his
beliefs, many (NOT ALL OF THEM) ultimately share a common or similar agenda.
The sample toxic agendas that follow are simply the most
common encountered so far. Many more exist.

It says NOT ALL of them are driven by sociopathic or entropic forces.

A war of mass murder, yes, by mass-murdering mega corp employees, which every SRunner is already doing in the first place. We make distinctions and do not kill or hurt the poor.

We ain't fire spirits. You are using a bad metaphor.

It's not the god of change, it's the sociopathic manifestation of environmental and spiritual corruption. I'm away from my books right now but check out "Street Magic", it's pretty clear as I recall on where toxic spirits come from. A toxic spirit is literally born from spiritual corruption, there is nothing good about it.



You won't. Assuming no corp/cop NPC ever assenses you, you're still working with a team of runners who will figure it out sooner or latter. If they don't, a fixer or Johnson is inevitably going to do some basic legwork on your before hiring. And in metagame terms, you cannot hand this kind of background to a GM and not expect him to take advantage of it at some point.



There is no RAW because toxic shamans are not meant to be played. In fact, they're considered less playable than ghouls, vampires, and cyberzombies. Basically, while you can play a monster who's soul is constantly degenerating and is forced to steal the souls of others to survive or a technological abomination against nature and reality, a toxic shaman is considered just too evil for a player character. There is no RAW to quote because RAW says "Don't do this!"

What I still don't get is why you want to play one. If it's flavor, there's plenty of other options that don't fly in the face of fluff and RAW. If it's a powergaming thing: #1 it's not that hard to break Shadowrun so just break it some other way and #2 why would you build a mage in the first place?

EDIT:

I don't think this means what you think it means. In the context of where it was written, it seems more like an explanation for GMs on a bunch of sociopaths might form into a group and work together, along with providing some examples of those. Yes, there are variations between different toxic shaman beliefs and yes there are reasons for infighting but I don't see anything here to indicate such a massive deviation from the fluff established before this. Why do you think this indicates such a major shift, instead of simply allowing the GM some leeway in designing the flavor ofhis (still very evil) toxic shamans?

Toxic Mentor Spirits
Toxic mentor spirits are handled as normal
mentor spirits (p. 192, SR4). They come in many different
shapes and forms.



Extending Masking will defeat assense. Especially when your magic is of an exceptionally high level.

My whole team of runners are toxics.



There is no RAW because motivations are never in black and white.

There is no RAW because the developers wanna allow room for a gray toxic mage like mine.

There already is a mentor spirit of Justice. It is Eagle.

I find the V thing funny because in the comic book he is a motherfucker. It is fitting that he was created by the same author who wrote the definitive Joker story. Especially since Batman from DKR until Grant Morrison's current run has been the arch-fascist superhero.

So Toxic mentors give the same mechanical benefits as normal mentor spirits and can appear to their mage in nay form the GM chooses. How does this apply to fluff?


That takes time and a few grades of initiation, not to mention it still leaves open a whole host of non-magical means to detect your toxic nature.


If you're the GM, why are you here? You don't need to justify anything to us, run your game and be happy. If you're playing, how can you possibly expect your GM not to jump on this hook? It is literally the defining feature of your whole team. Besides, you've now just upped both your collective bounty and are probably big enough that any group that gets even a whiff of your toxic nature (and it doesn't sound like you're gonna be subtle) is going to consider you a serious threat. Regardless of your intent, everyone from gangers to megacorps gets freaked when a group of toxics are in town.


I'm pretty sure the RAW is clear that Toxics are not meant to be PCs. And I'm not getting into a morality debate on the internet, everytime that happens God does unspeakable things to a kitten. I will stick with my assertion that, as described in fluff, toxics are deranged sociopaths driven by deep spiritual corruption and whether you want to define that as "good" or "evil" it's still not something most people will assosciate with and isn't really appropriate for roleplaying. If you want to roleplay that there's already a game out there for that and it's called FATAL.

Quick questions I'd still like answered:
#1 Why do you want to play a toxic shaman instead of any other anarchist shaman group?
#2 Why did you start this topic?
#3 are you GMing or playing?

By that logic you can make any mage you want and call it a toxic mage.
Could I play a toxic mage with the pacifist quality? How about one that really wanted to heal the earth and restart civilization by mending people's broken hearts? Why not, it says they come in many different shapes and forms.

If you now conveniently ignore the paragraph upon which you built this thesis in favor of a absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence approach, then why bother justifying a misinterpretation of both the spirit and the letter of the character?

More over, toxic magic brings forth mana spikes that bring the Horrors, evil alien beings that will destroy the world. Therefore toxic magic, no matter in which cause it is used, is bringing about the death of all metahumanity. that's where the moral realtivity ends.

I think the question should then be posed; why do you want to play a toxic mage at all? The death means life construct already exists in the Dark Mother mentor spirit. There is no reason the group of vigilantes must be toxic, so why do you want to vear so far away from the inherit concept of a toxic shaman?
This is more than just your interpretation of what a toxic shaman is, but more you making a character you want to play and trying vainly to find a justification to make him a toxic mage.
So why? Why not just play this guy as a regular mage.

But I'm serious about Alan Moore. That guy will mess you up.

Well, if you look just two paragraphs over your own quote, you seem to have missed this :

... or that :


Putting down "evil" megacorps to push forward more decent alternatives while refraining from indiscrimate tactics - as your proposed group does - is simply, too mild, not enough single-minded, obsessive and disruptive agenda and methods to warrant the "Toxic" label and all the assorted goodies that comes with it rule-wise you so desperately seek.

This is IMHO the realm of the Adversary mentor, not of Havocs.

While you're doing a quite fine job at splitting hairs over certain wordings and sure as hell are correct about real world motivations not existing in absolutes you're incorrect when it comes to the gaming universe of SR. The latter does know at least one absolute value for "evil" (and thus by implication also for "good") in form of the - currently distant - threat of Horrors. And while you could certainly create a debate whether or not Invae are "evil" in an absolute fashion, they sure as hell were depicted as "evil" throughout SR's history from the perspective of mankind as total (opposed to individual views). So your claim that there are never black and white motivations is inherently flawed when viewed in context of SR and its RAW



And here you're entering the realms of fortune-telling, unless you happen to be a developer or have true telepathic powers. Otherwise the claim that developers truely want to allow toxic mages in line with your interpretation is flawed as well, despite being overall "correct" within the boundaries of propositional logic (where a true conclusion B drawn upon a false premise A always remains true regardless of how stupid the premise is).
Looking at how toxics have been portayed over the course of SR's editions it's rather doubtful that the developers truely wanted to allow room for your ideas and thus deliberately chose the words a.k.a. RAW in the same manner that you now interpret them in your construct.

So while this discussion might be quite entertaining in terms of "how far can I bend things to fit a certain POV without contradicting RAW" there remains that one - so far unanswered - question: What's the purpose of this - apart from the more or less obvious "trolling" and "powergaming"/"munchkinism"?

Mhh well, from what you wrote there, it sounds very much like your guys want to become the top dogs, grab power and basically set themselves as the ones who decree What Shall Be. And from the other posts will mercilessly destroy each and every organisation that doesn't fit their beliefs root and branch, from the CEO down to the lowest waitress or janitor (as you state 'if they're corp X they're the ennemy, even the kids, and deserves what they get' or a close equivalent).

How long before even the fig leaf of 'letting the nice guys prosper' gets trampled under the heel of the want for power, and those pesky things like morality and free will gets pruned to let only good obedient zombies slaved to you 'ideals' and feeding your power ?

In my opinion all the Robin Hood posture is merely the facade your groups shows to project, rather than what they truly are. Sounds a bit like the Universal Brotherhood, and we know how it ended for the poor schmucks who joined the ideal...

But if you want to have nice toxics in your game, well, it's your game - there's no Game Police to snatch you and toss you in a dark cell with Buba the love troll for what you're doing, and as long as you have fun, it's all right. Just don't pretend it's canon.

He want to play one so he can design his own spirits and give them karmadrain and possesion and then karma drain a half a dozen of them to high enough force that they can posses great dragons, so he can take over the world with his army of possesed dragons.
So in other words he just a troll, whose answer to any rules problem is "Don't worry I'm just gonna make shit up"

There can always be more than one spirit representing a certain ideal.

As I said, my automatic gun makes less recoil than yours.

I am not saying that toxic mages are not killers.

I am saying that they only kill specific groups of people, namely mega wageslaves.

Please do make the differentiation between a pacifist, a vigilante who kills all the criminals out there and a totally deranged sociopath who kill everyone.

we are making that difference, toxic mages belong to that last category.

It is not "more decent" alternatives. It is a "different definition of what's toxic". Who's to say toxics can't choose their targets and methodologies and retain their goodies at the same time?

BTW, your description is more of a introductory description than anything else. Does it cover all possible variants of toxics? of course not..

Hey which megacorp doesn't want to destroy every other corp and rule the world? Just ask SK.

The difference is that we want to improve the world not destroy it. This is why my toxics aim at the megas without hurting the common people aka Robin Hood and V.

As I said, we are toxic mages. Sure we are evil but no more evil than the next megacorp and certainly not as evil as the arch typical totally deranged common toxic mage.

In fact, we set out to hunt down totally deranged toxic mages who want to destroy everything. Surely, that sets up apart from the rest of the pack.

Wow, thanks for that tip. I will be sure to include that strategy in my game.

Btw, I don't make shit up. I only create wider interpretations of rules so as to enjoy a greater variant of possibilities in SR. If all toxic mages or blood mages are evil, where's the fun in that?

How about a toxic mage who destroys other toxic mages?

Oh before I forget, another prime objective of our group is to use our toxic powers to destroy horrors, shedim, shadow spirits, insect bug spirits and any other supernatual evil spirit.

Our mentor spirit was actually the lord of death and change but death to the current world so that it can change for the better.

Horrors, shedim, shadow spirits, insect bug spirits and any other supernatual evil spirits prevent the world from evolving so the most important objective is to use our toxic powers to get rid of all supernatural evil.

This objective is even more important than taking down the megas.

Using Poison against Poison.. That's the motto...And the main poisons in SR world are the megas and supernatural evil. If megas and supernatural evil spirits destroy the world, how is humanity gonna start afresh as stated in the Havoc agenda?

So using toxic powers to destroy evil.. that's a very reasonable objective within the confines of the rules..

Patty, you can do whatever you want in your own games.

But, speaking quite frankly, don't go around blathering about it and expect other folks to just applaud your 'genius'.*

Here's a hint: If most of your arguments need to start out with "in my game...", well, your argument probably only applies to YOU, not to anyone else, and is therefore not a good common ground to have a debate about. There's no point in asking "can I do this?" about your home houseruled campaign rules. Your home campaign can have whatever you want.

It's okay of you want some dark comic book superpowered game. That's your prerogative.

For most other folks, though, that is not Shadowrun.




-k

* - Seriously. Have you ever run into "that guy" that will just NOT SHUT UP about his 117th level demon/paladin/cyborg/whatever that requires fifteen billion houserules just to begin to be legal? GMs can be "that guy" too.

This thread is like a train wreck... awful, but too fascinating to look away...

But that doesn't answer my question; can I make a pacifist toxic mage? And if not, why not? As you clearly state, the text says there are all types of toxic shamans, so why couldn't I play one that abhors violence? One that views killings as a detrimental to society and who wants to heal it, thereby making the distopian world of Shadowrun crumble?

Or could I play a thurge that doesn't believe in God? A monotheistic Shinto priest?
Could I base my PC off the titular character of a graphic novel and not even know the name of that graphic novel?

Now I like the idea of an all toxic party going around blowing stuff up. No qualms with that what-so-ever. Heck, sounds like a fun backwards game. I'd have a blast. I think where everyone is getting a little thrown off the rails is your (mis)interpretation of the way toxic shamans work.
The "I'm not really bad, I'm just drawn that way" theory doesn't really hold weight based on any published material. Especially when you consider that toxic magic is so bad that the mere usage of it brings about the end of the world. How does that coincide with not harming the benevolent little guy?

The idea of the post seemed to me to be "Here's my interpretation of toxics, what do y'all think?"
Well, you've heard what we think. Everybody. Think about that. Everyone else on dumpshock disagrees with you. We can't even agree on whether or not threading takes an action and no one else thinks you have a handle on this idea.
I know you aren't beholden to anyone to agree with your choices of how you play the game, but you asked for our opinion and you have it.
Universally.

Now, stop typing, go to your local comic book store and buy V for Vendetta. A million times better than the movie. They didn't even come close. Alan Moore refused to put his name on that thing. Bound is a better film symbolizing resistance to Thatcher's England. Plus Gina Gershon totally makes out with Jennifer Tilly. Why the Wachowski brothers veered away from lesbian BDSM into William Gibson rip-offs, I'll never know.

EDIT
Also, word that sounds dirty but isn't: titular.

This.

Toxics are supposed to be maniacs who are not just uncaring or tragic villians, their fundamental ideology is the antithesis to human life. The role of "we don't give a shit for individual humans, but in the end our extreme means will serve the betterment of all mankind" is already taken by others. If you want to run things different in your game, no problem. Just don't try to convince us it's canon, because it clearly is not and was never intended to be.

What.

Have you been conveniently ignoring what has already been said about how toxic magic, by definition, helps summon the Horrors early and bring about global genocide? You certainly evaded Darkhen's quote stating that ALL toxic mages wish to bring about the end of all life on Earth.

No matter how hard you try to spin it, within the themes and context of the SR universe, toxics are not and can never be good people.

It is when Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly make-out scenes are used in the same post.

You know, this is A LOT of restriction for a group of people infamous for being uncaring about collateral damage.
So, I'll throw you a bone.
I can see a Toxic Havoc starting this way, killing only corp employees, thinking she is saving the world, etc. But eventually, there will be a point where she will kill inocent people (like putting a bomb inside a corp office when there was a school visiting the place) and at this point the shaman will have two options: rationalize and free her of the guilty for what she just did (they would become wageslaves too, I set them free!!!) or realize that she became worst than the monsters she was fighting and try to repent.

My point is, no matter how noble the initial path is; the end of all Toxic magicians is crazyness, hatred for metahumanity and herself and socipathy.

He'll just refute this by saying that his "toxics" are not meant to be "good" either, just not as "evil" as others. Namely: While being "evil" on a global scale he wants them just to be "evil" enough to get the label "toxic" and thus the enhanced magical powers that come along with that tag and simultaniously being far better than all other "evils" by having less severe targets than these. And all will be warranted by the fact that moral and motivational absolutes nominally don't exist (hence the reference to shades of gray and such) ... at least not within his frame of perception ... and of course the quoted wordings from RAW can (deliberatley) be interpreted as being ambigious as well.

Why are we still discussing this? Lesbian make-out scenes have been presented and ignored?

At least that's interesting, compared to this toxic claptrap. Pay attention where attention is warranted, ladies and gentlemen!

Judging from your evasie answers to some of my posts, I'll have a few questions about your happy bunch of toxic's mindset. As you didn't put a word in reply to my mention of exterminating the megas down to the last janitor and his family, I'd like to have a few precisions.

How close the family ? only direct ascendants and offspring or would you extend that to aunt, cousins, in-law and the like ? How close an association would be required to end up on the target list ? No matter what, considering the Ten's size, even limiting yourself to the closest relatives means killing quite a few millions peoples - most of which will have either a rather vague association, or very limited choice and influence. A cook preparing meals for the workers on some isolated site isn't exactly what I'd call a trendsetter amongst his parent corporation...

What of former employees ? Would they too share the guild and need to be purged for the sin of their association ?

Also, what of their subsidiaries, stockholders or even business partners and customers ? Where do you draw the line of 'this is evil megacorp X' to end the targetting ? Also what amount of callateral damage is happy lot willing to accept ?

J. Tilly just isn't my type ... no matter with whom she's making out

Ppppffff. Still no excuse to be responding to the rest of this.

Oh man, that made my day

I remember when a lesbian acquaintance of mine put Bound on the TV with me having no clue what it was gonna be about. Cue me looking at her quizzically when it got underway.

Regarding this topic: Toxics are like Captain Planet villains. They lack a certain depth of character depth, are so '90s it hurts my teeth, and were obviously never intended as PCs, because they have the Always Evil alignment. There, done.

pattyhulez: I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve in this thread; why do you want to convince us?

No excuse needed ... From time to time it's just relaxing to view someone's (brain) fart and then trying to ignite it with a lighter

To take it a step further, I'm guessing most of you don't remember some of Patty's other topics. I'm still thoroughly convinced that all y'alls are gettin' trolled. But for laughs, go check out the thread about spirits possessing drones. I think that was the other laughable one.

We do know that, X-Kalibur. I'm positive that KarmaInferno and I, and most of the others, were there for all of them. There's not much else happening here at the moment, though. It's fun to step on bugs.

And "y'all" is already plural! That's the possessive.

As a sort of side note to all of this, Is there really a bounty on Toxic Shamans? My runners have taken out a couple over the last year of game time and it would be nice to know if/who was giving them out. They got involved in a magic turf war with the toxics and sort of won.

I think it's detailed in Portfolio of a Dragon: Dunkelzahn's Secrets.

The bounty is a 1,000,000 bounty for living Toxic and Blood shamans, for "research purposes". Many people here think that's suspicious.

Don't look now, your lack of Southern-ness is showing

No you can't make a pacifist toxic mage who can't kill.

Yes you can make a choosy toxic mage who only kill supernatural evil and mega wage slaves.

As I said before, my toxics are killers but they only kill evil forces.

Toxics want to improve human life. Especially Havocs.

Because toxics view the current state of human life in SR as crap. Therefore they have to destroy the same crap right now so that humanity can evolve to a higher state of life.

However, a lot of toxics get blinded into destroying everything. Some toxics are more choosy and enlightened and only destroy megas and supernatural evil cos these are the main stumbling blocks to a better life for humans.

Isn't killing already evil? It is certain many would consider killing poor wageslaves to be evil, anyway. Besides, a toxic who isn't 'evil' is not a toxic at all, just a player cherry-picking bonus powers. That's what definitions are for.

You can play this game all day, and it's kinda fun. Is Tyler Durden evil? Hehe. In the end, though, it doesn't matter at all. PC shadowrunners *can* be evil. Evil things can be PC shadowrunners. Toxics *can't* be PCs.

Please quote the page on the book which says that toxic magic help summons Horrors early and bring about global genocide?

Remember, Havocs wish to restart humanity anew. It never said anything about the ways in which humanity can be restarted anew.

So some Havocs wish to destroy everything. Some Havocs only target supernatural evil and megas.

Toxics are not good people. But they are not all evil people too.

Not that it matters, again.

Yes, there would be a few who go on a killing spree.

That is when our own mentor spirit orders the rest of the havocs to hunt down those who ignores the group's creeds and geas. One of which is to never target innocent civilians specifically.

If the toxic was trying to bomb a mega VP and innocent civilians get caught in the bomb, then that toxic would be punished and killed too. There are millions of ways to carry out assassinations and if you are inept enough to hurt innocent civilians while carrying out assassinations, then you do not deserve to be in the group and would be culled.

After all, which sane group would want to attract more enemies? The idea is to turn the people to our cause and not turn them against us.

Yes I can imagine now one toxic bumbling an assassination act. Then orders came down for a group of toxics to remove that bumbling toxic. It would be a chase across town and across the country.

That would be one hell of an adventure hook. Killing one of our own.

Toxics barely even have groups, considering the unique and personal nature of their devolution. They wouldn't likely care about 'innocents' anyway, but they couldn't plan any coordinated response even if they did. They're, by definition, *not* sane (since you mention it). They're not trying to get followers or public support.

And how is that wrong?

Are there any RAW which states that ALL toxics must kill innocent civilians in order to remain toxic?

State the book and page please.

Obviously, the higher up the employee, the more valuable his life is.

Well my toxics have groups.. they have a budding mega and mafia too.. and they are definitely getting followers AND public support..

See my toxics are not deranged enough to realize that a few people can change the world all on their own..

To change the world, to start humanity anew, you would need an army and an empire and my toxics realize that very very clearly... hehhehehe

There's no 'remain toxic'. It's not a geas. It's not a group stricture. You're toxic. You're insane. You're bent on massive destruction, regardless of the rationalization inside your cracked little skull. That's what it means.

Again, 'your toxics' aren't. It doesn't count as evidence if I call my dog a horse. There's no (extra) shame in admitting that you stole extra powers through rationalization, and are in fact just typical (evil, power-hungry) shadowrunners using unbalanced house rules. That's fine; it's not 'true', though.

That is what you mean. It is certainly not what I mean.

I don;t have a horse nor a dog.

I have a cat and I am calling my cat a cat.

So, I suppose you have house-ruled a toxic mentor that does exactly that, right? Kill only megacorp employee and keep innocent people alive...
I call shenanigans on that.

You want quotes from books? Ok, I'll give some:

Doom > wish to bring about the end of the world by any means possible (and no, it is not the end of the "world" as society, but the world world, as in Armageddon and Apocalypse).

Mutation > evolve or die. It doesn't fit the point of view of your toxic shaman anyway.

Pestilent Rat > spread disease everywhere.

Pollution > spread the taint.

Rabid dog > it actually is the closer to your PoV (destruction of those he deems unworthy), but the sentence just before that tell us that loyalty and devotion are antithesis of Rabid Dog's beliefs. What does that mean? It means such a Mentor is completely unreliable and one day might tell the toxic mage that Shiawase employee are evil and must be killed and next week say that red headed step children are evil (just to clarify, I have nothing against red headed step children, I for one, think red chicks are hot)

And last, but not least:

RADIATION

CLEANSING COSMIC FIRE AND ENTHROPY INCARNATE, nuff said.