QUOTE (Seerow @ Apr 19 2011, 10:46 PM)
Re: The Feywear, what exactly is the point of it?
It lets you get a positive quality put into your clothes, but you have to pay a ton of money AND karma for it... where (unless this was also erratad out in a newer version of the book) you can just gain new positive qualities by paying that same amount of karma. Yes, the book says the GM should award the qualities where they make sense blah blah, but Attitude also says that the GM should consider the impact that feyweave will have on his game before allowing a character to get it, so you're having to go through the GM in either scenario to get the quality... it's just with this you have to be wearing specific clothes and pay a bunch of money on top of it.
My guess would be that the Feywear and the Magic Resistant Quality would stack. Don't know, though, as I have yet to get
Attitude.
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As to the actual topic: The biggest complaint I have with magical characters is that they do have so much that can't be replicated. As a couple other people have said, there is no concept in the game that couldn't be made better with a splash of magic added to the character for that little extra edge. How much magic you want will vary from character to character, but having magic is always going to be strictly better than not having magic. It also doesn't help that you can't pick up magic post character gen, so if you think there's any chance your character will want some form of magic to complement his skillset somewhere down the line, you want to have at the very least one of the awakened qualities, and just enough magic to not be burnt out with whatever wares you want.
This is False. You can purchase Latent Awakening, and pick up Magic later in the game. I have even heard of some GM's allowing the purchase of Magic after play starts without having the Latent Awakening Quality. Post Character generation, this does cost an amount of Karma, but it is also a viable solution.
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Some things being exclusively magic is okay. Indeed, it's even expected. After all, what kind of mundane effect could turn someone to goo? Or take over someone's mind? But on the other hand, if that's the way it is, you should have more things that are unique to mundanes, and possibly limit the stacking between similar mundane/magical things. After all, why be a Mundane face and just have Tailored Pheromones, when I could be a Mystic Adept Face, who has Tailored Pheromones, Kinescis, Imp Social Skill, Commanding Voice, Cool Resolve, and the ability to cast Increase Attribute (Charisma)? Yes, you probably won't be able to do all of that at character creation, but you could do most of it, and could have all of it within 50-100 karma.
Well...
PAB Programming will allow you to take over someone's Mind, creating a Manchurian Candidate.
Turn to Goo is just a Grenade or two applied in an enclosed Space
And not everyone wants to play a Magically Active character. There ARE drawbacks to playing such a character. I am sure that I do not have to go over those again here, as everyone knows those drawbacks.
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I mean, even a hacker/rigger benefits from dipping into being an adept. You get a couple of cool initiation powers that can help out, and imp tech/vehicle skills to bump your skills above the natural maximums.
Hacker/Riggers are better as Technomancers than they would be as a Mage. Of course, The Hacker I play (A Massively modded CyberLogician) still often runs rings around the Technomancer in the Group. There are things that he does better (Spooof comes to mind, since that is his specialty), but when Hacking, The CyberLogician often finds and hacks the systems long before the technomancer does. His only Benefit is that he can Thread CF's to 14 when he really wants a High Threhold Cap, where I have to Use Edge. (We use the optional rule of Skill + Attribute, capped by Program/CF Rating). A Mage will never outshine the Hacker, though an Adept might come close.
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Mages themselves are a different story. They're far less dippable, so they don't scream "take this to help out any possible build ever!", but they are still very strong in their own right. While they can be used for complementing other roles (again, the Increase Attribute spell is amazing and is the only way to boost several stats outside of drugs, and there's several spells that support stealthing, gunslinging, etc), Mage's really stick out moreso in what they can do on their own. Their counterspelling is pretty much the only thing that will keep their team as a whole standing when facing other mages, since direct spells have no mundane way to protect against except for very expensive qualities. They can basically spam stunbolt/stunball/manabolt without much fear of drain at all. They can maintain 4 initiative passes with a single spell (can use a force 4 sustaining focus which is relatively cheap to keep it up cheaply). They can turn people to goo, stone, or animals, their pick. They can turn themselves into a critter and wade into melee (not that this really has any benefit in shadowrun, but it is possible, and is an easy way for mages to overcome their typical physical weakness). They can turn invisible and fly. About the only thing a mage can't do is teleport/time travel. The majority of the things listed are things that mages are typically capable of doing competently starting at character generation.
Drain, the mage's intended limiting factor, is pretty easily negated. Between Increase Attribute, and Centering (most mages' first metamagic), and a Centering Focus, it's not really out of the question for a mage to be able to just shrug off drain values as high as 6-8 even at relatively low karma levels. Even a starting mid-op mage should be able to shrug off 4, which covers most force 5-7 spells. With higher karma levels (ie the 400ish karma discussed in this topic) 40 or so drain resist dice isn't out of the question.
And this doesn't even touch on spirits, astral perception, or astral projection, all of which are pretty closely hoarded by the mages, and made prohibitively costly for other characters to touch. (Seriously, a full power point for astral perception? That's ridiculous). These are things that for the most part nobody else has an equivalent to, and Mages give up next to nothing for access to it.
Anyway, at this point I'm more or less rambling, so I'm going to shut up and go to sleep now.
And yet, the mage has to worry about such things as Background Count, Wards, and Other Astral Threats. Where the Mundane could care less. Want to pass through a ward undetected, the mage better shut down ALL of his magic (or hope that his Masking is up to the Task). Sucks to have to recast those things all over again. Especially in the middle of an intrusion. And how often does the mage have all the time in the world to Cleanse or remove all of his spell signatures, throughout the facility? in a run and gun game, he is likely to leave spell signatures all over the place for the opposition to find later. Again, Mundanes just toss the weapon and move on. Kind of Hard fo the mage ot do that.
Yes, Mages are Powerful, and yes, they are very versatile. Can they outshine the Unawakened? Yes, if the GM is not on his game, they can indeed. Is it a forgone conclusion? I do not think so. It takes a very large amount of karma for a Mundane to have nothing else to spend on, Skill and Attribute Caps notwithstanding. The Mage will likely spend all of his karma on magical increases of one type or another. The balance is not as slim as it seems.