As far as non-squishy mages go, yes, they are entirely possible. That's the advantage of classless systems such as SR : roles aren't as clearly defined and you can hybridize character concepts in a way that's qualitatively different from multiclassing.

However, this will still make you worse at your primary role most of the time. Mages are scarce on BP to begin with- raising your Magic stat, buying appropriate qualities, half a ton of specific skills, spells, pushing otherwise rarely used attributes for soaking drain, that adds up. Simultaneously, the mage still has to buy a whole bunch of essential mundane skills.
If you'd ever tried to build a mage, you'd be aware of this, it's a pain in the ass to make them at least survivable in situations where the sam would shine.

Now, there's obviously buffs for everything- but unlike the boosts of a sam, these are temporary, take time to set up, require expensive ressources to be maintained comfortably and might be missing at the most inopportune moment. Having to move through a single ward undetected may shut off your entire defenses. Stepping into a BGC can leave you completely defenseless, or at least significantly impair you.
From one moment to the next, your additional IP and magical armor are gone. At best, you have to cast them all over again. At worst, you are stuck in an area where you are effectively a very poorly built 300 BP character who has to hope he doesn't accidentally shoot himself in the foot.
Sprawls aren't littered with zones that shut your bioware off.

A sam can also shoot opponents he can't see. The -6 for invisible targets shouldn't stop a good shooter, and he can still use ultrasound or radar, which doesn't work for spellcasting. The mage can't do that.
Just toss a thermal smoke grenade at the mage and use your ultrasound goggles to target him. He'll love that.
Yes, there's ritual magic. That just takes half a day and additional preparation. There's a reason why so many players don't even bother with it, in spite of the drastic advantages it would offer.

On top of that, SHOOT THE MAGE FIRST has been drilled into every corpsec squad ever. As soon as they realize that you're the caster, you're hosed. Better hope that your troll tank can keep them from pumping you full of tungsten alloys.

There's good reasons for mundanes to be afraid of mages, but mages themselves don't have it any better in this regard, they will get into situations where they feel utterly defenseless in comparison to other roles. I hate walking into a fight whenever i'm playing a caster. Staying in the background busy with summoning and mind control is so much easier and doesn't make me feel like a sitting duck.

Why Only Once per Day?
The character my Wife plays could do it all day long if she so desired. When you can cast various versions of "Incinerate Town" you do not have to rely upon a Single casting.

Yes they do. So? Most versions of RPG Mages do not take any "Drain" from their spells either (Shadowrun and Mage the Awakening are the only examples I can immediately think of that have such a mechanic). Canon DnD does not. And that is generally the standard to compare against. DnD Mages can do things that Shadowrun mages can only Dream About.

Ah, I was thinking of spells like control weather, which take a very long time.

More than possible. You can make a more than decent damage soak with just armor and body. Armor is cheap, and body can be cheap if you're a troll.

Combat armor and a ballistic shield will take care of the armor. Since a shield takes one hand, I think a sammy wouldn't be able to use it with most of their two-handed weapons, you're on par with them for damage soaking. Armor is cheap, so no worries about overextending your BP (just get camouflage suit from chargen, then upgrade to combat armor later).

I've actually brought those points up in other threads, but people didn't find them too convincing for some reason. Maybe I would realize why they aren't convincing if I'd ever tried to build a mage.

Expensive resources? Why do you need resources to maintain a karma-made-permanent spell? Or a sustained spell?
Unlike the boosts of sam, these have more variety, and cost nothing, take no surgery time, and can be replaced rather easily if someone ever removes or breaks them (try saying that about 'ware). It's also arguable that if you chill in your base for a few days and overcast all your buffs to R13, then no BC can ever take them down (I'm of the opinion that deep space is -infinity, not -12).

If the target is behind a barrier, mage sight goggles or just blasting the barrier should be sufficient. If you're worried about light conditions, astral perception will take care of that. As for ultrasound and radar, there's a metagenetic quality for echolocation, but I don't think that can be used for "sight". I'll look it up later.
Thermal smoke won't help against astral perception.

Hide behind a barrier. You don't need to break your cover to kill everyone on the other side. You can just use mage sight goggles.

Stack your ballistic armor up to 20. Now you average 7 hits to resist ballistic damage, and quite a few against impact too. Improved invisibility bends light (all wavelengths apparently), so no need to fear from anyone except the one guy who has the most expensive technical vision upgrade I know of: ultrasound. Even then, you can just put up a glass window between you two and he's blind.

Powerful, large AOE spells require high level slots. I built my first few characters for 20th level before I realized that our campaigns wouldn't take anyone past 6th level. You guys must have been playing for a while.

Not much I can say against this: right, and right.

Karma is an expensive resource. Arguably the most expensive resource.

The word "expensive" threw me off, but karma is indeed a valuable resource. Probably the most valuable, since others can generally be valued by NuYen cost.

We have indeed been playing for years. My campaign has been running for just over 20 years now, with 6 or 7 different groups of characters. The current characters have been playing for several years (except for one or two new characters), and my Wife's mage is almost at 18th Level.

But it is easily renewable, as well.

Jeez.

Troll is by far the worst race for mages in the core book. Mages live and die by their drain stats, and trolls take hits to every single drain stat possible. These same penalties also mean that they can use less foci, bind less spirits and have horrible attributes when astrally projecting.



Have you ever read up on the encumbrance rules? Turning your mage into a turtle will make him pretty much immobile.



You are aware that there's cummulative sustaining penalties and a mage with a ton of sustained spells is practically incapable of doing anything right?
When you rely heavily on sustained spells, you need a sustaining focus or a spirit of man who casts the spell for you and sustains it as one of his powers. As Natural Spell is an optional power, you only get one kind of spell per 3 points of Force at best, so this option is extremely limited as well.




And when you crash into a ward, it automatically alerts the guy who set it up.
You'd also need a Rating 12 sustaining focus for that if you don't want to live with sustaining penalties to everything you do.




Except it won't.
You cannot target anyone on the physical plane from the astral unless he is also astrally perceiving.



Ah, mage sight goggles. Nothing screams I AM A MAGE PLEASE SHOOT ME like them.



Assuming a body of 4, you also take a -6 to all tests linked to Agility and Reaction, including initiative.
Enjoy going last and being a perfect target for called shots because you are almost completely incapable of dodging.



Or he uses radar goggles. Or a millimeter wave scanner. Or uses thermal sense. Or just lays down some suppressive fire with his SMG.
Guard dogs (including hellhounds and barghests) also don't care if you're visible, they'll just smell you. Spirits won't be fooled either. Or any drone with a decent sensor package. Good cyberears or an olfactory booster may also be sufficient to locate you.

Took a while... But fun...

I have seen a few decent troll builds out there. They take a little more effort, but not too much.



Rating 13 Actually. And you do indeed alert the Mage who established the ward. Hard not to at that Force Level. Unless you have Masking and Extended Masking, of course.



Indeed...



Actually, you have a penatly if either of ther stats are above your Body x 2 (or x3 for Military Grade Armors). So with a 20/20, and a Body of 4, you would be at a -12 (-6 for each of the Armor Values).



Agreed, Perception is so easy to boost, for so many senses, that I always side with the technology, for the most part.

Anyways...

I'm going to call RAI on that one: only the higher value matters. No double penalty. These are modifiers to the attributes themselves, and it's unreasonable to expect that 12/10 standard security armor (with helmet) would reduce an average person to -2 Agility and -2 Reaction. Theoretically that should mean they're unable to move.

Call RAI all you want, But it is still RAW....
Besides, Assuming that you are wearing Security Armor, your threshold is actually 12 for a Character with Body 4 (Body x 3). So no losses at all. See how that works...

No actual reductions to Stats because you did not exceed the Threshold. But by all means, Only limit it to the highest value. However, don't complain that PC's have an insurmountable Armor advantage.

It's (Body x 2), so you'd need Body 6 for no losses.

Ooops, Sorry, Caught up in the use of the optional rule.



We use the 2nd option, and apply it only to Security Armor. And of course, there is always the options for Military Grade Armor as well.

IF you are using the standard Rule, than the character deserves to be encumbered heavily while wearing Security Armor and having only a Body of 4. He would be -4 to each attribute; -2 for Ballistic exceeding the maximum, and -2 for Impact exceeding the maximum. What is exactly wrong with this? Seems perfectly logical to me.

I wouldn't say he 'deserves' -4 (a massive penalty) for daring to wear Security Armor (a standard commercial product) with his measly *above-average* Body. Besides, we all know how easy it is to get tons of armor while avoiding this penalty… hell, kudos to this character for not munchkin-ing.

Security Armor IS munchkining....
Though not as much as Military Grade armor is.

What ever happened to wearing a Secure Longcoat and being okay with that?

I'm assuming he has a valid reason to wear it; there must be plenty of Security NPCs with Body 4. It simply wouldn't exist if it *crippled* anyone with a Body below the human *max*. That's crazy. And yes, he said 'I think this is RAI'.

As opposed to FFBA/Gel/PPP/monstrosities; pure metagaming.

Opinions vary I guess...
I just see Security Armor being Customized to the individual wearer, is all...
And yes, those monstrosities are ludicrous indeed.

Kind of an exaggeration since Trolls don't take any hit to the dominant drain stat (Willpower), but I see your point.

I never had a reason to since I was a troll, and our party's mage didn't even know he had armor. Thanks for that. I'll keep my eye out.

I would hardly rely heavily on them. Probably start with a force 2 sustaining focus to maintain one spell, then upgrade to a force 4+ when I get a hold of the resources. A spirit of man can work out too. Then there's quickening for a spell or two that I intend to cast at uber force. I haven't heard about Natural spell since I'm still new at the whole mage thing, but it seems like dividing these spells up three ways would minimize the cost, especially considering I wouldn't want more than 3-6 spells.

Where do you get rating 12? Don't I only need a focus of force 2*(# of sustained spells)?

I was just going by the latest edition of the core book:

Is there a rule that overrides that somewhere?

They also scream: I can stand behind 29 meters of solid brick and shoot you instead. In a cover-based system, it's helpful to never have to poke your head out from cover. Even shooting the goggles should require a called shot.

Thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt on body. Between the armor I wear, and the barrier that adds to my armor when people decide they have no choice but to shoot through it, I should be fine.
Couldn't I also go possession tradition and use a spirit to fortify my attibutes? I heard about that, but haven't looked it up yet.

I'm pretty sure all thermal senses work by picking up on infrared light emitted by warm bodies, so no dice there.
Wouldn't spirits use astral perception, and so not be able to see through the glass?
For cyberears, I think "I heard you looking at me" is a figure of speech. Not a reality.
I admit I haven't looked this up, but firing blind is for when you can't see you're target, but know it's there. Doesn't smell just allow enemies to fire blind because they know I'm around? Or in the case of dogs, know pretty well where I am? I'm curious if smell would actually negate penalties for lack of sight.

Having a bunch of low-force foci brings it's own troubles : you can't have more bonded foci than your magic attribute. Since you will probably need some beyond those used to sustain your spells, it might be a problem.

Quickened spells are an option, but they carry some troubles with them :
- you'll have trouble with wards - quickening descriptions explicitely mentiosn they can be disrupted by wards
- it can turn into a karma sink : if the spell gets ended for one reason or another, you get no refunds on karma
- since a quickened spell is also an active spell, you're gong to end up with an aura like a christmas tree. And you can't turn it off without burning the invested karma. Activating foci along with it won't help in that regard.

Even a fairly dense security that spot an aura alight with spells and foci will think 'trouble' and react accordingly, just as they would if they spotted a gun-an-armor totting sammie hanging around. During a run it's not much of a problem, but when you're going to the mall for some shopping, that can spell troubles.

At least SR4 spares you the pervious's editions grounding rules - using the active foci/spells as conduits to channel a spell from the astral to the material plane. That could be brutal, with a damage spell flowing outward from the mage to fry the others PCs....

That's why you get Extended Masking first, and subsequently quicken Increase Intuition BEFORE anything else. Still going to be a karma sink, though. =/

You need a sustaining focus for each spell, with a Force that is at least as high as the Force of the spell it sustains. So sutaining say 4 buff spells of Force 13 will need 4 Force 13 sustaining focus - and the karma to bind them.

Ah, I see it now. Thanks. Dunno where I came up with that other rule.

@Longbowrocks :
Regarding the astral targetting, yes, an astrally perceiving mage can target subjects on the physical plane. If he can see them normally as well, with a physical sense.
Astral perception doesn't hinder targetting on the material plane. but with astral perception alone, you can only lock on to astral/dual-natured targets.

There's a few neat tricks enabled by how the issue is handled (for example, you can manaball a group of spirits or ghouls without risking to hit your non-dual natured teammates stuck between them), but astral perception does nothing against a mundane opponent just taking cover.
I think the rules also suggest to apply partial cover modifiers to spellcasting tests (they also suggest modifiers for casting at really long ranges, together with the -3 penalty for casting through optical devices like mage sight goggles, binoculars or endoscopes).

I can see that being RAI, but I don't see anything specifying that as RAW. Could you cite something?

I wonder a bit. We have mentioned a lot of modifiers here. I wonder if a mage (considering all of them) es even able to cast a spell.
He needs one net hit to effect anything after all.

So lets get started: Our mage trys to scare of some grangers in the barrens of seatle.

First we apply the BC of 1 which is said to be present in the Barrens.
Lets put the scene in around around 10 o clock pm. So it is quite dark.
And we are in Seatle so it is raining a bit.

So with normal sight we would be down by -5!
With Astral Vision we would be at: -3.

If you think of combat and apply partial cover or even good cover for everyone you go down to: -7(-9) or -5(-7).
The avarage mage would be crippeled in such a situation.

If you start applying all the modifiers (from camelion suite or the Camouflage spell it is getting even worse.

(And how does the mana version interact with astral perception)

Why would astral vision be affected by darkness? Is this in a table somewhere?

You sent me racing through the books on this one. There is no chameleon suite, it's a suit, which I don't think would help against astral perception because it's optical camo.
Camouflage spell looks similar.

Just a typo, sorry for that.


There is an astral visibility table in Streetmagic.
BC gives a malus and it depends on how many lifeforms there are. etc.

SR4A, p. 183, Targeting :

A magician in the physical world can only cast spells on targets
that are in the physical world. Similarly, a magician in astral space can
only cast spells on targets that have an astral form (though the auras
of things in the physical world can be seen, auras alone cannot be
targeted). An astrally perceiving (or otherwise dual-natured) magi-
cian can cast spells on a target in either the physical world or in astral
space. An astral target can only be affected by mana spells—even if
the magician is in the physical world astrally perceiving—as it has no
physical presence.


Emphasis mine. When you are assensing a physical, non-dual-natured target, you only see the aura. Your aura is not an astral form, it cannot be targeted by spellcasting on the astral.
Likewise, you couldn't target an astrally projecting mage who is manifesting unless you would change to astral perception. You only see a ghost-like image that he is casting on a plane he isn't actually present on. The same holds true for the auras of mundanes : they are not actually present on the astral. They are particularly vibrant shadows of an entirely physical entity.
This is why being a dual-natured being (ghoul, shapeshifter) is such a pain in the ass- in contrast to everyone else in the game, you can be targeted by projecting mages all the time.

Thanks. This is something I've been misinterpreting for a while to varying degrees.

I find this excerpt more important: It's only astrally *projecting* mages that can't target physical-only things. I'm only emphasizing this, not correcting anyone. I am not aware that you're in any way hindered by not using a natural sense; blind mages can target physical things while astral-perceiving. You still need a physical LOS, but astral sight needs that *anyway*. There've been some major threads about this, and the rules have changed significantly between editions.

In any case, this issue is the main reason mages often get vision augmentations: avoid astral vulnerability, and increase sighting options.

My intepretation of it is that this rule applies when the mage is purely astral - otherwise they wouldn't bother with using the next paragraph to specify that a mage in astral perception can target either ot the astral or physical plane. This second paragraph doesn't differentiate between eyeball or assensing targeting - so either method should work.

Basically when the mage is on one side of the fence, he can only target what's effectively present on his side - but when he's stradling it through astral perception (or whatever way to achieve a dual-nature) he can target both sides - though only one side with a given spell, and a spell selection that's influenced by the chosen side (namely, mana spells only when casting through the astral, and maybe a few astral-only spells disabled in the pyscial plane).

Exactly.

Here's an interesting twist.

There is the "carrier" negative quality at 5 points.

One could use that one but add different diseases, somewhat creating a living pandoras box of diseases walking around.
There could be balance issues so the GM should monitor exactly WHAT the diseases do.

That way a character could have the following fun.

Amnesia
Carrier (Disease)
Carrier (Disease)

That's something I would totally ban as a GM - and certainly not tolerate as a player a soon as I figure it out. Because even the the character isn't harmed by what he's carrying, the other PCs arent - and will probably the first to catch it. With a TPK (bat the carrier) a likely result if the diseases are bad enough. It reeks of 'I wanna destroy the game' playstyle.

Even for an NPC I'd be wary of it - and strongly dislike it from the GM as it will have a strong feeling of 'I'm going to screw you and enjoy it and there's nothing you can do about it or even to see it coming'. Season with as much evil cackling and hand-rubbing as necessary.

Wouldn't this apply then to any one player that wants to play a Ghoul, even Gary the friendly Ghoul? After all, unless they take a quality for it they will be carriers as well.

True, but HMHVV, even the Ghoul one, needs some kind of physical contact, such as biting/scratching/spitting in their soyburger.

I also wouldn't be TOO worried about it, it all depends on the vector. I've yet to see characters share blood. They don't get into melee combat with each other or (generally) bite each other. Same with sex. You can have even more esoteric vectors (or limitations on who is vulnerable). A mage who is carrier for a mage-attacking disease in a party with no other mages is fine.

It can ary with the disease - and the point cost should reflect this. But the post I answered to left the feeling the diseases would fall into the 'nasty and contagious' slot, turnign the character into a 2070's Thyphoid Mary. An STD affecting only sheeps would deserve a forceful slap on th head rather than any sort of points .

Though a character that turns out danger to any mage he interacts with is going to quickly have problems finding spell formulas and other magical gear. Odds are he can kiss any magical group goodbye too.