I've played my fair share of Shadowrun but I normally play the flavor of Technomancer/Hacker, Street Sam, Adept or Face. Those sorts of builds I've got down. I also tend to be the party leader for planning and tactics. As life happens we lost some players and gained a few new ones. Over half the group is new to SR and a couple are fresh to table top in general. So my GM asked/told me to back off my normal roles I take and to try and get the new players thinking more tactically and stepping up, taking charge and using their characters. He then told me I would be playing the Mage/Medic... Cool I know/knew little about magic let alone how to make a good mage. So I searched around and read on DS various mage info and read most of the information pertaining to mages in the books.

So after about 8 various builds, I submit to you for your viewing and critiquing pleasure my mage. Since I don't know how to do the nifty Spoiler tag thingy, I'm posting most of my character below.

400 BP
Alias: Crowely Telchines
Race: Dwarf (25 BP)
Magician: Chaos Magic(15 BP)
Attributes: (190 BP)
B: 3
A: 1
R: 3
S: 3
C: 1
I: 5
L: 5
W: 6
Edge: 1
Magic: 5
Ess: 6

Skills: (114 BP)
Spellcasting 6 Spec. Combat Casting
Counterspelling 4
Medicine 4
Summoning 4
Binding 4
Assensing 4
Perception 1
Pilot Ground Craft 1

Qualities: (-20 BP) Not Counting Magician
Restricted Gear 5
Astral Chameleon 5
Mentor Spirit 5 (Dark Goddess)
SINner (Criminal) -10
Records on File -10
Lost Loved One -5
Big Regret -5
Sensitive Neural Structure -5

Spells: (36 BP)
Stunball
Stunbolt
Ball Lightning
Lightning Bolt
Heal
Increase Reflexes
Levitate
Slow
Improved Invisibility
Detect Enemies, Extended
Physical Mask
Mana Barrier

Contacts: (2 BP)
Talismonger 1/1

Resources: (38 BP)
$190,000
*Includes
Power Focus 4
Sustaining Focus 3
Combat Fetish
Various Gear
Plus my Safe House using the Runners Companion Alt. Life Style Rules

Looks like you hit the major "gottahaves" like the foci, so I'm mostly going to suggest tweaks - I see no major issues.

I'm not the biggest fan of Astral Chameleon - when it comes up, it only adds a pretty minor benefit. I would consider dropping it if you find yourself needing to cut stuff.

That 1/1 contact is fairly useless. I would either cough up a little more for a decent contact or drop it.

Slow is a widely hated spell and I would not expect your GM to allow it, or at the very least I would expect to use the German version that isn't bullet-stopping.

Mana Barrier is very meh, it has some uses (like owning Dual-Natured melee opponents), but I kind of feel like it's too situational to be worth it. YMMV.

First Aid is really useful, medicine less so. I would strongly consider swapping them, or getting FA 4 and Medicine 1.

Your ability to summon is much more limited by your Drain resist than by your dice - you don't really need Summoning 4. As is you're rolling 13 dice. A, say, Force 8 spirit is only rolling 8, so you will generally get at least one service - but you risk taking a bunch of physical drain from it - 5.3P on average, and you only have 11 drain resist. I'd actually recommend going down to 1 and a specialization in Summoning.

As a mage, you generally want to put your karma into Initiating, raising magic, and bonding foci ASAP, so it actually is worth speccing important things at Chargen. I would pick up a specialization on your Binding, too.

Body 3 and Edge 1 makes me uncomfortable - that's putting you pretty strongly in Glass Cannon range. I would really try to get Body 4; I can see living with Edge 1 and putting some karma into that to get at least OK edge.

That Charisma of 1 will limit you to a single bound spirit at a time. Not a crying shame, but having a variety on hand to help with spell-casting and the like is pretty sweet. Also, with no social skills you'll have a 0DP with any social tests which aren't always avoidable.

Speaking of bound spirits, starting with one is a great use of a few BP.

I so often see Edge neglected but for magicians it can be really useful, if only for ignoring the Force-caps-hits rule on spellcasting. You've got 17 dice for combat spells there (unless Dark Goddess adds any – I'm AFB) which has about a 52% chance of scoring 6 hits or more. That means whenever you avoid overcasting you are likely to lose hits.

If you're taking Medicine I would definitely give thought to First Aid as well or instead of.

No Dodge or Gymnastics is brave.

I'd definitely up the ratings of that talismonger. They're among the most useful of contacts, even for mundanes.

I'll assume armour and a magical lodge are included in 'Various Gear'.

Don't forget you have to specify what kind of sustaining focus it is and which of your combat spells are limited with the fetish. The rules don't specify, but I think most people play that multiple spells can share a fetish.

Combat spells really aren't that impressive to focus on. That tends to be a schtick better handled by the sam. Both in terms of efficiency and not robbing him of his spotlight chance.



I've seen this one go around a few times, gets me interested. Can someone actually quote it for me? German is fine. ^_^

I agree with everything else, but bound spirits are a terrible use of BP and are nothing but a trap.

Dodge or Gymnastics wouldn't be bad, but they really call for either a decent level of skill or nothing; Gymnastics 1 is just a waste. I would rather get more Body at this point so as to at least not die when you get shot.

Also, re: Combat spells, they are plenty useful. Street samurai cannot get any AE attacks remotely as good as Stunball; the ability to take down groups of enemies is more than enough reason to have a combat mage. It's not the ONLY thing it makes sense to specialize in, but it's hardly a bad choice.

I might drop for that extra 5BP for contacts or so.

I thought you used the rating of the first aid kit instead of your first aid skill. Thats one reason I took Medicine over First Aid, am I incorrect in this?


I forgot Charisma limited bound spirits, might have to change that. I'm not worried about the 0DP on social tests, but I want more than one spirit at a time so...


Dark Goddess provides +2 to combat and healing spells.

If you don't have first aid, you sub the medkit rating. If you do have first aid, you add the medkit rating. So with FA 4, and a medkit, and logic 5, you would start at 15 dice.

Astral Chameleon is actally amazing if you plan on taking the Flexible Signature metamagic.

Your Signatures are halved, then reduced by Grade. So it opens up the door to casting spells that aren't tracable back to you, and don't require any actions to scrub out the signature either.

You can't do it at a very high/practical Force value until you initiate a few times, though because Signature duration is based on Force.

I have done a 'hide in plain sight' mage with astral chameleon, masking, extended masking, flexible signature, and an intuition tradition to get decent rolls on the tests involved. The end result is a mage that's hard to geek first, because its very hard to tell where the spell is coming from.



Its generally a MUCH better idea to put that 1bp towards buying 5000 nuyen worth of Binding Materials, if you have a bit of prep time.

Though it can be hilarious if you specialize in it. My friend in one game made a summoner-specialist with a charisma tradition, had some extra points, and just started the game with 8 spirits on standby if he neede them. A pre-loaded astral gank squad, as it were.



Slow as written is just bad. It should really work like the spirit power Movement, but only for slowing things down.(making things go faster is even more broken). Spell force = force of movement effect for calculating change in speed. And probably also a mana spell, so it only works on living things, and leaves a reason to still use Movement.

Oh that makes a big difference, thanks UmaroVI. I'd like to keep medicine but First Aid has a larger payoff, so I'll think I'll just go with that.

As for only a 3 in body, I'm fine with. But i think I'll drop Intuition by a point. Still leaving me with an Assensing of 8DP and increase Charisma.

Edge 1? Is it really so bad in your group with refreshing edge? Edge can be one of the best attributes in the game. But I guess it depends on the group.

Charisma 1? That's a hard. Only one bound spirit.

But I guess you lack the points...

It's also true that if you just cannot scrape up the points, it can be OK to start with, say, 1 charisma, 1 edge, and then karma them up to 2/2 - in fact, the character generation system encourages this.

Edge is probably the biggest "value varies wildly depending on how your table runs things" stat.

This isn't quite as good as you are selling it - remember that it's only a 6-Force threshold to detect that someone is casting a spell, and none of the things you listed fix that, so as soon as you actually start casting spells the jig is up. The part I see as most worthwhile is the Extended Masking, which lets you keep Sustained spells and foci active without giving yourself away beforehand,. and Astral Chameleon gives people a -2 to see through it. As you said, it also lets you hit the "spells without leaving a signature behind" threshold earlier - but remember you can erase signatures manually in a few seconds. Is 5 points for -2 to one particular test against you and the ability to erase signatures faster worth it? Well, that does depend on how often these things come up. Especially given that these things don't come online until you have a good deal of Initiation under your belt. YMMV.

Leave First Aid to someone else. You already have Heal and you're in dire need of points. Plus it's bad strategy for the group to have all the healing focused on one guy only: who heals you when go down?

What category is your sustaining focus? I hope it's illusion, because with no infiltration, no dodge, reaction 3 and agility 1 you'll need to have improved invisibility running whenever you sneak or end up in combat. Good luck if you're ambushed or have a gm with a 'geek the mage first' outlook.

Few things:
- spirits are awesome, how about 5/5 split on summoning/spellcasting.
- that rating 4 power focus must be a bp hog. Consider dropping it and using the points to cover some more bases with your character

I am a little confused: What is the "slow" spell? I never heard of it and can't seem to find it anywhere. Please help me out on this.

You don't want to know It's a spell in War that was so badly designed that sustained at Force 1, it stops all bullets incoming to the mage.

To the OP: replace Slow by Silence or Sound Barrier. With your 0 Infiltration dice pool, you need to mask your elephant walk too...

Mana spells only affect the mind. They can make you think you're not falling, but the ground will dissipate the illusion

Coyote is a coyote shaman,...

You need restricted gear to take Slow at chargen anyway, War! says the availability for these spells is doubled, manipulation spells are normally 8 and thus are 16. He used his restricted gear on the power focus.

Honestly, this person may be a decent mage, but as built they really don't have any business running the shadows. You can't use magic to do everything, magic causes drain, is hard to conceal at high force, and doesn't solve every problem, but aside from your 4 medicine, 1 perception, and 1 pilot ground craft this character can't do anything without magic, they don't even have the edge to make up for such weak skills.

You're character has a 1 in agility, the best non-magic attribute in the game, this is used for stealth and guns, both skills any shadowrun who plans on living for two consecutive runs need(an ares predatorIV with 2 pistols, and a spec is a better weapon in 9 out of 10 encounters than a stunbolt, and invisibity doesn't always work.) You're character has a 1 charisma, which means they can't help gain the versitility they lack with bound spirits, is going to piss off johnson, and can't succeed a simple con check when using mask to disguise themselves.

There are easy ways to free up points. First, you don't need the foci, period. Take the sustaining penalty for a few runs, or summon a spirit of man to cast the spell you need. Since magicians use little to no 'ware, you don't have as much need for money as other archtypes, so you can quickly save up for the sustaining foci, besides the binding cost at creation is overpriced. Dropping that alone will let you pick up the infiltration, pistols, and etiquette skill you're character desperately needs, with some points to spare.

Also, a smaller point, a 1/1 tailsmonger is pretty useless. They don't have the connections to get any good illegal stuff, and they don't have the loyalty to keep quiet about anything you buy from them.

AFB, but I'm pretty sure the Availability rating only applies to the spell formulae.

Yea, the availability of a formula or an instructor. Do you mean to suggest that at character creation spells shouldn't use this availability rating? Granted it's only a problem with War! spells since otherwise spells are all below 12.

I do. The availability rules limit what you start with but make no assertions regarding the life you have led up until that point. If the GM were to claim that they imply the character has never previously had access to anything with an Availability rating higher than 12 the player could argue that since Availability ratings are subject to environmental factors (market, law, etc.) then at some point in his life he was somewhere where the Availability rating in question would have been much lower.

At the very least the player need only have an Arcana skill of 1 to say he designed the spell himself and if the GM takes issue with that then there are several other things that should be rolled for before they get on the character sheet. Like starting spirits, since it's allowed by RAW to have a bound Force 6 spirit with as many services as you like despite a Summoning dice pool too low to have any hope of a single successful ritual.

I'll admit it's kind of a loophole, but the alternative could be quite the can of worms.

It could? How is that? Base Availability is a very clear cut delineation.

Sure, all of the factors you described are true, but the same holds true for every other item. Someone with one rank in Aeronautics mechanic, Armorer and Pilot Aerospace could claim his character has built a satellite, built a Thor shot for it, and flown it into space, with a rocket he built himself, while returning with the drop pod he built himself.
Leaving the monetary picture out of the question, would this allow him to skirt availability rules? I don't think so.
So why should spells be any different?

Character generation does not care how you came about the things you have, just that you're paying the listed price for them.

That's what Restricted Gear is for.

You could explain RG that way, or it could represent something else, like ill-gotten gains or a present from someone you haven't seen in years. It's tangential to the matter at hand though.

Exactly, and there are no availability ratings for spells so you can't be denied them at chargen. Which is fine by me incidentally.

There are Availability ratings for formulae though, which you need to get the spells themselves. Wether or not you yourself write the forumlae doesn't matter for their Availability. And none of the basic ones surpass Availability 12, so all are chargen-valid. War! chooses to be a special snowflake though.

As I understand it (not having the book myself) War! has spells for which the formula/tutor availability is doubled, bringing some above the 12 max for chargen. If so, would you ban a player from starting with said spell on the grounds that he would have had to have laid his hands on something too rare in the past? Bear in mind that the character is not intending to own the formula or have access to a tutor for said spell, they just want to know the spell.

I maintain that applying the chargen availability cap to a character's history is not RAW or even RAI, so therefore no spell is off-limits to starting characters since spells themselves have no availability rating.

Yes, I would apply the Availability Limits. To do otherwise is odd...



Then why would a character not be able to start with a Gauss Rifle, or Muscle Toner 4, or Power Focus 5? They are from his past, so he should have them with no penalty. And spells DO have a rating. They are based upon their formula. You need a formula to learn a spell. See Below Quote:



Now, you CAN learn from another Magicain (as long as you honor the master/apprentice dynamic). But, since that tradition has fallen by the wayside, Learning via Formula is the method that is generally used. And, to have a Formula, you must obtain it. Thus Availability. IF you DO want to have a Master/Apprentice relationship, I would STILL make you satisfy the Requirement, because that is what a Master would do to an Apprentice. There are no "Free" things in Character Generation. You must still satisfy the requirements of Availability. See below Quote:



Spells rely upon Formula, and Formula are Gear. Thus, you must satisfy the Availability Requirement for said Spells to learn them.

Anyways.

You understand correct.
And meh. I rather choose to not allow things from War! from chargen at all. I tend to keep a tight leash on players getting milspec stuff, especially when some of it's as notoriously broken as the Slow spell that raise the issue here.

But hey, you're right in the end, it's not an Availability on the spell, so technically it'd be valid. I could see the opposite being RAI though. Either case, YMMV.

Characters cannot start with those items because they are gear and subject to their availability ratings as per the Gear section of the Creating a Shadowrunner chapter. Spells aren't even on the same page (literally). I never said spells don't have a rating (give me SOME credit!) nor is this even about the rating limit. Nor is it about starting the game with a spell formula, which is subject to the availability limit because unlike spells they do have an availability rating and are classed as gear. Spells however are more akin to skills than gear.


I'm afraid to say that quote does nothing for your argument. As I say - spells are not gear, they do not have availability ratings and are not purchased (at least not with nuyen).


No. Learning spells relies on formula (and even that is not strictly true). Starting characters do not have to worry about learning spells any more than they have to worry about summoning and binding the spirits they start with or obtaining restricted items without a fake ID. And I'll say it one more time: spells do not have availability ratings. They are dealt with separately at chargen and there is no text I can find nor have been shown that ties them into the availability rating restriction, so to do so is inference not RAW.

Call it rules-lawyerage. Call it a loophole. Call it game-breaking, counterintuitive or born-to-be-house-ruled-out-of-here.
As much as YMMV, it's still RAW and though we can equally debate the best way to do things, only RAW debates can be conclusively decided.

Amen.

Just a note, most magicians can cast a spell or two when that awaken, so there is a precedent to knowing spells you've never seen the formula for.

In my opinion, applying spell formula availiabilities to spells a character starts with would be the same as saying "Well, all laser weapons have an availiability higher than 12, so no Exotic Ranged Weapons: Laser Weapons for you." I see spells a lot closer to skills than to gear.

Anyway, back on topic: I think you could drop the First Aid skill, too. The character makes, equipped with a good medkit, a decent secondary mundane healer. His spell is even more powerful. Of course, healing the damage caused by unresisted drain can be quite effective, but with said good medkit he gets up to a dicepool of 11 under optimal conditions anyway.
You could consider 'ware as well. A chaos mage may not be too worried about foreign materials in his body, and you can get a lot of use out of one lost point of magic. I often use the cerebral booster to get better attributes to resist drain. A choice of style, of course.
Also, a pistols skill is, as already mentioned, always worth it. If your character gets into combat in an area with high background count, he may end up nigh helpless - nothing but his magic gets him out of combat safely. Dodge, too. Being able to resist or quickly heal damage isn't worth not getting hit right up front.

Except knowledge of certain spells is actually restricted or forbidden in certain jurisdictions.

Also, you don't get perfect conditions for First Aid, pretty much ever, especially if your aim is to help yourself recover from Drain. Plus you need three hits to even heal one box of damage.

Is it forbidden to know them or just to use them? I appararently haven't read that (or glanced over it), where is this from?

You are right about First Aid. Yet this would be the first thing I'd cut if I was in need of more points (to be used for combat skills, for example). How much damage from drain does one want to heal anyway? Those modifiers can also be minimized if you take your time to look for a safe and clean spot to do it - First Aid takes time anyway, so I wouldn't recommend it much in combat. Get someone capable to assist you, and things look somewhat better.
Sadly, First Aid is somewhat poorly written. You can only heal an amount of damage boxes equal to your skill rating, a medkit acts as the skill if you don't have it. So by strict RAW, you can heal more damage without a skill than with it This asks for an immediate houserule, I'd say...

Well the German version of Slow doesnt exist.
Instead there is an Mass-Levitation spell.

I would then use rules from Augmentation p.124 " The maximum number of boxes that First Aid can heal is the Rating of the medical
equipment or the First Aid skill of the character, whichever is higher"..