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MADness
Is it possible for a character to change magical traditions? Assume during gameplay (prior to character creation, it should just be a hand wave mechanically). Has anyone ever run into this?
Glyph
GM call. RAW, I don't think it is possible, but I'm not 100% sure. I would allow it myself, but it would take some heavy roleplaying. Changing your tradition in Shadowrun is a big, huge, deal. How you use your magic is intrinsically tied in to your strongest and most personal beliefs. Changing your tradition essentially means that you are changing your mind, on a fundamental level, about how you think the universe works.
MADness
QUOTE (Glyph @ Jun 19 2012, 08:43 PM) *
GM call. RAW, I don't think it is possible, but I'm not 100% sure. I would allow it myself, but it would take some heavy roleplaying. Changing your tradition in Shadowrun is a big, huge, deal. How you use your magic is intrinsically tied in to your strongest and most personal beliefs. Changing your tradition essentially means that you are changing your mind, on a fundamental level, about how you think the universe works.


Like losing one's faith in one's religion. I wasn't entirely sure how to would work. In my mind, it's a Christian Theurge shifting to Hermetic or Chaos. Not because of the magic, but because of the religion. It started bouncing in my head when I realized that only a couple of traditions aren't tied to a theological matrix.
Wounded Ronin
QUOTE (Glyph @ Jun 19 2012, 09:43 PM) *
GM call. RAW, I don't think it is possible, but I'm not 100% sure. I would allow it myself, but it would take some heavy roleplaying. Changing your tradition in Shadowrun is a big, huge, deal. How you use your magic is intrinsically tied in to your strongest and most personal beliefs. Changing your tradition essentially means that you are changing your mind, on a fundamental level, about how you think the universe works.



The universe of shadowrun could be the perfect place to play out some kind of fundamental loss of faith.
Nikoli
Given how tied one's tradition is with magic from the standpoints of personal view of the intrinsic nature of the universe, how one approaches the manipulation of mystic energies as well as one's paradigm in dealing with everyday life. I would say a temporary reduction in the magic attribute based on the drastic level of change. If the tradition was religious in nature and the person had a truly catastrophic crisis of faith to the point of abandoning their religion in favor for another or abandoned religion altogether, I'd say maybe a loss of 50% or down to 1 if the change is drastic enough. Instead of karma to return it, set aside an amount of in game time that it will take for them to come to terms with this change then slowly return the magic rating as they gain confidence in this new awakening.
Critias
This strikes me as "precisely the sort of thing we don't need rules for," personally. Faith and belief -- gaining or losing it -- is something that's so personal, and is going to vary from situation to situation and character to character, it seems to me that it's the perfect place to just hand the reigns entirely to a GM, let them talk to their player and work stuff out, and call it a day. Eyeball it based on karma costs for Mentor Spirits (if they're involved), look into any new Qualities that may apply (and charge accordingly), but other than that it really needs to happen on a case by case basis.
hobgoblin
This seems to fall very close to something that may well produce a "twisted" or "toxic" magican.
raggedhalo
What's interesting to me is that even the religious-based Traditions don't actually require that you believe in their higher power - like, you don't need to be a practicing Christian to be a theurge. It turns out that years of Sunday school really mess with the mind, though wink.gif
Midas
Interesting question/idea, and the answer is that is completely up to the GM.

My thinking is that if a character's magic is based on faith and for some reason he lost/turned his back on his faith his magic would more likely dry up as a result, rather than morph into another tradition but YMMV.
Kliko
As long as players don't go tradition "shopping" and want to keep all their gained powers/benefits from the previous tradition etc.
CrystalBlue
From what I've seen in SR4, there's a very good way of handling this: Burnout. Understanding that what everyone is saying is true (that your faith in your tradition of magic is what fuels your abilities), burning a mage out is exactly what you're doing. Your magic isn't working as well as it used to. Maybe you're just running into some bad luck, or maybe your faith is wavering. Start by decreasing their magic every time they have a question of faith. For characters, it's not a simple binary choice. A lot of things go into how a tradition works and how it fuels magic, and it essentially makes a mage. And as they get closer to losing it all, they get down to 0 magic. And they are considered a Burnout. They can't do magic anymore, because they have lost faith in the ethos they used to think in. Now, if the mage is truly devoted to their cause, they can try to rise up from the ashes once more. Or, if they try to find another way of thinking, they can look for a new tradition. But they'd have to be taught for a very long time, learning how to think like that tradition, before they can claim a single point of magic using it.

Take, for example, a hermetic mage burnout. Their formulas and spells just don't read as well as they used to. Logic can't solve every problem, and sometimes logic fails them. At some point, they throw out the workings of logic and numbers and figures and try to escape from it. This is a few year long process, maybe. Once they burnout, they wander, lost and aimless. To lose your magic is like someone ripping out your soul and leaving your mind in it's place. It's empty and hollow and might bring with it other problems. But maybe, down on his luck, a local shaman takes pity on him and provides him food and shelter for a while. He looks at how the shaman can use magic and might be intrigued. Then, it's a process of asking the shaman to teach him. Teaching the lore of the shaman's people, their spirit guides and the places the soul may visit. The many chants and and phrases that are used when performing even non-magical tasks. All of these would have to be taught, for a long time, and ingrained in the mage's mind. And maybe someday, if his heart is in the right place and his logic takes a back seat, he might be able to open his mind and heart to the callings of the wilderness, to the animal spirits, and to mother Earth. And at that point, he MIGHT get a point of magic, starting the new shaman on a path of discovery.

But, you know, maybe it's just a DM call. :O
Krishach
Burnout would be a possible way of handling the losing of ones confidence, which is another word for faith in this instance, but that is a personal issue.

Changing of beliefs happen every day, as new information is uncovered, accepted, and processed, whether or not the information is true, the point is whether one believes it. A change is a quintessentially roleplaying experience, and should be treated as such. GMs should never penalize a player for taking an interesting tack with their character, and there is no game-related system or reason the GM should be able to deny one's path. Other games are more suited for such niceties, such as Dresden Files. If a character truly wants to roleplay burnout, I think a redemption of faith, or changing of it, should restore powers lost as appropriate.
Stahlseele
SR4 has rules fdor that.
Street Magic:"Crisis of Confidence"
ShadowDragon8685
QUOTE (Stahlseele @ Jul 2 2012, 06:53 PM) *
SR4 has rules for that.
Street Magic:"Crisis of Confidence"


Those aren't rules for dealing with someone's faith and changing their Tradition, Stahl, they'll rules for saying "FUCK YOU!" and heaping an Awakened character down with negative qualities and reduced Magic at no reimbursement because FUCK YOU.


And that's boring. There's nothing there to let a magician regain his faith, toss off the useless geasa, or even adopt himself into a new faith such as a shattered Christian Theurge saying "You know what? God never existed, He never gave me magic! It was the nature of this Sixth World that gave me magic, and I was always tainting it by seeing it as a gift from a God that doesn't exist! I don't need God, I am magic!" and becoming a Chaos or Hermetic Mage, or a magician whose faith rejected them finding spiritual enlightenment and magical reawakening in the form of a new religious tradition, such as a broken Hedge Witch being taken in by a Buddhist or a lost Hermetic adopting the ways of the Shaman.
Stahlseele
Closest to this were the old pantheistic rules,i think SR2 or SR3, where you could, once a month, change your totem or something like that . .
can't remember where these rules were from/what book they were in though . . and the closest SR4 has is the crisis of confidence.
ShadowDragon8685
That's really only close in the way that a terminal case of high-velocity lead poisoning is a cure for AIDS.
Halinn
QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Jul 3 2012, 01:57 AM) *
That's really only close in the way that a terminal case of high-velocity lead poisoning is a cure for AIDS.

It's technically correct, and that's the best kind of correct.
Overture
Honestly, I wouldn't force a player to go down to zero Magic and work their way back up unless that's the story they wanted to tell. Obviously, it should be after a great deal of thought and work, since it's not a decision to be made lightly. Maybe an investment of karma and/or nuyen, with an equivalent delayed boost in power level upon completion of the switch.

Hell, with this you have leads for practically infinite runs. Go track down someone to train you in the tradition, help them out with a few favors...
Krishach
QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685)
And that's boring. There's nothing there to let a magician regain his faith, toss off the useless geasa, or even adopt himself into a new faith such as a shattered Christian Theurge saying "You know what? God never existed, He never gave me magic! It was the nature of this Sixth World that gave me magic, and I was always tainting it by seeing it as a gift from a God that doesn't exist! I don't need God, I am magic!" and becoming a Chaos or Hermetic Mage, or a magician whose faith rejected them finding spiritual enlightenment and magical reawakening in the form of a new religious tradition, such as a broken Hedge Witch being taken in by a Buddhist or a lost Hermetic adopting the ways of the Shaman.

Precisely. By saying that the mage loses power, you instantly eliminate ANY character exploring such things for roleplaying reasons. I say, if the person wants to explore character development, and talks to the GM about it, why the hell not let him re-explore as good roleplaying?
Take away roleplaying and we are basically playing a complex video game and doing the math by hand.
CrystalBlue
QUOTE (Krishach @ Jul 3 2012, 01:57 AM) *
Precisely. By saying that the mage loses power, you instantly eliminate ANY character exploring such things for roleplaying reasons. I say, if the person wants to explore character development, and talks to the GM about it, why the hell not let him re-explore as good roleplaying?
Take away roleplaying and we are basically playing a complex video game and doing the math by hand.


In your head, it doesn't make sense to lower a person's magical powers by switching traditions. In my head, it does. Tradition isn't just something you pick up or drop at a moments notice. It's a full commitment in both mind and spirit. And, if you're an adept, in body too. It's something you do every day, be it study a magical theory to keep up with the times, or pray to your gods to grant you the power to summon help when you need it, to doing a 4 hour run before you have breakfast because Dog doesn't think you've run long enough. Magical traditions require intense focus, concentration, and conviction. Lose focus and you start to drain. Lose concentration and you don't hit as hard with your spells. Lose conviction and you've lost the very thing that was giving you the strength to hold onto that mana in the first place.

I'm not saying you have to take my interpretation of magical theory. But in my eyes, this is how magic works. Unless you're an immortal elf or great dragon, or you just happen to understand the true nature of Mana and how it's going to kill us all someday, you need a way to center your thoughts on why you can bend steel bars in half and only weight 150 pounds. And you can't just switch that way of thinking in a weekend.
Jeremiah Kraye
Deleted for double pasta :3
Jeremiah Kraye
Except that magic represents a person's potential, while belief represents the focus to practice and employ that potential. IMO a persons ability to utilize that magic may waver, and for all intensive purposes wink out until they rediscover themselves but to neuter them entire by forcing a rebuilding seems silly. Think about it in the classic fantasy sense... It's a transformation not a rebuilding, kind of like a powerful wizard into a powerful lich.
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
I would likely do it as a Geas, rather than a Loss of Magic. He has his crisis of Faith, loses his Tradition, and then picks up Geasa representing/restricting him within his new paradigm. They continue to be a crutch to him until he has removerd them in play, thus representing his evolution into gaining a new Tradition. *shrug*
Tanegar
QUOTE (Jeremiah Kraye @ Jul 3 2012, 02:21 PM) *
Deleted for double pasta :3

Do you mean that you had a double helping of pasta and deleted half of it, or that you gained a double helping by deleting your post? Because, you know, if it's the former, then SCREW YOU! That pasta could have gone to feed the hungry. If it's the latter, I totally need to make more double posts. I like pasta.

biggrin.gif
darthmord
Such a thing would be better represented IMO as a temporary penalty to Magic. That way the Magic 5 mage with faith issues is still Magic 5. He can still feel the magic out there but it no longer listens to him. As the faith issue deepens, the penalty gets larger and larger.

Think of it as similar to a background count of belief.
Speed Wraith
QUOTE (hobgoblin @ Jun 20 2012, 01:25 PM) *
This seems to fall very close to something that may well produce a "twisted" or "toxic" magican.


IIRC, that was exactly the story behind a villain in one of the 1/2e modules from forever ago. I don't recall which one or what exactly the circumstances were, however.
hobgoblin
QUOTE (Speed Wraith @ Jul 3 2012, 08:41 PM) *
IIRC, that was exactly the story behind a villain in one of the 1/2e modules from forever ago. I don't recall which one or what exactly the circumstances were, however.

The proverbial devils bargain would be a classic. A desperate reach for more power, starting the magican on the path of damnation.
ShadowDragon8685
QUOTE (darthmord @ Jul 3 2012, 01:38 PM) *
Such a thing would be better represented IMO as a temporary penalty to Magic. That way the Magic 5 mage with faith issues is still Magic 5. He can still feel the magic out there but it no longer listens to him. As the faith issue deepens, the penalty gets larger and larger.

Think of it as similar to a background count of belief.


If I were going to write rules for it, I'd start with this. Per my house rules, a player doesn't "lose" points of Magic (or Resonance) for any reason (except total burnout,) they just get suppressed. When your cap is raised, any preexisting points return in full force, so for my games it's simply another way to lower your maximum Magic.

I'd say that an Awakened person who starts to lose his faith would have his maximum Magic reduced by 1 for every significant event or scene spent roleplaying his crisis of, and rejection of, his old faith/tradition, until he hits 1. At that point, it can't go any lower, and his faith is weak enough to adopt into a new tradition. He still retains his minimal powers - he can cast at Force 1, for instance, or 2 if he Overcasts, assuming he's a Magician or a Mystic Adept who chose to keep his spellcasting rather than adept powers, he retains 1 point worth of powers if any kind of Adept, and if a magician, he can still summon Watchers, but no other spirits.

At that point, he can seriously start pursuing other options, religious or otherwise; his Magic cap returns to its normal maximum at a rate of 1 for every significant event or scene spent roleplaying his newfound faith and the return of his power.
Krishach
both of which would be an awesome roleplaying evolution of character, with the GMs permission and forewarning.
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