the spellcasting skill is the near-undisputed king of skills. With a single investment you can bend reality to your whim in a multitude of ways, from manipulating people on a more fundamental level than even the best face to healing with greater ease than any medic. Oh, plus the ability to turn invisible, fly, shrug off bullets... all with a single skill.

The only skills that even come close are Alchemy (basically spellcasting with more prep time) and summoning (which, let's face it, is the real challenger for the crown).

So I was thinking: Why not split these skills up?

Spellcasting skill into the spellcasting skill group (Combat magic, Illusion magic, Manipulation magic, Divination magic, Healing magic), Alchemy into the alchemy skill group (Same as spellcasting only replace 'magic' with 'preparations') and summoning split into the tradition's spirits, once again as a skill group. Specialization becomes by spell or by force.

A new skillgroup is formed from enchanting, disenchanting and ritual spellcasting called 'arcane rites' with binding, banishing and counterspelling remaining individual skills unbound by skill groups.

So, you are no doubt wondering why this would be a good thing? If something isn't broken, why am I trying to fix it?

It's fairly well known that mages are very powerful and very flexible. While a Street Sam will focus most of their investments into a single area (IE killing people) with a smattering of support skills, they lack the ability to spend a relatively inconsequential amount of karma and make all of that investment work for both killing people and, say, influencing people. They can't then spend a little more and have the same initial investment also give them superhuman stealth (though granted there is some overlap due to a common attribute). A mage could focus a bunch on combat magic, then get mind control and improved invisibility to suddenly have the majority of his investment working in this new area in addition to the old area.

This change doesn't remove his ability to do that per say, but requires that the initial investment be a lot higher in order to have universal mastery of magic.

Other effects of these changes:
1) Aspected magicians are improved. Suddenly the skill group they receive at high priorities is a lot more valuable, potentially covering all 5 aspects of spellcasting/alchemy/summoning while the full mages suddenly need to prioritize skills a lot higher to have a similar flexibility. Also, by making the 'Arcane rites' group available to all Aspected Magicians they can still perform a lot of traditional 'Magey' things without taking away the fact that they are still fundamentally limited.

2) Mages have more use for high skill priorities, either sacrificing part of their magical flexibility or paying with all of their mundane utility. Suddenly the choice between skills and attributes is harder, and whichever choice you make has a price.

3) Mystic adepts are depowered like Mages, only more so. When mages will be scraping together every point they can to get that extra pip of summoning or spellcasting mystic adepts are instead spending them on power points, weakening themselves as mages in a very serious way.

Anyway, that's just an idea I was toying with. What are your thoughts?

It could quite possibly work, but I have a small quibble: All Skill Groups in SR5 are of ostensibly the same value due to all of them consisting of 3 skills. This introduces groups of 5. Something like "Combat, Detection, Counterspelling/Disenchanting/Binding" and "Health, Illusion, Manipulation" might work...

I feel like this would need some serious testing, though - I have to wonder what impact it would have on things like the Occult Investigator Mage/MystAd. The loss of flexibility could be an issue for mage concepts that are already skill and attribute starved in order to meet the concept.

For a game set in the "standard" SR setting? I would not agree to this change. Why? Because I don't see a problem with the thing you want to fix. They're powerful in their field. They're supposed to be. Speaking as the Shadowrun GM for my regular play group, I'm okay with that.


Now for a game that didn't include augmentations? Yeah, I can totally dig it. I'd be all about something like this. One of the things that I've been challenged by in working on my homebrew Ancients setting is how to balance it so magicians (and adepts) are dangerous without running roughshod over non-magical types.

To address the 'Other effects' comments:

1) There are numerous better ways to fix Aspected Magicians. As a side effect of a change, it isn't really hurting anything. I still don't think it's enough of a selling point for aspected magicians though.

2) I'm not sure what mage builds you are looking at, but even with free Magical Skills from the A & B Priority, I always want more skill points. I haven't seen a playable magician yet that specifically chose Skills to be their "dump" priority. Tough-to-balance characters like Burned-Out Mages, Troll Magicians, and the like sometimes in that situation, but not really because they thought it'd be "Just swell!" to only have their Skills at D or E. Priority just doesn't give them the flexibility to do anything else.

3) SR5 is the first edition that made Mystic Adepts, dare I say it? Powerful! No, no. That isn't it. Playable. That's the word I was looking for. Yeah, I'm cool with an option that has been around since the early days of SR finally being a real option. After Mystics took it dry with that "5 Karma per PP" nerf, I see no reason to further weaken them.

I don't know. The problem comes with that mages are already pretty strap for spare Karma to level up. This would only exacerbate the issue. We'd have to also have a nuyen sink to help offset their reliance on now needing to spend more karma on skills somehow. The sam is just going to be stronger and quicker since they can spend more on augs and skills, while the mage now has to pick between spending karma on several skills, spells, magic, etc, and their only nuyen sink is foci which just so happen to have a karma cost on top of that.

Or maybe we could make a street sam have a nuyen sink that costs them karma somehow. Maybe a self learning skillwire that learns from its user, this way they have to spend nuyen to upgrade and karma to train the skills for this skillwire.

All you're really doing is pushing more people to a Power Focus IMO, it sounds like a good idea, but mages tend to end up with lots of Cash & far Less Karma, so why bother spending on skills after the initial burst & instead just buy a Power Focus which boosts all of those skills for only a monetary investment.

Besides, I don't see skill groups working for mages of any type until we get something outside of this quirky weird Priority system we have in 5E. As far as 4a, Again Karma is already limited I see this as more of a Mage Tax than anything else.

Power foci cost Karma to bond with.

So if each spell/spirit type is a skill, what would people specialize in? One spell? You know those cost Karma and nuyen too, right?

I made my own list of expanded magical skills some years ago. I'll post it when I get a minute.

Ok, let's look at, say, health spells.

One skill that lets you (with the right secondary investment) boost initiative, increase any attribute, AND heal? Not shabby.

Divination: You can bolster your defenses (combat reflexes), read minds and detect hostiles before they act against you. Again, that's a set of perks that most people would pay for on its own.

Combat magic: Melee attacks, ranged attacks, and effectively grenade attacks? all from one skill. A street sam needs at least 3 to get the same flexibility.

And so on. Each aspect of magic in and of itself is powerful enough to make the skill quite worthwhile.

One thing I would consider doing if I was running this is making spells cost less Karma, because the price is now being payed in specialization. 2-3 karma per spell sounds about right, but that's just off the top of my head.

Sustaining spells gives a -2 dice pool modifier to all tests per spell on top of causing damage to the caster when they are cast.

Being able to do any of those things is different from being able to do all of them. People recite the chapter on magic as if it were a character sheet.

With sustaining foci, focused concentration, and limit increases from reagents that penalty isn't something to assume. Even on the fly there are drugs which halve the penalty.

i feel that splitting each into 5 skills may be too many. i like the idea, i'm just not completely sure about taking it quite that far... but i am inclined to agree that magicians could afford to lose a bit.

but really, the first thing to fix is how you can ignore the force limitations on some things because of reagents. too many really good spells can benefit too much from reagents and then be sustained with a rating 1 focus.

In GURPS each spell is a separate skill. I felt that was way too far for Shadowrun, but it did help me realize that splitting up the skill might be workable.

Yes, but there's a certain assumption in the game that you can be full mage and still be something else - just like you can with any other role. If you split it too far, this becomes untenable. As it stands, mages need:

- Assensing
- Astral Combat
- Alchemy
- Banishing
- Binding
- Counterspelling
- Ritual Spellcasting
- Spellcasting
- Summoning
- Enchanting
- Disenchanting

That's 11 skills to cover off all of the mage role. You'd be increasing this to 23, far more than is needed to cover off any other role in the game.

It's doable. There is no reason a caster can't use the mechanism in the rules to create a new active skill....

Do something like, giving a +2 like specialization for having one skill, a +1 for two skills, and so on....

on top of all of the other Karma sinks

-New Spells
-Initiation
-Metamagics
-Non-magic skills
-Foci Bonding

I see it as 'forcing mages to make a choice'. You can be good at spellcasting, good at summoning, or good at alchemy, but trying to cover all three bases is too much. OTOH you can specialize in subsets of those skills, EG Fire spirits, manipulation and illusion spells, health preparations, in order to have powers across the board.

Considering that being able to summon one type of spirit, cast one type of spell or create one type of preparation is often thought of as being so powerful (how many threads are there about spirits outclassing street sams?), it might be worth making mages chose to be really good at bending reality over their knee in one way or being mediocre at doing it in a lot of ways.

Also, it justifies having spells that have similar effects in different schools of magic (EG combat reflexes and deflection).

What you actually mean, then, and we should be clear here, is changing the role of "mage" away from what the game as designed assumes it is, and instead having multiple roles. The idea of a full mage as it currently exists would be IMPOSSIBLE, much less being a mage and still being anything else.

It's a very substantial impact, and perhaps one far greater than is required to create any needed change. Spirits in this edition are sufficiently tamped down (it takes pretty high force to get the damage to compare with a street sam, after all, along with a longish deployment time (Materialization requires a Complex Action, and the involved loss of initiative might rob them of an action), especially since they're easier to damage (the auto-hits might help, but ItNW still hasn't kept up with the damage increase nor the easier access to AP), those spells are pretty much all confined to one school ANYWAYS...

By this same description (and application of skill) here is what a Street Sam (or other fighter) needs:
Pistols
Automatics
Long Arms
Heavy Weapons
Throwing Weapons
Unarmed Combat
Blades
Clubs
Gymnsatics
Archery
Running

That too is 11 skills. I agree that splitting to 23 skills is too far, but maybe rebalancing the mages skills so that they aren't quite so truly "one-skill-to-rule-them-all" might not be so bad. For mages Spallcasting is their bread-and-butter skill, much like Automatics is really the ranged-fighter's bread-and-butter. I'm not sure how to balance out the mages skills so much but breaking them out to 23 skills is a bit much.

I do like the idea however. I also think that the Automatics skill need to go away.

It's actually a lot easier for the Street Sam to winnow that list down - he can cover off his full role with 1 melee skill, 1 or 2 ranged combat skills, and Gymnastics. The mage sees a greater loss of function from taking away any 1 skill than the Street Sam does.

In your list of Mage skills (at least in SR4) could easily be reduced as well. Even under SR5 the list could be reduced without major loss of function.

- Assensing
- Astral Combat (not needed, spellcasting can cover this in the rare case that it's needed)
- Alchemy (completly not needed to be a mage)
- Banishing (situational at best, useless at worst)
- Binding
- Counterspelling
- Ritual Spellcasting (now situational (SR5), nearly useless under SR4)
- Spellcasting
- Summoning
- Enchanting (situational, at best)
- Disenchanting (situational in SR5, useless in SR4)

So again, the list can be shortened as well, for both the fighter and the mage they both have 5-6 core skills, and a bunch of optional ones that can be useful in the right situations.

Of course every group is different, perhaps in some groups the mage needs all of the magic skills, of course that may be groups out there where the fighter needs all of his skills too.

you don't expect your street sams to be able to sneak at all? 0.o

i mean, i don't expect full-blown infiltration specialist or anything, but being able to sneak around on at least a basic level is something i have always considered part of being a street sam.

Reduced, sure, but you wind up not fulfilling the full role (and I'm purely going with SR5 here).

- Spellcasting is now a poor substitute for Astral Combat.
- Banishing is now about the most efficient way to deal with a hostile spirit, or close to - direct spells are simply not at all as good for the purpose anymore.
- Alchemy is certainly needed to cover the full role - not being able to, say, remotely activate a Heal spell can be a very, very big loss.
- Rituals are much more relevant now than before
- It's Artificing, not Enchanting - an error in the table I was using I think - but it's gonna be your main way to get more powerful foci - and in point of fact, I missed Arcana as well, which would be required to create the formula. The availability simply gets prohibitive otherwise. You also need Arcana to be able to initiate.
- Disenchanting can be the difference between life and death. Besides, being able to shut off someone's Levitate spell is all kinds of hilarious.

You can start trimming out elements of the role if you need to, but unlike the Mage the Street Sam doesn't need every applicable skill to fulfill the full role - Pistols or Longarms, or just Automatics, can do it for ranged combat (Heavy or Thrown Weapons for grenades can be a valuable add as well). A single close combat skill is all they really need (likely Unarmed in combination with Bone Lacing/BDA, but there's other options). Adding more than that for those groups adds a vanishingly small amount of functionality. Running mostly falls under "nice", as well.

Well, yes, there is that. But still - 2-4 combat skills, Gymnastics, and Sneaking. That's 6 skills, and all the bases covered.

@RHat, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree. I could use similar arguments for the fighter maintaining all of his skills that you use for the mage to maintain his. They do add a lot of versitility to the archtype, but the core (key) skills are more limited than the groups that either of us listed. I also agree that Arcana is now a needed magic skill, though I do not understand why it was changed.

@Jaid, I don't think that RHat or I listed skills that "every" shadowrunner should have, just those core to a role. Every runner should have some stealth capability (sneaking), perception, etiquette and/or negoations and a few others. Yes you can get by without them, but they are still good skill to have. (sorry if I spoke out of turn here RHat.)

There's a pretty clear push to take the low-value skills in SR4 and make them more important. Almost like every skill had to earn its place.

most runners should be capable of sneaking at least a little, i agree there. but i would expect the street sam to be good at it far more so than, say, the face, decker, or rigger archetypes. not to the level of a focused infiltration expert, but better than most runners.

I actually expect more, stealth wise, from the face.

I am curious as to the logic.

Street Sammies come in all flavours from Sharks (dangerous in appearance, usually with obvious cyber) to Barracuda (sleek and lower profile, but still just as dangerous, tends toward more discreet cyber and/or bioware)

Yes, some Sammies may benefit from more stealth/sneaking, but a lot capitalize on being the flashy muscle to get the job done as well as drawing fire away from the less armored/reflexed party members and do not bother with stealth, relegating that task to others, whether its the decker popping the doors & disabling security camera system for them to the mage providing invisibility, etc...

It all comes down to background and campaign really.

Saying that all Sammies by default should be more skilled in stealth than other roles is a bit off.

The idea is interesting, but I think it would just lead more players to choose only manipulation spells, since they are the most versatile. Maybe splitting it into three skills would be better, something like:

- Combat+Health
- Detection+Illusion
- Manipulation

In that case, I'd recommend rolling counterspelling/binding/disenchanting into the third, so that they all cover roughly the same amount of ground.

I disagree... I have been playing a Mystic Adept in SR4A (for about 350 Karma and several years) and he has been imminently playable. One of the most enjoyable Awakened characters I have played in fact.

I disagree. Manipulation contains both Mind Manipulation and Matter Manipulation, and both combined cover a lot of different cases. Most of the mage characters I see have at least half their spells from that category.

Ah, but that same split is being applied both to Conjuring and Alchemy, changing the dynamics. If we were to consider just spellcasting perhaps, rather than the spell schools, three spell classifications would be better? Internal (Healing, Increase Physical Attribute, and such), External (Combat Spells, physical effects like Ice Sheet or Control Actions, Deflection), , and Mental (Mental manipulations, Combat Sense and most other Detections, Increase Mental Attribute), perhaps?

i guess it's probably got something to do with the fact that my very first introduction to shadowrun as a setting was "never deal with a dragon", and when i think "street samurai" i think of Ghost.

Then maybe we should make this a 6-way split:

Physical magic skill group: Combat spells, Health spells, Reality Warping spells (Physical Manipulation)
Mental magic skill group: Divination spells, Illusion spells, Manipulation spells (Mental Manipulation)

You know I just have not seen mages overpowering the game in 5e. Yeah they are versatile but that is their gimmick right now, its not like thy have jaw dropping power with force 10 stun balls anymore. Mental manipulation spells need a fix, but outside that I have not encountered a issue. they cost a crap ton in karma/priority to get the basics down and as versatile as spellcasting is the actual in game versatility is not as absurd since you don;t come with infinite spells.

Which gets to the "splitting it too far" problem again, especially if Alchemy and Conjuring is seeing similar changes.

force 10 powerball (or manaball) has been replaced with force 10 ball lightning (and reagents to keep it from causing physical drain) pretty much. still wrecks everything in an area (although admittedly, magicians took a serious hit in combat effectiveness on the astral plane where physical spells don't work considering iirc all indirect spells are physical).

there will of course be a bit more drain (well, ok, probably a lot more drain) in SR5 than there would have been in SR4, but a mage can still clear a room pretty danged effectively.

now, as i've said before, i'm not sure it needs to be cut up into quite so many different skills, either. i do think magicians could lose some usefulness and still be at or near the top of the heap in terms of effectiveness, and i'm definitely not sold on the absolute complete and utter necessity of having every single one of the existing magical skills by any means (many of them are certainly more useful than they would have been in SR4, but you can still have a very strong, effective magician without them in SR5).

i mean, certainly, ritual casting is a more valuable skill in SR5, even without a ritual group to work with... but while watchers are certainly useful, versatile, and can provide a lot of effectiveness, you can still have a very very strong magician without any ritual skills. disenchanting and enchanting are nice, but not required, and so on.

is this the best way to bring magicians to be a bit more in line with everything else? i don't know. personally, i'd probably do gradual nerfs of the major problem issues, and see how much that does (for example, releasing errata dealing with how a force 1 sustaining focus and/or focused concentration interacts with a force 1 spell that has several drams of reagents used to boost the limit could certainly have a dramatic impact on just how ridiculous health spells can currently be).

It sure do in fact fit the genre.

It's sure to unbalance the character creation process though making mages too expensive.....

matter of perspective, really. does your mage need to start off as a master of everything in order to be viable? again, not saying this is the best solution, but if you had the ability to either build a powerful but specialized magician or a magician that is powerful mainly through versatility rather than through sheer brute force, would that really be a huge problem?

i mean, it's not like every street samurai ever made is able to also fit in being a godlike face, or that every decker that was ever made in a shadowrun game is also an elite rigger as well, right?

most other archetypes have to focus on an area to do well. currently, mages can accomplish an awful lot of really powerful and effective stuff. splitting their skills further could potentially make the character creation process balanced, rather than unbalanced (it's something that we're not likely to know for sure without an awful lot of playtesting though, particularly since we've only got one core book to work from). now, it might also make magicians too expensive... like i said, it's going to take some testing to know for sure. but so far, magicians have seemed to have more ability to influence the world via various means than most other characters i've seen...

Outside of A skill mages they will be focused to some degree I'd think, unless they give up on every non-magic skill even etiquette. If even with a in skills you still come up short on covering your archetypes bases I think there is an issue. I just don't agree with the basic premise of this thread. i have not seen mages dominating the game or over shadowing anyone in 5e. They are versatile sure, but for the individual mage there versatility is not over the top and they don't top the field in any area they use their versatility on. They aren;t even close to the specialists. they seem to fit in as a solid generalist and support character. Are there issue,s sure but every archetype has issues a couple spells and spirit powers are broken but that sin;t enough for me to think the archetype as a whole is overpowered.

In 4e, I thought mages were too good. But with the increase on drain and the curbing of some spells and spirits durability they seem fine to me. The mage in our game is in a duel to see who is the worst in a fight him or the technomancer.

if your magician is as bad in a fight as your technomancer, either your magician is doing something very wrong or your technomancer is not spending much on being a technomancer.

with a couple of simple spells, your magician may not be the absolute unstoppable beast that they would have been in SR4, but you should still have a lot of combat effectiveness, plus a ton of utility, just from spellcasting alone. i mean, literally, if all you have is spellcasting, your magician already gets a lot of potential. spirits may no longer be unkillable, but they can still be effective offensively and for utility; concealment, influence, fear, noxious breath; these four abilities alone can let you single out important targets and remove them fairly reliably. heck, even elemental attack can be pretty impressive (12P damage with -6 AP on a force 6 spirit, if you can stand the drain to keep one close) (edit: almost forgot, engulf + energy aura is also a pretty brutal combination, though of course it will be even better once great form spirits make their way back into the game) and if your opponents are dumping gunfire into your spirits, have you considered persuading them to stay down via suppression, by any chance? even one of your less impressive combat characters (ie that technomancer) can have a lot of value if you simply drop some suppressing fire on the enemy to keep them pinned down, since even low offensive dice pools are still likely to score *some* hits.

and with indirect spells, your magician can wreck people very effectively too.

this doesn't even get into stuff like using mind control manipulations, or how much of a difference it can make to be invisible during a fight.

if your magician is so ineffective in combat, it's probably either due to poor choices, or a deliberate decision to focus on other areas.

If someone does get the urge to playtest this then please let us know the results. Heck, if it turns out to be workable then it might end up as an alternative ruleset in a splash book at some point down the line.

Why would they add a workable alternative?

Never going to make it as an editor with that attitude.

Just teasing.

It is a tough call, you want to have a bit more flavour by breaking it up but if you go too far then it starts to be more number juggling than it's worth.

That's the point of optional rules, isn't it? you can add as much complexity as works for your group and game.

It isn't, becasue you can do that right now, even in SR5. Again... Just because you CAN do something does not mean that you MUST (or even SHOULD) do something.

sure. that's why i'm advocating trying out various things to see how well they work. right now, magicians in SR5 are extremely powerful. now they're not extremely powerful in all the same ways as they are in SR4, but they're still extremely powerful, and could likely use some toning down... in general, there are *very* few, if any, builds that can't be improved by adding magic to them.

This I agree with entirely. Take a concept, add a bit of magic and you tend to get a more functional concept. That said, only about 30% of my characters tend to be magicians of one flavor or another (though they often end up being some of my favorite charators, though not because of their power, as they do not generally tend to be optimized for magic).

1st Edition - Redlegs, Shamanic, Sorcery Aspected Magician following Wolf.
2nd Edition - Cain, Physical Adept, Gun (Pistol) Specialist
3rd Edition - Spikes, Ex-Ganger Physical Adept, Unarmed Specialist
4th Edition - Nexus, Cyberlogician (Augmented); Jenks, Mystic Adept Face; Ananasi, Spider Changeling Infiltrator/Thief (Augmented); The Serpent, Unaugmented Mundane Mercenary; and Dharkoni, Iga Clan Adept Ninja (Augmented), Throwing (Shuriken) Specialist.

So, in the last 4 Editions, Five of my favorite characters were Awakened, with 3 Non-Awakened in the list.

so if you agree that magic is generally speaking a very reliable way to make "a more functional concept", how does that differ from magic being overpowered?

Hum. What about:

- Combat+Health+Banishing
- Detection+Illusion+Counterspelling
- Manipulation+Summoning/Binding+(Dis)Enchanting

What your saying is like saying that "a Hacker can become more functional by picking up a Weapon skill of some sort." It is True, nothing more. Adding Magic will always result in more functionality. Just like adding Languages will ALWAYS add more functionality. Just becasue you have gained additional functionality, it does not mean that the additional functionality results in the character being overpowered. It just means they have additional functionality they did not have prior to the addition.