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Gargs454
So I am playing my first ever mage in Shadowrun. (5th Ed.) Normally I play some sort of gun bunny and using karma tends to be pretty straight forward. Obviously its a bit different for the Awakened as its largely about Initiating. So, my first question, in looking at the Metamagics available, it seems that Centering really just stands out first and foremost above everything else. Am I missing something? It just seems like an obvious first choice.

Second, is there a "general rule" among players of mages as to karma use? What I mean is do you generally Initiate, then raise Magic, then Initiate, then raise Magic again, etc.? For context, my shaman is a bit of a utility caster with some direct damage thrown in (we have another partial caster that focuses on pure damage). Just curious as to what others have done. Normally I tend to be a bit of a jack of all trades character, but that's pretty hard to do with a mage considering the karma costs for everything.

Thanks in advance for any help!
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
Well...

Centering is nice, but as a First Metamagic not ofthen the best choice. It gets better the more initiate grades one has.

Karma expenditures are tricky, because it depends upon who you ask, and their style. In my opinion, I tend to spread out my Karma Expenditures... Rarely do I raise Magic after play starts, but Initiation garades are important for the deeper understanding of Magic. My personal preference is to purchase Spells and the occasional foci. While my last mage had Magic 5 and 4 Initiate grades (He was a Manipulation Specialist Mage, 13 DP in Manipulation Spells), he purchased over 60 additional spells, and two foci, in play (and he did not have a Power Focus). I tend to prefer a broader understanding of magic and versatility over staright power and a few select spells.
Beta
I don’t know about most people, but when you grind through the math I don’t think it is worthwhile to raise your magic after every initiation, unless your starting magic is quite low. The shaman in my game has three levels of initiation and is only now looking at buying up his magic from six to seven, and that is mostly to make summoning force seven spirits safer.

A general note about initiations is that most of the metamagics have effects that get stronger as you have more initiation levels. This makes one initiation a debateable investment, but makes further grades increasingly valuable. To me this says that you need to think whether you are going to focus on improvement through initiation, or improvement through other means – a bit of each may not be your best choice.

If you are going to improve through initiation, plan out the metamagics you’d like to get, then figure out in which order. Centering is great, but when it is only giving you one die it is not all that useful (unless you then get a centering focus, but that delays your next initiation). If you end up with a lot of magic duals then Shielding might be better (since it adds to each use of countermagic you do), or spell-shaping can give a lot of utility, or you can look at opening up a school of metamagic as defined in Street Grimoire (if you are using it) – some of those have rituals or enhancements that can be picked up cheaply enough after the first metamagic in the school is purchased.

If you are less interested in initiation, then look at buying up your main skills, getting strong foci, learning a broader array of spells, and even picking up a key quality or two that you couldn’t afford at character creation. In particular if you don’t have a way of sustaining spells yet, then a sustaining focus might be a high priority.

And even look at buying up your edge – because magicians make two important rolls with each cast or summons (the base success roll, then soaking drain) they are more susceptible to bad luck because they just roll more dice – but they also have more scope to push things by planning on using edge (i.e. casting a powerful spell that you would not probably soak, but adding five dice and getting exploding sixes gives you a much better chance). Edge is another things that gets more powerful as you have more, as it moves from a reactive ‘re-roll the fails on this awful roll, to bail me out’ to more pro-active “I summon a force 8 spirit, and pre-edge my drain’ or “I push the limit on this direct combat spell, letting me get more successes and ignoring the limit of its low force”
Tecumseh
I play a lot of magicians. The advice so far is good.

The question should be "what metamagics are most useful at my table?"

Many folks - myself included - find Masking and Extended Masking to be great metamagics to take early, because we play at tables where we don't wish the rest of the world to know that we are Awakened. If your GM isn't big on the cops or corpsec singling out the mage then this might not be as big of an issue for you.

Quickening is a dynamite choice, especially if you have Health spells (Increase Reflexes, Increase Attribute, etc.) that you want to sustain semi-permanently. It's so potent that many GMs put some limitations around it, such as having to buy your hits (dice pool divided by four, rounded down) rather than allowing the magician to roll and reroll until they have the maximum number of successes.

I don't pick up Centering and Shielding until my fourth or fifth metamagics. As the others have noted, these become more effective the more times you have initiated, so they're better if you wait to take them.

I rarely think about upgrading my Magic attribute until the costs of initiations is on par with the next point of Magic. For most people that's Magic 7, so some quick math says that's around initiation #8, or even later if you're reducing the cost of your initiations. Even then, it's often a better value to pick up a better Power Focus or to put some karma into your skills. Or more spells! Spells are relatively inexpensive and a great way to round out your toolbox, especially if you see yourself as a utility caster.

Long story short, put off Magic 7 for a long while, maybe until you're a Prime Runner.
Gargs454
Hey guys, thanks for all the advice, y'all are awesome! I'm particularly pleased about the advice regarding raising Magic since I likely would have started doing it at the first chance (still a long way off nyahnyah.gif)

I realized Centering was obviously one that got better with higher initiation, but hadn't really considered the alternatives. I will admit that Quickening intrigues me quite a bit. My main concern though is that I see it as a potential karma hog. Our GM is not shy about dropping mana barriers on us (or rather running missions/modules that have them (have already encountered one and we just hit the first chance to initiate -- no karma spent previously). So I'm assuming that the spell would not survive passing through one which is why I was a bit hesitant. Though if I am reading it correctly, additional karma only makes it harder to dispel is that correct? If so, it might not be horrible since we tend not to have a lot of opposed spell duels per se (i.e. he doesn't try countering/dispelling so much as just chucking spells). With that, I could get away with just dropping one karma on it.

At any rate, you've given me lots to think about and have definitely opened my mind more to the way of the Awakened. Was so much easier playing the gun bunny. Lol. smile.gif
Zednark
Here are the metamagics I'd recommend for your first. Note that which one is best depends on what you'd use it for.

Masking (SR5): This is really, really handy if you don't want people knowing you're Awakened, and really, really useless if you don't care. It becomes very important for Awakened faces, because the cons they pull off often require a degree of blending in.
Quickening (SR5): Mentioned already, and completely broken. Put it this way: For a Magic 6 Adept to get 6 armor, he'd have to spend half his power points. For a mage with Quickening, it costs 1 Karma. Sure, it can get dispelled, but then you can just cast it again. Even if it gets dispelled every session you still come out ahead, unless you're running a really long term game.
Invocation (SG): I can't stress enough how wonderful Ally Spirits are, and this metamagic, along with the Ally Conjuration ritual, are required to get one.

Now, which of those you want to gun for is up to you. For a Pure Mage build? Quickening, definitely. Conjurer? Invocation. Awakened Face? Masking. Something else? No idea.
mielikki
I personally like Flexible signature metamagic - leaving behind less evidence (each level reduces the longevity of astral signatures), and even when there is evidence left, it can look like somebody else left it.
In our game world, being a magician is almost a crime in itself - and astral signatures from any crime scene are kept on file just like fingerprints. Combined with Aura masking, it's standard operational procedure for a mage who wants to stay under the radar.

Big problem with quickened spells, in our game at least, is mana barriers. Not so much the fact that they can disrupt the spell, but the very fact that the magician who created the barrier (and wards are cheap to make and therefore used a lot) is immediatelly aware of the intrusion. Not very usefull if you are trying to sneak in somewhere!
Gargs454
Hey, thanks for the continued advice, its really opened my eyes.

Ironically, I am the party face (kinda) but more because I was the only one who didn't dump Cha than because I'm actually decent at it. So cons are not really my game and its primarily used to try to get a few extra nuyen.

Quick question on Quickened spells since Mielikki brought it up. Assuming I am able to detect the mana barrier (not a safe assumption I realize) can I not just let the sustain drop? Would that still alert the mage who created it? As opposed to letting the barrier break it? Obviously if I don't notice the barrier its a different issue, but just curious.

As it stands, I think I'm looking at Quickening first now. I had a low level sustaining focus, but would be nice to not be bound by that. smile.gif

Beta
The thing about quickening is that it chews up karma (at least one karma each time you want a spell to last) -- and for most mages karma is their primary improvement currency.

What tradition is your character? If it is one that uses charisma for drain, I admit that quickening the charisma boost can be very powerful (better drain resist means bigger spells, and higher charisma means better negotiations, etc).

As for mana barriers, they are easy to see astrally, but of course you aren't scouting astrally all of the time. A bit of ritual magic and the watcher ritual could potentially be useful for you, to have an astral scout without burning up services from a summoned spirit (this is part of why allied spirits are so amazing -- all those little things that they can team with you for that you wouldn't normally burn service on -- but that is s MUCH larger karma investment)
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
As a note, we have a mage in our current campaign that is using Quickening on many of the team's members. Now, he has been doing this for a while, and he is pretty powerful (Magic 7, typical spellcasting pool around 18 dice). When he quickens a spell, he casts at Force 8 (typically gaining 5-8 hits on the casting); with the expenditure of a Point of Karma, that spell now resists mana bariers or dispelling with 16 dice. Most mana barriers will not stop the spell in the least. And the few mages who have tried to actually dispell those spells have hurt themselves quite badly in the attempt. In addition, they are robust enough that even the mage who actually quickened the spells is unwilling to dispel them. About the only thing that has much of an effect on them is a background count. Quickening is a really robust way to augment up, though it has the huge drawback of not allowing you to be stealthy, magically, as you now glow like a christmas tree in the astral unless the Quickening Mage takes an astral quest to bury the spells signature on the metaplanes (I assume that he can still do so, as that has always been an option in the past); the quest rated at the force of the spell being hidden. Really does suck for those who prefer to be stealthy. There is a reason I have refused all such suggestions to date. smile.gif
tisoz
I thought an astral quest hid your astral trail but did nothing to change your visibility, or spells active during the quest, an the astral plane. Am I mistaken, has it changed or is TJ wrong?
Coldstone
I don't have the 5th ed magic book, but as far as I'm aware, the tradition of hiding signatures in the metaplane was to prevent people from tracking the spell origin (so the mage that cast it). You still lit up like a christmas tree, but the 'outlet' was now hidden discreetly for all those pesky multi-plug cables.

Granted, there was still ways to hide the blinking lights too, but an entire runner team of them is a fair bit harder.

But, maybe that changed!
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
QUOTE (tisoz @ Feb 27 2016, 06:41 AM) *
I thought an astral quest hid your astral trail but did nothing to change your visibility, or spells active during the quest, an the astral plane. Am I mistaken, has it changed or is TJ wrong?


Thak you for the correction... I was mostly concerned about the tracking of said spells, which is totally screwing the majority of the team, currently. Thanks for the clarification.
Of course, the search power works just as well, these days, to locate the "team, or individuals on the team, that have those honking Force 8 Quickened spells laid upon them". No one ever listens to the Spy... Anonymity is your friend...
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