I'm starting a new campaign, in which the PCs are soldiers (or maybe Marines, I haven't quite made up my mind). Two of the three are Awakened: one magician, tradition TBD, the other a melee adept (troll with a no-dachi).

I'm especially interested in when and how military magicians learn new spells. I assume militaries have complete or nearly complete libraries of all known spells; are they rationed out, or does a magician just have to make a request?

Finally, is there a book (preferably 20A or earlier) that deals with PCs as military personnel?

What's WAR! good for?

*ahem*

Actually in this case it has some value.

Military Mages are a valued asset and you can see bits about running a military campaign in WAR! along with a few military style spells like elemental grenade and such. Some of the spells are OP as hell and will need serious consideration or nerfing before using, we are looking at you Slow spell.

That said, it is safe to assume that Mages will have access to learning what spells their department feels they need to know and have reasonable resources to make it happen.
Again it depends on what they are supposed to be doing. Regular front line types are probably going to have combat spells while the Intel guy will have Detection/Mind Probe type stuff.
The question of whether they would get Heal or not is debatable.
On one hand it would give a team a boost in case medics are short on hand, but at the same time military likes to specialize and you also have to remember the grunts don't have tons of karma to blow, otherwise you would have every soldier have every spell which if you look at character stats isn't the case.

Military designed spells are available in most corporate or national military academies.
Since they have not yet been released to the public, the spell formulae for military spells have twice the normal cost and Availability for each category and have a forbidden (F) legality.

Due to the overall rarity, you probably won't see them in every unit, but again you get teams like Ares Firewatch 6-8 man teams and at least one or two tends to be Awakened, but then Firewatch are not your normal grunt units but are to be considered Prime Runners in their own right so seeing a high percentage of magic talent is to be expected.

You can see more on Anne Ravenheart, a former military mage and general badass who has cropped in a few SR stories, in Street Legends Supplemental pgs 38-41.

On a related note you may want to check out the old Fields of Fire book. While it focused on mercenaries it was done on a level that would be applicable to a lot of special op military squads.

I don't know, the mage having a heal spell seems like it would be a tremendous morale boost. I mean, you would have a guy on your team who could get you un-shot. It would make a bunch of heavily armed 18 year olds feel even more invulnerable.

Oh I agree that you would THINK Heal spell should be in every mil-mages spellbook, but when you look at the statted up guys, it doesn't make the list for most.

I suspect it is more for game mechanics, the grunts only get so many slots to fill plus the devs don't want people getting back up behind the team after a Runner has shot them and moved on.

Hell Anne has been front line, command and intel who wasn't afraid to get her hands into it, yet you don't see Heal in her list though she does load Detox, which seems like an strange oversight.

Actually, magic is an all-important asset in Shadowrun warfare. It is, on a strategic level, similar to nuclear weapons, a decisive game-changer. The same applies on the tactical level, making it a revolution as great, or even greater, than the combined mass production, motorization, and atomic revolution the 20th century brought. Think about it - it allows weather control, the detonation of volcanos, the summoning of extreme force multipliers such as spirits, and in extreme forms unstoppable assassinations via a variation of the Great Hunt - putting enemy leaders directly into the crosshairs, without all their armies and nukes able to deter a lethal attack. At the tactical level, it offers reconnaissance impossible to counter with mundane means and tactical support, ranging from strong protection and near-instant restoration of combat readiness in gravely wounded to massive force protection through - equally hard to counter mundanely - spirits. Mages are incredibly valuable assets in Sixth World warfare (and, consequentially, very high value targets).

How mages are treated, though, depends strongly on the force they serve in.

The US (later: UCAS) Armed Forces learned the hard way how magic changes everything in war. They got their asses royally kicked by people they, at best, considered washouts, mongrels and infidels. So they did what all fallen empires do: enter headless chicken mode for a few years, fall apart further, and then try to consolidate and regroup and turn the enemies' weapons against them. As stated in early books (Seattle Sourcebook, Sprawl Sites, Just Compensation, among others), this worked moderately well. They got mages, but both anti-magic and human white supremacist attitudes and a sore lack of viable compensation compared to corps leaves them with the dubious, incompentent, and dangerous types. The UCAS armed forces have a small brigade worth of magical support of all kinds - this includes aspected mages, adepts and other types of not full sorcerer Awakened. compared to magical powers such as the Tirs, better NAN states, and Japan, that is not too much.

However, especially on national guard level, magical support is very thin in the UCAS, and probably many other old-school armed forces - the Seattle Metroplex Guard, for instance, has four (4) mages, for an organisation at division strength (that's about one mage for every 5000 troops). Colloton's JSF Seattle, on the other hand, packed a lot of magical punch - but at the expense of the entire rest of the country, as her attached magic bataillion is made up of a quarter of the UCAS' entire magical force.

Other armed forces, though, like Aztlan's, have a much higher Awakened-to-soldier ratio, possibly along the lines of 1 per 100, as the actual population suggests.

Still, mages are rare, and as such, rarely personally deployed in forward combat roles if the army can help it, I think (special forces may be an exception, especially Wildcats and Aztec warrior orders), given their high value as targets for the enemy. Instead, rituals will be used a lot for a variety of combat rolles, tactical as well as strategic, as well as alchemy (from prepare healing potions that release a helaing spell, to magically augmenting soldiers through compounds that grant them limited Awakened capabilities, like Animals Tongue and Immortal Flower) and spirits as augments to an army's forward combatants and of course, for reconnaissance (and counter-reconnaissance). It is though such effects, rather than the mage's personal presence, soldiers mostly will interact with military magic.

This creates a divide between soldier and mage - and accordingly, mages will be either revered (NAN armies, Aztlan) or varied levels of distrust and hatred.

In the UCAS, it seems a mixed bag, with many local guards and some branches (Marines, if I remember correctly) heavily anti-magic, and others embracing magic at least out of strategic nescessity. Other forces are much worse, like Switzerland (home of the Human Nation) and the CAS (which I cannot imagine tolerating witches and satanists in the army, especially given how populist, backward, and bigoted they have consistently been described).

Germany's church-statelet of Westphalia, and the Catholic Church's Papal States, have embraced "white" magic while condemning other forms, leading to specific magical orders that provide tactical and strategical assist (and, as per Black Madonna, the Papal State has developed nuclear capacity, too). Interestingly, hunting other mages seems their primary mission.

The MET 2000 and German Bundeswehr have battaillon-sized magical corps and seem rather pragmatic about them, France has (per Shadowrun France) religious magical orders similar to the Papal States, and Russia's Red Army seems to hate all Awakened so much it has no mages, or really any Awakened, among its ranks, and rely on the GRU's magical capabilities in their war against Vernya's shifters.

All told, the reception of magic in the Sixth World's combat doctrines is mixed, but nobody can deny it for the game-changer it is - more, even, than the atomic age was.

Which then opens the question of how armies incorporate those magic folks...
Do they commission them after training their potential further ?
Put them through magical boot camp and give them stripes ?
Do they sort out the too... anti-authority types and other undesirables or do they reserve the right to overlook some issues because Magics are rare, furthering anti-mage sentiment that sees them as rear soldiers and folks for which some rules dont apply ?
Lots of fun to be had here !

Personally, I don't see awakened as regular rank-and-file, depending on the army regulations. They are too rare and the military invests a lot in their training, so for me, they'd most likely be best off with longer NCO contracts (4, 8 or 12+ years depending on amount of investment and army doctrine, I'm working from the German perspective here, since its the model I know best) or commissioned if their uni education etc. allows for that and (the biggest issue) there's a free billet.

From what Just Compensation tells us, most armeis seem to gather all sorcerers and Awakened assets into a "Mage Force" of sorts, aassigning them to other units temporarily as is deemed necessary, while maintaining their own chain of command.

Adventures regularly treat them differently, using mages as challenges for Awakened characters in a forward combat role, which, while understandably dramatically, makes absolutly no tactical sense at all.

And yes, anti-authority types and (in many cases) all traditions that aren't studious are weeded out (though the UCASMC seems to have a startling population of Black Mages and possibly deep infiltration by the Black Lodge). I think mages are sent through the same type of boot amp as all other branches, but enter service as officers (since they already are university graduates) to retain a fraction of appeal for magic studies graduates. I would expect them to enter service at least as NCO with better pay, though, given other employment opportunities they have (navy.com suggests a master's degree will very likely get you CO status, but it's up to your recruited, a typically American way of handling things - I'd expect Shadowrun mages to automatially get CO status and assorted privileges and pay grade just to begin to compete with corps, magical societies, and independent magical entreprenneurship).

For how magical personnel might be treated in a unit, I've always thought that the film "Aliens" can give you a good example. Ripley as the "specialist outsider with specific mission knowledge able to assist" is attached to a unit of grunts. Most treat the outsider with indifference, fear, scepticism or derision. As she proves more useful, and starts to kick ass and chew gum, some of them come around, support and include her, and eventually defer to her judgement. But - some don't, stay opposed, and are just ass-hats. That's the nature of (meta)humans. She's still an outsider though - not part of the unit, ignorant of their customs and without the shared camaraderie of having gone through unit training together. Along with that, different uniform, duties, or not having to do the "grunt" work will make them more like officers (if they aren't actually officers), also further removing them from the squad / platoon / team.

If you're doing more of a special forces unit, then a lot of that goes out of the window, as you're more likely to have specialists from other units being promoted / seconded into the SF unit, and coming together to form a new team. They are generally more intelligent, and are much more likely to appreciate the talents of a magical character.

As regards spell lists and such like - in my opinion, you should make the mages life "appear" easy to begin with - yes, there's a quality library with all the spells they can imagine in them, at decent forces. But they can't have them - not without a requisition form. And the correct authorisation. And a form M450A-493 filled out by their commanding officer. In triplicate. Remember that the military has a chain of command, and strict hierarchical rules, and is organised very formally. Your mage may want to learn firebolt at force 9 - but the magical syllabus and training itinerary says that on Monday morning from 8-10am the non magical people are doing the assault course, while the magical people are learning "Reduce fatigue" or "Speed march" spells, and learning the skills "Astral terrain analysis". They don't care what YOU want to learn, they care about giving you the right tools to do the missions they have planned for you in the future. Which you don't need to know what they are - for reasons of security. Much like with the mundane guys - make them aware that the army has all these whizzer toys - then give them the basic assault rifle. Special toys are given to them for special jobs - signed out and signed back in to the armoury after each mission. At least until you get the Quartermaster as a good buddy contact....

Personally, I think mages relate to regular soldiers as Psy Corps specialists do to grunts in Starship Troopers. They're remote, detached, more than a bit scary and only attached to troops by the mission, otherwise being secluded in their own mage corps and subject to rumors (the strong belief in the existence of Satan and, consequently, Magic as Satanism among Anglos won't do them any favors either, I imagine).

I would think that one model you could look at is how militaries handle medical personal? With doctors, like mages, they are dealing with people with particular skills, who can make a lot of money outside of the military, and who it doesn’t really make sense to treat like the standard grunt.

Granted that about all I know on this topic is what I picked up from watching M*A*S*H* as a kid, but others might have more insight?

I would expect a number of armed forces to have to rely on contractors to provide the much-needed magical support.

It's something of a retcon to play the contractor angle in Shadowrun, considering the setting was first developed before private military companies and contractors became so prevalent in the US armed forces. Still, it would make sense - awakened personnel being a rare commodity, corporations ought to try to make a profit of their rarity. PMC had a similar effect, targeting special forces operators for recruitment, once the national budget had paid for their selection and training, which in turn deprived special forces from seasoned NCO and CO.

Magic contractors would indeed make the divide between mundane and awakened troops more vivid.

Also, considering there will never be enough mage, I think the most common tactics would rely on what mages can do from faraway, with ritual sorcery, astrally projection and spirit remote services. It may be way more effective to have ten mages, in a secured environment, sending as much spirits with remote service on the current flashpoint, and switching to the next flashpoint ten minutes later, than having ten mages, even with all their spells and spirits at hand, spread evenly along the frontline (assuming there is one).

FWIW -- speaking only for myself -- when statting NPCs, I'm likely to give pretty elite soldier-type mages Heal, but "default combat dude" mages another attack spell or something instead. Against elite badass forces, Heal is another tool in their tactical box, a way to highlight how dangerous those guys are and how nasty a prolonged fight with them can get. Against mook-level baddies, one of them being a one-man artillery team just adds to the danger of the fight (while still letting the team ramp up the violence and finish things off quickly, instead of dragging out a scene).

Healing abilities on bad guys run the risk of just...undoing a PC's last action, basically, and that's something to be careful with when statting up baddies, IMO.

The only Military mage I ever used (as an NPC on tiop of that) was a French Foreign Legion Lieutenant, who worked pretty well. While the PsyOps example illustrates some aspects nicely, I think mages can also be employed at the frontlines for some important benefits. Spell-protection, for example (dunno whether that's the correct term in English). In general, I think that healing spells on a military mage are a sword that cuts both ways. It's nice to want to have it, but one should separate here. In the way I use mages, healing people is not their primary job (neither is slinging too many combat spells, flashy mages are bullet magnets). I see them mostly as specialists for the analysis and application of magical ressources as well as for the protection against the same things used by the enemy. In my book, their repertoire is mostly magical reconnaissance and buffing their squads. A healing spell or mindprobe on the side might be good for the job, but its not their main function, so they should leave the healing to the medic, who is the specialist for that.

Of course there are also specialists for magical healing, like sanologists, but then, they're employed in exactly that specialty and aren't expected to moonlight as combat mages. While a lot depends on the individual talents, education and preferences of the applicant and their general versatility, again, most magicians would be specialists in a single field with a hint of expertise in one or two others. The rarity would mean that they're simply attached to the fitting structures with their mage-ness being like an important qualification, but I feel like there are not enough mages to justify a special structure. Like, the aforemented Sanologist would most likely be ranked as a, say, 'Captain (Mag)' in the Medical Corps. The FFL Lieutenant (Mag) would be a platoon leader or in a consultant role, like Company or Battalion adjutant or sort of operations officer, depending on the specific circumstances of the mission. Someone with skills more suited towards an interrogatory role would get a staff position for that.

In regards to contractors vs. soldiers, I'd say it comes down to the army as such. Everyone knows that even as a mage, professional solders seldomly get rich. So the question is, what benefits could sweeten the job enough to compensate for that.

How about traditions? I imagine military academies big enough to have a magical-studies program teach a variant of Hermeticism: even heavier on hierarchy, chain-of-command, and discipline, plus an emphasis on the military application of magic rather than endless theorycrafting. I'm picturing something similar to House Tytalus.

What about mages who come to the military from other traditions? My mage player hasn't settled on a tradition yet, but has said he finds Hermeticism "boring."

Canonically, old-school militaries like the UCAS army have a high percentage of black mages (Rita Furlann, for instance). In more Sixth World armed forces, they can either be looser - accept the ccentricities of shamanic traditions more easily, like the NAN and Aztlan do; build rank based on magical talent, like Tír and Shaanxi forces do, or accept non-human sentients that usually have magical powers in large numbers, like Yakutian, Manchurian and Amazonian forces do.

Generally, sorcerers with authority-compatible mentors (either by favor of authoritarianism or opportunism) and traditions would do better in a structured military - mentors such as dog and lion and eagle, traditions like theurgy, black magic, and application-friendly hermeticism. For reasons of maximized impact, military mages should focus on rituals, clairvoyance and summoning, and scrying, summoning and ritualistic metamagics.

Nath's idea of magical PMC beng hired on a by-requirement basis to bolster magical assets has a lot of merit, and is a viable model especially for smaller (traditional) national and all corporate armies.

Sing to me of melee adepts, Dumpshock. Should I try to convince the player to change his character, or could a modern military that uses, you know, guns find a place for him?

As a counter-spirit specialist perhaps. But he'd still need the basic guns skills all soldiers learn, because the military tends to be stubborn. If he's supposed to be Mr/Ms Anime Katana Fighter, go with corporate background (because whatever).

He has skills in guns.

Close Combat Instructor would be my first pick. Otherwise the only occupation I can think off is Personal Security Detail. It depends on the country and the branch. There are many countries in which there is a presidential guard of some sort. In the US, as far as I know only the Army has a protective services unit, an offshoot of the military police, whose soldiers perform bodyguard duties to provide personal protection to general officers (civilian agencies like the Secret Service providing protection to other key figures). But guess any military police unit would love to have a melee adept to deal with the drunken cybered ork private trying to return to base at 3 AM.

I think from books and others they are given a little more leeway in regards to discipline and basic duties (aka they are willing to over look the extras added to the uniform, personality conflicts, etc)

This would not endear them towards the average soldier, or the commanding officers too much.

They fall into the same category as some of the specialists in modern times (if not outright civilian contractors working for the military, much like now), treated as a problematic and dangerous asset.

Kinda like the way certain tasks are outsourced because the average grunt, or even recon specialist doesn't have the moral ambiguity combined with the right skill set that a contractor would (or in this case the magical ability)


Now enlisted ones, well you are still going to be limited to what you are taught (and the main focus is not healing, but damage and recon. They have full on doctors to patch up soldiers without wasting the rare magical active soldier in that role..)

At least for the "academic" traditions, it will probably be the tried "we'll pay our university, just check the box where is says 12 years" routine. As for spells, IMO they would be treated like any other weapon or equipment: Your equipment is decided by the current doctrine, strategies, and the ugly dealings of military procurement. TPTB obviously can't prevent a mage from learning something on the side, but use of such spells would for the most part be discouraged. Let's say some spellslinger just loves his Toxic Wave, the enemy declares that this constitutes first use of C-weapons and entitles them to retaliation with more mundane toxins...