1) If a mage burnt out, can he still gain the benefit of his weapon focus?

2) A Toxic wereform was a Sterile shaman, what is he doing with a Severe Allergy to Purified Air and Water? I mean he's supposed to draw power from the sterility of purified air and water, doesn't he?

1) If in doing so he hits Magic 0, no.

2) Unless "Sterile" is some kind of obscure totem hidden deep within an equally obscure sourcebook, that sounds like an imaginery problem you came up with for an imaginery totem that doesn't make much sense.

You could make the assumption that "sterile" in this sense is rather different than "purified." Think of breathing the constantly recycled stuff inside an airplane, or maybe the dusty dry air of a complete wasteland, scrubbed of life.

Ah, so I was right. Obscure totem in an obscure book. I don't have that book within arm's reach and it's too early to walk across the room to snag it, so I'm just going to have to run on the assumptions the "totem" gives.

I imagine they would tend to be Avenger toxic shamans instead of poisoners. They would go about destroying polluters. The amount of pollution in their sterile environment would have been the cause of their insanity (thus leading them to be more prone to becoming toxic than normal magicians I imagine), and they would use their influence over that pollution to use it directly against those that would pollute while simultaneously doing what they can to clean the area in the meanwhile, at which point they would gain the power of their sterile environment again (ie, switching from one source of power to the other) even if they're allergic to it. Which doesn't make any sense for Avengers anyway.

I think the concept is pretty silly all around, myself. Sterile environments are every bit as alien in nature as toxic environments are, afterall, so they should be just as corrupt already. I dunno. Ignorance is a bitch, but my laziness today trumps it.

Sterile environments are just as corrupt. Reference Space.

~J

Perhaps they just couldn't bring themselves to give Sterile-oriented toxic critters a Severe Allergy to purified emotion.

Shadowrunner: Okay, we bust in there, and the trolls start singing kum-by-ya while the mage and I give him a big hug. Ready? Go!

haha. you know, i bet most shadowrunners would rather walk through fire than follow AH's plan. "damn... uh, can't we just, y'know, shoot him or something? i'm, i'm really not comfortable with, y'know, hugging and stuff."

I can see it now... "OK, guns don't work, fists don't work either. So you want us to get in there and kiss him unconscious?"

Just watch out for those oral spurs guys...

Sterile domains aren't lifeless places in the "stripped of organic life" sense (that's Desolate enviroments). The text mentions that Sterile domains are "regimented, cold, and sterile" and where the "human spirit has been polluted". No emotion or passion, just cold, calculating, and efficient. Instead of being deformed and mutated, Sterile domains and shamans would be the pinnacle of idealized perfection.

Perfect example of a Sterile domain: Hitler's Germania, designed by Albert Speer. Germania was to be the capital of the Hitler's Thousand Year Reich after he flattened Berlin and build on top of it using slave labor.

Perhaps this Toxic wereform would be some weird "back to nature" type person, where "nature" is carefully manicured and in order, a bizarre parody of the irrational wilderness.