Hey, this'll only be my 2nd Shadowrun character, I'm looking at making a Mage of some description. I wont get the books for a couple of days, but I'm looking at making a highly mobile mage (speed, run on walls if possible, invisibility, that kind of thing) with artillery style spells (mana ball etc). Does anyone have any advice? I'll post something a little more concrete once I've done a proper book trawl.

I don't know about the running on walls, but invisibility and levitation are a potent cobination for stealth effects.

Read these posts on invisibility and improved invisibility:

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...hl=invisibility

and

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...hl=invisibility

There is a spell called Gecko Crawl in MITS. I wouldn't exactly call it running, but it will let you move on walls. The GM might let you create a more powerful version latter in the game using the spell creation rules in MITS.

Gecko Crawl sounds handy. Can you still cast offensive stuff while using Gecko, or Invisibility?

Also, any other general Mage Building tips?

There is no limit to what you can and can't do based on what spells you have sustained, apart from the +2 modifier to all your target numbers for each sustained spell.

As for general mage-building tips, I don't mean to show any munchkin, but if you're going to spend any time summoning at all, go shaman. Spirits have *handy* sets of powers (*never* underestimate the confuse power), and they can be summoned on the fly.

Elementals have their adavanteges: they're able to go in standby-mode and won't disappear with sundown (or -rise, depends on when summoned). They can support the mage in many ways. Never had a shaman or mage complainig about his spirits he can summon.

I prefer the flexibility of Nature Spirits, but Elementals can be very nice too.

Shamans can summon more often and on the fly, without requiring any costly components. I love that flexibility. They can afford to use spirits much more often than Mages.

On the other hand Mages have their own advantages. Since they summon their spirits out of combat, they don't have to worry about dealing with drain when they need the spirits. The second advantage is that a Mage can call forth multiple elementals at a time. A Mage with four fire or five elementals iat once is a tough opponent.

Here's the gist for conjuring: if you're looking for raw power on demand, go with the hermetic mage. You can have a few of them gang up on opponents. However, it costs nuyen to summon them, so it gets spendy really fast. When I play a hermetic, I usually keep the elementals in reserve unless the shit really hits the fan.

Nature spirits and spirits of the elements are more versatile and they cost nothing to summon. However, unless you are an initiate, you can usually only have one summoned at a time. However, you rarely need more than one. Nature spirits have a lot of useful powers. The movement and concealment powers they have are really useful and I think play into the type of character you are looking for.

I am surmising from your post that you are trying to recreate the D&D improved invisibility, fireball, flight power-gaming combo. My advice is don't bother. In shadowrun (unless your GM is running a real shot-em-up power game) it is much better to have a well-rounded character.

First, in D&D the more spells you have on you the better. In Shadowrun, the more spells you have going, the higher your target number is and the easier it is for bigger /badder mages/spirits to find you. Second, in D&D the more stuff you kill the bigger and badder your character gets (x.p.). In Shadowrun, you get just as much karma, sometimes more, if you talk your way out of a fight (etiquette) or avoid it all together (stealth). Third, in D&D the bigger and flashier the spell is the better. In Shadowrun, the simpler the spell is the better since there is less drain. For that reason, you're better off using stunbolt/ball than fireball.

I would suggest the following:

Start with a decent body, willpower, and charisma rating
Keep an even balance between your conjuring and your spellcasting
Make sure to have a few dice in aura reading, unarmed combat, stealth, a ranged weapons skill (i.e. pistols), and ettiquette.
The following spells: Stunbolt/ball, Heal (or Treat), Armor, Increased Reflexes (+3), Improved Invisibility
The following equipment (if you can afford it): a good radio, a couple of sustaining foci (especially for the I.R.+3 and armor), secure jacket, low-light (or thermo) goggles, a forged credstick, a couple of low-lifestyle crash pads for when Lonestar/Mafia/aztechnology is looking for you.

All of the above should keep your mage up and running in almost any kind of game.

Physical Barrior. Almost doesn't matter what force.
Levitate. you can fly. again, high force not needed, unless you plan to drop bad guys from height.
mage fingers. Telekinesis. When you just need that passkey, it only needs a level one.

I almost never make a mage without Levitate or one big damage inducing spell like fireball.

Regarding Gecko Crawl: This is anything but a "crawl" by the way. Your target number to cast it is 4 and the movement rate to move along walls or ceilings is your Magic Rating (typically 6 at chargen) x the number of successes (up to the Force of the spell). If your mage specialized in the spell (ie 6), then you'd be able to move 36m/turn at max, and probably more like 18m/turn in reality. That's anything but a crawl.

18 m/turn!!!

I guess I never realized how fast you could get going with that spell. I always focused on the "crawl" part of Gecko Crawl and never actually used it!

Man, I never realized how powerful Levitate was until a player of mine used it. I was amazed! Just to give you some numbers, the spell works by weight. For every 100 kg the target numbers go up by one. Well, the player was just using it on himself and he weighed less than 220 lbs (100 kg) so he rolls his spell at Force 4 at Target# 4, gets 4 successes. His Magic Att is 6, so 6x4=24 meters he can move himself...PER TURN! That's almost 79 feet in 3 seconds! That's like 18mph, pretty good for floating. That's not levitation, man, that's flight! It's an awesome spell, especially considering that the fastest (unaugmented) human running speed is about 23 mph.

Levitate is still more generally useful than gecko crawl. It lets you fly without depending on touching a wall, lets you lift teammates over an electric fence, lift a ganger up to the top of a telephone pole, grab a briefcase and float it over to you, and so on.

One big decision to make is whether you want to be a full mage, or a sorcerer. The latter is more specialized, but might be up you alley if you lean more towards spellcasting than conjuring and astral projection. It does give you advantages - one higher priority (or 5 more build points if you are using that system), plus you only have one skill to buy (sorcery instead of both sorcery and conjuring), and you get 10 more spell points than a full mage. I am mentioning this option because your initial post seemed to focused only on spellcasting, so a sorcerer might be more what you are looking for.

Levitate and invisibility are both good. Other useful ones are magic fingers, control actions, and trid phantasm - combined with invisibility, they can let you really cause mass confusion in a group of enemies (a pin falls out of the grenade strapped to someone's belt, or their pistol discharges; one of the guards suddenly opens fire on the others; an elemental seems to manifest, or one of the guards seems to change into a demon, and so on).

Er, no. Three intersecting domains is rare enough, while six is generally a minimum starting charisma for a conjuring-heavy character.

Though it is one of those age-old debates, true enough.

~J

I'm not planning on doing any summoning, I'm looking at a bit of astral projection maybe, then largely combat and mobility spells, not summoning or time-consuming rituals