Although mana-channelling (aka magic) does to some extent appear to be dependant upon the body. So there'd probably be a cue of upset mundanes going to the doctor to find out what sort of FAB infection they'd picked up that's knocking out their magical ability.

Okay, now maybe we're getting somewhere.

If magic works the way you believe it works, there's a problem with people who have self-appointed themselves to godhood.

If magic works the way you understand it to work, and you understand both shamanic and hermetic ideas, then you should be able to cast and learn both branches easily. Or you should go crazy, because the "understanding" is contradictory. Or you should both go crazy and learn both branches easily.

But if belief (or understanding) only shapes magic, then you can ask: what are the limits of the shaping? The problem with having a generic set of rules that can handle pretty broad shaping--enough to encompass the differences between hermetic and shamanic traditions--is that you tend to lose traditions altogether. And Audun's existing rules actually don't allow very much shaping (+2 bonuses/penalties, maybe summon one spirit outside of a traditional group) when it comes to differences between traditions. So if I look at the rules he wrote, I don't get the impression that magic works the way the practitioners believe, and I don't even get the impression that practitioners' beliefs shape very much at all.

Some specific comments about Audun's specific proposals:

Astral sense is awfully useful for costing almost nothing.

Redefining what skills do seems a fine idea; sorcery does a little too much as it is, for example.

Making divination a separate skill is not a fine idea from a playability standpoint. The GM is not prescient, so it's hard to handle. As a metamagic, divination gets limited use. It should stay appropriately limited, I think, even if divinatory abilities are one of the most common things claimed by modern-day psychics and mystics and so on.

I'm not sure you want to put detection spells into an assensing skill, since then your bullet barrier linked to detect bullet wouldn't work so terribly well. You already can get a lot of information from a good assensing test that you might otherwise use a detect spell for; they have different uses.

Conjuring is a very powerful ability. Allowing it to become even more powerful by mixing shamanic and hermetic traditions is probably unwise. More details are needed here to assess whether it's balanced.

I like the idea of more uses for ritual magic. I'm not sure that providing a bonus of one or two points really covers what I'd like to see, though, and certainly the difference between "simple" and "complex" rituals should be spelled out.

It's unclear to me why centering is no longer a metamagic. I suppose without spell pool you need *something* to keep yourself from taking drain on every spell, so centering could be a way to do it.

I'm sorry. You're right. Some loser getting drunk and falling off his bike once is proof that thinking you're a god and then rationalizing limitations into place makes it so. You win. I'm convinced.

ya know, the way this argumentis going, imayhave to write this up as an adventure. a character who's a reasonably powerfull, but delusional hermetic, who's suffering from a god complex, hires the runners to find out why his disciples nolonger recognise him.

exploring the poor slotshome,theyfind that his disciples (actually the other members of his astral contact group) are still astrally contacting with some one who happens tohave all the correct memories and skills, but who's aura is a little "off".

turns out that one of the other members got jelous of his position, and hired some one to do the afforementioned full brain-swap-mojo. one of them took, the other did not. the insaine guy is actually the disaffected leutenant-in-leaders body, who's been kicked out of the group for pulling the stunt, and gone insaineas a brucey bonus.

hillarity ensues

I don't think technology or magic has reached the point where full-brain swaps can be done.

re: divining, and its rarity.

divining should work like centering that you do ahead of time. instead of forcing the GM to give the player specific information, just allow the player to get bonus dice that can (and must) be used over the next few days. these dice represent his foreknowledge--insights that the character can't quite put together into a specific image of the future, but which occasionally fall into place at just the right time, allowing him to duck when he shouldn't have known to duck, or clip the blue wire when the bomb disposal expert on the radio is mistakenly telling him to clip the red, etcetera.

when it's important to the plot? sure, the GM can let slip a piece of vital info. but most of the time, it should just be an abstract bonus.

That idea had occurred to me, but it makes divination rather mudane and a little boring. I was hoping for a more mysterious feeling to it.

Vis-a-vis the existence (or otherwise) of totems/gods, I don't know if it helps but my view on this is summed up here:

If that isn't Terry Pratchett, it sure sounds like the same viewpoint being espoused.

There is really verily little room to mauver within SR3 spell casting to differentiate magical traditions. All that there has ever been is a totem bonus, the shamanic mask and flavour descriptions of spells (very little room to move).

Is there anything else that could be done to differentiate between different traditions of sorcerers.

If you want to be able to create a tradition that isn’t in the book without calling it a flavour of hermetic or a new totem that otherwise works as a shaman you need a new list of spirits. This has been done twice in MITS. Wujen and voodoo.

Some guideline on how to balance spirit powers and availability would be useful.
Every magician would start with a single tradition with a discreet set of spirits. Access to more types of spirits may or may not be available as a meta magic. If the tradition you want is not listed in any book you can (with your GM) design a set of spirits appropriate to your new tradition.

Although this would be good for good players. Be warned, any system to design spirit sets will ether be stiflingly rigged and complicated (defeating its purpose) or open for easy abuse so it must be clearly stated that final arbitration of new spirit groups goes to the GM and the GM should be very careful what he allows.

Dose this mesh well with your plans.

I really would like to do something to make sorcerers of different groupings more distinct however.

Another thing I would like to see is metamagics decoupled from initiation. Metamagics should have a karma cost to learn (not necessarily the same for all metamagics) and a way to learn them must be found (this could involve paying more money, a astral quest if you are initiated or coming to an arrangement with a free spirit). It always struk me as strange that initiation did not teach you a metamagic but no mater how intelligent & ready to learn the student (karma availability) or how skilled and dutiful the instructor no amount of training could teach a first grade initiate a second metamagic.

Edward

damn, too late.

Sounds like Pratchett or Gaiman, though.

Small Gods by Pratchett is hilarious and well-done also. It's about the rebirth of a dead god, too.

there are three or four ways of doing this
the all or nothing,
the "buy the ability"
the package deal.

wih the all or nothing aproach, youre either mundane, or afull on mage with access to all ofthe metamagics. this pretty much universally sucks.

the "buy the ability" aproach is where you start off with zero ability, and have to buy all powers one at a time. want to be able to astrally perceive? gota buy it. want to be able to cast spells? gotta buy that ability too. ritual sorcery? that's annother one. want to summon spirits? gotta pay the karma? Elementals? Classes start on friday. bring karma. (and beer)

the advantage of this method is that it allows for infinately variable mages with infinately variable abilities. the problem is however that it's also open to the most amount of twinkage. unless of course someone felt like writing up a list of dependancies... IE yoyu cant summon both spirits and elementals, untill you know how to access the metaplanes, which you cant do without X,Y and Z, all of which require you to be able to astrally project.

this unfortunatly is more work that most people would like to put up with.

the "package deal" is probably the closest to what we current;y have. you're either a full mage, with a basic set of abilities, or a full mage, who can do a whole lot more. you can still buy additional abilities, (metamagics) but the abilities you get every time you initiate dont ecaaxtly have any limitations.

As for the "short ritual" that everyones mentioning, the rule that shootists use for aiming, is that you get -1 to a target number for every action you spend aiming, up to a limit of half your skill. I cant really see why this shouldnt be adopted for spell casting too.... Lets face it, the way that it's described in cannon for a spell being cast, is that the mage in question forms the spell, then fine tunes is so that it matches the targets aura. there are also several references in published SR novels where people have stated that they could have summoned a spirit, or cast a spell more quickly, but didnt want the headache. Lets face it, doing something with no time constraints DOES make it slightly easier. having extra time to align that aura should make the spell more effective, and having extra time to do it, means that the mage in question cant get it more efficient (ie, there are plenty of arguments as to why mages should get the optio to "aim".

Centering, as i see it (and if you disagree, please fell free to say. i'll probably ignore you, but hey...) is a form of meditation. Meditation was described to me by a freind, as "focusing the front part of your brain on a simple repetative task, so that the back part of the brain can get the hell on with what ever it needs to".

the real problems with meditation are that it takes up ALL of your attention, fully, so that you can block out the "outside world" and cocentrate on whatever you're trying to meditate on.

the other problem is that it takes a certain amount of time to do.


both of these limitations mean that doing it in the middle of vombat is probably something you dont want to be doing. Sure you concentrated hard on casting that manaball spell.. unfortunatly the combat was over several minutes ago, oh, and you were concentrating so hard, you didnt notice when you got shot in the kidneys.

if it were up to me, (and frequently it is) i wont allow centering in combat, unless the form of centering that the character uses is REALLY apropriate to the spell in question .. (the last time i allowed it, the character used hi-ku, and was attempting to cast "mob mind", to get an angry mob to NOT linch the johnson)

I interpreted centering as a linking between the patterns of thought necessary to cast a spell or perform some other action, and the planning stages of other sophisticated activities. For example, centering with dance would use pre-motor cortex to tie the plan for dancing into the execution of magical activity. You'd have to be able to dance in order to use this (since otherwise you'd be planning to not dance, which would kind of ruin things), but it's not the full act of dancing but rather the act of planning that provides the benefit.

With a rationalization like this, it's okay for a free action of such activity--i.e. launching the planning routines plus the normal associated gestures or whatnot--to provide some bonus. When you start getting into far-higher-than-starting skill levels (10+), then even this explanation starts wearing rather thin, as it's hard to see that you could put that much sophistication into a plan.

Of course, this is a rationalization of the current system. One could decide that the current system was bad for other reasons (e.g. balance), change it, and come up with a rationalization for the new system. ("It is the act of dancing/meditating/etc. itself that helps shape magical energy" or somesuch.)