[All4BigGuns]

A 4,300 Karma Mage? Good God that bastard must be a monster. I'm afraid to rebuild the mage I had from 3rd, and she'd only have around 1,200.

Heck, the Street Sam I had in that game (everyone had two characters) with the same amount of karma (along with ridiculous levels of cash being gained during that game) is monstrous.

[Senko]

Oh and those magic rules aren't absolute there's at least one case of a dragon teleporting a group of runners but it took a lot out of him and presumably there's some explanation for real life religious figures who came back plus whatever the eleves in Nosferatu are.

[MijRai]

There's multiple cases of dragons 'teleporting' people, if you look around; most are explained or surmised as extremely quick travel due to magic, not actual teleportation.  I mean, appropriately stacked use of Movement, Increase Agility, etc. can practically put people past the sound barrier on foot.

You're making the assumption those people actually came back, as opposed to making it look like they died or (a disturbingly frequent event) were thought dead due to poor understanding of the human body back in the day.  When certain eras went out and made little bells for people who wake up in a coffin to ring for aid, somebody 'coming back' isn't hard to extrapolate. 

The elves in Nosferatu?  What? 

[Senko]

This one is pretty explicit about it being teleporting since they're in one spot and then another.

The ones I'm thinking of are real life but I'm not saying more due to religious don't talk terms of service.

They crop up at the end of Nosferatu with weird weapons, insane power, some bound spirit that seems to be able to remove cyberwear and fix essence holes and some inexplicable knowledge of previous lives of the main character. They also seem to be there just to throw a "this is a dystopian setting, the heroes really accomplished nothing oh were going to kill this one off-screen because we can Nyah, Nyah, Nyah" spanner in the happy ending.

[Medicineman]

@Medicineman
Which book has the make your own tradition stuff because there have been a few characters I'd have liked to do that for.

4A Streetmagic ( of Course )
I was a bit disapointed that it wasn't in SR 5

with a nice Dance (of Course)
Medicineman

[Senko]

Thanks.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Hawatari is sitting on over 4100 karma herself; the Wyrm has roughly 7500.  They've been played regularly since the beginning too.

This said, a few things should be remembered/realized: while many religions have what they might describe as a 'codified' magical system, it can vary from sect to sect.  Christians may see things generally the same, but if you talk to your GM, you can reskin whatever it is you want into some version of Christianity - whether that's Lutheranism, Mormonism, Baptist, or whatever, or even a particular order within the Catholic Church - because the Dogs of God (Dominicans) don't see things the same way that those of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) do, or the Franciscians, or the Xaverians, etc.  Just because the game designers set up the 'magical Way of Shintoism' a certain way doesn't mean your Shinto priestess needs to view things that way; there is sufficient variation in every religion to be able to alter the framework and find a sect or viewpoint of that religion so that your magic matches your religion.

Note that Catholics can use magic, but summoning is officially restricted to the general clergy, not just the Sylvestrines - not that people who CAN summon would refrain from doing so, any more than people who CAN have sex outside of the bonds of holy matrimony do so; it all depends on the person's level of devotion.

In regards to the teleport / back from the dead, Senko, please make sure you fill in all your facts.  Any mentioned 'teleport' has been sufficiently explained by high-Force Levitation + other added movement stuff.  Any mentioned coming back from the dead, religious (i.e. Ibn Eisa) or not, was clarified as having been a malevolent spirit (shedim) possessing and reconstructing the corpse.  And killing (we could only wish) Brightlight was what the character deserved, for having been a Carl Sargent / Marc Gascione creation.  I dearly wish their writing could be entirely excised from the world of Shadowrun, because it is hands down the worst crap I have ever read for a game.

[Senko]

I don't even know who brightlight is I was referring to Niall and the ones who show up intending to kill him for treachery.

Hmm don't recall that levitation bit what I saw was from one location to another, I assumed it was achieved via some manipulation of metaplanes myself but I do recall it being mentioned as teleporting plus knocking a dragon out of contention for a prolonged period of time (not something most could do). So benevolent shedim seems it's setting itself up for some major hole picking by other religions. That said filling in facts is what I'm doing with this and other threads e.g. the shedim bit.

7500 that's a scary amount of karma.

As for personal Shinto mage I don't actually need to reskin all that much my tastes and limited understanding of these things with the brief blurb it gives is enough to make me quite happy in a way I wouldn't be as a straight Hermetic or any of the others really.

[MijRai]

Benevolent shedim?  That sounds like an oxymoron to me. 

[Marcus]

4A Streetmagic ( of Course )
I was a bit disapointed that it wasn't in SR 5

with a nice Dance (of Course)
Medicineman

God I miss  4e Streetmagic that was a magic books. Comparing it and SG just makes me depressed.
Sigh.

I don't even know what I would do with 4300 Karma, I'd need a weekend and a couple spread sheets, to even begin too compare builds in that range.

[Senko]

I'd probably expand my options better offence/defence, some computer ability, nice bug upgrade to my magic, anything left pick up some nice extras like artisan.

[SmilinIrish]

7500 karma!!  Just over 400 karma gets you to magic 12 with 6 initiations.  Another 400 would probably more than net you all the metamagics in the books.  Add another few hundred to max out all your stats.  Holy cow. 

[Senko]

I think I'll make a 7500 character to see what it looks like maybe even make a thread what would you may with 7500 karma if you were making something youd like to be. Only problem is how much cash would this the wyrm have gotten at the same time.

[Glyph]

While a lot of the traditions are religious in nature, but they vary a lot in how religious they are, and how tied to their traditional faith they are.  Also, not every religion is exclusive - the entry for Buddhism talks about how most Buddhist spellcasters actually follow the Shinto or Wuxing traditions.  Heck,  "Born Shinto, Marry Christian, Die Buddhist" is a phrase used in Japan today.

Exclusive religions such as Christianity won't necessarily all practice Theurgy - a lot of them will gravitate towards hermetic or chaos magic.  I could also see them treating traditions like British Druids or Qabbalism as "ancient teachings" rather than a religion, or following traditions with loose, if any, formal religious ties, like Shamanism or Wuxing.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

You're ... more than a little off the page on that, Senko.  Ibn Eisa was by no means 'benevolent' after his assassination-cum-resurrection-actual-inhabitation; he turned his followers into basically a new and active jihad.

And exactly, Glyph - and as I said, 'Christian theurgy' needn't be the structure that the book has it as.  It's a game; games can be altered.  (We have the technology.)

As for the whole 'how much you can do with X karma' - always remember that you can do that one thing, sure, but there's a lot that needs to be done if you're operating at that sort of level.  While it takes 100 karma to get an attribute from 1 to 6, if you have higher base attributes, you have a higher top-end cost.  To boot, skills cost a lot to push into the higher reaches; a Grade 12 initiate with a Magic of 18 is a huge karma sink, but if you don't gain in your skills as well, you're halfway to throwing it away.