Good Afternoon, Here at the Shadowrun Errata team*, we've been hard at work providing you official Errata for many of the problems that exist in Shadowrun. The following is our official* fix provided for you the player to use in your gave one of the most unloved and underappreciated groups, the aspected mage!
Turn to page 69
Add the following paragraph under the aspected magicians and page 48 of Forbidden Arcana under Enchanter:
At the end of character generation, after all nuyen and skill points have been assigned, Aspected mages gain 1 spell or preparation equal to their current magic rating. The first free spell must be chosen from the tradition's favored spell list. This applies to Standard and Prime Level Runners only.
Yet we felt that this wasn't quite enough to push aspected mages to being fully viable as a character archetype, it made them workable, for certain, but there still remained at least one significant hurdle to their growth and development as full fledged shadowrunners out the gate, so, we decided to add a second addition,
Again, page 69 and 48 add the following paragraph to aspected magicians section enchanter sections.
An aspected magician may elect during character generation to spend individual skill points on raising skills in their chosen magic field. However, at the end of assigning skills, said skills must remain grouped together before Karma is spent. This means an aspected magician cannot specialize in their chosen field with skill points, but may do so with karma, or break the group with Karma afterwards as well.
So let's create some examples,
Harry is making a character name Killgore, the Street Samurai, hoping to create a super awesome street samurai who can use magic on the side. Taking magic D, and spellcasting, Killgore is soon kitted out to be a really cool street samurai. During the assigning skills stage, Killgore's group starts at 0, unfortunately, though the new rules give him a free spell, he still has to invest his skill points evenly. Harry raises killgore's entire sorcery group to 3, costing him 9 total skill points. As each skill is now at three, the group is considered still grouped. At the end of cgen, after chroming out, Harry raises Killgore's magic rating to 1, and is allowed to pick theoretically one spell. Yet Killgores tradition is a cosmic mage, requiring that his first spell be either Analyze Magic, Analyze Truth, Comet, Detect, Gravity, Shape or Sunbeam. Harry decides he wants to spend another 5 karma to select a more useful spell, to go ontop of Killgore's awesome and cool first choice of Comet.
Julia is working on her character Maverick, the aspected magician/face. She decides to take aspected magician B, and chooses spellcasting as her preference. When she arrives at skill selection, her sorcery group starts at 4. Though she doesn't care for ritual spellcasting, she has to raise it with the rest of the group equally. Thus after Julia elects to spend her limited skill groups in other areas, she uses 9 skill points to raise her sorcery group to 6 total, again, not allowing the group to be broken by the end of skill portion of character generation. She wants aspected magery to be an important part of her Maverick's focus, but realizes she'll need to spend karma to buy a specialization to further improve her character. At the end of creation, due to some choice priority selection and investment of special attributes, Julia gets 6 free spells due to the fact her magic rating is 6. As she is a Shaman, with no spell preferences, she can chose from any spells she wants for all 6, though if she had chosen a different tradition with favored spells, she'd need to take at least one spell from the preferred list.
FAQ:
1.So why did Catalyst Game Labs* and you decide to make this decision to push Aspected Magicians a bit up in terms of viability?
A. So the biggest problem with Aspected Magicians we here felt was that while they represented the world at large pretty well, they didn't really fit in with the scope or theme of general Shadowrun Character Generation. The average character that comes out of shadowrun character generation is an experienced professional, and yet, often times the possibility exists for an aspected magician to come out of shadowrun character creation not knowing any spells or preparations with a magic rating of six and with a relevant skill group of 6. Furthermore, for those interested in exploring playing an aspected magician, the problem always became that they should really just actually play a magician. If the solution to play the type of character you want is just to play a different type of character and pretend to be the original character, then a change was frankly needed.
2. Aren't you afraid that this change will make magicians lose their unique flavor? Or make them somehow less valuable?
Not really, I mean Mystic adepts are a far bigger threat! On a more serious note, Magicians have access to three different kinds of magic, barring taking certain qualities that restrict their abilities. An aspected magician has limited developmental capabilities and tools when compared to a regular magician, and while an aspected shadowrunner could be just shy of equal in terms of their field of expertise, the magician still has access to things like spirits, rituals, potions or spells that an aspected magician can't realistically counter. A magician remains the ultimate toolkit, and the ultimate defense against magic. This hasn't really changed with the above changes.
3. Why the restrictions on both the changes?
So this is a multifaceted answer, the first response is that we want aspected mages to be part of a character design, and a major part of said design. The limitation on spell selections is there partly to prevent characters from just selecting increased reflexes, heal and other more powerful spells without at least comitting some resources in terms of Karma or Special attributes to developing their aspected magician past 2 spells/preparations if they decide to chose a tradition with very real and tangible benefits. For skills it is more of a feel thing, as we don't want aspected magicians to get an unfair advantage over regular mages in terms of starting skills necessarily. Luckily, not all magic skills are created equal, yet Mages can pick an choose what skills they want to develop with skill points. Though Aspected can also spend skill points to raise a group, it often times is comparatively inefficient due to the requirement skill groups be unbroken at the end of the skill choice phase. Furthermore Full Mages can more easily specialize in certain kinds of spells or skills for no Karma cost, giving them a unique bonus over that of aspected.
4.Why no Street Level love?
Because unlike Standard Character Generation, Street Level characters are often just starting out, or are untrained. They haven't had a chance to develop their skills in high stress situations where knowing and using their magic rating would be important. As such, aspected magicians might just be professionally trained and only just starting to learn how to properly cast spells.
*I am not officially affiliated with Catalyst Game labs or the Errata team in anyway. Yet this change is still needed, go tweet this at some of the writers, or the publishers to get their support and approval for these changes. Let's hope they turn this into official errata! And seriously, everyone, let us all just treat this as the actual rule because come on.. Aspected magicians needed some love for the past few years, and Forbidden Arcana tried, got close.. But missed the big problem that made them nonviable. How many years has this problem endured for? Consider this the official ruling, I give everyone permission to treat it as so, let's just hope Catalyst labs can get behind it!
Edit - Title edited to remove reference to "Official" and "Errata" - SR Mod