[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Aspected Magician
Defensive Aspect (5 BP)

The magician (or mystic adept, wherein are found the majority of this aspected magician) possess brutal penalties for most active uses of their magical power.  (This does not apply to adept abilities, note.)  For Spellcasting, Ritual Spellcasting, Conjuring, Binding, Arcana (for any 'active' design use, as compared to 'knowledge' use), and Enchanting, the magician receives a -6 to their dice pool.  Counterspelling, Banishing, Assensing, and Astral Combat are their primary focus.  Defensively-aspected mystic adepts very frequently follow the Path of the Warrior, and are known on the street as 'mage-killers' due to their relatively high resistance to magic and significant combat ability.

[rasmusnicolaj]

I Like it.

Shouldn't they get +2 to their aspected magic, when they get a -6 penalty?
As per the Expert Aspected Magician optional rule in SM p. 31.

Rasmus

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

That's a rule-tweaking that GMs could optionally pursue. However, I don't think it should be part of the Defensive Aspect, and here are my reasons.

Every other Aspected mage gets normal ability in three skills, plus a portion of one, and has 6 skills and the rest of that one reduced.  Spell Category, Spirit Aspect, Astral Aspect, and Enchanter Aspect are all even worse; they get only 2 skills, or restrictions on their 3 + 1.

• Sorcerer: Normal Sorcery Group (3 Skills), -4 to Conjuring Group (3 Skills), Assensing, Astral Combat, Enchanting, Arcana (except for spell design).
• Conjuror: Normal Conjuring Group (3 Skills), -4 to Sorcery Group (3 Skills), Assensing, Astral Combat, Enchanting, Arcana (except for ally design).

The Defensive Aspect gets 4 full Active skills, and is basically designed to be a tough-to-magic badass.  As a consequence, there are (should be) penalties for the skills they're basically never going to use, just to emphasize the fact that yeah, they're seriously screwed in those areas.

On review in writing this response, -6 may be somewhat over the top, thoughts on reducing the penalties to -4, to keep in line with the other Aspects?

[JustADude]

On review in writing this response, -6 may be somewhat over the top, thoughts on reducing the penalties to -4, to keep in line with the other Aspects?

-6 is fine, if they get the +2 to the ones they're good at. Otherwise, yeah, I'd drop it back to -4.

[Lethe]

If you want to drop it back to -4 you should reduce the aspected skills to 3 and take Astral combat or Assensing out, to fit in line with the other 5BP versions. I would say remove Assensing, since it has nothing to do with an "Defense Aspect"..

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Opposing viewpoints.  Fight it out!!

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Revisiting this for 5e.  As a Quality (since it could be added on to any Magician / Mystic Adept), what do you think it'd be worth?  -5?  -10?  Or -5, but with an increase to your non-negatively-impacted Magic skills, so a +2 to Counterspelling, Banishing, and Disenchanting?