How to make Shadowrun less bad

[Username17]

Mages carry guns too. There are times when in combat they choose to fire those guns rather than cast spells. But the existence of that option and the fact that it is on occasions employed is not used as justification to make a vast plethora of potential enemies completely immune to magic, it is not used as justification for making unbeatable anti-magic countermeasures cost 0¥, nor is it used to justify making magic incapable of performing basic combat tasks such as removing opponents. Why the fuck do you think that is?

-Username17

[TheFlatline]

That helps the hacking mechanics, but it still doesn't address the elephant in the room that Frank likes to bring up: Why hack in a firefight when you can pull a trigger?

I'm still not convinced this is a huge deal. Every hacker character I know in SR has carried a gun, so I don't think the intention is that you have this hacker who is 100% a keyboard monkey and nothing else.

That's not to say I don't think hacking in combat shouldn't happen, it's just that a hacker shouldn't be 100% using computer skill all the time. It's not a bad thing if sometimes he just whips out an Ares predator and shoots someone. I think if you're trying to kill someone, a gun should be the go-to choice. That's what guns were made for and if it works better than a computer, I don't take issue with that.

But that's not to say you've got no options for using a computer to help out in a fire fight:

1. Information denial: Those security guys your street samurai is shooting have biomonitors and likely some kind of TacNet going. You drop one, and someone is going to know about it. The hacker can be doing some action to suppress a potential alert. Now obviously you need to make hacking a lot easier to do than several rolls just to locate a hidden node or decode someone's wireless communications.

2. Group debuff: Most people imagine hacking a device as shutting a device off. But it can be more impairing. Imagine if a hacker could potentially blast a group's AR interfaces to cause them to be temporarily stunned or blinded. Since everyone in the SRverse runs AR, that's going to be something quite useful.

3. Drones: Drones are badass, and there's really no reason for an SR4 hacker not to be running them.

You obviously missed the 50 post "stay at home hacker" thread and the conversation that generated it.

People want, or think they want, or think that a hacker that sits in the basement and never leaves is a fucking awesome concept because they don't *need* to get into a fight and to shoot guns at each other.

So whatever your design has to be you either have to fiat that shit don't fly, or you have to figure out how to make a basement dweller a vital and integral part of the game.

As far as merging riggers and hackers, I'm okay with this. The other shit borders on brain hacking, which again I'm okay with, but a lot of people are going to resist and kick against.

[Cyberzombie]

Mages carry guns too. There are times when in combat they choose to fire those guns rather than cast spells. But the existence of that option and the fact that it is on occasions employed is not used as justification to make a vast plethora of potential enemies completely immune to magic, it is not used as justification for making unbeatable anti-magic countermeasures cost 0¥, nor is it used to justify making magic incapable of performing basic combat tasks such as removing opponents. Why the fuck do you think that is?

Because magic tends to be overpowered in almost every RPG. It's overpowered in D&D, it's overpowered in Shadowrun. It's even overpowered in Mutants and Masterminds where it's purely a descriptor for your powers.

Unless the goal here is to eliminate mundane characters, then modeling things after magic probably isn't a great idea. As far as I know, we're trying to keep the street samurai as an archetype, and the best way to do that is to have firearms be the most effective and reliable way to kill people.

If you're talking about ditching the street samurai and I missed it, then that's an entirely different conversation.

[Cyberzombie]

You obviously missed the 50 post "stay at home hacker" thread and the conversation that generated it.

People want, or think they want, or think that a hacker that sits in the basement and never leaves is a fucking awesome concept because they don't *need* to get into a fight and to shoot guns at each other.

If you're staying at home, obviously you have to be giving up something tactically by making that choice, and that something is the ability to do direct damage. The stay-at-home hacker is purely a support concept. I'm not sure from a design standpoint if I want this style or not to be valid, that's another discussion in itself, though it's solveable via wifi blocking wallpaper anyway if you don't want people to be able to stay at home. Even if it is allowed, I definitely feel that sitting at home should cost you some potential options, and having one less gun on the team seems as good a cost as any.

[Username17]

Because magic tends to be overpowered in almost every RPG. It's overpowered in D&D, it's overpowered in Shadowrun.

This is an incredibly weak argument. For starters, in most editions of Shadowrun, Magic actually isn't overpowered for starting characters. It only becomes overpowered because of various eccentricities of the character advancement system. Magic doesn't actually do anything overpowered in Shadowrun. Even at the really high end, the biggest demons and dragons in the setting need plot immunity to avoid getting swatted like flies by the high end weapons that also exist. By the rules, Ghost Walker and his spirit army would be a grease stain in an artillery crater.

Magicians are more powerful than mundane characters because of math errors in the advancement rules - not because of anything specifically overpowered they can actually do. You don't get to hide behind the admitted power discrepancy between Mages and non-Rigger character archetypes and claim predestination on this. Riggers also fucking exist. And if Street Samurai were able to advance in power and versatility as quickly as magicians are able to, there wouldn't be a balance issue there either.

-Username17

[Concise Locket]

What else can be done?

Completely unrelated to mechanics: take a chainsaw to the setting.

[kzt]

To make those work in any logical fashion I think you have to slow down combat. A 15 second firefight in SR seems both uncommon and takes forever to play out with the 3 second turns. I can certainly see you messing with the other side as part of setting an ambush or manoeuvring them so that there is no fight at all, but in combat I'm not so sure.

[Ferret]

It was noted a while ago that today, there's really no good reason to say Hacker and Rigger are different things.

Collapse the two archetypes. Hackers hack, and contribute to combat via Drones.

Rigging vehicles is just 'how you drive future vehicles', i.e. not a special thing anymore other than You Have a Smartjack, You Don't Have To Touch The Steering Controls Physically. Maybe that translates to a bonus to your Drive/Pilot skill or something, that's debatable.

As earlier stated, I'd also probably include in the fluff something like "As time has passed and the ambient mana level rises, it is found that electronics suffer in immediate proximity to the Awakened. Generally, consumer products have been made resilient to this interference as long as a mage is not in direct physical contact with them while spellcasting or sustaining a personal spell, but Mages must turn to bioware for augmentation, and their physiologies cause system failures in cybernetics. This also means they cannot directly jack into a cyberdeck."

Mages just don't get to play in traditional Cybernetics or the Hacking arenas. Design bibles would have to specifically state that we do not stat up a biocomputer cyberdeck or whatever. Mages could still have a Computer skill for research, use a comlink, etc, but not while they're doing their thing in combat-time.

[codeGlaze]

That brings up the problem of making mages giant walking EMPs. Making them even more effective vs Deckers/Riggers AND Sams with cybernetics.

Now, given that magic users value essence and embedded tech negatively affects essence, what if that could somehow be expanded outward?

[Seerow]

That brings up the problem of making mages giant walking EMPs. Making them even more effective vs Deckers/Riggers AND Sams with cybernetics.

Now, given that magic users value essence and embedded tech negatively affects essence, what if that could somehow be expanded outward?

Well he was saying that the negative tech impacts only apply if you plug in directly. So rather than harry dresden style taking out a computer from standing in the same room, you get a mage who can totally use a handheld commlink and doesn't really affect anybody else, but putting in cyber, or trying to jack your brain into the link in any way causes problems.

Which then leaves room for you to make cool cyber toys unique to the Sammy, while still leaving mages/adepts room to upgrade stats and such with more expensive bioware.

[Just_Snake]

Hello folks!

I just stumbled across this forum by chance and saw the SR5 stuff… What the fuck? It’s been a long time since I really played Shadowrun (some SR3&4, years ago) but this still shocked me. I don’t have the time for it at the moment but I always wanted to get back to the game sometime in the future and would have hoped to find better, improved rules and stuff. Well, so much for that.

I’m not up to date on the precise game mechanics anymore and I probably won’t have the time to post regularly. Nonetheless I had a boring day at work and thought about the skill distribution I would like to see in Shadowrun. Obviously, it’s suboptimal that the different character-archetypes need vastly different numbers of skills to be efficient (especially the gun stuff).
In my opinion every class should need more or less the same number of skills. One solution would be to go back to very broad skills like “gunnery”. Broad skills avoid micro-managing, which sounds good. But on the other hand, they reduce character-differences. I don’t want characters with 500 different skills. But I like the fact that a sniper and a pointman with a submachine gun aren’t just fluff differences that could switch roles at will, if necessary. If there are two or the similar characters on a team, I consider it a good thing if they can specialize in different roles (as long as this is kept somewhat in check and is roughly similar for all char-types so that all can advance roughly at the same speed with the same experience).

For this reason I would like a system in which each archetype (let’s for example say fighter, hacker, rigger, mage) has four to five skills that would be useful (but that you probably don’t need all). This allows for similar characters that are still different. And it allows for “easier” character development. If you only have one skill you really need, it will already be somewhat maxed at char creation. Then you need to save huge amounts of karma to improve. This way it’s easier to improve on stuff you aren’t that good at the side as well. Of course the amount of karma you get need to fit to the number of skills out there. I know this isn’t a brand new idea and many of these skills are in some or another rule-book. I would just like to get such a system from one cast, with matching numbers of skills and roughly similar “importances” of each skill for each character class.
The examples are from the top of my head and may not be perfect in any way. I especially don’t have any real concept for the rules behind these skills. I know that this is a glaring hole but for now I just assume there is a solid mechanic in place that needs skills for actions, probably based on the core of SR4.

Fighter:
-hand-to-hand combat (maybe splitted in armed/unarmed, but I don’t want to over-do it)
-pistols
-automatic weapons
-rifles
-heavy/exotic weapons (some additional thoughts on this will come later)

Rigger:
-cars
-motorcycles
-flying stuff
-other vehicles (see below)
-aiming
-signal warfare (encrypting signals, jammers, etc.)


Hacker:
-analyze (understanding of data structures and system architecture)
-intrusion (ways to break into systems)
-offensive matrix fighting
-matrix defense
-signal warfare
(-maybe an “other” skill, see below)

I’m not really sure about the line between these archetypes yet. I prefer to have both separate because I like both concepts but I think there should be a big middle ground. A rigger-only char can only jump into vehicles and control them like his body. A pure hacker can only manipulate the matrix and doesn’t know anything about vehicles. However, most riggers can also hack to a certain point and most hackers know how to operate a drone network via pilot-software. This would mean that these mixes would need much more skills. The solution would in my opinion be software. Rigger-type chars often use agents to substitute hacking skills and hackers use auto-softs. I imagine a rigger of certain power level always to be better than a similar good pilot-software (and hacker to be better than agents, on the same power-level).
In my opinion, every other character should be able to use computers without these specialized skills. I think operation the AR and comlinks is something you don’t need a skill for in the year 2070+. It’s just like walking. This may not be true for a char with some handicap “computer- illiterate”, but that’s it. Other chars can’t hack or jump into drones but they can use agents and autosofts. Maybe they can’t use them to full potential because they lack the deeper understanding of specialists (so that there is a need for hacker/rigger that you can’t just “buy away” with top-notch software). Or chars with corresponding skills get bonuses on agent/autosofts because they can give them more precise orders. One way or another, I would want to have both specialists and non-specialists to be able to operate drones and the matrix. It’s the year 2070+, both should be totally common. It’s just that there are worlds between them in effectiveness.

Mages:
-elemental spells (including mana-bolt type of things)
-mind-manipulation (illusions, control over the body, reading thoughts)
-enchantments
-conjuring
-dispelling/banishment
(-maybe an “other” skill, see below)

Spells and other magic abilities get sorted into these categories and you need the skill to use them. Personally, I would prefer this approach over the “gunnery”-version. It gives mages different flavors that aren’t only fluff. A competent mage probably has all these skills but there are things he is better or worse at. And some specialists only know their fields of magic. Creating a fireball is roughly similar to a manaball, but you need a whole different way to think magic in order to make a spell work that reads other peoples brain or dispels a spell by another caster.

Honestly, I’m not yet sure how to integrate social skills into this. A face is an archetype on his own and should have his own skill group. But on the other hand, almost every (at least every professional) char need some social skills. Maybe the necessary “amount” of skill to “get along” is so low that basically everybody can get some basics that are enough without spending too many points. After all, probably almost every face-character will need skills from some other areas as well. At least I haven’t seen many really 100% pure faces so far.

Well, I think that would be enough skills to make for great character-diversity and not yet too many. After all, next to no character will really go for all these fields. Then we need some general skills that every group can use, like athletics and stealth-stuff.
Moreover I thought a while about the skills you need almost at no time, like parachuting, technical diving, etc. It’s really excessive to have these as skills. Who is going to invest enough karma to become really proficient in them? How many are there? How many more could be created with the same right as the ones existing? I really dislike these…

…but. I do like to see differences in the char-background in the sheet. I don’t want to micromanage everything but let’s say I have three chars with athletics 5: an ex-seal, an ex-paratrooper and a pretty fit mage. I do like the option to get some flesh on this backround. The first one can parachute and dive with equipment, the second only parachute, the third one none of this.
This is totally personal preference but I like to see some of these details on the character sheet and not just as fluff (“I totally have the skill, but I won’t use it now”). However, this stuff is rarely needed and not too important. It shouldn’t be expensive and shouldn’t need much room.
Here is my idea: these skills get changed into additions to base skills.
An char with high athletics has a good foundation for all that but if he never learned to use the equipment, he will have a fucking huge disadvantage at using it.
You have an athletics sill and you can buy a number of additions for *little* karma. Let’s say parachuting, scuba-diving and technical climbing (all stuff that can be relevant in a game about industrial espionage). Spend the little karma once and the char can use his full athletics-skill on the task. Without, he has some huge disadvantages because he is dealing with stuff he has never seen.
This allows for some more character diversity, avoids new skills that need to be raised, makes it payable to get the options for the char and offers chances for more small character progressions in the game (spend little karma, get new abilities you can actually use because you then use the regular skill value). Personally, I would like such a system, because I like char sheet that give some details and allow for some individuality. As long as there aren’t too many skills and every character type needs roughly the same number of skills to be at a similar level of expertise on his field.
Of course, it would be easy to make an optional rule to play without skill additions for people who don’t want this amount of detail. Than you just use the base skill without the disadvantage and that’s it.

And here we finally reach the “see below”-part from my examples. At least for the fighting-chars there are many exotic weapon systems that really don’t fall under any other category. The same is probably true for riggers and I think it would be easy to find similar things for hackers and mages. Now, I don’t want a bazillion skills like “rocket launchers”, “mortars” and what-not. But it’s hard-streached to place them under “rifles” as well.
So I would suggest one skill “exotic stuff for that class” that you can buy and raise. And then you can activate the different systems just like the rarely used skills as additions. Of course this makes this one skill cheaper than the rest because with 3 additions it’s worth three skills. But as it’s only about the exotic stuff you rarely need, I would consider this a good compromise. Again, it’s easy to house-rule it out for the less-precise people who only need one exotic weapon skill. I think it would make sense for fighters and riggers. For hackers, mages and faces it would depend on the more detailed rules. It may make sense to use this option for all classes, but on the other hand I wouldn’t try and force to have such a thing for every char. After all, I don’t want too many skills. I would just like to find these rarely used but in some settings important things on the sheet, not every stupid thing you could do in the world.

As I said, just some thoughts I had at work (and I saw it as a chance to practice my English). I hope my explanations make any sense. Any thoughts or comments? Different opinions? Mistakes on my part? Openings for other bad stuff in game mechanics?

[Seerow]

Fighter:
-hand-to-hand combat (maybe splitted in armed/unarmed, but I don’t want to over-do it)
-pistols
-automatic weapons
-rifles
-heavy/exotic weapons (some additional thoughts on this will come later)

Stopped reading here.

You talk about recognizing that the weapon skills are spread thinly, and then proceed to regurgitate literally the exact same SR4 gun skill list, in pretty clear indication of not understanding the problem at all. After a failure that basic I can't imagine the rest of your post being worth the time to read.

[Just_Snake]

[...]
Stopped reading here.

You talk about recognizing that the weapon skills are spread thinly, and then proceed to regurgitate literally the exact same SR4 gun skill list, in pretty clear indication of not understanding the problem at all. After a failure that basic I can't imagine the rest of your post being worth the time to read.

Well, I thought the problem was that fighter-chars need much bigger amounts of karma to progress than other chars, mainly mages. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I do like differences between chars of the same "type" though, that aren't just fluff but specialisations in their fields. A fighter can have x flavours and I like the char-cheet to show that (and to feel the differences ingame in things the char can do). I would just like the same for all types of chars in a meaningful way, with a reasonable amount of karma that allows all types of chars to progress at roughly the same speed.

That, and some thoughts on rarely needed stuff like parachuting (that somehow does get important if you do need it).

[Username17]

The issue is that murdering people is not and never has been and cannot ever be a complete character shtick. Mundane fighting, literally the entire thing, amounts to a combat shtick. Nothing more, nothing less.

All characters need a combat shtick, but they also need to contribute during legwork and stealth scenarios as well. So all the combat skills, however many there are, are at best about a third of a character.

-Username17

[TiaC]

As earlier stated, I'd also probably include in the fluff something like "As time has passed and the ambient mana level rises, it is found that electronics suffer in immediate proximity to the Awakened. Generally, consumer products have been made resilient to this interference as long as a mage is not in direct physical contact with them while spellcasting or sustaining a personal spell, but Mages must turn to bioware for augmentation, and their physiologies cause system failures in cybernetics. This also means they cannot directly jack into a cyberdeck."

I feel you could also go the other way and say "Magic is a very complicated skill; to cast a spell, one must define hundreds of variables. Because of this, an unaugmented brain can only cast spells through long rituals. Mages have taken to relying on cyberbrains to quicken casting, as the minor essence loss is offset by the massive increase in convenience." This would mean that Mages are always open to hacking attacks.

[Schleiermacher]

If you don't want Sams to have to spend all their skills on different modes of combat, but you do want the option for two Sams to have different skills, you could do like Exalted (well, you wouldn't do it quite like Exalted because White Wolf never met a design choice it couldn't screw up, but stay with me here):

There are 4-5 different combat skills, but you never really wish you had more than one, because while they each have their strengths and weaknesses at low levels of investment, with sufficient investment in any of them, and perhaps some well-chosen cyberware or additional skills with broad out-of-combat utility, like Athletics, you can eliminate each mode's weaknesses, and investing in two or more different ones becomes redundant. This of course needs to be possible at chargen.

That would probably satisfy both those who want to distinguish between sniper rifles, pistols and hand-to-hand, and those who don't want to have to spend all their skills on different kinds of weaponry to be viable. But I guess turning all Sams into gun-fu masters and Cyborg Ninjas might upset the trenchcoat and mirrorshades people?

[angelfromanotherpin]

I think you're better off with a very small number of combat skills (like, ranged and melee), with specialties to set up very small signature weapon die bumps. Then make the weapons meaningfully distinct and use something like holdout limits to restrict how many a person can reasonably carry on most runs to like two or three (plus built-in cyberweapons). Look at some FPS games (or Bastion, etc.) to see how you can set up multiple valid loadout combinations that people might reasonably debate over.

"Shotgun, Sniper Rifle, Cyberclaws."
"Naw man, Katana, Assault Rifle, Cybertaser."

[Seerow]

I think you're better off with a very small number of combat skills (like, ranged and melee), with specialties to set up very small signature weapon die bumps. Then make the weapons meaningfully distinct and use something like holdout limits to restrict how many a person can reasonably carry on most runs to like two or three (plus built-in cyberweapons). Look at some FPS games (or Bastion, etc.) to see how you can set up multiple valid loadout combinations that people might reasonably debate over.

"Shotgun, Sniper Rifle, Cyberclaws."
"Naw man, Katana, Assault Rifle, Cybertaser."

I generally agree with this method. Basically to make the analogy to magic:

"Weapons" is your "Spellcasting" skill. Picking up a new weapon is equivalent to a mage grabbing a new Combat spell. In that the spell/weapon always fills the same general purpose, but will have its own perks/disadvantages to justify a reason to use them in different situations.


The real issue is that even when you pare it down that much, Spellcasting is still the much better skill, because it covers not just your Combat spells, but also your utility, stealth, social ability, etc. I've suggested in the past that Spellcasting needs to be split up because it simply covers too much ground, but the general problem comes with defining how to split it up in a way that makes sense and isn't grossly unbalanced (for example splitting among schools of magic leaves a few clear winners and a few schools that people simply stop investing in. And even inventing new categories to place the spells into leaves a lot of grey area for spells that can be used in multiple situations).

[Cyberzombie]

Magicians are more powerful than mundane characters because of math errors in the advancement rules - not because of anything specifically overpowered they can actually do. You don't get to hide behind the admitted power discrepancy between Mages and non-Rigger character archetypes and claim predestination on this. Riggers also fucking exist. And if Street Samurai were able to advance in power and versatility as quickly as magicians are able to, there wouldn't be a balance issue there either.

Well if you're saying riggers are badass, then there's really no need to give the hacker any kind of extra attacks, because he can already double as a rigger and just run people over with drones. I mean I can see your argument if you're talking about SR3 or earlier, where rigging was super expensive and took up a primary character's schtick. But in SR4, rigging and hacking are more or less the same thing. So if you want more offense on a hacker, you strap a few guns to a drone or two and you're done. The rules already support this, so I can't see why brain hacking is remotely necessary.

The hacker needs matrix actions to go faster, but as far as what he can do, his capabilities are fine.

The street samurai is the guy who needs extra capabilities, because his skill set is lacking. Hacking and spellcasting both come with a utility component, but the street samurai just doesn't have that.

[Seerow]

Magicians are more powerful than mundane characters because of math errors in the advancement rules - not because of anything specifically overpowered they can actually do. You don't get to hide behind the admitted power discrepancy between Mages and non-Rigger character archetypes and claim predestination on this. Riggers also fucking exist. And if Street Samurai were able to advance in power and versatility as quickly as magicians are able to, there wouldn't be a balance issue there either.

Well if you're saying riggers are badass, then there's really no need to give the hacker any kind of extra attacks, because he can already double as a rigger and just run people over with drones. I mean I can see your argument if you're talking about SR3 or earlier, where rigging was super expensive and took up a primary character's schtick. But in SR4, rigging and hacking are more or less the same thing. So if you want more offense on a hacker, you strap a few guns to a drone or two and you're done. The rules already support this, so I can't see why brain hacking is remotely necessary.

The hacker needs matrix actions to go faster, but as far as what he can do, his capabilities are fine.

The street samurai is the guy who needs extra capabilities, because his skill set is lacking. Hacking and spellcasting both come with a utility component, but the street samurai just doesn't have that.

In the same way that a Hacker can take on the role of Rigger, a street Sammy can take on the role of hacker. What you're describing is a problem that the only role protected archetype in the game is the Mage (which is a noted problem discussed throughout this thread).

The trend should be to make the Archetypes more distinct, not continue to roll with rigging as a subset of hacking like SR4/5 use.

[A Man In Black]

Rigging seems like it nearly slots into the weaknesses of the Hacker, though. It supports the guy who Shadowruns from his apartment or from the van. It supports "Kill a dude with a keyboard" in a way that doesn't make SR grogs froth at the mouth. It gives Hackers a core combat competency, while also accommodating actions that are essentially situational or weak. It de-emphasizes the Dropout problem: if a hacker can still shoot you with a rigged drone, there's less incentive to drop out of the hacking minigame entirely.

You still have all of the Sam's problems, but making Hacking+Rigging an attractive and synergistic whole makes typing on a keyboard as attractive a schtick as casting spells.

Plus, it makes MGSIV Otacon a playable character.

[kzt]

The obvious skill fix for magic=utility is to make every single spell a different skill that has to be improved separately. This seems a bit over the top too.

[Antumbra]

The obvious skill fix for magic=utility is to make every single spell a different skill that has to be improved separately. This seems a bit over the top too.

You could split it into Combat|Illusion|Manipulation|Health|Detection easily enough. Perhaps let each allow for specialisation in a single spell.

Combat spells would probably want a broader set of spells though - call it "Energy" maybe. Even a pared-down Manipulation is far more useful otherwise.

The basic GURPS magic system goes the route of each spell being an individual skill, which doesn't actually end up that complex, but I think it would be an unnecessary addition here.

[Hicks]

Get rid of the Magic attribute; your tradition dictates now which attribute you use with your magical skills and drain. Make magical drain run off of Essence + (Tradition Attribute). The Magician positive quality is broken into 3, 5 points for Spells (which allows you to purchase the spellcasting (with counterspelling folded into it) and ritual spellcasting skills, and 3bp spells), 5 points for Conjuring (which let's you purchase the summoning (with banishment folded into it) and binding skills), and 5 points for Astral projection (which allows you to purchase to Assessing and Astral Combat skill)

Knowledge Skills cost 1bp/rating, Skills cost 2bp/rating, and skill groups cost 5bp/rating. Specialization still cost 2bp

Primary attributes are now:
Body (Strength is folded into this)
Agility
Reaction
Perception (old intuition)
Intelligence (old Logic)
Willpower (charisma is folded into this)

[Seerow]

Get rid of the Magic attribute; your tradition dictates now which attribute you use with your magical skills and drain. Make magical drain run off of Essence + (Tradition Attribute). The Magician positive quality is broken into 3, 5 points for Spells (which allows you to purchase the spellcasting (with counterspelling folded into it) and ritual spellcasting skills, and 3bp spells), 5 points for Conjuring (which let's you purchase the summoning (with banishment folded into it) and binding skills), and 5 points for Astral projection (which allows you to purchase to Assessing and Astral Combat skill)

So magic gets even easier/cheaper to use?