Shadowrun RPG > Magic and the Planes
More Magic Question
Gabriel:
Retread, I don't remember just where the rules for karma cost for learnign spells is, but I'm pretty sure you HAVE to spend a minimum of 1 karma to do ANYTHING. If you learn it, it costs you. If you have a Force 2 Exclusive Stealth spell, it will still cost you 1 point of Karma to learn. If it didn't , you would have to assume the EVERY AWAKENED PC would know ALL spells at a Force 2 Exclusive or Force 1 Fetish Limited. Game balance has to be observed at all times, and free spells will throw the entire game off kilter.
Gabriel
Retread:
Nowhere in canon does it say that karma is a requirement for learning a spell. However, the rules are left to the GM and players to interpret. Keep in mind it still takes time and money to learn new spells. It's not as if people who design spells do it for free. To hire an instructor it would take at least 1,000 nuyen per force not to mention a bonus for the teacher's Instruction active skill. Also, it takes one full day to learn a force 1 spell. A training day in Shadowrun is roughly 8 hours. So, you'd have to pore over the formula for 8 hours before you could learn it on top of spending 50+ nuyen per formula and then another 50-200 nuyen simply for the fetish. The average magician doesn't necessarily have these resources, let alone would the exact formula be available with the right kind of fetish for that formula.
Addtionally, if you follow standard character creation rules, you can still get 30+ different force 1 spells if you wanted to, so I don't really see much difference in paying 1 karma for an un-limited spell and spending no karma for a spell which requires you show off the fact that you're a magician by fiddling with some gewgaw before you throw the mojo, have to pay extra for, and simply have to find available.
Again, interpret how you will, but nowhere in any canon that I find does it elaborate on the cost of force 1 spells with limits.
Gabriel:
That's basic GM'ing, chummer. No one gets anything for free. And yeah, if you want to spend your 25 force points buying 25 Force 1 spells at creation, you could, but the thing is that you have to spend them. Money and time are nothing in a game like this. I'll give you an example. You hav a mage that graduated MIT&T. He then moved on into the corprate world since his scholoarship was sponsered by (let's just say) NovaTech. Since he went to a university, he spent a minimum of 2 years, but probably ,more like 4 or 6, learnign his trade. Without spending any Karma, you could concievably have a PC who knew every spell in the book at Force 1 for no cost at all. You can't honestly tell me you think that is a fair interpretation of the rules.
Gabriel
ROOTless:
Trust me Retread.
As far as mages are concerned, money is nothing, Karma is the limit on the skies. The only limit.
Retread:
Right, two years not including those in which you need to learn Sorcery, Conjuring, Spell Design, Magic Background, and a myriad of other knowledge skills related to the school. The number of study days required to learn all of that stuff would well encompass more than two years even without studying spells.
I'm simply saying that by basic math 1 - 1 is zero. So a force 1 spell limited by fetish costs 0 karma. Of course, 1-2 is -1 so you're not going to get free karma for learning an exclusive force 1 spell. Besides, if you were to learn your fetish limited spell and upgrade it to force 2 it would simply cost 1 karma anyway, there really isn't any difference.
ROOTless, I know that karma is desperately important to magicians, but saying that money isn't important is sort of relative, most especially if allow players to purchase karma with money. Additionally, have you ever seen the price on a Power focus? Crimeny.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version