Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker: Magic and Technology

[Username17]

I am ambivalent about killing people. I think it should probably be easy to incapacitate people, medium to kill them, and hard to subvert them.

For Illusion, I want to draw a line between holograms and illusion magic. With magic, making a photo-realistic image is hard, but making something invisible is easy. With Holograms, making a photorealistic image is easy but making something invisible is hard. Because illusion magic is about imagining things into being, and it is easy to imagine something not being there but hard to imagine a photorealistic image; and holograms are about photoshopping reality, and it is a lot easier to photoshop something in than out.

-Username17

[DrPraetor]

I am ambivalent about killing people. I think it should probably be easy to incapacitate people, medium to kill them, and hard to subvert them.

So you'll always incapacitate people?

This is desirable from the standpoint of non-lethality, which we want. We want people to be captured. But, 99% of the time, someone whom you have incapacitated can trivially be made dead, if you feel in a less charitable mood at a later time. So Incapacitate is more useful than Kill, therefore you will tend to Incapacitate instead even if they are *equally easy*, and if Incapacitate is cheaper, it's no contest.
I could see a continuum of:
Impair < Incapacitate or Kill < Subvert
?

For Illusion, I want to draw a line between holograms and illusion magic. With magic, making a photo-realistic image is hard, but making something invisible is easy. With Holograms, making a photorealistic image is easy but making something invisible is hard. Because illusion magic is about imagining things into being, and it is easy to imagine something not being there but hard to imagine a photorealistic image; and holograms are about photoshopping reality, and it is a lot easier to photoshop something in than out.

-Username17

Certainly, Invisibility = easy is the Shadowrun classic.

Is it easier to make a person look like a generically attractive person, or like a cactus?

[Whipstitch]

With holograms one would think a cactus; they don't move and you don't have to beat the same sort of uncanny valley threshold as you would with a human; people might have a good idea of what a prickly pear looks like but they're not as likely to pick up on a bad prickly pear as they are a human that is a bit off. It might also be a useful game conceit in that you could potentially have off-the-rack holograms of models and celebrities that are quite convincing but that creating a convincing hologram of a mob boss is going to be some combination of hard, time consuming or incomplete.

[Username17]

Incapacitation is only upgradable to kill if you hold the territory at the end of the battle. For the players worried about star accumulation, that will usually not be the case.

-Username17

[DrPraetor]

Incapacitation is only upgradable to kill if you hold the territory at the end of the battle. For the players worried about star accumulation, that will usually not be the case.

-Username17

I'm not sure if we aren't running into a nomenclatural thing.

Okay, when you incapacitate someone with magic, do you need to worry about doing them permanent injury? Certainly, it is easier to incapacitate someone with a bullet or a club than to to splatter them all over the wall - but even so you have to worry that they'll wake up with severe brain trauma, if they wake up at all.

So when you say "incapacitate" do you mean "grievously injure" (which, legally speaking, would be "murder" if they happened to die) or do you mean put safely and magically to sleep?

With technological devices, it takes considerable effort to put people away *without* some, generally high, risk that you will kill them. If magical tazers are way better than normal tazers, but magical balls of fire are not better than grenades, that's still a significant advantage to team Magic.

OTOH, the abstract damage management system tends to blur this out for everyone. I think last campaign we played SR3, Glenn ended up hospitalized on at least three different occasions (my favorite was when he used his datajack to issue spitting death threats from a video monitor while inside the healing tank), and we never even bothered to roll to see if he needed a new skull or whatever, so maybe we don't care.

[DrPraetor]

Magic
"I'm writing a book on magic," I explain, and I'm asked, "Real magic?" By real magic people mean miracles, thaumaturgical acts, and supernatural powers. "No," I answer: "conjuring tricks, not real magic." Real magic, in other words, refers to the magic that is not real, while the magic that is real, that can actually be done, is not real magic. - Prof. Lee Siegel, U. Hawaii

In the 2070 of FT'sCpFHb, there exists a seemingly extra-natural force which can alter or suspend the conventional laws of physics. To almost everyone, this extra-natural force is Magic, and it will be called Magic throughout the rules. In the in-game discussion and vignettes, this force will also-mostly be called Magic, but when people in 2070 say Magic they usually mean the conscious manipulation of Magic by a person, a Sorcerer or Witch or the like. Likewise, this chapter is mainly devoted to the use of Magic by these talented individuals, including the feats which are possible through Magic and the rules used to determine the success of Magic endeavors. This chapter includes a section on Magic Theory which goes into the various academic views of what so-called "Magic" actually is; but most people in the world of 2070 either don't care or actively dismiss the academic consensus on the topic, so you (as a Player) can skip that section unless you wish to portray a character with an academic interest in the topic. This chapter also includes a section on Magic and Society which you probably should read even if you don't intend to play a Magician, in order to participate cogently in fictional world you'll be sharing with the other players, wherein magic is a somewhat known quantity.

Technically speaking, Magic in the world of 2070 is absolutely pervasive: roughly 33% of the world's population belong to one or another magically-altered subtype of Homo sapiens, these people are magical all the time simply by existing. However, most Elves, Dwarves and Asura are not, once you've gotten to know them, fantastic or spectacular so the general consensus doesn't regard an Elf as magical just for walking around.

Roughly 8% of the world's population are somewhat more magical than that, and blessed (or cursed) with some magical effect. For example, some people are immune to fire; some people trigger periodic small hail storms. Many of these people do not know they are magic at all: if you spontaneously killed any goldfish that came within 10 feet of you, would you even notice? Approximately 1.5% of the world's population show some reliable degree of Magical Sensitivity, making them aware of Magic which is normally invisible and allowing them to distinguish Magic phenomena from coincidences or advanced techologies. Finally, about 0.25% of the worlds population, a total of about 25 million people, can both see Magic and also consciously manipulate Magic well enough to consistently produce a wide variety of different miraculous effects.

This doesn't stop the other ten billion people from trying, and it is possible to perform many acts of Magic, in particular the conjuring of spirits, without even Magical Sensitivity. This is extraordinarily dangerous, however, and those who succeed in working Magic while blind often run afoul of one or another persistent hazard.

[Blicero]

That gratuitous bolding is really distracting.

[RiotGearEpsilon]

It should probably be replaced with a more subtle typeface tweak in the final draft.

[Vebyast]

It should probably be replaced with a more subtle typeface tweak in the final draft.

If it makes it into the final draft at all; given that the title of all these threads is "Frank Trollman's Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker", and that he's the one with all the spare Shadowrun ideas floating around in his head, Frank probably has final say on what goes in in the end.

Of course, there's the possibility that DrP == Frank or he's a respected member of the community that I've just never seen before, in which case my bad.

[DrPraetor]

I am not defined as Frank; nor am I, god help me, a respected member of anything. If it makes us easier to tell apart - I just *think* you're an idiot, Frank will tell you so.

There's a good chance none of this will be used (for After Sundown, I think my only suggestion that he actually took was the Power Schedules? Not sure though.) but I've been bugging him to do his own *cough*run fork since we were actually *playing* *cough*run, back in the day, so I have to be helpful.

That said, there's a good chance that anything I write will not make it into the final draft. But I think it's easier to work from concrete text than from vapor/speculation.

[Vebyast]

That makes a lot of sense. It just seemed weird to me that you showed up and started dumping full-grown chapters.

[DrPraetor]

Magic	Covers	Sample Spells	Associated Demitype
Astral	Detection Space Warping Metamagic	Clairvoyance Dimension Door Spirit Ward	Deep Ones
Enchantment	Shapeshifting Transformation	Polymorph Stone Skin Alter Self	Ogres
Evoking	Kinetic Forces Time	Telekinesis Stasis Earthquake	Asura
Illusion	Images Emotions Veils	Invisibility Phantasm Fear	Elves
Thaumaturgy	Fixing Destruction Creation	Heal Disintegrate Sterilize	Dwarves

So Northwestern Forge Magic looks like this:

• Astral: Chemistry
  Enchantment: Mechanic
  Evoking: Demolitions
  Illusion: Artisan
  Thaumaturgy: Armorer
  Summons: Spirit Constructs (Fire Aura, Stabilize, Strengthen)
  Accouterments: Hammers, Metal Powders, Alchemical Metals

-Username17

Is Northwestern Forge Magic also not so good at healing? It'd be nice if

Suggestion - like After Sundown monsters, each tradition/paradigm should include a "base package" which costs 2 permanent stress (which is what it costs to be "gifted") and X é, but has 2.5 stress worth of spells that everyone in that tradition/paradigm has?

I'm still not totally unclear how spells work? Is it something like... this?

Healing, 40é, 0.5S
Thaumaturgy, Life-Dependent, Good
Magical Healing enables you to instantly restore physical damage - including contusions, bruising, perforation or scarring - to any living organism at a range of touch, or by applying your accouterments to the subject.
This is equivalent in game terms to medically assisted healing (see Healing and Injuries); that is, any amount of "normal" damage may be healed, as can any critical hit which can be corrected by surgery, and at the same hit thresholds. Critical hits which require clonal replacement parts or the like can be ameliorated by magical healing but not the destroyed organ must still be replaced. Again, this is entirely identical to medically assisted healing, as described in Healing and Injuries. Healing cannot raise the dead.
The difference between magical Healing and conventional medical treatment is that magical Healing is practically instantaneous, with a base time of one minute instead of one week. The dice pool is Thaumaturgy + Charisma + Target Strength / Target Injury Level. None of the quality-of-recovery contribute extra fault dice.
Each time a person is magically Healed, any remaining injuries become fixed in their aura and must heal naturally.
Magical assistance to long term healing is covered in the

Healing Boost, 5é / lvl, 0.1S / lvl
Thaumaturgy, Life-Dependent, Modifier
Healing Boost provides an increase in both the potency and risk of the casters healing powers, specifically the following spells: Antidote, Healing, Cure and Prophylaxis.
For each level of Healing Boost, reduce the success threshold by 1 but add an additional fault die to both the healing test and the concentration test. Any Healing Test using Healing Boost automatically becomes an Open Test.

Aura Masking, 15é / lvl, 0.25S / lvl
Astral
Aura Masking conceals the magical characteristics of a magician from both mundane and supernatural observation.
First, the rating of Aura Masking is added to the dice pool for the Challenge Test when someone tries to read the characters aura or use other divination magic on the character.
Second, Aura Masking reduces the effective Stress of the character for combat-targeting and covering purposes. In a combat turn where the character does not take an Overt Magic action, the characters stress for targeting and covering purposes is reduced by Aura Masking level; in a combat turn where the character DOES take an Overt Magic action, the character's stress for combat targeting and covering purposes is reduced by Aura Masking level divided by 2. In either case, the total Stress contributed by magic cannot be reduced below 0; that is, Aura Masking cannot effect stress gained by cyberware, combat drugs, etc.

Like that?

[CatharzGodfoot]

At the very least, you don't have to bold the name of an ability within its own description.

Also, if "Healing" is a game term that means 'magical healing', you don't need to write it as 'magical Healing'; just 'Healing' would be sufficient. If it's not, then the emboldening and capitalization is probably superfluous.

[Lokathor]

Praetor, you sure do loooooove your bolding.

[fectin]

Treat boldface like an acronym definition: bold it the first time it appears, and not subsequently.

[DrPraetor]

Just imagine that I'm talking at you and every time you see a bold word I'm annunciating so heavily that I'm spitting on you.

[Almaz]

Just imagine that I'm talking at you and every time you see a bold word I'm annunciating so heavily that I'm spitting on you.

ENUNCIATE! - Tick

[Username17]

Without the gratuitous bolding, that looks a lot more usable:

Magic

"I'm writing a book on magic," I explain, and I'm asked, "Real magic?" By real magic people mean miracles, thaumaturgical acts, and supernatural powers. "No," I answer: "conjuring tricks, not real magic." Real magic, in other words, refers to the magic that is not real, while the magic that is real, that can actually be done, is not real magic. - Prof. Lee Siegel, U. Hawaii

In the 2075 of FT'sCpFHb, there exists a seemingly extra-natural force which can alter or suspend the conventional laws of physics. To almost everyone, this extra-natural force is Magic, and it will be called Magic throughout the rules. In the in-game discussion and vignettes, this force will also-mostly be called Magic, but when people in 2075 say Magic they usually mean the conscious manipulation of Magic by a person, a Sorcerer or Witch or the like. Likewise, this chapter is mainly devoted to the use of Magic by these talented individuals, including the feats which are possible through Magic and the rules used to determine the success of magical endeavors. This chapter includes a section on the paths of magic which goes into the various academic and popular views of what so-called "Magic" actually is. This chapter also includes a section on Magic and Society which you probably should read even if you don't intend to play a magician, in order to participate cogently in fictional world you'll be sharing with the other players, wherein magic is a somewhat known quantity.

Technically speaking, Magic in the world of 2075 is absolutely pervasive: nearly 40% of the world's population belong to one or another magically-altered subtype of Homo sapiens, these people are magical all the time simply by existing. However, most Elves, Dwarves and Asura are not, once you've gotten to know them, fantastic or spectacular so the general consensus doesn't regard an Elf as magical just for walking around.

Roughly 8% of the world's population are somewhat more magical than that, and blessed (or cursed) with some magical effect. For example, some people are immune to fire; some people trigger periodic small hail storms. Many of these people do not know they are magic at all: if you spontaneously killed any goldfish that came within 10 feet of you, would you even notice? Approximately 3% of the world's population show some reliable degree of Magical Discipline, making them able to consciously use their magical abilities and allowing them to distinguish Magic phenomena from coincidences or advanced technologies. Finally, about 0.3% of the worlds population, a total of about 27 million people, can both see Magic and also consciously manipulate it well enough to consistently produce a wide variety of different miraculous effects.

This doesn't stop the other 9 billion people from trying, and it is possible to perform many acts of Magic without any Magical Discipline. This is extraordinarily dangerous, especially when it involves the conjuration of Outsiders, and those who succeed in working Magic while blind often run afoul of one or another persistent hazard.

[Username17]

But yes, it is time to hammer down the spell list. Truth be told, I'm not super happy with the names for the types (except Illusion and Conjuration), although I am happy with the actual division of powers. So here's what I need terminology wise:

• The difference between a spell and whatever it is that lets an Elf throw sleep dust around. The second is "blatant" rather than covert, but it's still an Illusion effect. It would be called a supernatural ability or perhaps spell-like ability in D&D, but those terms are fundamentally unhelpful. These magical natural effects that
• Ogre Magic. Currently it's called Enchantment. The idea of enchanting something so that it becomes stronger or enchanting someone so that they turn into a rabbit is pretty intuitive to native English speakers. But D&D players expect "enchantment" to have charm and sleep - which are both Illusions. I am undecided on whether to keep the name Enchantment.
• Deep One Magic. I am flat unhappy with "Astral Magic", since technically all Channeling is done through the Astral. Maybe "Sorcery"? It's a mixture of space bending, astral manipulation, and clairvoyance. It's a lot like the nMage spheres of Space and Prime.
• Asura Magic. I am similarly unhappy with "Evocation" as a name. It's basically a combination of the Forces and Time spheres from nMage.
• Dwarf Magic. I really like the word "Thaumaturgy", but it could be used for basically any school of magic. It's largely a combination of Shadowrun Combat and Health spells, with the addition of a number of Manipulation effects that honestly probably would have made more sense in one of the aforementioned schools.

This all contrasts starkly with Hacking. Hacking terminology I rather like at this point:

---

In Asymmetric Threat, hackers interact through the medium of Hacking Techniques. A hacking technique is a special trick that a hacker uses to do something with or to a system that it isn't normally supposed to do. There are six types of hacking techniques: Basilisks, Data Mines, Exploits, Images, Phreaks, and Trepans. Basilisks and Trepans target living creatures, Exploits and Phreaks target computer systems, Data Mines target data sets (regardless of whether they are stored in a specific place or in a cloud), and Images create things that can be detected in the real world (and thus work on cameras or eyes equally well).

---

The question remains what a hacking technique or a spell needs in its stat block and description. A magical effect needs to specify what challenge priority it has. If you're using telekinetic thrusts to fight like a four armed Darth Vader, you're using regular Combat Priority, but if you're casting Mind Cloud you need someone to cover you because it has lower priority. I am currently undecided as to whether to have three levels of priority or only two.

But what about hacking techniques? They all run at the same challenge priority. So obviously they don't need that. What do they need? Just a cost to learn and a skill association?

-Username17

[Vebyast]

[*] The difference between a spell and whatever it is that lets an Elf throw sleep dust around. The second is "blatant" rather than covert, but it's still an Illusion effect. It would be called a supernatural ability or perhaps spell-like ability in D&D, but those terms are fundamentally unhelpful. These magical natural effects that

Sleep dust is an item that stores a spell effect. Some high-stress elves just passively manufacture the stuff out of the random, unused illusion power they have floating around.

So here's what I need terminology wise:

For Asura magic, how about something like "Kinetics" or "Energetics"? It's mostly about moving energy around, speedingitup, and _slowing_ _it_ _down_, after all.

[...You Lost Me]

The difference between a spell and whatever it is that lets an Elf throw sleep dust around. The second is "blatant" rather than covert, but it's still an Illusion effect. It would be called a supernatural ability or perhaps spell-like ability in D&D, but those terms are fundamentally unhelpful. These magical natural effects that

I think you accidentally a sentence right there.

[CatharzGodfoot]

I hate to say it, but the most obvious replacement for astral magic is "psionics". "Warp" magic sounds pretty neat, though.

[angelfromanotherpin]

• The difference between a spell and whatever it is that lets an Elf throw sleep dust around.
  
  I like innate powers being called Talents. Or maybe even Innates. I feel like every discipline could benefit from having both a technical name and a slang name, actually.
• Ogre Magic. Currently it's called Enchantment.
  
  I typically see enchantment used to describe either mind-affecting effects (as in D&D) or to describe magic item creation. But it feels like the D&D equivalent is Transmutation. Maybe it could be called Alchemy? Or Shaping?
• Deep One Magic. I am flat unhappy with "Astral Magic", since technically all Channeling is done through the Astral.
  
  I thought space bending and clairvoyance were under Correspondence? That's not a bad name, even though it's not dripping with magical history.
• Asura Magic. I am similarly unhappy with "Evocation" as a name. It's basically a combination of the Forces and Time spheres from nMage.
  
  The concept of Shakti seems to fit, if you don't mind a non-Western magical name.

[Lokathor]

Well then here's what I'd go with

[*]non-spell magical powers are "Talents".

[*]Ogres use "Enchantment", sometimes called Shaping, Enhancing, or Bending by Ogres from various places.

[*]Deep Ones use "Warp Magic", but translators converting Deep One writings to English will sometimes use the more literal translation of Void Venting (the actual Deep One language is of course not writable with roman characters since it's designed to be spoken underwater). At the same time, Clairvoyance magic can be referred to separately as The Path of Stars by Starwalkers (sometimes Stareaters), which are an oracle-like subtype of Deep One particularly gifted with visionary-style magics yet unable to use other forms of Warp Magic. depending on how it's used.

[*]Asura use "Kinetics", but sometimes they call it Screaming and Asuran monks call it The Way.

[*]Dwarf magic is "Thaumaturgy", and some more reverent dwarves call it Truecrafting or Truesmithing.

[Username17]

Shakti is just about perfect. It's basically "The Force" from Star Wars, but it's from South Asia, where the highest number of Asura are from. Totally works.

-Username17