Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Gamemasters' Lounge => Topic started by: Companero on <03-19-13/0848:20>
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Is there a good source of NPC statistics for Blood Mages (and Toxics, for that matter?). I'm putting together my first Shadowrun campaign which calls for one at the end and I'm looking for some inspiration on how to make him interesting and dangerous on his own - while he has allies, the way I've planned the adventure means that the 'runners might have dealt with them all before they find him, depending on their choices.
I'm afraid I don't really have enough intuitive sense of the magic rules to want to make one myself without seeing some baseline examples first. I do have Street Magic and its possible i'm missing something really obvious!
Thanks :)
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Blood magic isn't limited to just allies, remember. You can use it on yourself, or on any hapless scrags who just happen to be bound next to you, as well as your enemies. Also, if it is likely that the guy's allies have all died before they get to the blood mage, have him keep one or two back, and use them to summon blood spirits.
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Hell, you can call Blood Spirits from animals as well as people. Give the guy a couple of Hell Hounds he can sacrifice to call up some blood spirits. Or dogs. Or bound kids if you want him to be really evil. Adds an element of urgency to defeating him.
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Hell, you can call Blood Spirits from animals as well as people. Give the guy a couple of Hell Hounds he can sacrifice to call up some blood spirits. Or dogs. Or bound kids if you want him to be really evil. Adds an element of urgency to defeating him.
If you want to be REALLY evil, have a couple of the group's friends/family go 'missing' just before the final battle. And then have the bad guy send the group a picture with him next to their bound and gagged loved ones. THEN send blood spirits at them, starting with the mage's dog, and working your way up. :)
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Oh yeah. Practically the entire point of including a blood mage in a game is so the players can burst in on him about to sacrifice someone they know, IMO! I do like the hellhound thing, as well.
But back to the OP, is there a source of NPC statistics for Blood Mages lying around somewhere?
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Check Hazard Pay. There are some blood mages in there, I believe.
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There is also one in Season Two of Missions, the ones set in Denver. I believe it is Tunnel Vision.
As a note though, Blood Mages are basically regular magicians who follow a twisted path and take the Sacrifice meta-magic. Stat wise you can use any old magician and just add (or replace) a meta-magic. There isn't really a 'Blood Mage' template or anything beyond making sure they have at least the Sacrifice meta-magic and probably Invoking and Invoking Blood Spirits meta-magics which means they should be about grade 3 initiates (unless you allow the optional rule to buy meta-magics). Beyond those requirements, any path and any magician could be used as a Blood Mage.
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Mantis is correct, but most blood mages would also have the Blades skill, since drawing blood is a prerequisite.
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If you want to be REALLY evil, have a couple of the group's friends/family go 'missing' just before the final battle. And then have the bad guy send the group a picture with him next to their bound and gagged loved ones. THEN send blood spirits at them, starting with the mage's dog, and working your way up.
I thought being really evil was making the blood mage the group's friend or family...
So that's where John was disappearing to all those weekends and new moons...
Mantis is correct, but most blood mages would also have the Blades skill, since drawing blood is a prerequisite.
Unless they're not very good at it. That just makes the pain greater. Usually.
Also: might have to check hazard pay at some point. I wonder if it will have more opportunities for a group that's investing in parachuting.
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Thanks! I was looking for an excuse to buy that book ;). Also for Mantis' advice which I think i'm going to use...
Unless they're not very good at it. That just makes the pain greater. Usually.
I'm playing with the idea that this guy might have learnt blood magic in a Ute prison, so perhaps he practiced using a sharpened plastic spork...
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Not to kill a budding idea, but learning blood magic in prison is pretty damn tough. Since the Draco Foundation offers a bounty on them I might even say impossible. Magicians tend to be watched veeeery closely in prison and blood magic is something most North American jurisdictions watch out for with Aztlan being the main exception.
He could have instead learned it on an astral quest gone wrong or through some sort of shadow spirit that wants to use the chaos he will cause to its own advantage. He could have learned it from an ancient text he dug up or from one of the Great Ghost Dancers who has grown disillusioned with the path the NAN has taken. He could even be a rogue Aztlan magician out to make his own mark on the world.
The best thing to do with the Twisted path magicians is take what they would normally be in their tradition and then ... twist it. Like if you had a Christian Theugerist who took the idea of sacrifice in his religion to horrifying, non-symbolic ends and starts seeing sin as only being expunged through blood or something. Get creative and delve into the darker parts of human psychology.
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Yeah, I imagined it might be hard to legitimize. But like you said, there are tons of other good ideas and I do like the twisting thing alot.
...although I entirely forgot about the Draco Bounty. That's going to single-handedly make the adventure far more lucrative than I planned, unless... (*scribbles notes, has ideas, changes plan...*) Thanks for reminding me about that!
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Also, the treatment of the Awakened in prison is... very not good. Things that can happen are MASSIVE chemical cocktails to keep them 'docile', constant sensory deprivation and being bound and gagged 24/7 to prevent spellcasting, including the use of magecuffs to prevent astral projection, and even giving them implants to kill their talent. And that's in the NICE prisons.
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That's actually something I hope is dealt with in one of the supplement books in 5E - I don't think it's much dealt with in earlier editions. Granted, until we start seeing technological anti-magic-generators, we're probably not going to be seeing nice means of handling awakened in prisons.
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I believe there's some discussion of how Awakened prisoners are treated in Street Magic, and before that in the Lone Star book from earlier editions.
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My gut reaction says medically induced coma would be the cats meow
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Putting them in overlapping wards with magecuffs seems reasonable enough. Someone who can cast through two Force 5 wards would be rare.
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I might be misremembering my fluff here, but I guess the Ute would simple have imprisoned their mages somewhere in the vicinity of Salt Lake City.
Things that can happen are MASSIVE chemical cocktails to keep them 'docile', constant sensory deprivation and being bound and gagged 24/7 to prevent spellcasting, including the use of magecuffs to prevent astral projection, and even giving them implants to kill their talent.
All of that sounds like exactly the kind of thing which would drive someone to become a blood mage after leaving prison. I feel like the imagery of that process would be great fodder for a emotionally charged game.
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According to the Lone Star book, mages get the chemical cocktail treatment with non-addictive psychotropic drugs to keep them barely conscious and then they bombard them with flashing lights or trideo to keep their addled little minds occupied. If they act up, they get mage masked for a few hours at a time. They also hit them with sleep deprivation so that any spell casting hammers them with drain and makes it harder to actually pull off. This is all done in holding. What happens in actual prison could be different depending on who has them.
Apparently, the only ones running actual prisons are the Federal governments of various countries. Corporations aren't allowed after Renraku tried making a game show out of basically torturing prisoners and others used them for experimentation.
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Lone Star runs the prisons in Seattle, Mantis. It is the majority of what they have left in the city. And most megas have their own prisions, as well.
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Then that would be a change from the Lone Star source book. Probably done just so Lone Star can keep a hand in the goings on in Seattle. I found that a bit odd to read in the source book when IRL, private prisons are quite common in the US.
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Putting them in overlapping wards with magecuffs seems reasonable enough. Someone who can cast through two Force 5 wards would be rare.
Multiple wards cannot cover the same volume of space, neither overlapping nor concentric (1 within another).
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Wards cannot be layered or overlap in the same area of astral space. However, there are disagreements as to whether a ward is a 'field' or a 'wall'. My personal reading of things is that it acts essentially like a wall, or shell, given that, once you are past that outer wall, there is no impairment as there would be if it was some kind of suppressive field. Therefore, you can have wards within eachother, so long as they do not occupy the same area of astral space. In other words, the inner ward cannot be touching any part of the outer ward's wall. The example I would use is a ward around a research lab to keep out astral spies, and a second, heavier ward around the high security wing, to keep intruders out (or to keep awakened test subjects in). So long as the two wards do not touch in astral space, you're fine.
But as I said, there are disagreements on whether the ward is a field or wall, and it has never been made clear in the books.
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The Shape of a Ward
Though wards are limited by the standard 50 cubic meters times the Magic attribute of the creator, the shape of a ward can vary and must be determined at the time of the ward’s creation. A variety of basic three-dimensional geometric shapes are possible, such as globes, domes, cubes, rectangles, trapezoids, ovoids, and more. Experiments with complex three-dimensional shapes have proven unstable, however, with the ward collapsing at the completion of the ritual. Experimental astral security designers and astral artists have had to rely on combinations of multiple simple wards to create complex astral constructions.
A ward must also extend at least one meter in every direction from the physical anchor that it is attached to (see below), which prevents ward shapes that are very tiny or very thin in any dimension.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks3/maths/images/solids.gif)
(http://www.princeton.edu/wwwmain_internal/cimg!0/7ez4qpfqwh9hwb5xaogrirvn5smiid4)
Wards are Exclusive
Wards cannot be layered or overlap in the same area of astral space. Magicians seeking redundant astral security measures will often put a series of wards in place, much like a gauntlet an intruder would have to pass through, but they cannot place multiple wards on the same space in an effort to make intrusion exponentially more difficult. Attempting to place a new ward where it would intersect with another ward results in the new ward simply failing.
So the area is a 3 Dimensional space much like our polyhedral dice, but metahumans only interact with the hollow shell "wall" and wards have no effect on the area inside. Which cannot share any part of their space/area with another ward.
One ward could cover the foyer of the building with another covering the R&D wing of a building and a third covering the remainder of the building. The runners would need to pass through all three to reach the R&D wing, but each must cover a separate area of the 3D space which the building occupies. You could even have one ward cover a few floors of a building and not others.
I've always thought of it like an egg, you can only have one shell for each egg. Not one shell for the yoke and another for the white. Although you can have a separate shell for each egg in the carton.
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Nice but OT, there is thread covering this. And discussion was fierce and endless, so lets try to avoid it here .
Back to OP: there is good Blood mage example in second Artifacts adventure book (Midnight?) except for sacrifice he is using Control Actions IIRC. Nasty.
Generaly speaking, Street Magic contains enought info. Take any magician NPC or sample char, initiate a bit and use right metamagics. Also Blood Adepts have some really nasty powers. Dont forget those ;)