[RPG] Can player characters be Nega-Mages

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I'll be starting a Shadowrun campaign with a few friends soon. I'm fairly new to Shadowrun, but I have read the German-language Shadowrun novel series by Markus Heitz.

Characters called „Nega-Magier“ appear in these books, which roughly translates to English as “Nega-Mage.” Nega-Mages have an automatic anti-magic field around them. In the novels, they can't be seen from astral space and no spell can hit them.

Is it possible to play as a Nega-Mage? Are there any rules for it in Shadowrun? Or is this something unique to the novels, something so special it's not available as a choice for player characters? (As a player character they might be too strong, so I suppose they should only be able to withstand a certain power of a spell.)

Failing rules specifically for Nega-Mages, is there anything similar to Nega-Magic (as described) or anti-magic in general in the rules, which we could use to get a similar effect for a PC?

I'm not sure which edition we will be playing, but I think it will be 5.

Best Answer

There are no official rules for Nega-Magicians in any edition of Shadowrun.

Furthermore, since Street Grimoire (the primary magic supplement for SR5) has already been released, it is likely that no such rules are coming any time soon for the most recent edition. Catalyst has moved on to supplements for other character types (the latest release was Data Trails for hackers). You can view Catalyst's list of upcoming releases here, but it is woefully out of date since most of the crunch books (those with useful rules information) listed on that page have already been released.

There are however third-party rules for 2nd and 4th edition which you may find useful.

The closest approximation to official rules is a Nega-Magician supplement published in GDW's Challenge Magazine #67 by designer David Perry (purchase links here, here, and here) for the 2nd edition rules. This supplement was later fan-converted to 4th edition rules.

Based on my own examination of the 4th edition fan conversion, it would be relatively easy to further update the rules to 5th edition, though I cannot guarantee that they will be balanced. Nega-Magicians are likely to cause lots of headaches for the GM since some of the greatest threats in the Shadowrun universe (Dragons, Toxic/Blood mages, and Insect/Shadow spirits) will be pretty useless against such powerful and rare characters.

Here are my recommended changes.

  1. I would change the following passage:

    In game terms, for every piece of bio/cyberware implanted, the GM should roll 1D6. If the roll is less than or equal to the total amount of Body Index and Essence Loss, then the nega-magician has lost his powers forever. A roll of 1 automatically means the roll has failed.

    … to read as follows:

    In game terms, for every piece of bio/cyberware implanted, the GM should roll 1D6. If the roll is less than the character's Body attribute or total Essence Loss (whichever is lower), then the nega-magician has lost his powers forever. A roll of 1 automatically means the roll has failed.

    (The formatting just to show the changes made.)

  2. In the core rules for 5th edition, bio/cyber 'ware do not interact with force points. Therefore, I would completely disregard the following passage:

    Force points serve a different purpose when creating a nega-magician. The number of force points, divided by ten, is the maximum amount allowed for starting bio/cyber-augmentation. Beginning enhancements do not require a nega-magic loss roll. (Optionally, the GM may ignore this maximum, but then require a roll for each piece of bio/cyberware.)

  3. The BP system was updated to SR5 with the supplement Run Faster and renamed Point Buy. The value of a full magician was changed from 20 BP to 30 karma. Therefore I would change the following passage:

    If using the Build Point system for character creation, all of the above applies with a Negamage costing the same 20 build points of a full magician.

    … to read as follows:

    If using the Point Buy system for character creation, all of the above applies with a Negamage costing the same 30 karma points of a full magician.

    (The formatting just to show the changes made.)

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