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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shayuri" data-source="post: 6540454" data-attributes="member: 4936">In Shadowrun they're called 'Archetypes,' but yes, there's several. Some are based on innate qualities, others are just specializations of skills and abilities, and are more fluid in nature.For example:Only someone with the Mage quality can be a mage. A mage can then focus on particular magical tradition, like the Hermetic (classical 'wizardry') and shamanistic. Further books add a lot. Tradition can vary what attributes a mage uses to resist magic drain and certain other things, but otherwise is mostly flavor.Similarly, only someone with the Adept quality is a physical adept. An adept is a character who channels magical effects through their body...giving them supernatural qualities and/or skills, but without the flexibility (or cost) of casting spells.There's also a Mystic Adept, who combines the ability to cast spells with the ability to have adept powers...but what they gain in flexibility they lose in a lack of focus.Then there's Technomancers, who are characters who have a strange quasi-mystical connection to the Matrix (the future version of the Internet) that lets them interface with it via sheer mental ability. It's handy in terms of not needing fragile and expensive cyberdecks, but dangerous in that there's very little between their brains and the untempered fury of various Intrusion Countermeasures and other biofeedback Matrix 'damage.' They're sort of 'hackermages' who can use the quality of Resonance to 'cast' Matrix 'spells' instead of the decker's ability to hack, and compile strange spirit-softwares called Sprites who can assist them in various ways. Only characters who have the Technomancer quality can do this.Further archetypes are more about combinations of skills and gear...of which gear includes various augmentation technologies.Street Samurai are the popular vernacular for combat specialists of various types. Big ol' troll bruisers, lithe gun-fu wizards, demolitionists...if your job involves punching, shooting, or blowing things up in preference to other concerns, you're probably a Street Samurai. They often dont' JUST do violence though. Sneakery, face work, breaking and entering...depending on their skills, gear and augmentation, they can do a variety of other things too.Deckers are the hardware-based hackers. What defines them is a single piece of equipment that will break their bank; the cyberdeck. It's a specialized computer with highly illegal counter-encryption capabilities required to wiggle past the many very robust security protocols that guard the Matrix from routine unauthorized activities. They can also be decent in a fight, or do other secondary roles much like a Samurai, but the requirements of hacking in terms of gear and skill points is much harder to have a really good secondary focus without compromising their core talents.Riggers are very specialized deckers who, in lieu of a cyberdeck, possess an unusual cybernetic implant called a Control Rig. They often have a specialized computer of their own as well to help control their charges. Control rigs allow a rigger to connect wirelessly to a drone or properly equipped vehicle, and interface with it directly using a simsense control that makes the rigged vehicle feel like their own body. They're the getaway drivers, hotshot pilots, and the guy who sits back and rolls a little robot tank into the guarded compound to start wiping fools out when even trolls fear to tread there.Note that these are distinct 'classes' but they're not as hardline as they are in a classed system. Anyone can buy a cyberdeck if they have the money, and it takes time and hardship, but you can get the skills needed to use it too, even if you don't start with them. Magic and Resonance are different, and you have to buy them in creation to have any potential for them...and being a mage and being an adept are mutually exclusive.</blockquote>

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