NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8775136" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Though there are other approaches.For example, Shadowrun (while imperfect in its implementation) makes magic work very poorly with tech, in a world where tech is very important. That is, to be a decker you (pretty much always) have to have cybernetic implants allowing you to "jack into" the Matrix. Cybernetic augmentation causes a loss of "essence," which is (very crudely) the "connection" your soul has to your body. All beings start with 6 essence and cannot have less than 1 essence without dying. Folks who have very low essence are generally speaking really noticeable. They have muted or disturbed emotional responses to things, behave in inhuman or disturbing ways, etc.Thing is...essence also affects magic. If you lose any essence, it reduces your Magic stat by an equal amount, and for the purpose of how much Magic you have, you always round essence down. So if you get an induction datajack (a relatively non-invasive option that goes beneath the skin of one of your hands), it costs 0.25 essence. For the purposes of getting more augmentations, that means you have 5.75 essence remaining, but for the purpose of magic, you've just lost one whole point of essence and your Magic (both maximum and current) are reduced by that amount. People with only 1 essence are effectively incapable of using magic.There are also a few people, "technomancers," who can do Matrix hacking stuff without the aid of technology at all, and their powers are defined by "Resonance." Resonance and Magic cannot mix--if you are a technomancer you cannot learn to use magic, and if you somehow do acquire magic, all of your technomancer abilities are instantly and permanently lost.As a result, magic is contrasted against both combat-focused cyberware, which is usually of interest to "street samurai" (the equivalent of D&D Fighters in Shadowrun), and more hacking/robot-control cyberware, which is of interest to deckers (hackers) and riggers (drone-using and vehicle-operating folks.) Mages (wizards, but they can learn healing spells), shamans (spirit-conjurers), and physical adepts (essentially D&D Monks) almost exclusively stay the hell away from any of that cyberware stuff, because it destroys their ability to use their magical skills; at most, you'll see mages dip their toes into it by taking only 1 essence worth of augmentations and making sure those augs are as top-line and impactful as possible. (Higher-grade cyberware has a lower essence cost than entry-model cyberware, but requires more complex and expensive facilities to install. The highest grade, as of SR5e, was "deltaware," and only a handful of clinics in the world have the kind of tech needed to install that stuff. But it gives a hefty discount on essence costs.)Magic is somewhat rare in Shadowrun, in that Awakened individuals (those who can use magic) are a comparative minority, but in-universe they're actually pretty common as shadowrunners. That's because being Awakened and not a corporate wage-slave usually means you're on the run or being hunted or trying to keep a low profile. You have valuable skills and few places to employ them other than by shadowrunning.</blockquote>

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