Mage Wage Slaves

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Raleel

The Lemon LeCroix of Mythras
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The question is - how much does a mage charge for his services when they reduce his ability to do magic?

so, this can be in any setting, and probably a number of systems, but it came to my mind in the context of using Mythras to do a Shadowrun setting. My intention is to use the Sorcery rules as built in Mythras, because I like them a lot, because I'm lazy a lot, and because they do a pretty good job of emulating SR magic with some constraints.

With that having been said, I was looking at Enchant, and how a Person of Means might use a mage to cast spell resistance on him, and then keep it up via Enchant. This reduces the mage's magic points by the cost of the Enchant and the spell (1 for enchant, 1 for spell, and probably 1 or more for other aspects). Lets say it's Spell Resistance. 1 for Enchant, 1 for Spell Resistance, and 1 for increasing the Magnitude (he can get it to a 6, which will block spells of 6 or less magnitude).

Now he's reduced his ability to cast spells by, say, 1/5 (he's got 15 magic points). How much does he charge?

My gut feeling past the "what the market will bear" is "One day's wage per day of enchanted spell running on you". So if he farms out all his magic points on enchants, he's effectively fully rented out. He's sitting pretty and all he has to do is precisely nothing. He tracks payments (credit sticks and automatic deposits, etc), but he can live pretty damn well like this.

now enter extralegal operatives (aka shadowrunners). They like these guys too, but they also know about them, and need to eliminate a target who is using a mage wage slave. This becomes a vulnerability to the Person of Means. The wage slave can be bribed or offed. He might spend some cash on bodyguards.

Now the price of doing business starts going up. He's gotta protect himself after all. Person of Means wants to make his mage wage slave immune to bribery, so he pays him quite a bit more, maybe gets him some illegal stim packs and that trid porn star he likes.

I guess for me this is a thought experiment on the rental model for one's magic points. It has sort of fascinating implications for an economy, at least in my mind. even low level mages could make a pretty decent living like this. It's sort of like the wizard version of a bodyguard, I suppose.
 
It looks like a plausible system to me. The only thing I can nitpick is the term "mage wage slave". It doesn't have the right connotation for me as the mage seems to have a lot of power in this situation. If you want to keep yourself safe from the spells of your enemies, you need to keep the mage well-paid. I could only see this being a wage slave type situation if a world had more mages than a demand for magic. I think the term wage mage would work better as it carries the meaning of regular payments without making it seems lowly position.

I really like the vulnerability idea. A figure gaining magical protection from a mage needs to ensure the mage's physical protection. Alternately, these arrangements need to be kept secret. Finding out who someone uses for their enchantments becomes valuable information. There is a lot of fun plot potential here.
 
I like this whole idea. "Mage Wage Slave" is ok. I kinda like "Sell Spell" or "Money Wizard".
 
Another thing that came up with one of my locals - the law enforcement. This restricts them as well, as they might want to cut through that spell. This makes licensing a thing, I would suspect, and legal obligations.

He also mentioned that back in 3e days you could ground out spells from the astral to the physical via these enchantment type spells. Now, I’m not certain I am going to bother with that, since the Mage exists and it makes it a nice little side plot, but now I’ve put it out there.

As far as the name, it’s highly mutable. It’s not even all fully formed.
 
How much of Shadowrun do you want to keep? In earlier versions of Shadowrun, sustaining a spell through a fetish called a Spell Lock, did leave an open conduit from the Astral to the Material Plane and spells could "ground out". Also if a mage was sustaining a spell, like the Mythras mage would be in temporarily sustaining a live spell, that could be tracked back to them, like a material link. So if you had Astral eyes on your target, you could potentially track and find the mage who was sustaining the spell. Of course traveling through Astral Space halfway around the globe has its own problems.

With a rich corporator, I can see multiple mages on staff for this system. A Combat Sorcerer for live spellcasting, a Defensive Sorcerer, to sustain spells and kick back safe at corporate HQ, and perhaps a Shaman to hand out fetishes and/or be on hand with deadly or protective spirits.
 
Expanding the topic to Mythras: Shadowrun in general, have you given any thought to the whole Essence angle? In Shadowrun, magic came from your lifeforce essentially, your Essence, and as you filled your body with Cyberware (or suffered different types of Trauma) you reduced that Essence, potentially becoming a Burnt-Out Mage, someone who had lost all or nearly all of his spell-casting ability. It could be interesting to keep part of that in Folk Magic. A "true mage" ie Sorcerer, Animist, Mystic (dunno if you were even thinking about Theology) could cast their type of magic plus Folk or perhaps even open it up so they could do any, but a Burnout could only do Folk with the few points they had left.
 
How much of Shadowrun do you want to keep?.
unknown really. I think that comes out more in playtesting. I want there to be a way to see that someone is using a wage mage, but I'm not 100% on driving spells down the link. Truth, there is a bunch I CAN keep, even mechanically. Stats are pretty damn close - SR stat x3 = Mythras stat. Skills are pretty comparable. Even costs of items are not grossly out of whack.

Expanding the topic to Mythras: Shadowrun in general, have you given any thought to the whole Essence angle? In Shadowrun, magic came from your lifeforce essentially, your Essence, and as you filled your body with Cyberware (or suffered different types of Trauma) you reduced that Essence, potentially becoming a Burnt-Out Mage, someone who had lost all or nearly all of his spell-casting ability. It could be interesting to keep part of that in Folk Magic. A "true mage" ie Sorcerer, Animist, Mystic (dunno if you were even thinking about Theology) could cast their type of magic plus Folk or perhaps even open it up so they could do any, but a Burnout could only do Folk with the few points they had left.

yea, i have. I think I'll put it in as tenacity, and overlap it with magic points a bit. I feel like I can do a different flavor on it, but I'm not settled on anything by any means. I mean, I'm barely at the point of "do cybernetics have their own stats, and do I want to deal with how that impacts skills" sorts of questions.

One thing that might be interesting is have spells cost magic points and tenacity, then have cyber hit tenacity. yea, you can cast little spells with your cybered self for a long time, but you really don't have the mettle anymore to handle the big juju.

part of this is really how much do i want things to affect stats directly, because recalculations might be annoying. Then again, it might not.

side note, I think I've mostly settled on using sorcery to model cybernetics. Some cybernetic skill gives an intensity, and this becomes a quality of an enhancement. Treat it as an Enchant that uses the character's own POW. The only thing that the cybernetics really does is offload the skill burden - you don't have to be a caster to cast your own stuff. That makes most cybernetics around a 2 POW cost (1 for the "spell", one for the Enchant), but I might alter that a bit here and there. Bundle senses together for eyes, etc.
 
I don't really see casting spells alone as a valid employment choice. The Wizard is more likely to operate as an expert who intermittently employs spells, or as an independent contractor you can got and get to a cast a range of specified spells at specified prices. In the former case, their skills and knowledge are as much in demand as their spell casting capabilities, and the Wizard needs to develop a more rounded skill set to fill the role. Sure, they will advise on magical matters, but they're also there to provide intelligent, informed, guidance on a host of matters.
 
Go out into the streets here in Brazil and you'll see throwaway paper ads for self-styled seers, mediums and even pais de santo (officiants of umbanda, the syncretic Afro-Brazilian religion that combines Yoruba and Roman Catholic beliefs) who promise to "bring the lived person in three days or your money back."

Wizards are among us already and they take all major credit cards. ;)
 
I'm back on this. I've released some of my work load, and my mind is focused more on creativity.

I don't really see casting spells alone as a valid employment choice. The Wizard is more likely to operate as an expert who intermittently employs spells, or as an independent contractor you can got and get to a cast a range of specified spells at specified prices. In the former case, their skills and knowledge are as much in demand as their spell casting capabilities, and the Wizard needs to develop a more rounded skill set to fill the role. Sure, they will advise on magical matters, but they're also there to provide intelligent, informed, guidance on a host of matters.

Certainly, that's entirely possible. But there are many folks who make a nice living off of renting out apartments. They make the investment in money, learn to repair things, and they live off the residual income. Maybe the talismonger aspect is a side gig. Maybe they make connections and broker deals. Could be a whole range here, really.

In the case you describe, it's more like an independent contractor for a job. It's a perfectly good gig, and maybe more prevalent, but not exactly what I'm describing.

I was considering this morning the impact this would have on the shadowrunning sorcerer. One of these talismongers could provide a solid Spell Resistance - even relatively minimal training could give you a Magnitude 3 Spell Resistance. That's 3 less shaping someone has to come in and hit you with something. they have to be that much closer, it lasts that much less time, etc. because they have to kick up their magnitude. A real game changer for those folks who can invest in the protection.

the smart rich person would invest in multiple objects. Not because they would stack (they won't), but because of the externality (i.e. talismonger) left out there. You don't know when he's geeked, and thus having a contingency in place would be good. This also plays into something that I feel like would fit in the setting as well - ostentatious displays of wealth, as you have all your enchanted bling on.
 
Expanding the topic to Mythras: Shadowrun in general, have you given any thought to the whole Essence angle? In Shadowrun, magic came from your lifeforce essentially, your Essence, and as you filled your body with Cyberware (or suffered different types of Trauma) you reduced that Essence, potentially becoming a Burnt-Out Mage, someone who had lost all or nearly all of his spell-casting ability. It could be interesting to keep part of that in Folk Magic. A "true mage" ie Sorcerer, Animist, Mystic (dunno if you were even thinking about Theology) could cast their type of magic plus Folk or perhaps even open it up so they could do any, but a Burnout could only do Folk with the few points they had left.

After a lot of thought, I think I'm going to not do the whole essence thing. I decided that I liked John Snead's point based approach. Essence then is really just these points, really. Some mechanism might exist for you to replace supernatural points allocated to magic into cybernetics, but not the other way around. As luck would have it, folk magic is a single supernatural point for skill/10 spells, equivalent to a cyberlimb to me.

Writing that above, I like that a lot. it makes a Burnt-Out Mage a much more interesting character.

I'll probably go with something close to Mr. Snead's table, which i'm sure you've seen, though I don't feel a lot of need for extra gradations. I would expect it to be marginally simpler, but I've not done all the work.
 
Further thinking and writing on this
  • Drones have AI. AI provides the mental stats. The actual body of it provides physical stats.
  • Skills are bought up as separate modules for AIs. Thus, you have to buy a combat style for an AI if you want them to use the mounted weapon. In some sense, there are very few or no Standard Skills for AIs, or at least nothing that defaults.
  • If you are a rigger and rig the drone, you substitute in your skills like Combat Style, etc. It's wise to note what you have in each kind of drone.
  • Piloting controls the drone movements. This also acts as a limiter on your actions with the drone (though not things like Perception). Essentially, every physical skill (i.e. has STR, DEX, CON, SIZ as a component) gets limited by this.
  • Piloting has subtypes. Air, Ground, Water are obvious here. I might put in a few more, but they are definitely going to be one offs.
  • Piloting also can be used in people-carriers. So you can drive the roomba with your piloting (ground) skill, or you can drive the getaway car.
 
Revisiting my notes here and thinking about this again. I am thinking that 1sp per magic point per day is probably a start of the rental rate. Mages are generally skilled help, like lawyers or programmers, and would end up in “Gentry”. Now, 1sp might not be silver pieces at all, but that’s the idea. 10 magic point guy can rent out his pow ar that rate per point.

This doesn’t include protection for the mage, nor is it for magical advice on the side.
 
....
I really like the vulnerability idea. A figure gaining magical protection from a mage needs to ensure the mage's physical protection. Alternately, these arrangements need to be kept secret. Finding out who someone uses for their enchantments becomes valuable information. There is a lot of fun plot potential here.

Following up on this I believe the Wizards' Guild assigns them randomly. :smile:
The Guild assures continued protection. It's Guild mages are protected in the most erudite of accommodations ensuring maximum magical effectiveness. Rest assured, if your Mage Protector becomes injured or sick, an equivalent mage protector will be assigned to your account. Contract with the Guild for all your protection needs.*

*surcharges for curse removal or inter-dimensional attacks may apply.
 
Following up on this I believe the Wizards' Guild assigns them randomly. :smile:
The Guild assures continued protection. It's Guild mages are protected in the most erudite of accommodations ensuring maximum magical effectiveness. Rest assured, if your Mage Protector becomes injured or sick, an equivalent mage protector will be assigned to your account. Contract with the Guild for all your protection needs.*

*surcharges for curse removal or inter-dimensional attacks may apply.

Oh i like this a lot. the guild takes a cut, ensures protection, the mage makes a decent wage. everyone is happy. licensed and bonded even. mmmmm. yes. this is a great reason to guild up.
 
Oh i like this a lot. the guild takes a cut, ensures protection, the mage makes a decent wage. everyone is happy. licensed and bonded even. mmmmm. yes. this is a great reason to guild up.
I hear there is a mage protector named Flo, who covers everything. :smile:
 
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