Magic in the world of Shadowrun is everywhere, every living thing has an aura and interacts with the mana flow of the world in one way or another. These energies are called mana.

Creatures that interact with mana are called awakened, whether they are animals with astral sight or metahumans slinging fireballs they all sense and manipulate the magical energies that perminate the world.

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Creating an awakened

There are many ways to use magic as a player character, the most common archetypes are Mages, Shamans and Adepts.

Both mages and shamans manipulate magic directly, they shape and channel mana to cast spells and change the world around them. They summon spirits to help them and they assens magical auras to learn more about people and locations. Where they differ is their understanding of magic and how they control it. Meanwhile adepts control the mana within themselves, they let mana infuse their bodies to empower them and focus it to create temporary but powerful effects, but do not cast spells or summon spirits.

Remember that Shadowrun has no class system, so you are free to mix and match abilities and skills to suit your vision!

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Pure Magic

The first step on your characters magical journey is to spend some of your character creation karma on the Magic attribute. This stat represents the characters raw magical potential and is used by almost all spells and magical abilities in one way or another. This is one of the few attributes that can be 0, meaning that a character has no magical potential and is not an awakened.

Once you have some magical mojo behind you, it's time to choose a whether you want to be a Magician, an Adept or both!

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Magicians

Shamans, Mages and other traditions of Magicians share the same basic character creation steps; Pick a tradition, note down what attributes are important for that tradition, choose spirit guide (if any) and pick spells. Let´s begin!

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Tradition

Traditions are how your magician understand and use magic. The base magic is the same, but how you interact with it and how you treat it are informed by your tradition. Traditions are a combination of culture, training and belief and there are as many traditions as there are people, but most fall into a few major categories. Below we´ll summarize a few of the most common and how they apply to your character.

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The Shaman

Shamans see magic as a force of nature to be respected, a wellspring of power that can be borrowed from and a companion in life that can teach you and guide you if you just listen. They see spirits as free and sentient creatures, animals and peoples of the astral plane. Spirits can be asked for help and bartered with for information, but binding or forcing a spirit is akin to slavery and frowned upon by most shamans. They manipulate mana using traditional methods, practiced for generations. Shamans feel the magic and form it by feeling, using their tradition to guide their actions. Most distinct of all, shamans commonly have a spirit guide, or totem. This guiding spirit is a lifelong mentor, sometimes a companion and friend, other times a distant teacher. Shamans can and do sometimes lose their totem, and gain another one. This is usually a hard and traumatic experience and not something to be taken lightly.

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The Hermetic Mage

Mages treat magic as an art or science. Their cast their spells through formulae, alchemy and geometric designs. Magic is a physical force, just like gravity or light, and can be manipulated with the right knowledge. Spirits are creatures of the astral realm or simply mindless manifestations of mana, depending on who you ask. Either way, most mages do not see any issues with commanding spirits to do their bidding or binding them to their command. Mages usually do not adopt a spirit guide, instead they trust to teachers, books and experimentation to advance their knowledge of the arcane. Many aspiring mages study magic in school, in fact most of the worlds schools have at least some classes in magical theory and many of the most famous universities have become famed for their research into mana and its uses.

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Honorable mentions:

There are of course many other traditions out there, each with their own quirks and bonuses. To find out more about these, see page 41 of Street Grimoire . Below are a few examples of traditions featured in that book,

• Buddhism
• Vodou
• Druidic
• Wicca
• Islam
• Wuxing

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Aspected Magicians

A limited form of Magician exist in the form of the Aspected Magician, a Shaman, Mage or other magic user that by choice or lack of ability is forced to only use one type of magic. Aspected Magicians can choose between three types of magic:

• Sorcery (Spellcasting and related skills to cast spells)
• Conjuring (Summoning and related skills for calling on and controlling spirits)
• Enchanting (Alchemy and related skills for crafting and imbuing items with mana)

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Adepts

Adepts are created differently; you still need a Magic attribute above 0, but simply buy Adept powers with Power Points. You start with a number of Power points equal to your Magic rating and gain more when (after character creation) your Magic attribute increases.

For the adept, using magic comes naturally. Adepts are people who have been born with a natural ability to channel mana into themselves and enhance their own physical, social or mental abilities. An adept can boost their strength and agility, enhance their intellect or make themselves more persuasive and trustworthy. How they control and manifest these powers differ from adept to adept, but many learn to master their bodies using various martial arts. Meditation can also help the person understand their inner mana-flow (or chi) better. Being an adept does not automatically mean that you can cast spells, in fact most adepts do not manifest other magical abilities at all, but a select few are born as Mystic Adepts. These individuals have the potential of both a mage or shaman and an adept, but being a jack of many trades usually mean being a master of none, so tread carefully!

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Mystic Adepts

If you simply cannot choose, you can be both a Magician and an Adept, a Mystic Adept! To do this you follow the character creation steps for a regular Magician (not an aspected one) with some exceptions; A Mystic Adept does not gain any free Power Points, these must be purchased at 5 karma each, to a maximum number of Power Points equal to your Magic attribute.

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Magic, Cyber and Essence

Magic and technology famously does not play nice with each other and that goes double for technology implanted into a living thing. To understand why it´s so rare to see shamans with cyberarms we have to understand Essence. While not completely understood by modern science or magic, essence is commonly understood to be a measure of once humanity, soul or life-force. All sentient creatures have essence while you can´t get any more of it, there´s plenty of ways to lose your essence. By far the most common reason is cyberware when you remove a part of your body and replace it with metal and technology, you lose a part of yourself. Essence can also be drained from you by some rare awakened creatures, for example those infected by the disease HMHVV , more commonly known as vampires, wendigoes, banshees and ghouls (among others).

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All characters start with an Essence attribute of 6. For every augmentation (cyberware, bioware or other) you get, you lose essence equal to that augmentations Essence Cost (listed in its stats). A character cannot have less than 0 essence, but can get very close (essence 0.01 for example). At 0 the character is dead, their soul and body no longer connected as the body is to far removed from their metahumanity to contain a soul.

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How does this relate to the awakened then? Well, your characters Maximum Magic Attribute is linked to your characters Essence. This means that if you currently have a Magic attribute of 6 (usually the highest you can go, at character creation anyway) and you lose even the smallest bit of essence, your magic rating drops to match your new essence, rounded down. So a mage with an essence of 5,7 would have a maximum magic rating of 5 and lose that point of magic attribute they had so that their new magic attribute is 5.

What this also means is that a less potent awakened with a magic attribute of 3 won't care very much if their essence drops a point or two, because only the maximum magic attribute is affected by their essence loss. This magician only needs to start worrying after being down to an essence of 3.

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Extended reading and Video guides

Would you like to know more?

— UCAS Military recruiter

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Have a look at the Shadowrun 5e Core Rulebook and read through the Magic chapter on page 276.
Once you have a grasp on that you´re ready to take on the expansions Street Grimoire and Forbidden Arcana.

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If you´d rather ingest your rules in a video format, we can highly recommend these videos by Complex Action, covering some of the more complex rules in bitesize videos. Below is a playlist of their videos on magic, but they have clips on other areas of Shadowrun 5th edition as well!
Complex Action - Magic Rules Playlist

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