Printable Version of Topic
Click here to view this topic in its original format
Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun _ Spell casting math problems
Posted by: Traks Oct 9 2003, 08:05 AM
Daaamn. I have read sourcebook and other sources, but I still do not get how exactly this is handled. My thoughts so far (which are surely wrong):
You choose spell, Manabolt
You select force of spell, say 6 (my players are quite new and thus have no more than power 6)
You use Sorcery active skill and sorcery pool to cast it?
How damage scales up? Does it for attacking spells?
Does force 6 means enemy will have 6 boxes damaged, so it is 6S?
Protective spells are more understandable this way, number of successes usually means how good you used it.
Except Impr Invis and Invis, is it contest (you reroll till get one, highest number and enemies later use this number as target) or you just use number of successes to later evaluate this?
For drain, you use Body + Spellpool again?
How much is drain? Those +1 +M or other numbers cofuse me somehow.
I just do not get how exactly this calculates, for the same Manabolt
Posted by: Fenris Oct 9 2003, 08:37 AM
I'll try and answer your questions as succintly as I can.
| QUOTE |
| You select force of spell, say 6 (my players are quite new and thus have no more than power 6) |
| QUOTE |
| You use Sorcery active skill and sorcery pool to cast it? |
Yes. You can use up to your total sorcery skill and your total spell pool (not sorcery pool) to cast the spell. Please note that any dice allocated to spell defense from the spell pool are not available for cast. Please also note that the sorcery skill, like the spell pool, only refreshes once a combat round. This means that if your mage wants to cast a spell on the first phase of the round, and then another spell on the second phase, he has to split his sorcery skill and spell pool between the two castings, unlike most other skills. Also please note that this is for normal spells. Elemental Manipulation spells are handled like ranged attacks using the sorcery skill as the ranged skill, adding spell pool as normal.
| QUOTE |
| How damage scales up? Does it for attacking spells? |
| QUOTE |
| Does force 6 means enemy will have 6 boxes damaged, so it is 6S? |
| QUOTE |
| Except Impr Invis and Invis, is it contest (you reroll till get one, highest number and enemies later use this number as target) or you just use number of successes to later evaluate this? |
| QUOTE |
| For drain, you use Body + Spellpool again? |
| QUOTE |
| How much is drain? Those +1 +M or other numbers cofuse me somehow. |
Hope this helps.
Posted by: Polaris Oct 9 2003, 08:58 AM
Looks like Fenris beat me to this by a minute or two but here goes:
| QUOTE |
Daaamn. I have read sourcebook and other sources, but I still do not get how exactly this is handled. My thoughts so far (which are surely wrong): You choose spell, Manabolt You select force of spell, say 6 (my players are quite new and thus have no more than power 6) |
You select the force of the spell as you cast it up to the maximum that you know. The maximum force you can know at character creation is six. For a combat spell, there is almost never any reason to cast it at a force less than maximum for reasons that will become clear below.
| QUOTE |
You use Sorcery active skill and sorcery pool to cast it? How damage scales up? Does it for attacking spells? Does force 6 means enemy will have 6 boxes damaged, so it is 6S? |
Yes, you use the Sorcery skill (or spell casting specialization of sorcery)+spell pool dice (if any) to cast the spell.
First you compare the number of successes you have with the number of successes on the resistance check. For every two net successes you have, you increase the damage code by one. If the defender ties or exceeds your successes, then the spell is resisted. So yes, the damage does scale up.
No. You pick the base damage code when you cast the spell. This is also the base damage code you have to resist drain against so be careful. The force of the spell is the target number the other guy has to roll on his resistance check. Thus the higher the force the better. This is why you should almost always toss attack spells with forces of six or higher.
Min-Max tip: Consider getting your attack spell fetish linked and apply the fetish to the effective force of the spell. This makes the effective force 5 for purposes of drain while it is still a force 6 spell in all other respects. This will make your drain rolls much easier.
| QUOTE |
Protective spells are more understandable this way, number of successes usually means how good you used it. Except Impr Invis and Invis, is it contest (you reroll till get one, highest number and enemies later use this number as target) or you just use number of successes to later evaluate this? |
Invisibility, Improved Invisibility, and Physical Masking are all indirect illusions (and indirect illusions are IMHO one of the more broken of the spell categories). The caster rolls against a target number of four and the GM notes the successes. Anyone that sees the effect gets to make a resistance check using their intelligence with a target number of the spell's force. That means that if you get 8 successes on an Improved Invisibility spell (even at force one), then a normal person even with a six intelligence can never penetrate it. That is one (of many) problematic aspects of this....but that is the official way it works.
| QUOTE |
For drain, you use Body + Spellpool again? How much is drain? Those +1 +M or other numbers cofuse me somehow. I just do not get how exactly this calculates, for the same Manabolt |
You roll your willpower plus spell pool (if any) to resist drain. For every two sucesses on this roll, you reduce the drain damage code (usually stun, but it can be physical in some cases) by one. If you scale past light, then you take no drain (no damage).
Your target number is the force of the spell divided by two round down. This is where my min-max tip from above comes into play. A fetish linked force six manabolt has a drain target number of 2 while one that does not has a target number of three.
The damage code you must drain is determined by the spell (usually medium but sometimes serious or even deadly). For most combat spells, it is determined by the damage code that you attempt to inflict. If you throw a deadly manabolt at someone, you must resist deadly drain.
Some spells are harder to drain than normal. For example, Physical mask is +1 M IIRC. That means, you take medium drain (as a damage code) but you add one to the drain target number. Thus a Physical Mask spell with a force of 6 would have a target number of 4 to resist drain rather than the more normal 3. Likewise some spells are easier to drain. Stunbolt, for example, has -1 (Dmg). This means that the damage code you must drain against is the damage you inflict (like a manabolt) but because you are only doing stun damage, this spell is easier to drain. For example a force 6 stunbolt would have a target number of 2 to drain rather than the expected three.
Finally some spells cause more drain damage than normal. This is the normal case for area effect attack spells (like Mana Ball). Manaball has a -/(Dmg+1) drain code. That means that the target number is what you expect, but you drain at one level higher than the damage you try to inflict. So a serious Manabolt at force six would have a drain target number of 3, but you would have to resist deadly rather than serious stun.
I hope this helps and makes things clearer.
-Polaris
Posted by: kenny26 Oct 9 2003, 09:06 AM
wow, people are really patient when helping newbs around here (no offense, i tend to concider myself a newb)... 
Posted by: Polaris Oct 9 2003, 09:18 AM
Traks,
Fenris is mistaken on one important point:
You do NOT lose sorcery skill dice when casting a spell. That means that if you have three initiative passes, then you could (hypothetically) cast three spells. This becomes really important if you have the guts to do astral spell casting (and risk physical drain).
You do lose spell pool dice when used until your next combat turn, however.
The only exception to this is spell defense. If you allocate sorcery skill dice to spell defense, then indeed you lose those dice for your entire turn which is one reason why you should never do that. Allocate spell pool dice to spell defense instead if that is what you want to do.
Exception: When walking around, you should tell you GM that your "default" is all pool and spell defense dice on you. When combat starts, you can (as a free action) deallocate your sorcery dice to cast spells. Until then, however, you are well protected from enemy spells (and thus suprise enemy magical attacks).
-Polaris
Posted by: Traks Oct 9 2003, 09:20 AM
Gotta couple more questions.
Some spells have: drain +1 (M)
As I see from example, result will be always M stun, simply increasing TN.
Are there any background skills that aid in Sorcery skill?
And thanks very much, I got spell casting/drain very clearly now.
As I thought, everything is simple when you get it
Thanks Polaris, being honest GM I will say that to my players.
Posted by: Fortune Oct 9 2003, 09:21 AM
| QUOTE (Fenris) |
| Please also note that the sorcery skill, like the spell pool, only refreshes once a combat round. This means that if your mage wants to cast a spell on the first phase of the round, and then another spell on the second phase, he has to split his sorcery skill and spell pool between the two castings, unlike most other skills. |
This is not necessarily true. While you do lose any Sorcery dice that have been assigned to Spell Defense for the remainder of the round, the Sorcery skill itself does not act like a Pool in other ways.
For example: Dan the Man has Sorcery of 6 and a Spell Pool also of 6, and he has assigned 4 dice to Spell Defense (2 Sorcery and 2 Spell Pool). Assuming Dan can act twice this turn (he rolled 11 on initiative), he could cast his 6S Manabolt during the first pass using his 4 Sorcery dice (6 - 2 for Spell Defence) and up to 4 of his Spell Pool. Let's say that Dan uses 2 dice from his Pool to help him cast the Manabolt.
On the next pass, Dan wants to cast Invisibility. He can use his Sorcery skill of 4 (he still doesn't have the 2 that he assigned to Spell Defence), augmented by the remaining 2 dice from his Spell Pool (if desired) to cast this spell.
Posted by: Fortune Oct 9 2003, 09:26 AM
| QUOTE (Polaris) |
| The only exception to this is spell defense. If you allocate sorcery skill dice to spell defense, then indeed you lose those dice for your entire turn which is one reason why you should never do that. Allocate spell pool dice to spell defense instead if that is what you want to do. |
The general rule for Pools is that you can not assign more dice to a task from a Pool than you do from the actual skill involved. Nowhere in canon is there an exception listed for the Spell Pool.
Personally I house rule Spell Defense so that it is solely a function of the Spell Pool, unrelated to the Sorcery skill whatsoever, but this is a house rule.
Posted by: Polaris Oct 9 2003, 09:31 AM
Fortune,
Actually the wording on Spell Defense is unclear. I grant it could be read the way you are suggesting but I never have and neither has any GM I have gamed for. That said, it is ambigious. Frankly, unless it is the 'default' condition I mentioned, I almost never use spell defense (contrary to what is suggested in the book) for the simply reason that it is too damn effective and it costs too damn much. You (IMX anyway) are almost always better off using those dice for offense and drain (in the case of spell pool).
-Polaris
Posted by: Polaris Oct 9 2003, 09:35 AM
Tracks,
To my knowledge there are no background skills that help you with sorcery***
***There is a metamagic technique called centering which can be used as a secondary skill to aid sorcery. Centering is bought as a seperate skill after you learn the centering metamagic technique and it is always linked to some background skill which it can not exceed. More rules on this can be found in Magic in the Shadow but it generally is not available to starting characters.
-Polaris
Posted by: Fortune Oct 9 2003, 09:39 AM
| QUOTE (Polaris) |
| Actually the wording on Spell Defense is unclear. |
This is true. That's why the general rule for Pool use applies.
That being said, I intensely dislike the way the inclusion of Spell Defence in the Sorcery skill changes the way the skill is used in comparison to every other skill in Shadowrun. This is one of the reasons why I instigated my house rule. Another is that it stops characters from walking around in 'default mode' with 12+ dice for Spell Defence. The absolute maximum one can use for Spell Defence in my system is equal to the character's Spell Pool.
Posted by: John Campbell Oct 9 2003, 09:40 AM
You guys are all partially wrong about the Sorcery dice. Sorcery dice do sometimes act like a pool, but the refresh (except for dice dedicated to Spell Defense) is not at the end of the combat turn, but at the end of the initiative pass. This means that, yes, if you get three initiative passes in a combat turn, you can cast three spells, using your full Sorcery skill for each. However, there are occasionally times where you might want to use Sorcery dice for more than one thing during the same initiative pass, and in that case, you have to divide the dice between the various uses. The usual cause is if you want to cast more than one spell at the same time, it's possible to do so with one Complex Action... but you have to divide your Sorcery dice between the spells being cast.
You can probably ignore that completely, Traks. I've never seen anyone actually do it... it's certainly not something you need to worry about if you're still trying to figure out how to calculate Drain.
Posted by: Polaris Oct 9 2003, 09:43 AM
Fortune,
I dislike the way the rule is written too, not just because of the ridiculous "default" mode which makes suprise magical attacks nearly impossible, but also because in normal combat, it makes spell defense (going by your/book interpretation) actually pretty pointless. As I said, using actual sorcery dice as spell defense is almost a complete waste and if you are forced to do it, then don't do spell defense at all. Get the shielding metamagic technique instead.
-Polaris
Posted by: Polaris Oct 9 2003, 09:45 AM
Tracks,
John is right, but I didn't include it because I thought it was a needless complication. You also take +2 drain TN for each spell above the first that you cast that way too.....and you have fewer dice per spell to get successes with.
In general it is a horrid idea, and I have almost never seen it done for good reason. John is right about this too.....you should be able to ignore this complication 99+ percent of the time.
-Polaris
Posted by: Fortune Oct 9 2003, 09:58 AM
| QUOTE (John Campbell) |
| You guys are all partially wrong about the Sorcery dice. |
I didn't mention that because it put needless complications into a relatively strtaight-forward answer. I have both seen multiple spells cast, and have done so myself when I played, but it is definitely a rarity when it occurs.
Posted by: The White Dwarf Oct 9 2003, 10:05 AM
In total the above responses are right on. The whole "two spells at once thing" is rare for a good reason, but sometimes you might find yourself up a creek without a paddle, and letting go two spells at once is the way to go. While youll almost assuredly take some drain (and if its a bad situation youll probably be using high force spells, and thus likley go unconcious even) if you trust your team to snag your drooling self and drag you to saftey you can go out with a bang. Thus while you wont use it 9/10 times, its sorta important to know for that 10th time when you *really* need to strain that magical muscle.
Posted by: Polaris Oct 9 2003, 10:09 AM
*nod*
The only time I have *ever* seen two spells cast in combat (and I have seen a lot of SR combat) was when I did it to "fork" a deadly manabolt to hit two distinct targets without nailing my friends.
It almost killed me too.
In short WhiteDwarf is right; it is a desperation move that you will almost never see.
-Polaris
Posted by: Munchkinslayer Oct 9 2003, 10:18 AM
All these responses and everybody's arguing. Is that really the dummy way? Now I'm confused too. Must lie down. Head hurts. Sleepy-time.
Posted by: Polaris Oct 9 2003, 10:27 AM
Slayer,
Whose arguing? It seems like most of us are fairly amicable and pretty much in total agreement. Consider the participants, that is fairly unusual.
-Polaris
Posted by: Fortune Oct 9 2003, 10:32 AM
| QUOTE (Polaris) |
| Whose arguing? It seems like most of us are fairly amicable and pretty much in total agreement. Consider the participants, that is fairly unusual. |
I was going to say the same thing, almost word-for-word.
Posted by: Munchkinslayer Oct 9 2003, 10:37 AM
Okay maybe arguing is too strong. But nobody is in complete agreement from what I read. And since the author of this post was looking for simple, any disagreement (is that too harsh?) is only going to confuse.
Posted by: The White Dwarf Oct 9 2003, 10:41 AM
There was some confusion over the wording of the "how sorcery dice" are used but it was cleared up throughout the thread. Want a summary post? Im sure someone here can toss one up with it all in a brief outline if its neccessary. The difficulty is including all the ways you can use sorcery dice over multiple turns in a simple way, which is sorta why it took a few posts to work through.
Posted by: Traks Oct 9 2003, 10:43 AM
Nah. They explained things I needed most, and everything else I will catch up
Basics are most important things, and arguing about "Do you get 18 or 19 dices when mixmaxing starting mage" comes much later.
Still I houseruled Invis - it is contest where mage uses highest number from all dices and then enemies use perception tests to see anything. At least makes sense for me.
So Mslayer, everything is fine.
Now I must overcome myself and go read Matrix page that was somewhere below.
Posted by: DigitalMage Oct 9 2003, 02:17 PM
Just to muddy the waters even more, using Sorcery dice for Astral Combat also reduces the amount of Skill dice to allocate to casting and spell defense!
A common alternative is the following:
Spell Defense is based purely on Spell Pool (just like dodging is based purely off Combat Pool) with no limit on the number of dice allocated.
Spell casting always uses the full skill rating, however if you are stacking spells (i.e. casting 2 or more spells in one Combat Action) then rather than split dice, increase the TN by +2 per extra spell for each casting test (similar, but not exactly like the melee rules for attacking a second opponent). Drain test TNs are modified in the same way. Spell Pool dice must be allocated between each casting test.
Using Sorcery instead of Unarmed Combat for astral combat does not reduce Sorcery dice for spell casting.
This is a relatively simple way of handling it and is consistent with the way all other skills are used. Why the designers didn;t do something like this in the first place is beyond me.
Posted by: Dashifen Oct 9 2003, 03:43 PM
| QUOTE (Traks) |
| Are there any background skills that aid in Sorcery skill? |
Nothing, AFAIK, will modify your target number for casting spells, but a good Magic background skill is often used in my games to know what spell an enemy mage may have just cast and also to recognize things like foci and wards. Also, a Spell Design background knowledge can help your target numbers for designing spells. You can do without that knowledge, but if you have it can help you out a lot.
-- Dash --
Posted by: Polaris Oct 9 2003, 05:15 PM
Digital,
I think you are overstating the case. All that little quote means w/r/t using sorcery in astral combat means is that if you use sorcery as your unarmed combat skill, then you can not use it for spell casting or spell defense. It is very badly worded, however.
In short.
1. If you have three passes in astral combat, you could use sorcery in combat three times at full strength.
OR
2. You could use three spell casting actions.
OR
3. Any combination of the above. What you could not do, however, is use sorcery to fight off elementals then spell cast as well.
That's how I read it anyway. I also think it is dumb and confusing. Just say that sorcery acts as Unarmed Combat in astral space and be done with it.
-Polaris
Posted by: Rev Oct 9 2003, 07:23 PM
The way to get something like a background skill for sorcery is with the centering metamagic.
Powered by Invision Power Board (http://www.invisionboard.com)
© Invision Power Services (http://www.invisionpower.com)