I just need to confirm some rules that I learned about. They have to do with Magic. I'll make a seperate area for my Matrix questions.

1.) When casting a spell, you choose the Force that you'd like to cast it at, limited to your Magic rating for not overcasting. When you do that, what does this ACTUALLY do to the spell. I thought it was the cap for how many net hits you could have on the test, as well as what the damage is that you're doing (for direct damage spells) or healing (the amount you heal). However, I heard that the Heal spell actually just heals you, and the drain is determined by how severe the wound is that you're healing. Could someone clarify?

2.) We were fighting spirits at our last game, and they were Earth spirits. I did not know you had to do double the amount of force in damage to a spirit before you can even harm it. In that vein, do you need ADPS or Anti-Vehicular rounds against a spirit? Was this something that only Earth spirits have? Where in the book does this list this, because I never see anything under a spirit's powers or skills that says their armor is always double their force and is considered hardened armor.

3.) An extended test imposes a -1 penalty on you for each interval you roll? Wha? Where was THIS in the books? I thought you could keep going, so long as you had the time.

I'm not a new player. I've been playing for a long time. But these are not complex rulings. These seem pretty simple and should have been caught a long time ago. So how did I miss these obvious problems?

1) I’m not a magical expert, but if I understand you correctly, the first way is correct. You pick the force, that caps net hits, determines drain etc. Your GM may have been simplifying the Heal spell for ease of play though.

2) Check the spirits out on SR4A 302-303. They have the Materialization power (SR4A 296), which give syou Immunity to Normal Weapons (SR4A 295). ItNW is in fact armor equal to double the Magic rating which is “hardened”. I suggest SnS rounds against spirits.

3) SR4A Page 64, Extended Tests:

The gamemaster can also limit the number of rolls under the assumption that if the character can’t finish it with a certain amount of effort, she simply doesn’t have the skills to complete it. The suggested way to do this is to apply a cumulative –1 dice modifier to each test after the first (so a character with a Skill 3 + Attribute 3 would roll 6 dice in their first test, 5 in their second, 4 on their third, etc). Note that a character can also fail an Extended Test by glitching (see below).

It is a “suggestion” but a very commonly used one.


4) I have no help on how you missed these.

They are immune to normal weapons but I'm still trying to find a page number for you. Read the immune power in the critters section to learn more.



Thats it, Materialization includes Immunity to Normal Weapons!


Don't feel bad when 3e came out we missed the part about force/2 for drain tests on all spells. We did strait force for drain tests for almost a year.

The Force of a spell does not caps the nets hits but the total hits you can roll. Say you cast a Force 3 spell, if you roll well and pull 5 hits, the two extras hits are completely ignored and your net hits would be 3 minus whatever the eventual opposition roll (counterspelling, Willpower, Object Resistance...) removes.

Heal works somewhat differently. It's Force is the maximum boxes of damage it can Heal, and you only heal (hits) boxes of damage, not (Force + hits).

The Drain of the spell is based on the current wound level of the target. The wording in the rules is a bit unclear, so an alternative reading is that it is based on the number of boxes you heal, but this feel wrong to me, it should be harder to heal someone who is nearly dead.

That's the Immunity to Normal Weapons power all materialized spirits have. (SR4A p. 186)


It is an optionnal rule suggested p. 64 (in SR4A) to prevent charracters to succeed in very difficult extended tests just by throwing time at them.

IIRC it's the cap for hits, not net hits. RE:healing, these are two different interpretations that are roughly equally valid. I personally think that the latter interpretation is a little too harsh when the game is already one of glass cannons, but different people have different interpretations of how the Heal spell actually works with the drain and whatnot.


It's not limited to Earth spirits, it's all non-possession spirits. Spirits are very powerful because of this, especially in the Force 5+ range, but if you're particularly worried about this you could always go down the cheap route and use Stick and Shock ammo to halve their armor and tase them into "unconsciousness." (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohplease.gif) The ITNW thing is listed in the description for Materialization.


It's an optional rule. Not the explicit "THIS IS AN OPTIONAL RULE" kind of optional rule, before anyone starts arguing with me about that, but the "Here's a suggestion for gamemasters" kind of optional rule. It's in the Game Concepts chapter under the Extended Tests section.


EDIT: mostly but not completely ninja'd by everyone else.

So, say I have someone that has 7 boxes of damage on them. The medic comes over and treats them and heals 3 boxes of damage. That makes it down to 4 boxes. Then, the mage comes over and casts Heal. He's then casting at force 4 to heal the last boxes. He only rolls 3 successes. Now, is he then only healing 3 boxes of damage, but draining for 4?

And when we're talking about damage for spells, does the net hits apply to the damage or over the damage. Say I have the same mage cast a force 4 power ball. He rolls and gets 6 hits and the target only got one success on their body + counterspelling test. That would be 5 net hits. What is the damage? Force + Net hits or just net hits?

Sorry to do this, but I've got a mage that's going to be flinging around stun bolt like it's going out of style and she was able to knock-out people in a single hit. Also, doesn't net hits add to the amount of drain as well? So if I've got the powerbolt options above, does that mean that the drain would be (F/2 + 1) + Net hits?

And ONE more question...same mage had Shape Material (Metal) and was getting through all of my doors because I made them...metal. >.< Can someone give me a stupid-person explanation on how that spell should work? Thank you.

There's a handful of other force-based effects of spells. Increase [Attribute] requires a minimum force of the target's augmented attribute score (before applying the spell, of course). Detection spells factor Force into their range. Levitate factors force into speed. There's a few other spells, I'm sure.

As mentioned, SnS is the best ammo against spirits. If your GM bans it, nerfs it, or prevents it from working on spirits, then your next best bets are any of the unusual weapons that do attacks versus half armor (Lasers, Shock Glove, Stun Baton, Tasers, Molotov cocktails, Ares Thunderstruck Gauss Rifle, flamethrowers, or the armor-bypassing Ares Screech Sonic Rifle), or APDS rounds on a high base damage weapon.

Another useful trick is called shots for extra DV.

Yes, every net hit after the target's resistance roll CAN be used to increase the damage, at the cost of increasing drain as well.

See SR4A page 204, under Combat Spells.

Yes... Exactly



No... He cast the spell at Force 4, so he only gets 4 Successes. Then he compares agains teh resistance of the Traget (who got 1 according to your example), so he only has 3 Net Successes. His damage is 7.



No, that is an Optional Rule, which allows Net hits to add to Drain. But note, it is an Optional Rule that promotes Overcasting or Multi-Casting. SO it si generally regarded as a bad optional rule.



Ummmmm. Not sure what you are looking for here. If the Metal is Highly Refined, it will have a higher Threshold to affect. Iron Doors are probably fairly easy to manipulate (OR 2). Titanium Doors, or Unobtainium Doors are probably much harder to affect (OR3, maybe 5). They are all made of metal, but the amount of effort/work it took to make (refine the metals into something that will work) that door will determine how many hits are required to affect it. Most Doors will probably fall into the OR 2-3 Range.

Shape [Material] is pretty self-explanatory. It's in Street Magic if you care to take a look for yourself, but basically, an amount of the specified material (metal, in this case) no more than (Force) meters in diameter assumes whatever shape the magician wants. Yes, this means he can shape a hole in a metal door or wall, crumple guns and other weapons into useless metal balls at a distance, etc. Do note, however, that "material that is connected or reinforced (such as walls or other material part of a structure) must be broken apart by reducing its Structure rating by Force points per Combat Turn." The Barrier Rating table on page 166 of SR4A gives armor and structure ratings for many sample materials. A security door, for example, has Armor 8 and Structure 9. So, your magician would need to cast Shape Metal at Force 9 to get through the door in one turn.

Besides, your doors probably aren't metal. They're probably plasteel or something funky like that, so screw you mage! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

The heal spell is weird in that it uses "damage value" (a term found in the combat chapter to define the number of boxes of damage a weapon do) in its drain value formula. Had it read "boxes healed" or similar, there would be no question what so ever.

Then again, healing damage in SR have always been weird. No edition have had a good description of what defines a set of wounds, iirc.

Thats an optional rule, and a really bad one at that. Why you would punish someone for a good roll is beyond me, especially when you can do more damage with an assault rifle anyways.

Under the normal rules, net hits on combat spells deal extra damage with no penalty to you. The force of the spell determines the base DV, and the number of hits you can get. If I cast stunbolt at force 3, and get 4 hits, and target gets 3 hits on their willpower roll, the spell fails because I'm limited to 3 hits. If I had cast the spell at force 4+, it would hit with 1 net hit.

Because they're already ungodly strong. It's also a rule that doesn't matter, because it's very 'sub-optimal'. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Because they basically made indirect combat spells pointless outside of pinging drones and vehicles.

It's not listed as an optional rule in the PDF. Is that in some errata or am I just reading something wrong?

No errata (there have not been any since the CGL financial issues, and recent reprints seems to indicate that they may have gone missing altogether), but they did change it to optional before printing. See if the place you got the PDF can supply you with a updated version (they usually do for some time at least).

Ah I wasn't aware SR4A had an updated PDF thanks (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Once I got the hardcopy one later I kind of stopped checking.


So basically, it should be: Net Hits add to damage without increasing Drain? With the optional rule being that adding the net hits to DV also increases drain?

A little off topic, but like others said the rule of giving you extra drain for your hits punishes you for doing well, which sucks. What my group does is increase the drain of direct spells by the highest number of hits scored on a spell resistance test instead. So rather than punishing you for doing well, it rewards someone who can resist successfully. (We've had a few mages knock themselves out casting at a high will counterspelled target). It gives indirect spells a nice niche: there are some targets you frankly don't want to risk a direct spell on.

If by "commonly used" you mean "almost never used" because limiting #rolls to dice_pool_size is in fact more common. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)



It's always bugged me that spells designed to intentionally effect a given material (in this case Shape [Metal], although equally valid for Wreck [Helicopters], or Slay [Lofwyr]) are still subject to the same OR limitations (admittedly Lofwyr is not an object, but still) as a more generic spell. The only advantage to having them is the (ever so slightly) lower drain, but seeing as you have to cast the spell at Force [OR threshold] anyway, you're already pumping huge drain for the spell.

Personally I'd lower the OR threshold by 1 for restricted target spells (or in the case of specific target Slay spells and the like, a bonus net hit* if the spell is successful).

*Why ever learn Slay [Lofwyr] instead of Slay [Dragons]?

That is a interesting house rule.

I've never put it into practice (not having ever had a mage at the table with one of the spells that would qualify). Just an idea on the drawing board that looks like it'd work quite well.

I mean.

If magic was real and I had a harder time effecting processed goods than natural ones, you can be sure that if I was going to design a spell that would only and specifically effect those processed materials, I'd take that "object resistance" into account when designing the spell, so that instead of throwing more brute force at the problem, the spell instead works around the inherit limitations to do the same job with less power (but it'd never work on another material with different properties! Hence the restricted nature of the spell).

Computer analogy:
Rather than brute forcing my way through nested arrays, use a binary tree. O(n^2) -> O(n)

The lowered Drain already accounts for that. If it does so *badly*, just fix that part. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Otherwise, you have an argument that can say anything: 'If I were making a stun spell, I'd totally take Stun resistance into account, instead of throwing more brute force at it.'

MY PDF shows it as optional... You should look into updating your PDF. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
EDIT: OOOps, SOmeone Already Posted... Sorry.

There really isn't such a thing as "stun resistance" though. Whereas there is a clear "this object, due to having been processed by [humans|machines|bullshit-we-made-it-bigger|bullshit-we-processed-it-more¹] ignores X level of magic" trait. Seriously, an OR5 drone has the equivalent dice of someone with a Willpower of 15.

If I were going to rewrite the rules, I'd make the OR table be the "this is what stuff rolls instead of Willpower" and maybe bump the numbers a little (50%?).



Even if one were to do something like, say, F/2 - 5 drain (instead of a hypothetical F/2) it still doesn't really solve the problem that a Magic 2 character who knows Wreck [Drone] can never effect a drone.
(Crunch aside making us go "well duh, they're magic 2," magic 5+ characters are technically outliers in the larger global population).

¹Table salt qualifies for at least OR4. It's highly pure/refined sodium chloride. Are you letting that fly? Because there are natural occurrences of pure salt, and the human-made process is exactly the same: boil salt water.