First of all i want to know if i am really the only one that is bothered by the fact that direct combat spells are now completely useless? I wrote and heard a lot about how much quicker the combat rules are, but regarding magic nobody seems to see the same problems as i do. So maybe i am too focused on the problems, maybe i have overread some important section in the core-book, so please help me out.

Secondly i need to know when the SR5-errata will follow as a download. Will it be released when the german SR5-core is published? Will there be a notification from Battlecorps or Drivethrough for all buyers of the PDF-version to update or download the changes?

Thank you

How are direct combat spells useless? So far, I do not share this assessment.

SR4: Spell power of 6 and 4 net successes cause 10 damage. Result: Enemy stunned. Drain (F/2)-1 = 2
SR5: spell power of 6 and 4 net successes cause 4 damage. Result: Enemy tired? Drain F-3 = 3

The good old fashioned stunbolt stuns no more, except your enemy is already half asleep or drunk. Drain is the same, so he gets 4 damage while you might get probable nearly the same effect on your mage. Pretty useless to me and not worth the eventual stun.

Direct combat spells aren't useless, they're just no longer godlike and exploitable to be even more godlike.

Dealing damage in this edition can be quite hard. Direct combat spells bypass the two-attribute dodge roll, and the easily improved Body and Armor soak roll, making them much more reliable in terms of dealing any damage. The trade-off is that they don't tend to deal much damage all at once unless you take exceptional measures.

This makes them unlike indirect spells and guns, which tend to do a whole lot of damage far less often. If you run a damage-per-action analysis, they're still actually quite good. And at standard Force levels they tend to be a minimal Drain risk, which means that you can hit things over and over and over again without really injuring yourself.

Further, with Reagents or Edge, they can really put the hurt on something without increasing the Drain risk (though it may become Physical in a hurry -- but 2P Drain isn't exactly a nightmare to soak).

The reality is that they have a niche, just like any other spell or gear. They're no longer always the best choice in all situations. This is a good thing.

This.

I would have liked them to still do maybe force or at least half force damage but just give them way more sting in the tail for the caster (i.e much more drain than elemental spells). That way you can still achieve your one cast stun but you would only do it when stunning must be the only option, rather than it being a low drain replacement for physical damage that can just be followed up with a cap to the head at the end of combat.

I am sorry to disagree, but the "niche" your are talking about is not visible for me. Is it to finish off somebody that was already hurt? I think you know as good as i do, that SR5 is even more deadly than SR4 and as least the way we play, you don´t have the time to wear down an enemy slowly. Mages still are low on physical attributes and don´t handle damage very well. I think most of the time "glass-cannon" is a viable term for them. If they don´t "cannon" anymore, the mages are useless and limited to buff and support. This might be ok for players that prefer to play mundanes, but for every player of an awakened, it is a kick in the face.

Dealing damage in SR5 is absolutely no problem, it is even easier than before. Dealing damage with magic, THAT is a problem.

It's for people who are proving to be exceptionally difficult to damage. When your target has wired reflexes, titanium bone lacing, and full body armor with a helmet, trying to sneak damage past his 14 dodge dice and 30 soak dice might seem a little difficult compared to the 3 dice he has to resist a direct mana spell.

Machiavelli. I gotta side with Epicedion and Smash on this issue. Indirect combat spells were overpowered in 4(a). They bypassed armour and any form of dodging and caused less drain than the elemental direct combat spells. That was simply put overpowered. Indirect combat spells were nobrainer choices.
Maybe they've been hit too hard with the nerfbat in 5th ed., but they needed a nerf. Personally I would simply have increased their drain to equal the other direct combat spells, or maybe even one point higher, but that's me.

What shall I say... I love to play mages. Still I think the change to direct combat spells was a good and necessary one. Like it has allready been pointed out, combat spells in SR4 were a no-brainer and simply overpowered.

It's changes like that, which make playing a mage so much more tempting to me, as you finally need to know when and how to use your tools. Magic is still very powerful and with non-mage chracters, I fear direct combat spells more, than their indirect counterparts, as there is not much I can do to avoid them.

SR5 is not more deadly than SR4, it simply is deadly in another way. It is based on the asumption, that it is hard to actually hit someone, so you are hit less often. When you are hit though it really hurts. That is what knifes, guns and indirect combatspells are for. Direct combat spells go around that. They are easy, almost guaranteed and thus lesser damage. The typical tank (or brickwall or whatever) build, wont be easily damage by guns or indirect cs, they will however be vulnerable to direct combat spell. In said case, these "useless" spells, as you call them, deal more damage, than most other means and that is only one example.

Like it has been pointed out multiple times now: Direct combatspells, are deadly, in their own way.

Know how to use your tools.

I totally agree that the spells were overpowered in SR4(A), but like it was in the past, they have changed one bad thing for another. Like you said direct combat spells were so good, that no sane player would have chosen indirect ones. They could be dodged, could be resisted with armor AND had more drain. But SR5 just switched the points. It nerfed the direct ones to a point , that make them worse than they had been in every previous edition, while it gets more difficult to hurt anybody with indirect spells. So what is left for the mage? The role as a supporter that need to hide behind everything more than ever? Sucks massively. Of course i hit the tank with 3-4 damage. And with what will he hit me? With 10+ successes damage. Thank you very much. Great niche. I don´t think that they will change that in an errata.

The enemy will roll Willpower of 3 for one expected hit and take an expected 3 damage, not 4. The magician expects to take no drain because no 5e magician in their right mind would exist with Willpower + Logic/Intuition less than 9.

How to use this tool:

1) Choose a mana direct combat spell. The last thing you need is to oppose 12 dice and do zero damage.
2) Pray for good weather. Not only can the GM rule that the environment makes your targets invisible, but moderate rain/fog/smoke removes 3 dice from your pool, resulting in one less damage. Hope they don't take cover, use flash bangs or smoke grenades or turn off the lights or else you're not casting that spell.
3) Pray they don't have a magician, because every three rating points in Magic + Counterspelling lowers your damage by 1.
4) Don't be drained or injured. Every -3 in modifiers lowers your damage by 1.
5) Don't sustain spells. Three sustained spells lowers your damage by 2.
6) Avoid background counts.

How to be proactive:

1) Choose Exceptional Attribute (Magic) for Magic 7
2) Have Spellcasting of 6.
3) Specialize in combat spells for +2 dice.
4) Have a mentor spirit give you +2 dice to combat spells.
5) Have a good team leader. She might decide to direct your actions. For every 9 dice she gets, you'll expect to have +3.
6) Use a bound spirit to aid sorcery. Every 1500 nuyen you spend gets you 3 extra dice.
7) Have a rating 4 combat spell focus.
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif) Spend Edge to get exploding dice and ignore the limit.

So 7 + 6 + 2 + 2 + 3 + 3 + 4 = 27 exploding dice dice, for 11 expected hits, minus 1 (for their 3 Willpower) for 10 damage. That was easy.

ummm... you haven't looked too closely at *indirect* combat spells yet, have you?

seriously. look at them.

you can dish out damage in an area with indirect combat spells that has an AP equal to force and your hits beyond 3 increase damage. no dodge roll is possible.

for added fun, in situations where you can afford to take a large amount of stun drain, you can use reagents on high-force castings (to set the maximum successes lower than or equal to your magic, don't want to take physical drain) so you get things like 12+ damage with -12 AP in a 12 meter radius. with a good drain resistance pool and some edge, you might not even take much drain.

you have plenty of cannon in there, plus a crudload of utility. and of course, last i checked, magicians get hands at no added cost, which lets them use guns just like everyone else, if they need it.

In play so far I'd say yeah direct combat spells look pretty bad. They may have been over nerfed. Sure there may be a time where I'm like oh noes we can't hit the super ninja so i'll hit him with this direct combat spell for tiny damage and that is useful, but that will be rare enough where I think it is safe to say they aren't really worth there drain.

This is how combat pans out for us. Any PC with a gun shoots and the victim is dead or close to it, PC who took the brawler archetype(using multiple levels of critical strike) hit somebody for moderate damage, high damage with the bow, mage nicks multiple people and risks some drain. Yeah the mage looks bad in direct combat. Still overall the mage has a bad ass bag of tricks so I think its a really big add to the party. With indirect spells the mage has the option to go big and match gun damage but he will likely be taking some serious drain if he wants to match any of the bigger guns or even pistols with specialized ammo.

And you think Dumpshock would know that?

The German SR books have no effect on the US books, they are published by two different companies.

Usually it works that way. You get an e-mail when the PDF is updated, and have 7 days for 7 new downloads. If you miss that window, you write to Battlecarps or Drivethru, and they can open up your downloads again.

The fluff and fiction have long held that, by and large, the most effective and efficient combat spell a mage has access to is "Gun." I call it a good thing when the rules swing more or less that way.

Considering that last I knew the errata were being compiled by a freelancer on his own time because noone at Catalyst was even interested in putting any out...

In 4th edition direct combat spells were more reliably effective than firearms, were all but irresistible if you didn't have a counterspeller nearby, and most mages could go on casting all day due to low drain.

In other words, with minimal investment a mage could reliably out damage a street sam for very little investment (Barring the street sam carrying heavy weapons).

In 5th edition, street sams reliably out-damage mages (barring spirits). I have absolutely no problem with the dedicated combat characters being more effective at hurting people than the spellcasters.

Agreed, but having said that there's no reason a mage shouldn't be able to be combat focussed. A mage specialised in flinging around fire should be pretty effective.

I'll still be flinging powerbolts around at tanks as well.........

Really, the mage's niche there is more in elemental AOE combat spells and illusions than just straight mana-based combat spells.

Right up until the enemy pulls out spirits or dual-natured creatures, and the mage goes to town.

a mage specialized in flinging around fire *is* pretty effective. they get to use their "do almost everything" skill (which will, most likely, be maxed, on account of... well, it's the skill you can use for almost anything except for conjuring spirits, enchanting stuff, and hacking).

their dice pool will likely be comparable to the decked-out street samurai if they really build for it (specialize in combat spells, get yourself an appropriate focus - power or spellcasting(combat) are both options - and max out the skill and your magic attribute. you can fairly easily start with 18 dice for combat spells, and that isn't exactly awful. particularly since 12 of that dice pool applies to so many other actions you'll be taking.

Indirect spells quickly outpace Street Sams for armour penetration, While direct spells ignore defenses entirely.
Indirect spells also often boast secondary effects such as setting their target on fire, melting them with acid, or electrocuting them with lightning.
Mages also get area spells, which at high forces outclass grenades and even at low forces are quite effective at bringing down mobs (or setting them on fire).

A focused combat mage can easily match a sammie in battle, just in different areas. Also, nothing stops a mage from carrying a gun as well as their spells, something most Sams can't match.

Spell Defense doesn't use magic, you only get to add the allocated dice from your [counterspelling skill level] pool. That 's an SR3 type pool that only refreshes at the beginning of the mage's next turn.

IMO SR5's spell defense rules are among the few rules that are a flat improvement compared to SR4 (where there was no reason not put full spell defense on ALL allies in LOS at ALL times). It didn't use magic dice in SR4 either, btw - people tend to overlook the difference between spell defense and dispelling.

Honestly, thank you for the math, but it doesn´t make the reality better than it is. ^^ We seldomly have "if the enemy doesn´t move and everything runs perfectly, he might drop" situations. But if these rare occation happens, YEAH combat-spell.

Because obviously you need to one-hit-KO every goon you meet.

It has absolutely nothing to do with that Draco18s, and you know it.