This is inaccurate. At priority B, you lose 2 points of Magic and have no free Power Points. At C, you only lose 1 point but get no free skill. At Priority D, you cannot be a Mystic Adept.

These losses can be recovered, but they require expenditures from other areas that mean that you're still losing stuff.

Indeed.

OK, so the mage pays 5 Karma for each seperate gun (if he for some odd reason, is not allready equiped with enough of them out of char.gen). The mudane (or adept) buys each gun with ammunition and extras for credits. So one could say, the mudane has a good deal there, as he can use Karma for skills and Credit for guns and stuff. There is that fact however, that guns can be lost in a multitude of ways, spells usually can not. Spells are not just tools they are abilities, that cannot be unlearned just like that.

As allready has been pointed out rather often, it does not stop with guns... with 5 Karma each, the mage can learn new abilities, that have a whole different use and utillity, than to kill outright. All of these abilities use ONE and the same skill, making it rather easy, to optimize. Not to forget, we are only taking spellcasting into account (which is the more or less the most powerful skill there is in Shadowrun, rivaled only by perception), it is however not the only angle there is to mages. I can build a character right out of char.gen, who can: deal damage, heal damage, avoid damage, turn invisble, "turn" into someone else, fly, control other people, summon powerful spirits (that may be a good sidekick, on par or even more powerful than a pc) and then some.

Direct combat spells are very powerful. Sure, they do not unfold their full potential right out of char.gen, but if you want to be a combat mage, you focus and get to be nasty rather soon afterwards (and won't necessarily stop growing ever more so). If you are not a combat mage however... well then what is your problem anyways? Why should any character, who is not focussing on combat, be on par or beyond with those who are?

Direct combat spells are also powerfull because of the way, combat works in SR5. It is based on not being hit and direct combat spells, take that option away from most targets, most of the time.

I still do not see, how mages are supposed to be over-nerfed, they simply have been overpowered for a looong time. It may well be that, playing a "formerly" overpowered profession, the feeling of being nerfed to hard, is a sign of balance happening.

ok so. the mage spent 5 karma on getting a single spell, the Sam could spend 4 karma on getting a skill to rank 2 that he did not have before. No one is arguing that mages have more flexibility, but if your mage is going around mind controlling everyone? Sounds like a GM problem, not a mage problem. If the mage throws a Fireball around in the middle of town...why was Lonestar or KE not arresting them or making them show proper mage paperwork & locking them in mageproof shackles? Summoning Spirits, they can resist, in fact I imagine most spirits of decent power would try, they do not like being trifled with by mere mortals. Fly? roll a skill roll, Levitate only allows basic movement, trying to fly, I'd make the mage roll a skill roll for that because the spell does not confer the ability to know how to fly. Turning Invisible, ok, roll those perception checks for the sound his boots make. also take the penalty for BGC in the middle of a facility.

Long story short, if someone is allowing mages to be the most powerful, maybe its time someone showed the GM how they can & maybe should let the world work around that mage.

As a GM it usually is not that hard to go hard on PCs and yes, one can limit powers there. This is not about "how to work around a mage", though. This dicussion started off, with someone saying, that mages are not powerful enough and I do not agree with that. Mages are very powerful and powerful enough for sure.

anyone can be powerful if no one is using basic limits.

I'm sorry, but that's total and complete BS.

EVERY game depends on the skill of the gamemaster. The GM depends on the structure of the game. If the structure of the game is poor, a talented GM can make up for it, but that tends to drain creative energy from other areas, like plot and excitement.

If the game does not support the GM, if it makes them houserule everything and constantly waste energy trying to fix things, then it's a poor game.

in other words, if your claim is that something is not broken because the GM can fix it, then whatever that something is must have been broken in the first place, otherwise the GM wouldn't have had to fix it.

if it actually isn't broken (one way or the other, underpowered or underpowered or just non-functional for some other reason), no modifications will be required. it will work cleanly with the rest of the system without causing problems.

and seriously, we're comparing vehicles with levitation? well good, next time i want to sneak into a corporate facility through the vents, i'll just let the GM know that i'm carrying a GMC banshee in my back pocket. i'm sure there aren't any flaws at all with that plan.

Levitate according to the spell does not technically grant flight... in fact in 5E you only move force meters as a rate so probably slower than walking. Realistically many spells have been tweaked to be better.

Why wouldn't we compare magic with tech, we do it all the time with augs vs. Adepts. We compare invis with camo suits all the time.

With sams vs adepts, it's very easy to objectively measure things. You just compare dice pool sizes. In SR5, adepts always come out on top.

Comparing spells to guns, however, can't be done objectively. They're apples and oranges.

Does this Banshee make me look fat? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

I have heard of Junk in the Trunk, but a Banshee in the Panties? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

I make you the friendly proposal, that you should turn on your brain and calm down before you write down unqualified comments. The game gives us more than enough options to create a balanced game and I think that even SR5 doesn´t need more than 2 or 3 house rules before it fits to any possible gaming style. What I am talking about is a GM, that is focused on certain parts of the game (e.g. Matrix or Combat) using all the small, tiny special rules, while ignoring the options other parts (e.g. Magic) because he has no personal interest. Only in these cases, the character-class that is not hindered and kept under control can run wild. If this happens, the other classes will justifiable feel like they are nerfed or – even worse – another class outshines them.

The user-signature that was mentioned some comments ago, is the more detailed version of what I was trying to summarize shortly. You should have a look. It doesn´t get any more true than that.

My comments are hardly unqualified, and you'll note that I never once mentioned SR5 in my argument.

No matter how many sound bites you might reference, the truth of the matter is that a good system supports the GM, not fights them. Blaming the GM for a poor system is not a good argument to make. A hogwild player isn't the GM's fault if the game itself devolves into system mastery supremacy. You shouldn't need to learn the minutae of rules just to control your game: the basic rules should do that, and the advanced rules should flesh those out, not replace them.

Is SR5 like that? The jury's still out on that one. However, I will point out that adepts outshine sammies in just about every objective measure, and have a ton of non-objective measures where they shine as well.

The bottom line is this: Quit blaming the game masters for piss-poor game design. Blaming the victim never achieves anything good.

Guys, this is not the tone we would like to see in the discussions here. And that goes for both of you.

It is very possible to offer your opinion without resorting to personal attacks.

So, calm down, take a step back, and when you are able to write in a more friendly manner again, you can continue here.

Bye
Thanee

Please read my comments more careful. I was talking about "the game" in general and SR5 in particular (because it seems the most difficult one up to now).

Unfortunately you still don´t seem to understand what i am talking about. The rules may be weak, but they exist. Real problems only occur if you don´t use them. THIS is what I am talking about. NOT USING EXISTING RULES. If you f**ck your Sammies on the airport with MAD-Scanners and Cyberwareblockers, but you forget to tell the mage (which is running around with several sustained spells) that there are wards everywhere, THEN you get a problem. If you hack into the Sammies ´ware but you forget to count in BC for the mage if you work into the deepest Barrens, THEN we get a problem. If you think a damage code of 10P AP-5 is balanced, but you complain if a spell does the same damage, THEN you got a problem. If you allow the mage to use the levitate-spell to be used as some kind of “darth-vader-suffocation-trick” because you know a sh**t about the rules, it is YOUR SELFMADE problem. Do you now know what I am talking about? Balance comes with knowledge. The system is - most of the time – not the problem.

They can't astrally project. They must spend a power point to be able to astrally perceive.

This, exactly. The fix for one broken rule shouldn't be another broken rule, or even a good one. It should be a nonbroken rule in the first place.

Using SR5 as an example: Mystic adepts were seriously broken when they only needed 2 karma to buy a power point. Rather than slap a new rule on them, they fixed the old one-- corrected it. Now, they're less broken, and certainly more within range of what a GM can cope with. That's doing it right.

Background count as a balancing factor? Not so much. Now you have two rules you have to balance. What's more, the new BGC rules don't even hurt adepts (as far as I've seen, at least) because Adepts have very few Magic-linked tests that they roll. So, hypothetically, another nerfing rule will get invented to try and fix that. Now we've got three rules that would be totally unnecessary if they got adepts right in the first place.

According to hotfix errata BC impose penalty equal to their rating on any test that utilize or use magic in any way. Including any skills that benefit from active adept powers such as killing hands, critical strike, great leap or improved skills.
So any test that is in any way affected by adept power suffers that BC penalty, not just Magic related tests.

a) Page 278 Drain: Drain damage, regardless of whether it is Stun or Physical damage, cannot be healed by any means other than the natural properties of the body—that means no magical healing and no medkits. Page 311 Rapid Healing [adept power]: You recover from damage more quickly, magically healing yourself over periods of time.

b) How on earth can you get 6 net hits against a dice pool that's double your Magic? Do you plan on having your Alchemy dice pool 18 dice greater than that somehow? If you use reagents to limit your hits, your potency will be that limit minus hits of double your Magic. At Magic 6 that's 6 - 4 (expected hits of 12 dice) = 2. At Magic 7 that's 7 - 4.67 (expected hits of 14 dice) = 2.33. This assumes the Alchemy dice pools of 18 and 21, respectively, to expect 6 or 7 hits to meet the limit. Failure means potency of 1 or failing outright. You still roll that terrible drain though.

c) Heal the stun drain with high body. The assumption I see often is that magicians will max Willpower and Logic/Charisma depending on tradition. Now they need to max Body for this trick, Agility if they want to toss their preparations like grenades (or simply learn a firearms skill to be effective in combat as they are sometimes advised on these forums), and Initiative and Reaction if they want to dodge (Geek the mage first, right?) or engage in astral combat. All while having lower priority slots, because they max Magic too.

What I plan to try is getting Magic 8 and using preparations of slightly less than double my Magic. I think I could pull this off as an elf shaman with maxed Body, Willpower and Charisma, all buffed to +4. Would those buffs count as "magical healing"? I would use a power focus and possibly a centering focus (along with the centering initiate ability).

I think the Quick Healer quality would work for this. Do you think the Magic 8 is overkill? (I've noticed several things in 5e that higher Magic helps.) Would the Karma be better spent on another initiation (centering die) or something else?

Astral Projection has a Pizza Problem anyway.

If having access to spells is really so wonderful, why not put Priority D in Magic to be an aspected sorcerer? The cost difference from D to E is 2 Edge/Magic points for humans (sorry elves), 2 attribute points, 4 skill points, or 44,000 nuyen.

So, unless I'm missing something, are the rules for BGC layed out at any point in SR5? I see references in some of the qualities, but other than that nothing- it looks like a rule that is implied from previous versions, but if you don't have the previous experience as a new player coming in you'd have no way of knowing what they're talking about. If anything called for a table it'd be this- there are certainly enough of them in the book.

-DrZ

Only if you make it a problem... We never seem to have any issues with it at all. *shrug*

You are apparently missing something, since a Hotfix Errata has been produced for Missions. That information is in that document. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
It may not stand the test of time, though.

I don't know what this means

He is equating it with the Hacking Issues of previous editions.