To a point, it is.


Which would be? And please, take into account that for all limits mages have, mundanes have twice as many. So it is not able to do just about everything, but it makes one character as effective as a TEAM of mundanes in SR4.


Assuming worst case scenarios (like drones operated by mancers), yes. Duh. That's what Edge is for. Also, by using concealment powers of summoned spirits, mages still beat mundanes at sneaking.


In a word, yes. You just need to abuse spirits a little. Remember, mages can do more than sling spells.


Yes, like using a precision rifle for door to door combat.

I know, you are right, buying a gun isn't even remotely close to buying foci and binding materials, but the versatility of a Mage makes them a better all around character as opposed to more specialized mundane characters. That's why they are such karma sinks and their materials are so friggen' expensive. Their bonuses and versatility need to be evened out by lots of needed cash and karma. They really aren't characters for beginning players, and they especially aren't instant gratification characters. But, we aren't trying to even out and make all character archetypes fair and balanced as that would make for a pretty lame game.

I ask for examples and I'm given blanket statements? Let's see if I can address some of your issues anyway:

No cost to magic?
Magic and all things associated with magic have a karma cost. This cost is high and should be high. For the investment that you make into the magic attribute, magical skills, spells and foci (which also costs a *lot* of nuyen) you get something. You argument, seemingly, is that you get too much. My argument is that you get enough, but that with the threshold changes you do not get enough, in that extreme investments into certain areas of magic do not give you even a decent chance of being successful.

Also, all spells come with Drain, some more than others. It is possible to design characters that have an easier time with drain than others but this is also a significant karma investment. Currently people claim that first aid and high drain resistance die pools can mitigate all drain. The examples given of high die pools (12-15) have a reasonable (50%) chance to mitigate between 3-5 drain. It's true that if you have a game where mages only ever need to cast one or two spells before they have chance to get first aid, it may make drain rather trivial. I'll point out that not only does this sound like a boring game, but that damage, in general, will be of no issue for this team of shadowrunners.

Now, mundane ways of doing the things that magic can do all come with a karma or nuyen cost as well. Though claiming that theirs is "twice as much" is patently absurd. Magic is notoriously expensive, which is as it should be. Can you even give one example of a character that was "as effective as a whole team?" I've yet to run into this even given examples of characters on the DS forums. If your assertions were even close to true people who wanted to play the most effective character would only play mages. However there are no shortage of people playing other characters (both for "roleplaying" reasons and for "munchkin" reasons.)

The concealment power of spirits gives a negative modifier to perception powers equal to the Force of the spirit. So, 500 nuyen per negative die modifier with limited uses each time you want it? That's admittedly pretty good bang for your buck, but nothing exceptional. You can get the same effects with technology with a single payment for the equipment. But cost isn't the only downside to Spirits. There's also Drain, and a lot of Drain if you're looking for a decent die modifier. Also, a very small amount of magic makes them trivial to detect, such as a simple ward. Spirits are good, but they're no substitute for some basic planning and technology. In combination with the technology they become *very* effective. Oh, I'm sorry, that would mean having to work with the team wouldn't it?

Yes.
Magic’s cost has always been its karma expenditures to get a given power level. That is its balance with everything else.
Streetsam: Agility 5 (40 bp); Skill 5 (20 bp); and for 1 bp you get 5000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) That money is enough to buy an Ares Alpha, smartlinked goggles and some extra recoil comp on the gun.
12 dice, base damage 6p -1ap. +3 DV with a short burst, +6 DV on long burst AND no limit to the max damage you can do based on hits.
Cost in BP: 61
Mage: Magician Quality (15 bp); Magic attribute 5 (40 bp); Skill 5 (20 bp); Mentor spirit for the extra +2 dice (5 bp); don't forget your two drain attributes at 4 each (60 bp) and the spell for 5 bp.
12 dice, base damage 5 with no armor (for direct damage spell) with a max of 10 damage based on force. Then soak drain.
Cost in BP: 145 AND this does not include Summoning.

Yes, that cost goes down for each extra spell the mage adds to his list. What if we give the Sam heavy weapons instead of automatics, White knight or Grenade launcher... Increased in monetary cost and higher availability, true.
I think I liked it better when mages (and I played a mage in SR3) paid for ratings in each spell they had. Maybe it would be better if spells where bought as active skills (without specializations) and keep drain the way it was.

I'm just throwing out ideas. See if we can come to some agreement on the rebalancing factor for mages.

Again with this nonsense.

Like I told someone in another thread.

Please build a 400 BP mage who can "do just about everything" and is as effective as a "TEAM of mundanes".

You can't. But you keep spouting off about it like it's an option.

Until you actually build that character and post it, I think the rest of us can safely ignore this aspect of your baseless rant against mages as it's quite obvious from this post and others that you seem to hate mages and have some kind of childish bone to pick with the archetype.






1) Dealing with "abuses" is what the GM is for. There are plenty of rules/optional rules for dealing with mages who "abuse" foci & spirits. Just because your games apparently don't have them, doesn't mean other people's games don't.

2) Riggers, Hackers, Sammies, Faces, etc are all capable of reaching out beyond their field and doing other things. This is not something specific to mages. It's part of how SR is designed. And good thing too, that's what one of the many great things that I actually like about this game.



Maybe you need to look at your game, your players or your GM to see that the problems you're so upset about might be there.

Using the same mechanic for fooling a camera with trid phantasm and blowing it up with ram seems a bit strange.

Can't argue with that.

But that's what it is.

It´s been a long time since i visited this site but this new SR20th-rule discussion really shocked me. I play magical characters since the beginning and never before they had been weaker than in SR4. Now they nerfed the last simple spells that had been left but for what exactly? Are your serious when you reason that they did it because they want to make other already useless spells more attractive? MUAHAHAHAHAHA....ok....I really don´t get it. I don´t use indirect combat spells because I don´t want to play a char that is knocked out by the first action he makes in the run. A samurai can cause around 16P damage with a gun easily and as long as his ammunition lasts, even if you subtract armor, you would need to cast a level 6 manabolt to get the same effect. For most of the mages out there this would already be overcasting. Besides the fact that you stand little chances to do this several times witout f***ing yourself by drain. Indirect combat spells are even worse because you CAN dodge, you have WAY more drain AND armor DOES count. So making good things worse to make already worse things seem more attractive is like shooting your leg because your other leg is hurting. Sorry, in my view it would have been a god decision to lower drain of indirect combat spells.^^

If you take a katana over a sword, you're min-maxing. If you take a heavy pistol over a light pistol, you're min-maxing.

There's just multiple degrees of min-maxing, and you don't want to spend your (New Rating*2) karma to raise the skill.

There's a bit of difference between getting +1 damage, and needing to double your dicepool.

What I think they should have done for OR was leave the base OR at 4 for drones and whatnot, but give a mechanic for increasing it. The old OR table ended at 4+ anyway - I've seen & used plenty of ORs > 4. But it makes more sense as a special case, not as default.

Neraph: True. It's not black and white, by any means. Also, I have no problems with people gaining power. There's usually even IC motivation for doing this.

Like I said, the thing I don't want to do, is pile up all the possible dice pool modifiers to be able to use spells like ram, trid phantasm and fix, and become invincible with mind control and other spells that don't go against an OR. The new rules put a total stop on using lower-level magic on machines, but do nothing to hinder the spellcasters with fistfuls of dice.

I've been thinking about this, and the suggested houserule for making objects resist illusions seems to fit my style of play. An opposed test against Sensors/Rating + Clearsight makes more sense than having to overcome the OR, as you're not directly targeting the object with physical illusions anyway.

This still leaves manipulation and combat spells with the new OR. I don't see such a big problem with taking direct combat spells down a notch - they needed a bit of balance, but I honestly don't know what to do with manipulation spells like Fix.

I just don't know. I like the idea behind the change, I really do... I just don't think the changes really balance themselves out. It seems to me there's a lot less problems with the old Object Ratings.

And as soon as you start charging all the other character types the karma to takes a mage to get those bonuses you might have a point.
But for a sami to get bonuses it takes money, same for a rigger, or a face. For a mage it takes money AND karma.

This, I would fully endorse and be happy with.




Exactly.

But not many seem to consider the karma investment that comes with playing a mage.

I posted an alternative OR table around somewhere that went from 0 to 8 (small rocks to small buildings (such as a whole stuffer shack), giving you a small range for "technology" ranging from OR3 (a wrist watch), to OR6 (large drones and compact cars)). Take that and then use some judgment with spells to figure out which spells get an inherent +1 success when used against tech (for instance, you give Trid Phantasm and Improved Invisibility the +1 success, but not Ram/Wreck because you think it's easier to fool than to destroy).

Edit:
Here's that OR table

I personally like the object resistance tables. Mages where too powerful, too versatile. I think giving them a big weakness, difficulty dealing with technology is fitting, considering they are gods agienst living targets. So it's difficult to turn invisible in front of a camera, it's not impossible. Heck, using a dice pool of 12(not unusual for a starting mage), you have a 60.7% chance of getting 4 hits, and a 91.7% chance if you use edge to reroll misses. Thats pretty good odds. If you don't like it, get a hacker...or a chameleon suit, or summon a spirit with the concealment power.

Lots of good points

I like the idea of Sensors/Rating + Clearsight, but as you say it leaves Physical manipulation spells in the the gimp boat.

And while Direct Combat spells could use a bit of balance, they don't the OR nerf AND the drain per net successes applied to damage nerf. Both is too much in my opinion.


What I think would work, would be the old OR table, with a second chart of some modifiers.

Nothing as complicated or long as the ranged combat modifiers table.

But something that would break down where to apply +1 or +2 to the OR.

For example things like

• Direct Damage Spell +1 to OR
• Advanced Prototype/Milispec Hardware +2 to OR
  [*Target has hardened defenses/special upgrades +1 or 2 to OR
• Massive or Heavily Armored Vehicle (Tank, Helicopter +4 to OR)

etc.

Obviously the list would need to be better thought out.

Something that is small, and tight. That allows GM power depending on the situation (always the best option) as opposed to now, where the base standard pretty much means all but the most powerful of mages will not be affecting technology at all.

Like what, use magic?


Karmagen more than allows for it (or rather, did).


It seems you have some sort of problem with yur favoured character type being powered down to normal level rather than being the powerhouse SR4 foolishly made of him.


Define 'usage'. Non-min-maxed mages certainly have their use, but if by usage you mean pwnage, yes, then you may have to minmax.


And essence, which cannot be increased, ever. You seem to fail to recognise this.

I posted both of these recently, but we're overlapping threads now so I'll repost here. Firstly to replace the complexities of ideas like "add a bonus for Illusion spells" and the rest, consider just separating out the actual sensors from the drone and using the appropriate OR. I.e. If you are using Imp. Invisibility against a drone, just use the OR of the camera the drone is using, i.e. 4. Simple, elegant, restores things to where they were without forgoing the benefits of making technology slightly harder to affect generally (e.g. with Direct Combat spells instead of Indirect). It also avoids silly fluff absurdities like connecting a camera to your commlink and instantly invalidating the deceptions of all but the most powerful of magicians. I like magicians having a slightly tighter range of abilities and technology being a bit of a weakspot as it is meant to be. But not the point that a few of the posters here would like. This will work for me and it is the approach that I will be going for in my own games.

The second thing is my solution to adapting OR to large objects: Link. I did this a while ago and I reposted it recently but I think it's worth putting in a second time as I think it works quite well. Arbitrarily picking numbers for aircraft carriers and jets can work, but sometimes it's nice to have a system. And if you try and do things in a straight table, then you get overlapping tracks, e.g. a large tree equals a medium vehicle equals a small amount of refined Uranium, etc. Hence my use of multipliers. Anyway, the linked post goes into the details.

I think both of these go a long way to sorting out the issues most of us have, but am very interested to hear critiques and suggestions from others. I don't like house-ruling things, but I feel obliged to make these changes.

Thoughts?

K.

I'll answer a few of these if The Mack doesn't mind.



Well no, but you can double up a lot of other roles. I have seen Samurai / Faces, Samurai / Hackers, Samurai / Hardware specialists, Samurai / Riggers, Hacker / Riggers, Hacker / Faces, Rigger / Faces (okay, I don't recall actually seeing one of these but it's perfectly doable). Basically, you can double up most of the roles very well and be sufficiently competent in both. This is just about doable with a full magician but you're straining a lot harder. Something gives. The Mack's point was that a magician requires a lot more dedication to be good at their role than non-magicians do at theirs and I really think that stands up to examination. If you want to convince otherwise, I'm afraid I think we have to take it to actual builds. And as you're the one trying to prove a positive (an effective dual-role magician is doable without costly compromise of the magical aspects), it's down to you to produce such a build. I'd had to ask that it be done with BP build as that's the standard rules and the only one we're all familiar with.



Karmagen (which I'm not familiar with) has also been errata'd, it's just not been released yet, so this discussion is on ice, I think.



I'm a GM, so my stake is one of player enjoyment rather than personal characters. I think it's been fairly well shown that Illusionist magicians for want of a better term, are no longer very viable out of chargen. Some have stated they think this is a good thing because it narrows the number of roles a magician can choose from, but I don't think it can really be put that Illusionism is down to a "normal level" as it's near unusable with any reliability.



The previous abilities of magicians to affect complex devices with magic were hardly pwnage with an OR of 4 to affect a drone. pbangarth's mathematics have already usefully shown that with the revised ORs, it's just not possible to achieve pwnage no matter how much you min-max. All heavy min-maxing will get you is a passable chance at pulling off illusions. But as others have noticed, because magic skills in different areas are tied to each other, someone really trying for a decent illusionist almost inevitably ends up with a tweaked out combat spell machine as well. That's a shame that people have to min-max massively for a given concept.



Essence isn't a resource you squander. It's just a cap on how much of something you can have at a time. If you get bored of your current cyberarm when you have more money, you can replace it with a better one later. And it's not a concern to mundane characters anyway. Limits their healing by magic, but no-one's ever going to say on account of it that they don't want to give up a point of essence for those Synaptic Boosters. Essence is non-issue except for magicians.

Karmagen is not the standard.

Karmagen allows for significantly more powerful characters than the BP system does.

I can build a 400 BP character, and then switch said character to 750 karma and all they do is gain.


So please don't use the optional rule in a discussion about baseline mages.




That's right.

Being able to fool a camera or sneak past a drone = godmode.

Mages can still toss overcasted F10 manaballs and wreck whole rooms of people.

How does nerfing two other non-violent, creative use spells change any of that?

It doesn't.

Overcasting remains, it's now the most attractive option. Indirect Combat spells still suck, and illusion and manipulation spells get gimped. How has anyone prospered in all that?



I'll say the next part in bold to help make this clearer.

The wrong things have been "fixed".

Maybe that helps.






That's true. You can of course upgrade and fill your essence hole. So I'm not really sure what the point of that statement was.

Not by itself, but combined with the kind of vast firepower mages have (stunball pre-errata) and sneaking past living things as well, and the spirit army mages can conjure up, it is. As they were, mages had no significant weakness, unlike other characters. Yes, God Mode.


Not. It just means they cannt fool anyone and aything anymore. They can still deal loads of damage, so I don't get what you're so uppity about.


And mages can initiate, and abuse spirits to boost their pools. Yes, both limitations can be overcome to some degree. It just takes time and effort (and currency).


Uhm, yes, thanks for proving my point. Post-Errata, btw, it don't work as well anymore.


Unlike mages, who learn a new spell and maintain their old ones, or keep their old foci, and can still summon spirits if they build themselves an ally. I fail to see where that puts mundanes over mages, unless your players are getting 100k per run, individually.


Post-4A. Pre-4A, you get way more. I could have worded that more clearer though.

Not at all.

He's not listening though.

He's happy that the mages he plays with now will all overcast their manaballs, totally forgo non-violent options and can still do all the stuff they did prior with spirits.

Wait, what got fixed again?

Hermit, I don't think that what you're talking about actually works in practice. The "vast firepower" you talk about comes with a price of drain and limitations. Combat spells are both more and less effective than mundane firepower in their own ways. They have an in-built balance. The spirit army? Every Force 4 spirit bound is another 2,000:nuyen: of that magicians share of the payment gone for good. Every non-bound spirit that is conjured in-game is more potential drain and can't form part of an "army" because there's only one. And if you summon again after the first has discharged its services, well that's a pass you could have cast a powerful manaball at the enemy. Again - a balance. I have never, in 4th edition, seen a magician do anything that could be considered "god mode" in my game.



He is "uppity" because he is objecting to magicians being forced into the role of being just damage dealers. He wants magicians to be able to choose other roles. You have just agreed and confirmed his point.



And karma. This is exactly what he said. The samurai only requires money. The magician requires the "time and effort" as well!



How has he proved your point, please? I genuinely don't see your logic in this.

Peace,

K.

You keep making this claim, and people keep asking you to prove it since none of us (at least those asking) have ever seen this to be true. Perhaps you could actually supply a character sheet? Or even an example of a character that did so in general terms? For example, was there some character in one of your games that could out-fight everyone, get past all security, do all the research on a run and/or effectively make all the other characters redundant?



I guess I haven't asked this question enough (though I feel I have): Why, exactly, do you feel that this change brings mages down to a "normal" level and that they were "powerhouses" before? Was it illusion spells in particular that were so vastly overpowering? Given the limitations to magic and the cost, I find your argument hard to believe. Frankly, since you've provided zero evidence and have instead made generalized statements of mage's "powerhouse" natures, I'm not sure why you expect us to take your claim seriously.

Hermit. You are adamant that magicians were overpowered and could fill other people's roles. I disagree. Would you be up for a friendly challenge to back your statements up? I'll start a thread and post a non-minmaxed Samurai build, and you post a magician in response that can do the same things he can, fulfilling the same role. 400BP standard build.

I'm afraid it is the only way you will convince a number of us that a magician can duplicate a non-magician's role.

K.