Absolutely. However, the tone with which the feedback is delivered counts a lot to how it is received. Besides, Cain has stated plainly that he is not interested in giving useful suggestions to improve the game, he is interested in expressing his opinion. That is fine, but it does change how the message is received. Anyway, that's as off topic as I'm going to take this thread.

Aw, you're still sore about it? Fascinating.

The facts were valid then, and they're valid now. Less so under 4.5; so I guess something constructive came of it. Of course, the new optional rule means that Joe Average can't even pull the trigger on a fully-automatic weapon, so I don't know if it's an improvement.


Untrue. It was because I rolled badly on the resistance roll. He did take damage, if it's any consolation; but his head failed to explode from the effort of binding a Force 16 spirit. Didn't burn Edge, either.

I don't think that magic is inherently broken. I do think that in a ruleset that covers ground as extensive as SR there will be fuzzy areas and a determined player can exploit those for their own benefit. Whether they succeed will depend on the GM and the other players.

I've not seen magic break a game, or at least not beyond fixing with some quick thinking, but the same can be said of anything the players choose to do. I once had to rewrite an entire adventure on the fly since the players decided that staking out a 42 story building was the best way to capture one guy that lived and worked there. Having spent a not inconsiderable period designing floor plans, and security measures I was a little irritated when they made no effort to get in. In the end they decided to visit a strip joint, and I had to have their target literally chase them down. It was entertaining in the end, but I'm consistently astonished by player idiocy.

@Cain: I submit to you that Joe Average can pull the trigger on a fully-automatic weapon, he just won't hit anything with it.

Also, I am familiar with the cursed dice. The mages in my game seldom take any damage from summoning since I seldom roll any hits on the resistance. I eventually adopted the optional Summoning Drain rule from Street Magic. For reasons I've never quite understood, my players have never attempted to bind a spirit, despite my suggestion that it was a really good idea. One has decided that it is out of character to bind things to his will ("music wants to be free, man", although this hasn't stopped him frequently mind controlling his fellow humans), and the other is an SR newb, who usually asks me in the 1st combat round if she can have summoned a spirit earlier, because she forgot.

I love my players really.

By not being magical, duh.

In any event, I don't believe magic is broken, but an Adept with Elemental Strike (Sonic) is a little gouda. Maybe even swiss. It sure makes opening locked doors easier.

In 3rd Edition I had a troll Shaman that would have either insanely good luck or Horrificly bad luck. I once hellblasted with immense damage dealt and then suffered absolutely no drain, then cast a minor drain spell and botched myself into unconciousness. Though I had been shot so there was a modifier lol. Though with a troll that didn't skimp on bod to badly, I got shot with a combat shotgun and was told, "you're bleeding slightly and may require bandages."

You honestly think that mundanes are better hackers than Adepts? Do you even PLAY 4th edition?

I think mundanes don't need to invest as much to achieve the same result that the Adept does with Magic.

I don't think it's broken. I think mages should be powerful. Very few opponants can go toe to toe with a well prepared group of runners like a sufficiently powerful mage / spirit. But I stress to the players, magic draws aggro (not that a cybered monster walking down the street with a panther wouldn't as well.) I explained it like this.
Magic is still relatively uncommon amongst the majority of folks, who get fed garbage by Humanis / Religion / Entertainment so much that they will absolutely fear / be in awe of someone that can take over their minds or turn them to goo with just a thought. You see the ork walking down the street, you get nervous and cross the street clutching your purse tighter, but at least you can see the ork (whether or not your fears are justified or not). The mage (and now the technomancer) would realistically be viewed as threats to the majority of the world that can't do what they do. Realistically you should fear the mundane Ares exec that has access to a a ridiculous "discretionary" budget than the lone mage, but human nature doesn't work that way. Different equals target. Just the way we are wired. Once the mojo goes off and someone notices who's doing it, they are target #1, even if they are not the most dangerous thing on the field, just like the obvious cyber zombie is going to be sucking down everything everyone has to give them.
Discretion is a great equalizer.
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

That doesn't mean anything, though. Mages look like everyone else. A guy with a big gun is obviously going to be picked out. The mage can disguise himself after blowing up a police car; the troll with a minigun, not so much. It's unbalanced, and all of the excuses in the world (they're SUPPOSED to be overpowered, it's the GM's fault, it's the player's fault) don't change the fact that we shouldn't HAVE to reject perfectly legal builds just because someone was too lazy to balance the goddamn game.

Adepts get more for their spending, though. They can initiate and increase their magic, so magic loss from cyber/bioware becomes trivial. So they have access to all of the enhancements that mundanes can get, PLUS adept powers.

And even in the short-run, adept powers are superior to cyber. There's almost no effect you can get with cyber that isn't available to an Adept, and adept powers are undetectable, unhackable, and never break down.

False. Adepts have astral signatures, their (active) powers leave astral signatures, and they're affected by background count.

#2 is false, unless you can say how long they last (Adept powers don't have Force)

OK, let me rephrase: Adepts can be detected from the Astral, their powers can be detected from the Astral, and they lose powers when in areas with background counts. The rules aren't clear how long adept powers are visible on the Astral once the adept isn't there any more, but it does state that ALL magical abilities leave astral signatures.

Yes and Yes.

But its supposed to be broken in my opinion its MAGIC, it shouldn't be defined by the same set of rules. Balance != Fun, and honestly 4e magic is more balanced than ever in 4e mundane vs spirit = get a BFG spirit go boom. 1e mundane vs spirit = buried that mundane in an Altoids box. You can have horribly unbalanced things and still have fun as long as everyone has their niche. The problem lies with when the mage doesn't need the rest of the team.

Given that this hasn't been proven yet...
(Ok, there's ONE mage build that can do Everything, but that's one build, not "mages in general").

In this I completely Agree...

If you're looking for rather mediocre results then yes.

The biggest difference I have seen between Mundanes and Awakened is that the mundanes had more options which kept the mages from breaking the game. Here's an example. In one game I made a adrenaline junky (addiction) pilot who got his kicks and giggles from testing his vehicles against those of trained corp drivers. Now our game was based in the SR universe but only 2 of our 5 characters were actually runners. The game had more story then work for Johnson and get paid (we think its limiting that most GMs limit the shadowrun universe to solely runners when there are so many other stories to tell.)

So these two characters just both happened to be awakened. One was a rigger adept and the other was a straight up mage. Well my character and the rigger character had an in game argument going over who was the better pilot since he got backed up by magic while I could drive a bunch of different vehicles. In the end while he shined with wheeled vehicles I had a lot more options. While he was pouring karma into boosting his magical abilities to keep them up with the increasing amount of magically skilled opposition (they would assense and go after the magical characters first) I was using all my karma to widen my range of skills. In the end he had a few advantages sure but nothing he could throw out I couldn’t stop because I was so much more varied then him.

Another example of this was when the group split because of in game drama and we ended up on different sides. The campaign ended in a blaze of glory when our two sides went head to head in a vehicle combat scene that escalated when we started ripping through gang territory and they started shooting at both of us. Even though he had the better driving skills and a few cool powers unlike him I had the karma to spread into electronic warfare and demolitions. Using these I intercepted the local gang traffic, put out a fake hit on their car, and the icing on the cake was when I used some special explosive I made (basically a sticky incendiary bomb) to make their care burst into flames and cover the windshield in flaming tar. In the end even with all his fancy powers he couldn’t keep the car from crashing into a gang controlled building. Needless to say my side won as they were all turned into burnt swiss salsa from a mix of sticky fire, bullet holes, and grenades.

So yes, I don’t believe magic is broken because even with all the things their powers can do a mundane can get such a list of different skills that he can pull off just as much and even if he cant do as much he knows enough to make the mage think twice before trying to blast him.

I think magic is more powerful than any other force in SR, but does that bother me? Nope, I see it as a condition of the world they have built, and as an avid Earthdawner, I see it as the way things should be. The fact that tech and mundane flesh can even compete is a testament to it's utility and a nod to the developers in the first place. Not everything is balanced, nor should it be. Balance comes in at the table, between the players and GM, anything else is a band-aid.

Amen! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

And there you have it... What more need be said?

The fact that the game is supposed to be where Magic meets Man and Machine, not "Mages are awesome and obviously better than everyone else". Unbalancing the game towards magic causes groups to lean heavy on magic, and as a result the whole theme and feel of the game is lost. If I wanted to play a game about wizards hanging out in grimy cities, I'd be hanging out in a White Wolf forum.

I agreed, what awakened get in power mundanes get in versatility; the problem isn't that awakeneds are godly, is that (often) either GMs don't give mundanes chances to put to use their wider skills repertoire or the players don't realy even try to come up with interesting ways to use their skills, you have to think out of the box people. Just think about one thing, in how many places people can be at the same time? What happens if the run imposes the team to spread? Sammy can also become an hacker, a rigger, a combat medic, if he isn't too obvious in term of implants he could even put toghether some social skills and let's not forget skillwires; the problem is that mundanes keep disperately to try to outdo awakeneds that have invested heavily in special abilities to boost their skills, they should gear up to cover the widest range of skills possible instead, magic can get amazing results but in order to get them it requires alot of focus (and karma).
Just to give an example I once found my mage on a run gone bad and ended separated from the team along with the street samurai (elf poser human girl, a true statement of the beauty and power that can be obtained with bioware combined with plastic surgery), my mage had pooled out many tricks already to get out from the site of the run, yet the security was still looking for them too close to be confortable and he was running dangerously out of steam, the girl hacked their way in a shop, stole some clothes, opened their way to the underground garage of the building they were in and hacked a car making its RFID broadcast a fake SIN of hers as the owner, when the corp security came to check the garage found the two as a couple that was about to have sex in the car, than she conned them to not tell to hers houseband and the corpsec just let them go without even checking the SIN (what could lover have to do with a shadowrun?), the two redressed and left the place in front of the corpsec with their new car, which was later sold to chop shop; she was a great fighter and athlete, was skilled in stealth and B&E, could handle tasks as backup hacker (not too much, she had only 4 ranks in matrix skills), had the best biotech skills of the team (the streetdoc contact offered her to retire and start working for him), had good social skills, spoke various lenguages, was proficent in survival and had some oddball skills such as parachuting at decent level.... hell she even had Pilot Aircafts at rank 3, once she ruined a whoole run scenario by commandiring an helicopter and using it to ram the one of the opposition, the GM wanted to use the enemy copter to force us to deviate from our planned path passing near an insect spirit hive, he had to have the insect shaman chose her as host for the hive queen.

Cain, how did the character get around the sunrise/sunset limit that applies to Summoned spirits in order to Bind a Force 16 spirit? That Binding process would take 16 hours. Was he far enough away from the equator in the right season? My guess is he would have had to have been near or even past the Arctic/Antarctic Circle to do so.

He was, and I believe he also Rush Jobbed it. That took the time down to eight hours.

In Seattle, you're closer to the arctic circle than you are the equator, so you get a lot of time during the height of summer/winter.