For sake of example.

The point is, 1 or 2 people of every 10 effected (one casting or many castings) will resist, the rest are dead.

then get yourself some counter spelling.
Just like most mages aren't so good at soaking bullets, most mundanes should not enjoy spells which attack an undefended mind.

I suggest using those fun loving, humorless law enforcement oficials. As others have noted the spell does leave an astral signature and a lot of angry people who in addition to feeling incredibly violated are often tax payong citizens (or at least have the SINs of tax paying citizens). Those cops get paid to track down walking menaces who threaten the body public, so this will be nothing but good press if they can stop the evil fiend. If you are particularly vindictive have the cops start a file on the offending character and escalate it to a task force if necessary. Once the police get a modus operandi on the player (and those accomplices who hang around with him) your favorite goon squad can start up on their trail every time the MO shows up. After a while your player (or the rest of the group) will get sick of dealing with officer grumpy and the brute squad as a free addendum to every adventure (without pay) and tone down the offending behavior. Raw force can't deal with the cops because no runner group has the moxie to deal with a major law enforcement task force, especially one that is keeping track of your MO and evolving tactics to deal with your abilities.

If they kill people important enough to warrant such a response and are too sloppy, or rushed to clean up after themselves... ya, that works.

Exactly!!! There is a reason it called Shadowrunning.

If counterspelling is available, raise the Force by 2.
Now instead of Force 2, I'm using Force 4 and expect about 3 successes on their part. If I'm wary I'd go up to Force 6, if I could take the drain (likely physical).

Or I could geek the mage, then worry about the mooks.

If you can know who is the mage, and see them.
I kinda like physical invisibility, silence, and other fun spells a whole lot.

hi hi

As someone mentioned earlier, control thoughts is a lot like rape. Even though the legal punishment may not be as extreme as 1st degree murder, it is the kind of crime that can make even lazy, corrupt cops get off their rear end and grow a temporary sense of justice, even if they don't care about scumbags killing each other or rich snobs getting ripped off. A similar thing goes for gangs and other criminals, even though they might deal in life ruining drugs, for some reason certain things are off limits (like hurting kids for example). The Yakuza like to pass themselves off on the surface as a legitimate protector of the people and might take offense where as they wouldn't give corporate crime a second thought.

Conversely, there are probably groups that find it to be just fine by them, or even encouraged as ways of instilling fear and control in a population.

This again assumes use of the spell is obvious.
Asking the victims to lay down while you execute them, and then scrub your signature off their aura's wouldn't leave much to show any spell let alone that one had been cast. All you would see if a bunch of people who were rendered helpless and shot, possibly just intimidated by a superior force and then murdered. Also if I'm using control thoughts, alter memory and mind probe are also right up my alley too.

How are you fitting 10 people in a 2 meter radius effect? Or are you conveniently ignoring the rule that radius = Force for area spells?

Yeah, if you ignore the rules, spells are broken! What an amazing concept.

More likely you'll get one or two people in the radius, and there's a better than 50% chance that at least one of the two people will fully resist a Force 2 mind control spell, even with only 3 dice. At that point, you've taken a hell of a lot more drain for no more real effect than casting Control Thoughts. And, for the record, if you're fighting in a place where people ARE packed tightly enough together that you can get more than a couple in a 2 meter radius spell, a grenade is going to be far quicker, cheaper, and more effective at taking them all out.

If any of the subjects resist (as has been discussed, the chances get better as there are more mooks), you can bet they'll make a panicked call of "Mindrape!" or something. Also, you don't always have the luxury of fighting opponents in closed-off areas. If you're in a city street and suddenly a fight stops, you can bet there will be faces at windows. Faces that see one side of the fight lie down and the other murder them all. They may not recognize it as mind control, but you can be sure they'll tell people about it, and one of them probably will.

Also, rape and murder is probably one of the few crimes considered more heinous than murder or rape individually. It'll be the sort of thing that carries the death penalty, and public fear of it means extra lone-star hours devoted to looking into possible cases of it. It could possibly be a group intimidated, but if it doesn't look like there was a struggle, if nobody heard or saw a superior force in the area, then there certainly is reason to suspect mind control.

One of my favorite bits in the new NYC material was the reference to the prevalence of MeFeed and the effects that has on crime and punishment.

MeFeed?

You guys should see the "Magic and the Law" section in Street Magic, it talks about the specific legal state of criminal laws on magic.

Ultimate expression of voyeurism/exhibitionism/big brother. You have a real time video, audio, GPS, etc. stream to anyone who wants to check it out. Its like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and a video camera rolled into one. And frequently, its on almost 24/7/365.

See Also: P2.0 networks.

See my last post answering this.

You mean the one that didn't answer it? "For sake of example" is meaningless. An example founded on breaking a rule is a flawed example.

Obviously you missed the part about multiple castings.

2070s YouTube. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

Ah, right. So now we've gone from using a single complex action, a single simple action (that's 2 Initiative Passes, at a minimum) and 5+ drain to kill 10 enemies, to X complex actions, X simple actions (2X IPs), and 5X+ drain to kill 10 enemies, where X > 1.

How is this overpowered again? Once more, you can get the same effect for less money, less time, and less risk by simply throwing a grenade. Or a Powerball.

The point is that you can kill someone with a Force 2 spell. Probably 2 or 3 at the same time. No, you won't be catching 10 of them with the same spell, but only 1 or 2 in 10 will resist.

Compare that to throwing a grenade:
You hit everyone in a 12 meter radius (frag), but only the 1 or 2 standing within the first meter (depending on armor value and body) will be incapacitated.* Everyone else will take varying amounts of stun. Anyone past the 6 meter mark probably won't take any more than 1 box, and anyone past the 9 meter mark won't be taking any at all.

Sure, huge radius, high damage, but few casualties per number of effected targets.

*At 3 meters a frag grenade is doing 9P, +5AP. If the target has any armor at all that damage is going to be stun. At 2 meters the damage is 10P vs. ~9 armor + 3 body -> 6P damage. At 1 meter it's 11P vs. 12 dice -> 7P. At 0 meters (standing on the damn thing) you're looking at 12P vs. 12 dice -> 8P damage (2 boxes shy of incapping an NPC).

Even if I've interpreted the errata on fragmentation AP, and it's only +2, you're looking at 7, 8, and 9 boxes for each example (and that's someone wearing 7 armor).

Actually, a little more than 3 in 10 will resist. Or do you fail to understand what a 31% chance means?

And, again, you're acting like all the mage has to do is cast Mob Mind and everything he targets instantly falls over dead. You're completely (and, if I had to guess, intentionally) ignoring several key facts:

1. It takes two initiative passes, at a minimum, to kill someone via any mental manipulation spell. It could take more depending on circumstances.
2. It's very expensive in terms of drain. Even at force 2, you're eating 5 drain, which is difficult to fully resist even for a fairly min-maxed mage. For the same 5 drain, you could cast a force 8 Stunball and be dramatically more likely to actually take out a large group of enemies.
3. Mob Mind is a sustained Area spell -- which means it affects the area, not the people inside it. That means if anyone leaves the area of the spell, they are immediately free from its influence. When you're casting Force 2 Mob Minds, it's hard NOT to leave the area in between the time of you casting the spell and the time of you commanding the enemies to kill each other.

No, a single frag grenade (why are you using frags? White phosphorous are much better) won't kill anyone in a wide open space, true. But throwing a grenade is only a simple action. Casting a spell is a complex action, and casting a mental manipulation spell then issuing orders is THREE simple actions. Try comparing apples to apples, here. You can throw two grenades with three simple actions, and even with frags that's gonna kill just about anybody. It also costs you zero damage to yourself, whereas you're likely to take at least some drain from casting Mob Mind.

Keep in mind that mental manipulation spells can be used more much much more than killing.

In any case, I'd never go for the area effect mind control spells, I'd prefer the single target versions. Creates so much more chaos.

Control Thoughts:
"You're allies are planning to betray you!"

My Mage player had already noticed the sheer unbounded limitless vague wording of Control Thoughts, and decided to take Control Actions instead, as he could see the abuse lurking within, and he was brand-new to Shadowrun! Unfortunately, in my opinion, Control Actions and Control Thoughts are too similar IN EFFECT, if not in fluff, that CT is unnecessary, ESPECIALLY given the mind-rape spell Mind Probe.
Why are there two different ways to force someone to do something? I don't get it. If you read Control Actions closely, it doesn't even really make sense. If you are jerking them around like a puppet, why does the target use his skills? Huh? Shouldn't everything the mage is forcing his meat puppet to do actually an extension of the mage's will and talents?

IMO, Control Thoughts and Control Actions work exactly the same. Control Thoughts is just the stronger version with a higher drain code that doesn't allow any resistance against commands. I think the description, how the caster takes control of the user's mind, is misleading, because the very next sentence says all you get to do is issue commands. It can't be total control over the whole mind, and simple obedience to commands, can it? You're right that the description makes no sense, because its description of effects contradicts the actual effects. I think issuing commands language, being a lot more specific, is correct, while the description, being completely vague, is not the operative language. Obviously, lots of people disagree, and I have no interest in changing their minds, especially not after seeing how hostile they are about it.