From what I was told, SR4 was supposed to have dice pools ranging from 0 to 12. They could go higher but that'd be rare and limited.
But when the other books came with their bonuses, the scale was changed, requiring a change of the difficulty of an extremely hard action.

The new treshold (1,2,4,5) look ok to me, but a friend of mine uses an alternate rule that seems to work pretty good too: no matter how high your dice pool is, you can never roll more than 12 dice, all other dice can only be used to remove negative modifiers. For example, if you have a dice pool of 15 in automatics and want to shoot someone with a -2 penalty, you'll roll 12 dice. If you had 12, you'd roll 10.

I never thought about that, that's kinda neat. Not neat like how a Naga or Pixie can be the Magic Apocalypse coming out of chargen, but still neat (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Did I miss something here?

So doesn't this mean that in SR Horrors = Auto Win? The reason you don't ward the non-door parts of underground facilities (and kaers) is because spirits aren't supposed to be able to press through that much earth.

That's only consistent if every run is against high-security installations. If you're running "Food Fight" for a bunch of newbies, a counterpselling mage isn't called for. Further, not all runs are against corporations. There should be things that challenge mages other than another mage. For example, in Kowloon Massacre, sheer numbers should be frightening, not just additional targets.

To defend against manaball, according to RAW, you need either Counterspelling or Magical Guard. Both those are fairly rare, and expensive. (Despite what larme says; even if your truck will save you enough money to break even, you still had to pay a lot of money for it.)

Mechanically, using the original rules, there would be a limit of roughly 4/3 Force^2.

That would be the average number of metres you could push through with an extended test if you limited re-rolls to the number of dice in the pool. It would be much less if you were using the SR4A optional rules for limiting extended tests.

Actually no. The rules assume that you are projecting. A free spirit isn't projecting. It can't run out of time and die. So it can keep retesting until it gets there. Or it gets bored and metaplanar shortcut home. And when it wants to try again it can metaplanar shortcut back and keep going.

I agree that providing constant Counterspelling to a facility is highly expense (not just monetarily, but also from a resource allocation and lost opportunity cost point of view) and will only be seen in the most secure of facilities. Generally, my "minimum" of Magical Security on a site is to have wards around the one or two most sensitive areas and one or two Bound Spirits patrolling. The job of those Spirits is to simply watch for Astral intruders or any Awakened intruder, then run and tell their Summoner. This would in turn trigger an alarm and the specific targeting of the Awakened intruder. This when that "High Threat Response" team with its Magical backup (a trained Combat Mage who most certainly has good Counterspelling) comes in to deal with the intruders. I think it has also been a general agreement on this thread that detecting magic after the first spell has been cast is fairly cheap/easy to do as well.

So, if all of the above is agreed upon to be reasonable, then simply busting in and manaballing everything should not be the "I win" solution to every run. After the first Manaball goes off the HTR team is called and all the people run to their warded, mirror-glassed, "Magic panic room" and wait for the big boys to deal with the problem. If the players can sneak around, dupe security, and do whatever to get themselves into a position where that one Manaball is all they need to complete their mission: good for them. They probably earned it.

Well either that, or you need to have your eyes on, notice the mage before he casts, and kill him. The best defense is often a good offense. Either that, or let him kill all the rent-a-cops, then send in the ghost special forces to ambush him and slit his throat before he can cast. Whatever. The point is, situations are too variable to say that one tactic wins in every situation. Like we already hashed out in the thread that got locked, you're only right if every situation involves oblivious guards all within LoS and AoE. Maybe that's how you play it, I dunno, but it doesn't have much in common with my GMing style, or that of anyone I've played with. You're right if you mean actually rolling dice and successfully resisting (without a bunch of negative mods to the mage and a large Edge pool for yourself). Which I guess I'll assume is what you mean so we don't have to argue about this same shit anymore.

Unless the GM, quite reasonably, wheels out the limitations on how many times you can roll for an Extended Test.

The getting lost rules are pretty painful and I imagine most GM's wouldn't allow a Spirit to shortcut back to the same point inside the Earth's Aura. Even if it was allowed you would have to check for getting lost every time you did it.

And has been said many times, Grenades don't hurt you (unless you explode it in your face). Oh, and good luck taking out that drone with your Manaball.



Already beat you there.

One Man Army, the Swiss Army Mage

Made using SR4 rules for Skillwires. I think I messed up a little regarding hacking skills, but should be easily fixable. You're welcome to try and do better. Using a Possession Tradition with Task spirits is more than a little cheating.

See my reply to Blade about drones. Powerball and Wreck(Drone) ruin a drone's day.

Pretty interesting build on the mage. Wasn't actually thinking of the MBW route. I'll see what I can do without the MBW and get back to you. Pretty much along the lines. Why no Ogre btw (for the reduction in lifestyle--easier to eventually retire)? Was this pre-RC?

Edited: for reading all the way down to the bottom of the post.

If the same tactics are coming out in every combat, it's safe to say they're highly effective. If they're ending every combat, except for maybe the mop up, they may be too effective. Trying for diverse combats is not a bad thing; but if it always comes down to: "Manaball. We win.", something is wrong.

As has been pointed out already in this thread, noticing the mage before he casts is a difficult trick. Noticing him *as* he's casting is fairly easy, but there won't be any survivors to report to the next team.

Both of those spells have to beat the OR to work because they are direct spells. They've got favorable drain codes because they're target specific, but you need to cast them at least at force 5, rolling at least 15 casting dice to make the grade, on average. Force 6 and 18 dice if you use the optional table. Which you seem to suggest is the right thing to do, as you believe mages to be broken.



IMO, that build is a joke. First of all, activesofts have suffered a serious nerf, i.e. Rating x 10k cost. Way too expensive to provide real versatility, especially coming out of chargen. Just 1x rating 4 is nearly 1/5 your money. I love how everyone conveniently forgets about the SR4A activesoft price hike whenever they want to complain about this build or the other replacing everyone using activesofts. That build has pretty much been crumped up and thrown in the trash by SR4A, because its entire concept hinges on being able to have a crapload of extra skills using activesofts.

Second of all, all of its dice pools are pathetic. Put it against any min/maxed build and it's toast. The min/maxed samurai goes first and ganks it in two simple actions, 15 ballistic dice is nothing. Min/maxed combat mage goes first and blasts right through those 9 counterspelling dice like they weren't there. It's a useful build in some ways, it can puppet mundanes nicely, but not as nicely as if it were a real mage.

Reading this just made me think of a relatively cheap way to make casting Stun/Mana/Power Ball more harmful to runners. Just put mirrors on all the walls... Good luck casting without being within your own AoE range. Yes, you can still spell defense yourself and your teammates but you only have to roll sucky once to have a TPK.
Could make for a good security chokepoint too. Set up the hallway in a geometric pattern (say a simple triangle) that limits cover on the aproch side as well as using mirrors to make spells harmful to use on the guards.

**Not like it has not been thought of before but whatever...

That is pretty wicked, but then again the runners could impose glare modifiers on the enemies by shining flashlights and lasers right back at them, destroy the mirrors, or use smoke to obscure everything... Better for the mage to just use a periscope or mage sight goggles, so he can be a little less obvious about it.

Actually I didn' conveniently forget. I didn't know until you pointed this out. I'm actually going to have to sit down and read this thing now. Seems the game has actually changed a fair bit (activesofts was one of the unfun things for me but didn't remove it since it was the balance against the mage). So even if the GM is being a little silly your activesofts still cost 1000 x Rating instead of 300 x Rating.

Mage Solo:I have to say that in SR4 it is impossible to make a mage that can replace all the other character "classes." I retract my earlier statement. My definition was that every dice pool that a "class" would be expected to roll had to be higher than 12 dice. You cannot do that in SR4 unless the GM is silly and allows the matrix to be Att + Skill then it might be doable. You can get close and probably replace two but not all. However, 2 mages could easily 2 man most things in SR4.

I don't get it. Are you suggesting that a character can suffer the effects of the spell if one of his reflections in the AoE?

No, it's you can't hit targets you can't see with mana spells. So, in some interpretations of this rule (since the developers didn't define what the hell this means) it is assumed that you don't see yourself when you cast a spell and hence don't affect the caster ever if in the AoE. Most people don't see themselves when looking straight ahead, so it makes some twisted sense. The mirror is to make it so they can always see themselves. And mirrors are defined as providing LoS for mages.

I guess information travels more slowly than one would think. News of all of SR4A's evil magic nerfs spread like wildfire. News of those nerfs being toned down or made optional still has yet to filter out to a lot of people. News of the errata being free is still a bit scarcer than you'd think. And news of almost all of SR4A's beneficial changes seems almost nonexistent. Funny how that happens.

Also, you just forgot 0's in there, right? It's 10,000 vs. the old 3,000, not 1000 vs. 300. 300 x rating would be omgwtfnowai.



What does that even mean, "most things?" It's not an MMO with set levels of NPC power. There's an entire world of NPCs out there, and no end to the ways they can kill mages. Do you mean that a mage can 2-man things that would ordinarily require more than 2 non-mages to take care of? I don't think that's a judgment that's possible to make. What kind of mage build + what kind of backup, vs. what other archetypes? What situations are they in? A flat out statement that mages can "2-man" is practically nonsense, and invokes so many variable factors that it could never be demonstrated or disproved.

The numbers I refer to are the Unwired pirated costs (an optional rule I tend to use but was not using for my proposed builds). 2 man most things refers to being able to handle most of the high-tech dungeons that SR is made up of. I was going for 12+ dice in all the following:

Street Sam -- Physical ranged, physical melee, perception, dodge, armor
Hacker -- Exploit, matrix perception, spoof, scan
Face -- Etiquette, negotiation, con
Mage -- spellcating, summoning, astral perception, astral combat
Rigger -- pilot: groundcraft, aircraft, gunnery, repairs

Which, in SR4, makes a pretty damn well rounded and powerful character. Yes, now that I am going through SR4.5 (sorry it is a mini-edition from what I am reading -- although good on the whole so far) I can see that 12+ dice don't cut it. It was pointed out in this thread that SR4 was generally designed wth dice pools of 12+ being quite large so that seemed like a good benchmark.

And I admited to being wrong about something. You don't always have to be such a jerk about it Larme.

I prefer to call it rigor.

As for the piracy rules... Those are just a gaping wound in Unwired. My take on the piracy rules is that no GM should let their players pirate all their programs, especially not activesofts, because that just makes them too cheap to be balanced. Maybe if you wanted to allow low-rating progs to be pirated that would work, as a way to let non-hackers have access to the matrix without breaking the bank. But as I've said elsewhere, balanced is where cost and benefits are roughly equivalent. Using the SR4A costs, the costs and benefits of activesofts become fairly balanced with each other. Using the piracy rules just tosses that out the window. Maybe you want skillwires to be a total no-brainer that makes everyone into a swiss army knife for barely any cost. But I don't think that's a good thing to allow, it tends to denigrate the need for a team and makes the players working together start to seem more and more unnecessary and thus implausible.

I've never found money as a limiting factor to be effective, as a player or GM. Unless it's crazy expensive (Deltaware synaptic booster 3 expensive) a competent group of players can get the money. Jewelry stores and computer stores don't have the security that most SR targets do.

I never said it was not foolproof. It is cheaper to outfit a building with mirrors at security chokepoints than to pay for a mage to stand there. And with magesight goggles or a periscope the casting mage is -2 dice. (IIRC: I don't have my books but i think I remember reading something about that.)
The runners would suffer the same penalties for using flashlights, thermal smoke and what not.



Yes, it is already in the rules... What, you never had a mage with a set of those glasses where the corners on the lenses are mirrored so you can look behind you.
Mirrors can and do provide LOS for spells, like periscopes or magesight goggles from the above quote.

Are people serious about the mirrors trick? Yes - you can use mirrors to target people. But the targets also have to be in the area of effect. The implication of GMs using the mirrors trick is that PC magicians have (a) been casting area effect spells over their current location and (b) not harming themselves because the GM is ruling that someone cannot see themselves.

Am I reading this correctly? Aside from shadowrunning magicians normally having some teammates next to them who would be targeted, we have to assume that the magician can perceive her own aura or else she could never cast spells on herself such as Invisibility.

I liked the earlier editions where Area of Effect determined who you could effect, but you didn't have to target everyone unless you wanted to. At least that's how I remember us playing in 2nd edition.