And everyone else correctly stated that thet does jack shit.
Giving a 5BP discount for a quality does nothing for bringing mages power levels clocer to other archetypes.
Making resisting makes easier overall for everyone on the other hand does.


I would change the manabolt to a fetished stunbolt and have the mage cast 2 of them. with avarage rolls thats 7S per bolt
bringing mages damage in that one IP to 14S that should take out most targets and most likely no drain damage(two times 2S resisted with 12 dice)
Or maybe even make it 3 stunbolts for avarage compined damage of 18S(6S per bolt) and no drain damage (three time 3S resisted with 12 dice)

Actually, looking back on it, I was wrong. It actually inflates the cost by 5 BP. Normally you could get it for 5 BP (to get SURGE 1), which effectively gives you 10 free BPs worth of SURGE qualities in exchange for a 5-point negative one. So the total works out to 20 BP (25 + 5 - 10) and a 5 BP flaw. His solution just makes it a flat 25 BP option with no flaw.

How about anti drone magic, making riggers less powerful. As it sits mages are next to powerless against them.

Someone is forgetting Rock Paper Scissors here.

Rock (drones) beat Paper (mages).

What do you mean powerless, lightning bolt works wonders against most drones. for example something like 9P+nethits AP-half is pretty nasty, or maybe 2-3 times 5P+nethits AP-half, for 0-2 points of P-damage.
Those have a chance of taking out a medium or smaller drones out with one shot and to severly damge even the biggest drones.
You could possibly evven convince your GM to allow you to get a version of lightning bolt that resricted to Drones as target for -1 to drain, making it either safer or allowing you to up the force by 2 points for even more damage.

How true that is largely depends on your spell selection; many spells have pretty low thresholds or do not rely on opposed tests to work well. Levitation, Awaken, Heal, Detect Life/Enemy, and the Clairvoyance/Window line of spells are all good examples of how a competent but not unusual magician can bring a variety of useful (if admittedly not overwhelming) effects to the table without much need for foci, particularly since the drug Psyche is remarkably free of negative side effects-- it's quite possible to run two detection spells at once for a fairly mild -2 penalty and then drop them once you detect danger or have a good notion of where to find your target. Likewise many spells are permanent or immediate effects and require minimal sustaining by definition. I'll grant you that you won't be a high end combat mage without a bag full of foci and a big ol' brick of Spellcasting dice, but I tend to be of the opinion that combat mages are the relatively weak sibling of the utility mage anyway, since I find it more useful to let the samurai do his thing and bring my 10 dice and a hard to duplicate bag of tricks to the group instead.

But really, the thing that truly tips the scales in terms of cost effectiveness is Summoning and access to the Astral, imo. Even a force 3 spirit can bring a useful mix of utilitarian powers to the group, and you don't need much talent to whip them up (and that's not even touching upon Guardian and Task Spirits...). Likewise Astral Projection can sometimes really let you snoop around rather well and you don't need much but an assensing pool and some decent mental stats to do well in that area.





I would agree here right up until the point that the Magician's spirit cuts into the dance with its elemental damage. Drones are definitely a thorn in the side of magicians everywhere, but summoning prevents them from being hard counter even before you factor in indirect magic.

Hmm how bout having increasing direct damage drain by net hits? Wait...

Whatever it's inherent weakness, it does manage either scale down the damage from these spells OR forces the caster to get more drain on average. Seems to work well so far in my game, and the mage still is casting at [Magic] force to be safe.

But you still have to hit the Drone, and It can attempt to dodge the Lightning Bolt/Ball...

That Lightning bolt just may miss...

Just Sayin'

Keep the Faith

While true, I am of the opinion that Spirits are the "shotgun" in "rock paper scissors."

Corrode/Melt/Sludge spell, street magic. Take "melt electronics" version of it.

Can't really target Electronics that you cannot see though... the damaging element would still have to bypass the Armor to get to the insides where the electronics lived...

Keep the Faith

Melt Drone, then. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Melt Drone is Good... Yep... Pretty Good Indeed...

My Necromancer's version of Powerbolt/Powerball was called "Decay," It was a fun spell...

Keep the Faith

That drone has most likely somethink like 2-6 dice to dodge, i easily have 9 dice even when casting 2 lightning bolts, so most of them should hit.
And that doesnt much differ from trying to shoot the drone either, it can dodge that too.So i dont really see what you where trying to say with that post, other then the obvius fact that drones too can dodge attacks.

I call BS on the multi-casting. UNLESS you have a lot of dice mods AFTER the split. It doesn't work nearly as well as you claim. Double casting say 2 stunbolts is generally doable... Even then, great you've done exactly as well as an average skilled character w/ a gun. (knocked out one guy, or damaged two firing SnS)

Even then, lets just ignore the fact that we can just pull out two pistols and split, and still fire twice as fast!! (or pull out 2 SMG's and double-up on recoil comp... two wide bursts (preferably long) can pretty much gut all but the most extreme dodge pools).


And multi-casting lightning bolts or other indirect spells... are you bloody insane Maax?! At a +3 drain code... Say force4, Double casting is 6 drain each. Triple casting isn't even on the radar.


Quite frankly:
The only things I've seen in this thread so far I like... (and not necessarily all of them together)

One item I've suggested in other threads in the past... Add an extra .5 point of drain for each point of force overcast. (same Drain/2 for up to limit, then +full for overcast).

The idea of breaking up the spellcasting skill into 'subskills' so that spellcasters need to specialize a little more. (even then w/o changing the skill costs.. IE: George has 3 ranks in spellcasting, each point gets 3/5, he has 3 ranks in health spells (bear doctor), 2 in combat, 1 in manipulation, 3 in detection, none in illusion).

That mental manipulations are a little more problematic. (I disagree strongly that all other categories are broken in the least.) I believe the best way to do this, is to turn them into extended contests of wills, and extra penalties to anything and everything the mage tries to do while engaged in one. Also I believe mental and physical manipulations should be separated (6 categories of magic instead of 5).

Treating all spells like healing spells... heavily cybered individuals can get up to -3 dice penalty applied to spellcaster. (-1 for every 2 points or fraction thereof of essence lost).

The -2 'sustaining' penalty for having more than one spirit present at a time. (that paired with only one service at a time from a spirit... substantially limits the army of spirits).

Calling BS on anyone suggesting techniques to reduce or sustain spells w/o penalty. While a mage may have theoretical access to a spell for every occasion, whether they have the money and karma to learn it is another problem altogether. The best limiter on mages is making it painful to sustain a large number of spells. (and by extension limiting how many spirit services they can use at once... IE: no more than 1 per spirit... and a spirit engaged in combat isn't going to be sustaining concealment as combat is a new service).

Only giving spirits (Force/2) ranks in any skills. This gives them a few less dice.


Things I specifically don't like and why:
Full defense against spells: Okay lets say character rolls double willpower. The mage has a 50/50 shot but still takes drain. The mage can't just pound on the target constantly every pass until dead because drain limits heavily how much he can do. You now add counterspelling dice... and it's not even a contest (barring severe specialization in that particular school w/ specialization and mentor).

So long as drain exists... I'm with it in concept but only if the number of dice it can provide is limited. Maybe if instead of Willpower... they rolled 1.5X willpower it would be better.

As far as people saying only 2 attributes... mundanes have a lot more karma to buy up edge... and edging resist rolls shouldn't be nearly as much of a problem.


Giving full force in drain... yeah I'm using a force 5 manabolt... probably taking 1 or 2 points drain off that. Lets make indirect combat spells, or anything with a drain code of say +1 or +2 completely unusable!

But Edge also lowers itself as a run goes forward. They'd have to choose to either stay at full potential for resisting spells, or use their Edge for the myriad other uses it has. It's a fairly balanced trade-off, especially since the real threats tend to not show up until near the end of a run... meaning they either have a low Edge by that point, or they weren't as effective as they could have been along the way.

Two force 7 lighning bolts are 7P drain each, with 14 dice for drain resistance(not too hard to get whit a logic tradion and a fetish for the spell) and a platated factories its 1P damage on avarage per spell, not too bad. If no platetet factotories then cast only at force 5 for avarage 1S per spell.

And on general douple casting is quite a good move if you have both spec and mentor bonus for the spell catecory in question, even better if you have a foci too.
For example magic 5
Spelcasting (combat) 5
and a mentor bonus to combat spells
is 14 for one spell, 9 dice per spell for 2 and 7,7 and 8 for 3.
A force 3 power/spellcasting foci turns those dicepools to 17 for one, 12 per spell for 2 and 10,10,11 for 3 at this point i would seriously concider douple casting at lower force
A force 6 power/spellcasting foci turns those dicepools to 20 for one, 15 per spell for 2 and 13,13,14 for 3 at this point i would start to use mostly triple casting on lower force

ON other note its so annoying that the board f**k-up my nick, its supposed to be Mäx, i cant even tell what that second to last character is supposed to be. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

That depends if the GM applies the platelet factories BEFORE or AFTER drain is rolled. I've seen that one pulled before.

It's hard for platelet factories to 'resist' damage which wasn't inflicted because the drain was soaked down to 1 or 2 points and they didn't engage. The character doesn't suffer damage from either attacks nor damage til AFTER soak is rolled. "any time the user SUFFERS 2 or more points of damage..."



Maax: you illustrate my point perfectly. you NEEDED to twink out the mage full bore... While we're at it lets twink out the street sam full bore and look at his 20+ dice too. You're comparing apples to oranges. At the end of the pass, in either case, the twinked out combat mage, OR the twinked out street sam/gun adept/etc. offed one of the opposition.

For a much more 'normal' mage... he'll only have 10'ish dice... 12 maybe 14 in a specific school. (I like splitting up my mentor and specialization bonuses for example in different schools).

So you're looking at a fairly modest 10/2 +2 per spell. Then the typical drain pool is only 9 or 10 dice... give an extra 2 for a fetish. That's only 3 or 4 drain soaked on average... (ignroing probability distro which shows that a fair amount of the time some of that comes through).

And I repeat you min/maxed your example to the hilt... claiming it's possible doesn't mean it's anywhere near TYPICAL.

I find this solution to be quite compelling. I'd require a 5 point quality (like a knack or like the Martial Arts quality) in order for people to pull this off, but the quality would be available to anyone. You would probably need to make the spell defense self-only or limited to (essence?) meters.

No argument here. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

There is actually one thing that beats spirits, we'll call it Dynamite in our little RPS analogy:

Stick and Shock. Works on spirits, mages, heavily armored folks, drones, lightly armored folks, and works best in small arms.

Spirits tear shit up, but Stick And Shock knocks them down to size (but also knocks everything else down to size too).

Particularly amusing when you realize that there's not much stopping you from giving your Guardian Spirit a Steyr TMP loaded with the stuff and going to town.

That's what we call a shotgun that shoots dynamite.

The whole point there was that on avarage you take 2P damage from the drain and the platetet drops that to 1P.


Considering the stats i was using to make the examples where the first set without any foci, i wouldn't really call my magic5, spellcasting 5 combat mage build min/maxed to the hilt.
I mostly calculated those pools with foci added becouse that build isn't finished yeat and i liked to see if it would be a good idea to get him one and really from what i have seen around here, every other mage has a power focus 3 and that makes using 2 spell at a little lower force a really attractive option over one high force spell, especially if that changes the possible drain damage to stun.

And the whole point of my original post was to say that mages arent powerless against drones, not to compare my combat mage bulid to a streetsam.

ROCK DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!