Err....So you give your mystic adepts the ability to cast at a force equal to their own magic rating without physical drain? So a mystic adept with 6 magic can cast force 6 spells and take 6 points of adept powers in your game? Last question: may I play a mystic adept in your game?

Half right.
6 magic, 3 devoted to adept powers, 3 to spellcasting/conjuring.

Can cast force 6 and overcast to force 12 and has 3 powerpoints, but they can be up to rating 6. Magic-linked skills use a magic of 3. This is per SR4A.

What: No Infected and no shapechangers.
Why: We've played Vampire and Werewolf in the past. Now we're playing Shadowrun.

What: No SURGE
Why: We all think it's dumb and retconned it out of existence.

What: The game effect of Emotitoys while leaving Emotitoys in.
Why: Because it was easier than explaining why every Mr. J has a Pikachu on his shoulder.

What: SnS ammo
Why: It's already easy enough to take down spirits between Banishing and the physad in the group. Also, assault rifle taser bullets that do stun but not physical damage is dumb.

What: Possession Tradition min-maxers
Why: Should be obvious.

Thing is, all of the above were collective decisions taken by myself and all of my players before characters were made. That's the beauty of talking these things out ahead of time and agreeing on the kind of SR game we want to play. Social contracts ftw!

would an email from one of the developers trump this?


Edit: Woh I just looked at my email. They used my question as the example for the FAQ

This post has been edited by Technowired: Jul 27 2010, 06:45 PM

I suppose gel rounds in an assault rifle do physical damage?

haha! that's completely retarded. I wouldn't play by those rules if Dunkelzahn somehow appeared to me in real life and told me they were correct.

One little power focus and you're casting as well as any full mage, with adept powers to boot.

I'd say that if the gel round does more damage than your body after soak than its real >...> Mimics taking one in the soft part of the dome.

Well it never exactly mentions that you can cast spells at the maximum Magic Rating. It just says the very broad statement of "For all other purposes, including the determination of the maximum level for adept powers, the character's full Magic attribute is used."

While you can discern from the text that this means that a mystic adept cast spells of a Force up to the total maximum rating, it does not come out and say it. That really makes Mystic Adepts a little strong.

Oh Shadowrun 4th, you could be much tighter on your writing and rules clarity....

Better to give answer where everyone can see

Relevan part bolded.
All other purposes means exactly what it sounds like.

Never directly says Force of spells. Again, you can assume that this is true but by RAW it is really never given a specific answer. Plus that makes mystic adepts crazy.

I'll stick with the FAQ.

Under SR3, your Bought Magical Attribute for the Spell-Slinging was used for Maxium Spell Force and Drain.
Also, not being able to use improved ability for magical skills must have slipped by me somewhere . .

This. I'll also stick with the Original Email I got from Rob Boyle. I'll copy and paste the whole thing: Don't tell me made it up, I will forward it to you if you pm me your email.
text between /// and \\\ are by me. (Poster's Note: When I said spell pool I was being dumb, and was trying to say magic stat)
///
The big question I have, though, is about Mystic adept in general - Since they can split their spell pool and everything things can get complicated. there is a paragraph on the second page of the mystic adept section that says that For All purposes, including the limits of Adept powers, the mystic adept counts as his max magic. so if he's spent 4 points on Adept abilities, and only 2 on casting, does that mean he can Force 6 spells without flinching? I am going to be dealing with this character specificly because He's gone through the trouble of figuring out how to roll 20 dice for soaking drain, and he's purposefully abusing the system to cause trouble.\\\


I'm not sure what you mean about splitting the spell pool ...

Nope, basically the Magic he has allocated towards magician skills counts for all aspects of those skills. So in your example, the max Force he can cast at is 4, and anything over Force 2 is Physical Drain.



:: Rob Boyle ::
Shadowrun Developer for FanPro LLC
info@shadowrunrpg.com ~ www.shadowrunrpg.com



Follow up email:

///Allright - will this make it into errata? Would be nice to be clarified - the book seems to make no mention of that. Or if it does, where is it at?\\\


It's unclear in the book, but we're adding it to the SR4 FAQ we're working on.



======================

In closing, this is the case of Creative Rules as Written versus Developer's Rules as Intended, based on the FAQ on the site. My only real beef is that they did not address this when they updated the book for the special edition.

This post has been edited by Technowired: Jul 27 2010, 07:18 PM

Back on topic: I hate the edges and flaws out of the RC.

Whats wrong with In Debt (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Why would it need to, "for all other purposes" means exactly what it says, no need to get more specifig then that.
There nothing creative about that reading of the rules, the rules are ver straight forward.

The problem with In Debt is that people get pissy when they didn't consider that they actually do need to pay it back and its just not a stat on their character sheet, and how someone without a Sin could possibly get a loan and from who, and the long spiraling problems it generates for the other players. Also: kink bombs.

people without SiNs borrow money from the Yakuza, the Mafia, etc..
And in some games, 45K is cheap to payback.

That part was Rhetorical.

and its nice of you to assume that a loan from organized crime is going to be at such a low interest rate.

edited because I felt it was too inflamatory. Point of the story is that someone got a cruel nickname because they were playing a boardgame with the creator and tried to argue rules with him.

Which part are you disputing? Here I'll break my statement into two sections for you:

1.


You don't resist a flame thrower with counterspelling, I hope this part doesn't need clarification? Fireball, despite being aimed, you can totally ignore the fire by standing stock still and letting it hit you and counterspelling it away. This implies it is magical fire. A flamethrower I cannot counterspell, only dodge.

2.


This is in the book, SR4A pg 204:



Also I don't remember you quoting anything relevant at all, so yeah.

Yeah, because 10% monthly interest is such a great rate... Given that that is over 10 times higher than a real bank's interest, yeah, I'd say the game assumes it is an illegal lone.

I do agree that In-Debt is a bad quality though. It is either too good or utterly the stupidest thing you could ever do to your character.

The mob loans aren't nasty because of the interest rate, it's generally the repayment terms - as in, 'all of it plus twenty percent, right now.'

In Debt wouldn't really be so bad if starting karma on money wasn't so limited (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

My 2 quotes (albeit not using tags) were directly from my SR4 pdf. I'll check my SR4ALE when I get home to completely clarify that.

Also, the fire being created is "real", this is why it is a physical spell. It can set things on fire and they continue to burn, and not with "magical fire" but real fire. The counterspelling portion is disrupting the caster's ability to create said fire and direct it at you. More like making the fire less hot as it were, or the acid less acidic.

Because let's be honest, you can totally ignore a flamethrower by standing still and resisting the damage from it. If you have fire-resistance in your armor it applies equally to both "magical" and non-magical fire as well.

Where's an arc lightning cannon when i need one...

If it has 'no effect' then why institute the rule? The point is, used wisely or not a standard minimum wage security guard should not be able to handle a spirit of force 6 or higher pretty much at all. Critters of that level need anti-material level fire power to deal with, which should NOT be coming out the end of a pistol, or even a SMG.


Why shouldn't the spirit be hard to kill? What are they going to do? shoot it in the heart or brain? Drone have the 'effect' of hardened armor, what are you doing about that? Making drones susceptible to stun damage? If you don't want people carrying SnS for anti-spirit use, say what I do, if you want to harm something with a weapon, it should have a 'system' susceptible to the weapon in question, no nerves = no tazers, no atoms = no acids, can't feel pain = can't be stuned, etc.