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> Interesting new spells from SM
Slithery D
post Sep 12 2006, 11:02 PM
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Some thoughts on new spells in Street Magic.

Analyze Magic: This is potentially a big deal for people who only use Assensing skill for careful, deliberate things and not in the heat of the moment. For 3 bp or 5 karma you can forego taking Assensing skill. It can't be that much more of a social faux pas to cast a spell in some situations when you're already obviously astrally perceiving.

Catalog: If you're really good at Detection spells, so that you can overcome high object resistances, this can be great to identify targets of a run or find extra stuff worth stealing. Enter messy office/storage room, cast spell, dictate results, review to see if what you're looking for is there, or if something you didn't know about looks worth finding.

Enhance Aim: Not my cup of tea, but less retarded than setting up ritual groups to buff your sniper's gun with Analyze Device.

Hawkeye: Cast this one your adept friend with maxed Intuition, Perception, Enhanced Perception, and cyber eye peception improvements just so he can roll the dumbest number of dice ever.

Spatial Sense: In the extended range version, a fantastic way to scope out a building layout when your worthless hacker couldn't get the plans online.

Thought Recognition: I can see how this would be useful, but I wonder if the changes they made to this from its SOTA 64 version (with a different name in the spy section) were intended. It's sustained now? So the person has to actually think of the subject in real time rather to be detected, rather than a one shot scan to see if he's ever heard of it? Hmmm. That changes things in intersting ways both good and bad.

Deflection: This should replace Armor for a lot of mages. It doesn't have the vision cues of Armor that make that one a bad idea to sustain all of the time, and while it doesn't protect against melee it can make ranged attacks miss entirely, rather than just soak after the fact. Of course, most of you will want it and Armor. Hmph.

[Element] Aura: I've always liked this as a spirit effect, now it's a great buff for your adept martial artist friend. If you can't think of creative uses of this on certain inanimate objects (closed doors?), shame on you.

Mist: I have to give props to the worst effect vs. drain trade off of any spell in the book. It's like a thermographic smoke grenade that costs you karma and lots of drain. But without the thermographic part. Or maybe it's like several superior illusion spells, but single sense, impairing only perception, and no possiblity of incapacitiation. Once I've got 20 drain resistance dice maybe I'll take it for stylish assassination get aways. Or maybe not.

Offensive Mana Barrier: Not bad as a spirit "keep away" or weakener if facing a mob of them, especially since it does damage as Force, not successes. Just hope a spirit with Magical Guard doesn't come along.

Pulse: With a friendly GM and specializaiton/mentor dice in Manipulation to beat those nasty Object thresholds, I feel this could be awesome in some kinds of runs. Or you can ruin the RFID inventory at your local supermarket. A favorite of wizgangs, no doubt.


Overally, I continue to find Detection spells the best for a runner mage who wants to fill his own niche without duplicating the efforts others can with appropriate combat skills or specialized equipment. Illusion is a mixed bag; why would anyone take Agony, again? And I'd take every Health spell in the book...if they cost 1 karma. As it is, maybe three.
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emo samurai
post Sep 12 2006, 11:13 PM
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Dragon
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Metaplanar quests on the side to get extra karma are going to happen in my group. Hooray for 10th grade initiates!
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