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Garrowolf
post Oct 3 2006, 05:43 AM
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I was thinking, what if magic users had a seperate track to cover their magic. Call it a drain track. Then base it on your magic rating. That way an new mage (magic 1) will be able to take less then a master mage (magic 9). Then you could require meditation or communing with spirits or whatever in order to recover it. Have it work basically the same but you could change the recovery rate.
That way you could seperate off the drain from the stun track and finally allow stun to be recovered with stim patches and coffee and such. You could even have stun resisting cyberware and bioware now. It wouldn't help drain, just stun.
You could even base stun on something besides willpower, maybe body or an average of body and willpower. You could even raise it based on certain cyberware or even lower it based on old metal cyberware.
It wouldn't really slow anything down in the game. The magic users would just have a different track to mark on.
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Cold-Dragon
post Oct 3 2006, 06:09 AM
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Except the drain is suppose to be a genuine risk to a mage - one that is tired out should not be blasting people without passing out in the process.

But hey, up to you.
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Geekkake
post Oct 3 2006, 06:28 AM
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I declare this as "vaguely workable". Granted, it's late, so I haven't thought of all the ramifications. And I certainly wouldn't allow it. However, the reduced track, with the same recovery rate as Stun but requiring some kind of tradition-related activity, is an interesting idea.

The main problem I see is the risk factor, as stated. From a roleplaying perspective, it'd be just as easy to have your mage perform a tradition-related activity to recover Stun damage caused by Drain.
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Garrowolf
post Oct 3 2006, 08:07 AM
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I wasn't clear I see. The drain track causes the same effect as the stun track. It has the same penalties. It is just based on Magic instead of Will. (or it could be tradition specific I guess). Maybe you have to astrally project to heal drain damage in order to commune with the flow or whatever. Maybe you have more then one way or recovering it but they have different intervals (Sleep - 1 hour, sitting by your element - 30 mins, etc)

It was more designed to open up other choices to relation to the stun track without imbalencing the game towards mages too much.

ie You could take a stim patch to get rid of stun but that wouldn't effect drain. I would even go so far as to say you can't recover drain while you have any stun.
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Mistwalker
post Oct 3 2006, 12:12 PM
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I probably wouldn't go for it.

It would just add another thing to keep track of. Allow the enemie to recover faster from you stunballs, etc.., making combat spells doing physical damage more powerfull than those causing stun, pretty well not allowing you to take out the guards with anything that causes stun.
Biomonitor attached to a 10 shot auto-injector, presto, no longer asleep.

As for having to project to recover your drain track, that would have serious repercussions to mystic adepts, and I believe aspected magicians.

And not allowing drain recovery while you had stun damage, then just take a stim patch, no stun damage, recover drain
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FrankTrollman
post Oct 3 2006, 07:29 PM
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stims don't reduce your stun track - they give you pain resistance that applies to stun damage. Someone has been playing with old rules. ;)

For the current stun rules, you'd want to check out bage 330 of the BBB.

-Frank
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deek
post Oct 3 2006, 07:45 PM
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Garrowolf,

So, basically you are just wanting the stun track to use 8 + (Magic/2) for mages instead of the 8 + (Will/2) as everyone else uses? Or perhaps make it a function of the mage's tradition, maybe something like 8 + (Avg of Will and Logic/2) for a hermetic...

I don't think that is hugely game imbalancing...most mages are going to want a high Will anyways, even if it doesn't setup their stun track. Its workable, but I don't seeing it being a huge advantage...I wouldn't use it, but I could see a player that had a really high magic want to use that attribute in place of his Will...
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Mistwalker
post Oct 3 2006, 08:40 PM
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Frank,

I think we were talking about a variant/house rule that was being suggested, not the way stun works in the RAW.
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Mr. Unpronouncea...
post Oct 3 2006, 09:44 PM
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You realize, of course, that starting (magic 1) magicians already do resist drain less than experienced (magic 6) mages, right?

(edit: and I'm talking garbage here. Nevermind)

This is reminiscent of the "Trolls have glass jaws" argument that ignored the Trolls' +5 (+4 bod +1 dermal) soak.
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Garrowolf
post Oct 4 2006, 02:51 AM
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Trolls have glass jaws? where was that from?
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Mr. Unpronouncea...
post Oct 4 2006, 06:39 PM
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Well, the argument was that since a troll has a -1 willpower max but +4 body, he'd be better off not wearing any armor and using his physical damage track instead of the stun track (which is so much shorter ;)).

Typically, people would completely ignore the fact that the additional successes on his damage resistance tests would result in the troll being KO’d much later than anyone else, regardless of whether or not the damage in question was stun.

So what if it's easier to KO a troll than kill him? It's still harder to KO him, than it is to kill another race!



But to the topic at hand - a line I didn't mean to remove from my earlier post was:

The experienced mage can cast spells 6x stronger without a significant increase in potential drain (i.e. still stun.)
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fistandantilus4....
post Oct 4 2006, 06:56 PM
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Experienced mages already take less drain than beginners. It's called centering.
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blakkie
post Oct 4 2006, 07:00 PM
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They also tend to have better foci at their disposal that can help out with drain.
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fistandantilus4....
post Oct 4 2006, 10:26 PM
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Not to mention that sine their magic rating is higher , they're more likely to take stun drain instead of physical, because they can handle more before overcasting, so they';re less likely to kill themselves. And ideally, they're smarter about their spell use, including when/how to cast high force spells.
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Zen Shooter01
post Oct 5 2006, 12:57 AM
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Basing drain resistance on Magic damages game balance. Magic is already a very, very important attribute. Using it to resist drain would practically make it the only attribute.
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PH3NOmenon
post Oct 5 2006, 11:04 PM
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if you want to give mages a seperate track for drain, i can't see any reason why not. You can even keep game balance *exactly* the same by giving them a drain track that's exactly as long as your stun track.

The extra track would give you the same wound modifiers as it fills up, and can be healed just like the stun track, with the extra requirement to do something tradition-themed while you rest. And if it fills up it spills over to P all the same, you'd pass out too.

I can't see any reason why this wouldn't be workable, the positives of such a system even outweigh all the negatives (if any, i sure can't think of any).


A mage with some amount of drain that has taken a few knocks to the head would be hella woozy though... a -6 (-3 stun, -3 magic) modifier to anything is pretty hefty...
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Garrowolf
post Oct 6 2006, 02:55 AM
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It was less about the mages and more about not limiting the rest of the characters. I was thinking that if there were easy ways to recover stun and not imbalence magic users it would make more sense to me.
If the Drain Track even stayed willpower based I think it would work but change stun to something else closer to the physical track. That way you don't end up with that glass jaw troll thing. Maybe make it based on something like an average of body and willpower.
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Fortune
post Oct 6 2006, 11:29 PM
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Stun damage doesn't really take that long to recover in the first place. A short break in the action should have most characters up and around with few to no boxes of Stun. If an emergency arises, that is what Stim Patches are for, to tide you over until your group can finally grab that short break.

I really don't see the problem.
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Dentris
post Oct 7 2006, 12:05 AM
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There is a way to recover from drain, it is called the Pain Relief power.
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Derek
post Oct 7 2006, 02:12 AM
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A long ways back, I proposed the same thing for SR3. I can't find the thread, since it was on the old forums, but here is the article I wrote up

[ Spoiler ]


It's in a spoiler tag, since it is rather long, but I thought there were some neat ideas in it, especially the magical compounds. Also, remember, it is SR3 specific, but could easily be converted over.

Dave
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lorechaser
post Oct 7 2006, 07:19 PM
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I think the main concern is that it essentially gives the mages far more power in terms of burning both drain *and* stun.

In your proposal, say a mage has will 4, and magic 4. They have 10 boxes of stun, 10 of drain. A normal mage with 5 stun won't cast a spell likely to give him 5 drain, because he'll pass out. A mage under your system might be more likely to cast a spell giving him up to 8 drain, because he can take it. It provides a bonus to mages in that sense, with no drawbacks.

If you simply say that whenever your stun + drain exceeds your max, you take that away. But then you're basically just house ruling that stun damage can be healed, drain can't, which is easier. ;)
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WhiskeyMac
post Oct 8 2006, 02:45 AM
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I like Derek's idea. It doesn't make sense that magic can heal gaping chest wounds in a few seconds but can't energize someone or take away their bruises. I think that it could be easily ported over to SR4. I don't really think it makes magic-users overpowered, just gives them another option.
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Derek
post Oct 8 2006, 03:53 AM
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Also, in reply to lorechaser, sure, it gives you a more chance to cast even though you might have some stun damage, but those penalties for both stun and drain add up quickly. Not quite as bad as SR3, where a +4 to target numbers is huge, but losing 4 dice is no small matter, either (using the example of 5 stun and 5 drain)

Dave
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lorechaser
post Oct 8 2006, 07:38 AM
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I guess I look at everything from my pov, which is that of an abusive bastard. ;)

To a normal mage, sure, that's not a huge deal.

To my mage, who was built to be sure I never had less than 14 dice to roll in any magical situation, -4 is harsh, but acceptable. Since I've armored him up to 12, it's rare he's taking anything but Stun, but I can still overcast like crazy. Heck, I may be dropping stunballs on myself, to take out my foes....

I think something like Derek (annoyingly, that's my name, so reading this thread confused the hell out of me for a bit) proposed is a more elegant, and less abusable, situation.
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hyzmarca
post Oct 8 2006, 11:16 AM
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QUOTE (WhiskeyMac)
I like Derek's idea. It doesn't make sense that magic can heal gaping chest wounds in a few seconds but can't energize someone or take away their bruises. I think that it could be easily ported over to SR4. I don't really think it makes magic-users overpowered, just gives them another option.

There are far less drastic ways to handle this, ways that don't destroy game balance. The most simple is to mark boxes of drain damage with the letter D for drain. Boxes marked D can't be healed with magic. Simple.
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