Limiting Spellcasters Options

[Garrowolf]

I know that I'm the one that usually is writing about things that would make magic users more powerful so this may throw people for a loop.

I decided to limit the magic attribute to 9 just like all the other abilities. You can initiate up to grade 9 as well, but you have to reach a magic of 5 in order to take your first initiation.

Physads are not screwed by this because I decided to allow them to gain physad abilities as metamagic. I was thinking about limiting certain physad abilities to metamagic only.
That way there would be a basic and an advanced list.

Part of the reason for this was reading about the increadibly powerful spells that could be generated at force 12 and higher (the posting about the spirit of man). I decided I didn't want to deal with that anywhere in the future.

I was also thinking of limiting Foci that you can use to half your magic rating. Low level foci (1-3) would be fairly cheap and not require strange materials. Above that you get more expensive. The ones with the expensive materials would be able to break this limit but would max out at 8 with anything higher then that would just be plot.

[Edward]

I don’t think your going to achieve your desired result.

At magic 6 you can already cast force 12 spells (and my characters do, without worrying drain) in fact I wouldn’t want to get my magic above 8 because at that point I would loose the ability to magically heal my drain from force 9 spirits (the summoning of which became an every run occurrence).

A better method would be to make drain scary, for starters say that any damage afflicted buy drain can not be healed magically and is harder to treat with biotech, if that isn’t enough then increase the drain codes. This doesn’t make it harder to cast al powerful spells but it dose make the idea less attractive, even with magic 88 your still don’t have more than about 20 dice to resist the drain.

I think the limit on focus force is interesting. I think however it should come with a removal of the maximum number for foci bonded (change this number to in use), thus a magician could easily have a focus for everything, and spares in safe houses but could not have a single all powerful focus (remember no more than one focus can add to any single dice pool)

[Jack Kain]

Wha about an unavoidable drain for overcasting. Say instead of resisting the physical overcasting drain you only convert it back to stun.

[Garrowolf]

I like that idea about the foci. Maybe I'll use that.

I was thinking about what if the drain from spells was not force/2 but force if you go over your magic rating. The other thing I was thinking was limiting overcasting to Magic + 3.

I was also thinking of limiting conjuring so that you can't overcast for spirits. They just won't show up. (Actually I didn't know that you could - is this how they are doing it?)

The other thing that might work is you can't summon anything over a certain power level without an extended ritual. You can only quick summon smaller spirits.

[Ryu]

I remember a suggestion of counting the full amount of overcasting at full force for drain rather than halving it. Might be a bit much, but helps.

[Serbitar]

[Thanee]

[lorechaser]

And to be fair: Getting a magic rating of 10, even starting at 6, is obscene.

Assuming you have a magical group, you pay for each initiation.

You need Grade 4.

1: 11
2: 13
3: 16
4: 18

So that's 58.

Then you buy magic.

7: 21
8: 24
9: 27
10: 30.

So that's 102.

That's a total of 160 Karma to get to magic 10. And that doesn't increase your spellcasting dice or drain resistance, so at magic 10, 160 karma later, you're still using, say, 11 dice to cast and 10 to resist.

[Thanee]

Actually, it does increase spellcasting dice. :)

It's pretty much the point of Magic to increase the dice pools for active magical tests.

Bye
Thanee

[lorechaser]

It does increase by your magic - I was referring more towards your spellcasting pool, power foci, etc.

[CradleWorm]

Actually, I think the best way to fix this problem is to not allow magicians to magically heal damage from drain.

This is a house rule that I have implemented in my own games and it seems to be very effective at controlling overcasting.

Also, you might want to take a good look at the number of karma your giving out in a night. A good evening should result in 4-5 karma. Thats not just team awards, but total for the player.

To get a magic of 9, you have to spend to get initiation and magic and assuming your character starts at a 6 for magic you spend 119 of karma...

Initiate 1 - 13
Initiate 2 - 16
Initiate 3 - 18

Magic 7 - 21
Magic 8 - 24
Magic 9 - 27

Even if your character is getting all 5 karma every night that is still 23 game sessions to raise your magic that high.

My group plays once a week... so thats 23 weeks to do it. And for 23 weeks of effort they can now cast force 9 spells without taking physical drain, but if they cast them at force 10 they still can get hurt and can't heal it.

[Thanee]

Uhm...

You said, with Magic 10 you are still rolling 11 dice to cast... that's only with a Spellcasting skill of 1 (and no other bonuses).

Magic directly adds into spellcasting dice pools, because they calculate like Magic+Spellcasting(+other).

Bye
Thanee

[Fortune]

[Garrowolf]

Okay let me put it another way

It's not just that I'm limiting my PCs. I'm limiting magic in the my setting. No human spellcaster will be able to do more then a force 12 spell. Overcasting would be limited to magic +3. I'm thinking about getting rid of power foci.

I like to magic to be versitile and useful but I don't want the power level that high in the setting. Only Dragons would be able to go past that, and if you see one of those in one of my games then I have decided to kill your character off.

I can't see any character that would not be totally disruptive to my game, even as an NPC, that powerful. Therefore they don't exist. I think if a GM pulls out a character like that then the PCs are going to feel railroaded too much. They are going to be staring at the man behind the curtain too much wondering why he has lost his nut.

[Jaid]

i suppose you could do that. the main thing that needs doing though, imo, is to drop the power of magic when someone has at the upper end of chargen. i don't think people are worried about the power level of grade 12 initiates, because they are supposed to be insanely powerful. furthermore, by the time you've gotten even halfway there, the group has probably retired, or created houserules to allow nonmagical characters indefinite progression, since they've run out of useful stuff to spend karma on long ago.

the main thing i would say (and you've got a fairly good houserul there IMO) is to limit the upper end of chargen spellcasters/summoners. force 12. this means that a magic 6 character could, at most, summon force 9 spirits of man, which can cast force 12 spells at best... still scary, but not nearly as bad as the force 24 spells which were previously possible from force 12 spirits.

furthermore, this does a lot to make the lower magic ratings a bit more viable. thus, someone could take the quality that causes them to awaken later in life (or they could build someone who has only just recently become a magician, and has magic rating 1 or 2) and they will actually be able to be somewhat useful.

consider the overcasting = magic + 3 houserule yoinked for any game i GM =P

[Garrowolf]

Glad you like it.

I was also thinking about how to keep the spirits more reasonable. Maybe either do the same thing for spirits as for overcasting. The other thing was thinking was what if it took metamagic to overcast summoning at all.

On the other hand I don't want spirits to go pif too easily and I don't want to make them too powerful just to make them last longer. Maybe alter the immunity to normal weapons power but to what?

BTW I've got my rules so far on my website if your interested

[Ryu]

The contacts alone are worth a visit, even if you like me don´t care that much for house rules. Thanks!

[Wakshaani]

You could also go Old School, and simply remove the (F/2) section from drain code and make it F +/- modifier.

This makes spellcasting a BEAR, and it'll slow 'em way down.

"Manaball, Force 8! Hah!"

"Okaydokie. That's an Overcast, so, take a drain vs 8 Phsyical."

"... owie ..."

[Jaid]

how far back does that go? iirc, it was F/2 in SR3 as well, was it not? (though of course, in SR3 the really nasty spells could deal deadly drain, even if the power of that deadly drain was low... )

[Fortune]

[Ryu]

Full force in drain calculation would be as crippling as it was back in the day. You´d just see ultra-drain-effective spells from that day on.

[OneTrikPony]

Um... Hey, what if we all house rule that damage from drain cannot be healed by magic.





:silly: Sorry Fortune, I couldn't help myself

[Fortune]

's alright. ;)

[Thanee]

[Glyph]

You need to keep in mind that Force: 12 spells are NOT that game-breaking. All that they are, really, are spells that have a decent chance of a one-shot takedown. And with counterspelling and Edge, even a Force: 12 spell won't automatically work. Plus, pity the spellcaster who gets a critical glitch.

In SR3, you could get the same effect with a Force: 6 manabolt cast at D damage - the difference being that you weren't taking physical damage from Drain, and with all of the options available to spellcasters (elemental aid, foci, totem or elemental mage bonuses), you could often take out a target and suffer NO Drain at all.

However, there is one thing that I agree with you on. I, too, dislike how there are hard caps for everything else, but not magic. Magic being able to eventually surpass everything else was a problem in previous editions, too, but limiting everything else exacerbates the problem. Yeah, it may take that mage 160 karma to improve his magic to 10, but at least he can DO that.