Resisting Direct Combat Spells Options

[hobgoblin]

ah yes, 1ed was the version with variable success requirements for staging?
(i got into SR late 2ed, so i never experienced that in play)

didnt the flamethrower (weapon, not spell) have a staging requirement of 20 successes or something?

[Shinobi Killfist]

I think the lowest staging was 4 for something like mana dart or I guess flamethrower. Where hell blast had a staging of 1. Heck even with a staging of 1 there was no chance of you getting damage to a level that really hurt at any of the levels of play we games at. I guess if you were a high enough initiate grade, through a powerful enough spell so they would get basically no successes in the resistance test, and then your sorcery skill was like 15 you had a chance to one shot with SR! combat spells.

It has been a long time since I played it so I' sure I am missing something though.

[Cain]

The problem was that nobody knew if a high staging was a good thing or not. For example, the original MP laser was a 12M8 weapon. You were virtually guaranteed to wound someone with it, but it was nearly impossible to kill someone. They'd be taking a moderate, and that was about it.

[FrankTrollman]

Back then armor granted automatic successes, which meant that high Staging numbers was good. They were guaranteed to get more hits than you would ever roll, so a high staging weapon was guaranteed damage, while a low staging weapon was pretty much assured to do nothing at all. Standard equipment came in at 6/6 armor, so any L2, M2, or S2 weapon was actually going to do no damage automatically.

-Frank