Full Mages and the Elemental arms race, If you can't beat 'em, join 'em? Options

[Zeittotschlager]

I'm playing in my first Shadowrun campaign, and our group has been plagued by a lack of a Full Mage who can regularly make the meetings. Unfortunately, it seems that any target worth hitting in the SR universe is going to have magical security as well as physical. This would be okay if it were not for the overwhelming power of Elementals.

An enemy Full Mage almost ALWAYS has 6 big ass elementals shielding him and attacking our poor street sams, adepts, and shamans.

So, I've been looking through my SR3 book for SOME way to effectively combat Elementals without HAVING TO HAVE 6 OF OUR OWN... But there seems to be no other way.

It strikes me as rather unbalancing... I know elementals are expensive, so in theory they should be rather rare... But Corp Mages are not going to balk at a measly 1k per force.

So should we just fight fire with fire and get another Full Mage, or is there some other way?

Thanks

-Z

[Jason Farlander]

Laser weapons and flame throwers will pop elementals pretty easily, except for fire elementals in the latter case. A water cannon should work as well, as the difference between physical and stun damage matters little with spirits. If you have the cash, weapon foci for the groggies. Depending on your GM, cold-forged iron weapons might also work as a low-cost option (they constitute "elemental metal" as far as I'm concerned).

If you have a shaman, a spirit with the concealment power is your friend. The *best* way to fight elementals is to not have to.

[Zeittotschlager]

Thanks for the info. Where did you read about lasers and iron swords being effective? We are only using the info that comes in the SR3 core book, and I don't recall seeing that.

I'm not sure how our GM would react to all of us suddenly sporting Flamethrowers and Lasers, but it'd be a laugh. :D

Anybody have thoughts on magical ways to deal with big groups of elementals without elementals of your own? A big battle with 6 elementals on either side REALLY slows down the action.

-Z

[moosegod]

Well, you can have a shaman just keep whipping up nature spirits as the spirits get cacked.

And engage the elementals in battles of wills, if you have a high enough willpower.

[The Cheshire Pen...]

Do some reconaisance work first and find out where the mage is. Use your decker or some other contact to find out where the mage works (his office in the complex, or wherever he does his regular rounds). Assuming you're going in with guns blazing (which really isn't the best way) shoot the mage first. No mage, no elementals -- pg. 113 of MitS says that spirits or elementals with a force greater than 6 generally become free spirits when the mage kacks out, and a bunch of free elementals can raise a lot of hell. Also, I can see there maybe being 6 elemental doing patrols around a fairly large compound. But not all in one place, and not all around the mage. A corp isn't going to skimp of the summoning materials, sure, but hiring a full mage is expensive as hell, and most complexes you run across shouldn't have a full mage. In the 'normal' shadowrun world, full mages are super rare, and you're much more likely to come across a sorcerer or a conjurer than a full mage. If you keep running into these full mages with packs of elementals, cook up a spell called 'slaughter elementals' -- area affect spell that deals deadly damage to elementals. At force 6, such a spell should have a drain of 4D, but if you make it exclusive and make it require a fetish, it's only got a drain of 2D. When you come across a group of elementals, -POW!- :vegm:

[Zazen]

[Moonwolf]

Geek the mage first. All the elementals will be released, and probably leave then.

[Zeittotschlager]

Lol.. I like the Slaughter Elementals option... :)

Battles of Wills don't usually work out for our boys... We're all first time Shadowrun players, so we probably could have done a better job during character creation.

I might have to mention to our GM about the rarity of Full Mages at typical installations, cuz they sure don't SEEM that rare...

Would the Magic in the Shadows book have the rules for creating a spell for slaying Elementals in particular? The GM has the book, but we really haven't gotten into it yet. Still getting the hang of the system.

Thanks a lot guys.

-Z

[The Cheshire Pen...]

MitS has the full rules on spell creation, as well as the specific spell "Slaughter (Race/Species)" on pg. 140. You could either research the spell formula on your own, or buy the full version of slaughter elementals on the street for 12,000 :nuyen: (that includes the street index) with an availability of 6/7 days,
or the restricted version of the spell that I mentioned for a paltry 6,000 :nuyen: and an availability of 3/7 days.

[lodestar]

A physad with killing hands is also good, particularly if he has distance strike , even better if he can astrally percieve. Killing hands bypasses an elemental's immunity to normal weapons.

[Backgammon]

[Tanka]

Your GM is obviously just trying to make your PC's lives a living Hell. If the Mage is an Ork or a Troll, tell your GM he's full of it and that he couldn't have 6 Elementals because of the max Cha on those two races. If not, well, remind him of the rule.

If he continues to even after you mention how stupid and repetitive it is, there are several options I see.

• Slaughter Elemental as mentioned earlier
• Stop playing while he's GM
• Do something to completely avoid the Elementals every time, and make him roll for everything

If he is just throwing them at you because he likes them and he wants to kill you off, dump him as a GM, it isn't worth it.

There are other ways to geek entire parties besides 6 Elementals. Tell him to get original.

[gknoy]

[Prospero]

They can get pretty far away, actually - (CHA+WILL+Magic)x 10 Meters. So you'll have to be pretty far to be out of the area they can roam around in, probably farther than you can get and still be inside of the corp compound. I think others have said everything else useful, but I'll reiterate what I think are the most usefull:

Make sure your GM understands how rare full mages are and how expensive elementals are to have around (in terms of time and money - summoning 6 elementals of decent force is going to take at least two full workdays for the mage, probably more).

Physads, weapon foci, oh my! These things can kick elemental ass if in the right hands.

Elemental damage. Hard to prepare for in terms of every single type of elemental, but effective if you can pull it off.

Another good thing to do against elementals is to summon up a bunch of watchers and sick the little buggers on the elementals. They aren't really going to do much damage, but they can distract the elementals for a while and help in any of the above tactics. Ask your GM to show you the watcher thing in MitS (in the Sprits chapter).

[moosegod]

Actually, this all comes down the the elemental vulnerabilities

Earth is vulnerable to air
Fire is vulnerable to water
Water is vulnerable to earth
Air is vulnerable to fire.

So find weapons that somehow fill those spots. It seem like cold steel would work wonderfully for the "earth" requirement.

[Ol' Scratch]

If I'm not mistaking, by the rules elementals are not immune to their own element. A flamethrower is just as effective against a fire elemental as it is an earth elemental, though it's most effective against water elementals (since they have a Vulnerability to it).

[moosegod]

Right.

That is true. However, some GM's have ruled the opposite.

eg. It's a house rule, so :noflame:

[Cheese Emperor]

And uh, how'd you come to that set of vulnerabilities moosegod?

[Dende]

In chinese Mythos, and other asian, mostly because they spread around... Iron pins were driven into demons and dragons to stop them from all magical ability, the pin disrupted their magical flow... Given that, I woud assume Iron a damned good weapon against creatures like demons, dragons, and oni...etc\

And moosegod's vunerablites and not unlike many old stories...and current vuners of elemental dragons in Exalted.

[moosegod]

[Cheese Emperor]

Works for me.

[Tanka]

I thought it was:

Earth:Air
Fire:Water

Vice versa as well, obviously.

[moosegod]

I should say, that was from memory. I don't have the book in front of me.

[Tanka]

My vulnerabilities sound more like it, not because I said it, but because they make sense.

Fire evaporates water.
Water douses fire.

Between Earth and Air, it was just because Fire and Water are polar opposites anyways. :P

[Birdy]