Bad statistics make a weak argument, the Illusion issue in SR4A Options

[Draco18s]

I have to congratulate with you Mr. Wyrm, even the simple idea of going to search the formulas was enough to give me an headache, your post is very usefull; thanks for your commitment.

Nono, Wyrm ate cheesecakes (and anything between him and the cheesecake). ;P

Sorry, joke from another forum.

But yes, the solution drove me mad, had to ask my sister what the class of math was that was about arranging numbers, after a minute she came up with "permutations and probability" which got me what I needed (eventually).

[Demerzel]

But yes, the solution drove me mad, had to ask my sister what the class of math was that was about arranging numbers, after a minute she came up with "permutations and probability" which got me what I needed (eventually).

From a pedagogical perspective you should consider looking up Binomial Distributions. What you are looking for here is pretty simply handled with the math for binomial distributions. In fact the Excel (Or OpenOffice Calc if youre into open source) function that with some creativity you can get all these answers from is Binomdist.

[pbangarth]

Yes, I used a method including binomial distribution to come up with those stats.

There have been several of the latest posts that suggest I am missing what people are trying to say. I will read through some of the material again to see if that is true, and if so, rejoin the discussion better informed.

[Zurai]

I don't know the SR4.5 page reference, but check p172 of the BBB4.0. "This limitation does not apply to Edge dice that are used to boost a spell." It's at the very end of the Force section.

Still, being forced to use Edge is still a suboptimal fix. You'll be burning through Edge very quickly if you're using it on every routine illusion spell.

Edit: p182, SR4.5 has the exact same quote. Edge dice can break the Force cap.

Ahh. Thank you for the correction. If only all of these little rules were, y'know, centrally located....... Again, thanks.

[Jaid]

Easily reacehd dice pool? Are you mad? I have a mage (Magic 6, Spellcasting 7, Powerfocus 2) who is by definition of his skill better than the best of the best. Yet, he will have trouble to fool technology with spells designed to fool technology. How does that make sense?
Sometimes it is not enough for rules to work (and this does only work for min/maxed cheese casters and even then barely), they need to work for regular people inseide the gameworld too. At least unless Fluff does not change to support "this spell will only fullfil it's function when you achieve mastery of magic at least of draconic standard"

DP of 14+ easily reached my ass.

that's your dicepool against everything. for an illusionist, it's relatively quite easy to get 14 (though he'll still be highly skilled, just not to the same degree as your mage).

magic 5 spellcasting 5 mentor spirit 2 specialisation 2. if we wanted, we could also throw in a power focus (or spellcasting focus, if the mage is *really* tight on resources) 2, a spirit using aid sorcery, a ritual team casting the spell, and so forth.

and while that kind of mage isn't likely to be common, it is likely to be quite common amongst shadowrunning mages who specialise in illusions vs things with high OR.

[GrafZhL]

For everyone who is still interested in probabilities I coded a little php script. Nothing too fency but at least you don't have to do the math yourself :P

Probability calculator

Have fun playing with it :)

[knasser]

How did we get to 14 dice being sufficient? Even if you're just overcoming security cameras, that's going to be a slightly better than average chance of success. If I'm going to build a plan about using Physical Mask to sneak through a gate, I'm going to want a better than 60% chance or else we're just going to go with a plan that we're confident we can actually pull off. Combat spells can be chancy because there are enough of them being flung about that average results matter. But things like Illusion spells are used as one-shot parts of plans (ime), so you need them to be low risk. And that's just security cameras. Trying to sneak past a drone isn't going to happen.

If some are arguing that magicians shouldn't be able to affect drones unless very powerful, then that's their preference. But if the argument is that 14 dice is sufficient for them to be effective, then I personally don't think it is. My thoughts.

K.

[knasser]

For everyone who is still interested in probabilities I coded a little php script. Nothing too fency but at least you don't have to do the math yourself (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Probability calculator

Have fun playing with it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Nice! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Demerzel]

How did we get to 14 dice being sufficient?

Step 1: Magician casts Physical Mask.
Step 2: Rigger looks at you via his car's sensors.
Step 3: If Rigger says you don't look any different try it again.

Physical mask to get past a checkpoint could be cast minutes before or more and confirmed. Big badda boom has to be instantaneous.

[Mr. Unpronouncea...]

You missed step 2.5: if mage takes more than a box or two of drain over the however-many-castings it takes to succeed at the spell, put off the shadowrun until another day.
And step 2.75, whine and complain if the mage gets too beat just doing the prep-work to be useful during the actual run.

Because, force 6+ is overcasting, thus physical drain, for nearly all mages.

Or do you handwave drain out of existance out of combat? If so, I can guess why you think mages are overpowered.

[knasser]

Mr. Unpronouncable beat me to it, but yes - drain is a risk. I get the advantage of being able to do Illusion spells out of combat sometimes and it's valid, but people get too hung up on the averages around here. They think that because the mage will soak 2P drain on average and they only cast spells that do 2P, that this means they'll always be. What it actually means is that sometimes the mage will soak 4P (redundantly), sometimes the mage will soak 2P and sometimes the mage will soak 0P and take the damage. If 2P is what you average and you cast a 2P drain spell three times, the real average is that you'll take damage.

[AllTheNothing]

For everyone who is still interested in probabilities I coded a little php script. Nothing too fency but at least you don't have to do the math yourself (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Probability calculator

Have fun playing with it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

How nice, I've read this right after having finished my own excel version. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)
It was worth the pain anyway.

[AllTheNothing]

Mr. Unpronouncable beat me to it, but yes - drain is a risk. I get the advantage of being able to do Illusion spells out of combat sometimes and it's valid, but people get too hung up on the averages around here. They think that because the mage will soak 2P drain on average and they only cast spells that do 2P, that this means they'll always be. What it actually means is that sometimes the mage will soak 4P (redundantly), sometimes the mage will soak 2P and sometimes the mage will soak 0P and take the damage. If 2P is what you average and you cast a 2P drain spell three times, the real average is that you'll take damage.

How big the pool is?
A mage with 12 dice (5 willpower + 5 drain attribute + 2 fetish) wiil have a probability of the 60,69% of getting 4 or more hits, 81,89% of getting at least 3 hits, 94,60% for a minimum of 2 hits and 99,23% for 1, zero hits would have a probability of the 0,77%.

[Shinobi Killfist]

another factor in the OR 6 thing to work into your statistics is the modifier for sustaining spells. -2 for each improved invisibility spell you have up makes it really hard even with a huge pool to hit OR6. Before OR4 was hard, now OR6 is basically impossible. I guess you can do AoE illusin cheese, where one spell does everything but I don't think that helps the game much.

[Draco18s]

From a pedagogical perspective you should consider looking up Binomial Distributions. What you are looking for here is pretty simply handled with the math for binomial distributions. In fact the Excel (Or OpenOffice Calc if youre into open source) function that with some creativity you can get all these answers from is Binomdist.

At the time I was merely trying to solve the problem, not solve it in the most elegant solution. For instance, I could have counted out all of the possible ways to roll 4 or more dice (that's about 14000 possibilities). It'd take a while but I could do it. Only I knew a set of math existed to do that for me, I just didn't have the set of math needed to do the or more part, so I did a simple sum (it was only 10 elements, most of which I could copy-paste without needing to change anything).

I also wanted a generalized solution that could be applied to N dice with S or more successes. While my solution required me to change my SUM() formula to get a different S or to add more columns for a different N, the amount of work was low enough that it satisfied my criteria.

[pbangarth]

OK, so I had to check through a selection of posts before my initial one in this thread to be sure I wasn't imagining the conditions and positions against which I argued. Of course, search doesn't like little words like '14' or '50%', does it?

As it turns out, I did not fabricate as a straw man the position against which I presented the stats, the one that basically states SR4A OR has made many spells useless. Below is a sampling of posts, put out before my response here, in which terms or ideas occur such as '50% chance before the changes', 'need 18 dice to succeed', 'no chance now', 'next to useless', 'unusable', 'unreliable',or 'can only succeed with Edge' { a bit on this one below}.

Thread: "20th edition changes" - some posts: 119, 394, 407, 487, 540, 544
Thread: "SR4-WOW" - some posts: 3, 25
Thread: "List of spells affected by the 4A OR table" - some posts: 4, 14, 23, 25
Thread: "PETITION" - some posts: 51, 295

I figured having over a dozen examples is enough to show I wasn't imagining it or making it up. The statistic I calculated demonstrated that these positions are overstated. One counterexample is enough to contradict a categorical statement such as 'impossible'. If someone can demonstrate to me how I calculated incorrectly, I will gladly retract my argument. From this calculation, based on a pool of 14 dice, I extrapolated that, yes, things got harder. No, they did not get impossible.

Impossibility is far more reasonable when talking about characters with dice pools of around 6; 'average characters' as some described them. The entire rule system is based on PCs built with a 400 BP chargen. I haven't tried it yet, but I understand the 750 point karmagen system generates characters in the same level, at least. So, if you didn't spend many BP on MAG or Spellcasting, or aids thereof, then what did you spend it on? where are your character's dice pools bigger? Is he a magician, or something else. A 'Jack of All Trades'? (And it's corollary?) I understand the attraction of playing characters who are not gods, I just wonder whether it is fair to judge a rule system based on the needs of characters who are handicapped by the choice of their players. I am 'average' in AGI and a combat skill or two. I might be able to stand against a ganger, but put me up against a trained special forces soldier who now works as a 'security consultant'? Forget it! Why should mages be any different, if they are average? An OR 6 is at the top of the opposition scale for them, just as the soldier is for me.

Yes, I know those descriptions in the BBB about 'best of the best'. That fluff stands in stark contrast to the reality that it is in fact easy to come up with the BP to give your PC a dice pool in the 14 range in something important. Argue the fluff, not the ease of the mechanics.

An interesting parallel position was presented by a few people, being that it is unreasonable and unfair for it to be so difficult for a character who is designed to cast illusions to affect things with those illusions. This was put forth by people who -do- see their characters as specialists. In the SR4 system, it wasn't difficult, or else the character was not really designed to be such a specialist after all. The new system does make it harder for them, even if they have been in the shadows for a while. I honestly don't know why the developers made the change. As far as I can tell they haven't told us. But the examples presented to support this position use characters out of chargen. My question - please, an honest one - is, "Should characters right out of chargen be the benchmark for measuring whether the toughest OR objects in existence are defeatable?" Right out of chargen is 'rookie' status in the shadows, no?

A cogent point was made about Force limiting hits. This has been the most telling argument so far. It was suggested that almost all characters out of chargen have to overcast or use Edge in order to have any chance against an OR of 6. I had not considered this before, and it certainly does put some characters a lot closer to that 'impossible' or 'nerfed' category. I come back again to the above question about rookies. Nevertheless, I concede that, compounded with the changes to advancement, objects in the OR 6 range need extraordinary efforts, or extraordinary magicians to deal with them.

I guess the ordinary magician will have little choice but to depend on her mundane teammates until she becomes extraordinary through experience. If you really want to play an 'average' magician, then why do you not look forward to the pleasure of training her up to excellence? And living in fear sometimes, needing her buddies to do what she can't - yet?

[Demerzel]

If so, I can guess why you think mages are overpowered.

I wonder why you're implying that I think Mages are overpowered. It's a pretty unjustified and unsupportable statement.

[Zurai]

But the examples presented to support this position use characters out of chargen. My question - please, an honest one - is, "Should characters right out of chargen be the benchmark for measuring whether the toughest OR objects in existence are defeatable?" Right out of chargen is 'rookie' status in the shadows, no?

I'm sorry, but that's an utterly bogus question. OR6 is NOT "the toughest OR objects in existence". That'd be something like a modern battleship or aircraft carrier. OR6 is computers, drones, complex toxic wastes, and vehicles - except it's not limited to OR6. It's "OR6PLUS". That means it goes higher. The bigger and more complicated, the higher the OR threshold.

So, no, a mage right out of chargen shouldn't be able to affect the toughest OR objects in existence - massive milspec vehicles, space stations, aerospace vehicles, and the like.

They SHOULD be able to affect computers and (standard sized) drones without needing to be completely specialized and optimized.

[Draco18s]

I'm sorry, but that's an utterly bogus question. OR6 is NOT "the toughest OR objects in existence". That'd be something like a modern battleship or aircraft carrier.

This this self-rationalized OR table. It puts drones at OR4 to OR5 depending on size (or possibly complexity at the GM's discretion) with OR6 being even larger objects and I went up to OR8 (small buildings, eg. stuffer shacks).

I'll likely take a look at the statistics presented in this thread and move a few things around, depending on what an "average mage" and a "basic specialist mage" have as dicepools.

Another thought I had elsewhere was two kinds of OR: damage/physical and foolery/mental.
Simply, any tech object that is incapable of percieving anything (desktop computer like todays without a webcam) are mOR1 (the spell still needs a hit to succeed) all the way up to drones with high rating Clear Softs at probably mOR7. Versus the pOR1 objects being small things (easy damaged) to OR8 large things (huge amounts of material, strong structure, etc).

[Tunnel Rat]

Actually, instead of calculating out the dice pools of specialized characters, why don't we start calculating the odds for the characters in the SR4 book. You know, the 'sample characters'. These are "The shadow folk you'll meet in your neighborhood" (to borrow from Sesame Street (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) ) These are the characters we're supposed to be using for 'new players' and for 'quick games' or when the GM is looking for the stats of a generic character. What are the odds for these folks?

[Draco18s]

What are their dice pools?

[GrafZhL]

Combat mage
Magic: 5
Edge: 2
Spellcasting: 5
Both, p and s damage track: 10
Affected spells: The combat mage does not have any of the spells, that seem to be affected by the rule changes (except for changed combat spells rules, Cpt. Obvious).

Occult Investigator
Magic: 3
Edge: 3
Spellcasting: 3 (Comes with Sorcery Skill Group: 3)
Both, p and s damage track: 10
Affected spells: Ignite, Improved Invisibility

Radical Eco-Shaman
Magic: 5
Edge: 2
Spellcasting: 3 (Comes with Sorcery Skill Group: 3)
Spirit Mentor: Raven (don't know if that matters)
p damage track: 10
s damage track: 11
Affected spells: Chaotic World

Street Shaman
Magic: 5
Edge: 1
Spellcasting: 3 (Comes with Sorcery Skill Group: 3)
Spirit Mentor: Rat (don't know if that matters)
p damage track: 11
s damage track: 10
Affected spells: Improved Invisibility

[knasser]

Another thought I had elsewhere was two kinds of OR: damage/physical and foolery/mental.
Simply, any tech object that is incapable of percieving anything (desktop computer like todays without a webcam) are mOR1 (the spell still needs a hit to succeed) all the way up to drones with high rating Clear Softs at probably mOR7. Versus the pOR1 objects being small things (easy damaged) to OR8 large things (huge amounts of material, strong structure, etc).

I think the simplest thing you could do (whether or not it meets your needs or not is something else), is to separate out sensors from whatever they're mounted on. I.e. if you use Improved Invisibility to get past a drone, then your threshold is that of the cameras mounted on the drone (i.e. OR 4 in the errata), rather than that of the drone itself (OR 6+). This makes a good difference to the needed pool, maybe enough to be tolerable to those who don't want mages to have to be heavily min-maxed to pull this off, but it doesn't affect all the non-Illusion spells which necessarily target the whole device.

Bam! You have your bonus to Illusion spells, you keep your motivation to use Indirect Combat spells and the general hindering of magicians against technology.

Unless anyone can see any reasons why this wouldn't work, then I shall be doing this in my game, I think.

[knasser]

Nice idea. Using your own probability calculator, here we go...

Combat mage
Magic: 5
Edge: 2
Spellcasting: 5
Both, p and s damage track: 10
Affected spells: The combat mage does not have any of the spells, that seem to be affected by the rule changes (except for changed combat spells rules, Cpt. Obvious).

Has an Indirect Combat spell so will ignore doing odds for a direct one.

Occult Investigator
Magic: 3
Edge: 3
Spellcasting: 3 (Comes with Sorcery Skill Group: 3)
Both, p and s damage track: 10
Affected spells: Ignite, Improved Invisibility

Chance of fooling an ordinary security camera with Improved Invisibility: 10%
Chance of fooling an ordinary drone with Improved Invisibility: 0.14% (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Likely drain taken from affecting camera with Imp. Invis. if cast at minimum necessary Force: 0P
Likely drain taken from affecting drone with Imp. Invis. if cast at minimum necessary Force: 2P.

Chance of Igniting a pool of petrol: 64%
Rest of ignite chances the same as Improved Invisbility
Likely drain taken is : 0P, 0P and 1P respectively.

Radical Eco-Shaman
Magic: 5
Edge: 2
Spellcasting: 3 (Comes with Sorcery Skill Group: 3)
Spirit Mentor: Raven (don't know if that matters)
p damage track: 10
s damage track: 11
Affected spells: Chaotic World


Chance of affecting a normal security camera with Chaotic World: 25%
Chance of affecting a normal drone with Chaotic World: 1.97%

Likely drain taken from affecting camera if cast at minimum necessary Force: 2S
Likely drain taken from affecting drone if cast at minimum necessary Force: 3P

Street Shaman
Magic: 5
Edge: 1
Spellcasting: 3 (Comes with Sorcery Skill Group: 3)
Spirit Mentor: Rat (don't know if that matters)
p damage track: 11
s damage track: 10
Affected spells: Improved Invisibility


Chance of fooling an ordinary security camera with Improved Invisibility: 25.86%
Chance of fooling an ordinary drone with Improved Invisibility: 1.97% (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Likely drain taken from affecting camera with Imp. Invis. if cast at minimum necessary Force: 1S
Likely drain taken from affecting drone with Imp. Invis. if cast at minimum necessary Force: 2P.

Summary: I can't see any of these characters making many attempts at using most of these spells because the chance of success is so low. Edge obviously produces exceptional cases as it is meant to.

[The Mack]

How did we get to 14 dice being sufficient? Even if you're just overcoming security cameras, that's going to be a slightly better than average chance of success. If I'm going to build a plan about using Physical Mask to sneak through a gate, I'm going to want a better than 60% chance or else we're just going to go with a plan that we're confident we can actually pull off. Combat spells can be chancy because there are enough of them being flung about that average results matter. But things like Illusion spells are used as one-shot parts of plans (ime), so you need them to be low risk. And that's just security cameras. Trying to sneak past a drone isn't going to happen.

You know, in all this debating back and forth, I don't think I've stopped to tell you that, well...You rock.

Thanks for being level headed, agreeable and for probably making the most sense out of all of us on both sides of this issue.

If some are arguing that magicians shouldn't be able to affect drones unless very powerful, then that's their preference. But if the argument is that 14 dice is sufficient for them to be effective, then I personally don't think it is. My thoughts.

They are, and unjustifiably so.

They continually forget about the disadvantages that come with both success and failure for mages, chiefly drain and the massive karma investment it takes to play one.

My question - please, an honest one - is, "Should characters right out of chargen be the benchmark for measuring whether the toughest OR objects in existence are defeatable?"

No I don't believe so.

But I also don't believe security cameras and run of the mill drones should constitute "the toughest OR objects in existence", and that would be reserved for top end prototypes, or highly advanced milispec drones and with large, or even massive vehicles being the toughest with ORs well beyond what the basic table shows. I wouldn't put an aircraft carrier at 6 for example, as that would be exceedingly low in my opinion.

Right out of chargen is 'rookie' status in the shadows, no?

Yeah, but that doesn't mean Street Sammies can't hit their targets 50% of the time. If any other archetype got saddled with such a huge chance of failure AND had the risk of taking stun damage, every time they did so succeed or fail after paying exorbitant amounts of karma for said abilities - people would be up in arms.