Is magic broken, let's keep it simple Options

[WeaverMount]

What do you think?

[Stahlseele]

Yes and Yes i think.

[Caadium]

I voted that I do not think that Magic is broken but I also admit that I've seen magic break a game. This only seems like a contradiction (as the popular votes match) until you think about it this way:

I've seen magic break a game. I've seen different tech builds break a game. There are MANY options that can break a game, therefore I don't feel that magic is any more broken than them and therefore I don't consider it to be 'broken' by itself.

[Socinus]

I think a game is only as broken as its GM allows it to be. If the GM finds that a particular character is overly powerful then they should be flexible enough to adjust things a little to account for that.

[ludomastro]

No and No.

I don't think that magic as originally written is broken, and I definitely don't think that SR4A magic is broken. I have never had a mage break a game - oddball specialist, yes, mage, no.

[suppenhuhn]

Yes and Yes.

I think what brakes magic is the unlimited amount of initiation that is possible whereas a mundane character starts almost at the height of his abilities.
Many of the drawbacks magic has simply are not relevant for somewhat high level initiates anymore, that aims especially towards possession and cyberware/bioware implants.
IMHO magic should be capped at essence, maybe allow 1 or 2 levels of initiation and raise skill caps to 12 or so.

/edit
that'S not aimed at magicians btw, but at all awakened chars.
There's simply no crunchy reason to play a mundane.

[Malicant]

Or maybe you're just wrong? Yes, sounds about right. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

[knasser]

At the time of posting, the votes are: 6 to 16 and 10 to 12 for the respective questions and options.

Therefore this poll says that even amongst those have seen a mage break their game, they're not attributing the cause to being the magic system itself. I've not had a magician break a game, but I've come very close to a pure Samurai breaking my game. I think the issue may be that Shadowrun allows a wide range of abilities to be produced by players with a 400BP build. And I want to be clear that it's a good thing, imo, that this is so. But it does mean that if you have a group that's mostly on one level but someone introduces a character that's at a noticably higher level, they can appear game-breaking.

[Maelstrome]

i dont think its broken. i really dont think any of sr is broken. there are a few things i dont think belong but thats it.

anything can only be as broken as a game master lets it be. every group ive been in had super specialists in it. a few guys were combat monsters. i was a magic monster, and we had a guy that was a matrix monster. and i never consider any of it broken.

[suppenhuhn]

Or maybe you're just wrong? Yes, sounds about right. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

So, where is a mundane performing better then an awakened?

[Malicant]

So, where is a mundane performing better then an awakened?

Since you are being so delightfully vague: yes, right over there.

[suppenhuhn]

Since you are being so delightfully vague: yes, right over there.

+1

[Maelstrome]

ive seen cybered mundanes take out magic users. ive seen non cybered mundanes take out people just as fast.

guns dont cause drain and bullets are cheap. caseless ammo is harder to trace if at all.

[Degausser]

I think BBB magic is not broken. It is fine as it is. As the book notes, you cannot go all day casting spells with no ill effects. At some point, no matter how good you are, you are going to suffer drain (by rolling poorly) and then you become crappier and crappier. Yes magic is very effective, yes it has it's place, but it is not super powerful compared to other things, like a fully tricked out street sam, or a hacker. (I don't care how awesome of a mage you are, you can't be a great mage and still hack. I have yet to see a 400BP mage hacker beat a 400 BP mundane hacker. And you NEED hackers to take care of security on runs.)

Now, I think shadowrun has problems in the SOURCEBOOKS. Augmentation provides rules for a couple additional pieces of cyber/bioware. Nothing that breaks the bank, but they are all pretty cool. Street magic and other books though, give Magic a huge boost, that I think gives them far better powers than someone else. When you roll up with your posessed blood mage bogady-boo, it gets pretty out of hand pretty fast. just my two cents.

[Sir_Psycho]

I think that magic can be broken, but it is so dependant on the player's attitude. Sure, spells and spirits are pretty powerful, but the cost of creating a decent magician, such as the cost for the Magic Attribute, the Conjuring and Sorcery skill groups, Drain stats, etc. basically preclude an average 400bp/750karma magician being anything but a magician. It's hard to make a well rounded magician, I find. They are in some ways specialists, but spells and spirits allow them to have a wider range of abilities, although not all their weaknesses can really be accounted for, I find.

With that said, I've never played with a magician who broke the game. Of course it's possible, I just don't see it as a huge problem. I also don't think the SR4A changes were really necessary. Spells that are affected by the new Object Resistance rulings were already pretty monstrous in terms of drain, and now they're unlikely to succeed as well. As has been discussed to death, there is little change to direct combat spells when you take into account overcasting being unchanged, which seems to encourage it.

[Cain]

I've seen it recently. A mage in my game successfully bound a Force 16 spirit, with over 9 services. A Force 16 spirit is impossible to hurt with mundane means, and is highly resistant to magical ones as well. With careful use of its services, the team became impossible to affect: for example, F16 Concealment means they're effectively invisible.

That doesn't mean the system overall is broken, but it does mean it has parts that break easily. Two totally different things.

[fistandantilus4....]

The most broken characters I've seen are always mundanes that make substantial use of tech and cyber, with the occassional nasty little adept w/ cyber. It takes a lot longer for a mage to get to game breaking levels than it does for a mundane with money.

[Socinus]

There's simply no crunchy reason to play a mundane.

How about fun?

Shadowrun isnt about performing well nor is it a quest for Ubermensch.

Give me a clever player with a mundane over an ordinary one with the best spellcaster any day of the week. Cleverness and skill can beat out high stats consistently. Perfectly example, I was watching a game online and the arch-nemesis of this game was a crazy good spellcaster NPC. I personally thought he was almost un-beatable but one of the players proved me wrong. They were battling in a warehouse that housed industrial supplies, including tanks of oxygen and other industrial gasses. The player took a shot at a tank near the spellcaster, broke it open, and the tank blew up. It took out half the warehouse and dinged up the protagonists rather much, but the spellcaster was done for.

Its being clever that makes a strong character, not stats.

[WeaverMount]

There's simply no crunchy reason to play a mundane.

How about fun?

Seriously if the devs wanted to make SR more fun they should have lowered the cost of fun to (new rating) x 2

[Malicant]

I've seen it recently. A mage in my game successfully bound a Force 16 spirit, with over 9 services. A Force 16 spirit is impossible to hurt with mundane means, and is highly resistant to magical ones as well. With careful use of its services, the team became impossible to affect: for example, F16 Concealment means they're effectively invisible.

This is plain scary. But nothing Gauss weaponry can't take care off. I hope.

That spirit must have had some sucker rolls, really...

[Degausser]

There's simply no crunchy reason to play a mundane.

I am going to go with at least one.

BP

Making an awakened character means an automatic deduction of 5, 10, or 15 BP, plus an additional 40 or 65 (for rating 5 or 6 magic)BPs for buying your magic attribute up. If you want to make an adept hacker, that is basically 45 points off of your character. Sure you can boost your hacking skills, and that is good, but you still need to spend a ton of BPs on cash for your commlink and programs, plus all those skills you need (Hacking skill group, computers skill group, plus whatever other skills you will need as a hacker to survive.) Meanwhile, a mundane hacker can be spending his BP on more skills, more attributes, or good qualities like "Natural Hardening" or "Codeslinger," and many of these qualities cannot be bought later with karma. In short, the crunchy reason to play a mundane is to save on BP.

[Draco18s]

The only magic I've seen that broke a game was when the toxic shaman used Acid Aura at the table (we needed a new table).

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Maelstrome]

Its being clever that makes a strong character, not stats.

thank you very much. could not have said it better myself.

[JonathanC]

I think a game is only as broken as its GM allows it to be. If the GM finds that a particular character is overly powerful then they should be flexible enough to adjust things a little to account for that.

While this is always true, it is also a cop-out to defend poorly balanced rulesets. Magic is too versatile in Shadowrun, as it allows mages to replace nearly any other role in the game, often with the same basic build. Sure, you can't hack a node with it, but unless you're doing data collection, you probably will never need to hack anything if you have a mage. Need to get somewhere? Movement spirit power. Need something dead? A mage has several damage options, including several that ignore or halve armor. Need to soak damage? A mage wearing decent body armor with the spell stacked on top of it will likely be the match of your average Sam, PLUS they can throw up a physical barrier for extra protection. If they only had a spell to let them walk through walls, they could go on runs by themselves.

[Agent 333]

By my reading of the rules, I think Magic can do some pretty broken things... however, as I've only actually run three sessions and the only mages in the campaign are all GM controlled, I've not see one break a game yet. But I imagine a dedicated summoner could obviate the need for some other characters....