Why shouldn't mundanes resist magic?, Make the Mage optional Options

[Heath Robinson]

Cain whines a lot, but sometimes he's got a good point. Mundanes really lack enough ways to handle magical stuff. Meanwhile, Mages can compete in the real world and the Matrix. Sure, they're not particularly impressive in the Matrix, but they can do some good backing up the actual Hacker.

Is there anything massively wrong with letting the 'wared add their Essence loss to their DP when targeted by Magic? Does it really horribly break anything beyond the Mages' sense of superiority?

[Jaid]

well, it makes cyberzombies even more scary. probably won't break anything horribly though. you could even make the flavor fit (it's kinda like object resistance, as the person becomes less and less meat and more and more chrome they are more like an object).

mind you, i'm not sure the flavour fits for essence lost to essence drain, bioware, or drug abuse/other.

and i'm not sure it's particularly needed.

[Ancient History]

One of the big building blocks of Shadowrun is that magic is restricted to magicians. That's fluctuated a bit through the editions, but it is essentially true.

[Cochise]

One of the big building blocks of Shadowrun is that magic is restricted to magicians. That's fluctuated a bit through the editions, but it is essentially true.

I didn't get the impression that the question was if magic should no longer be restricted to magicians, but rather if - going by the theme of "magic and technology don't go along too good" - mundanes should get stronger ways of resisting manipulation via magic (both good and bad). Just like certain health spells simply had lessened chances of healing highly cybered persons due to the TN increase. So what if mundanes got their lost Essence (rounded up) as pool modifier for their spell resistance tests in general?

[Dakka Dakka]

I don't think additional rules are needed. Every mundane can take the magic resistance quality. All the GM has to do is award a few of the NPCs with this quality. PCs can take it at character generation, or IMHO afterwards if they take a particular interest in overcoming magical effects.

[Glyph]

Cain whines a lot, but sometimes he's got a good point. Mundanes really lack enough ways to handle magical stuff. Meanwhile, Mages can compete in the real world and the Matrix. Sure, they're not particularly impressive in the Matrix, but they can do some good backing up the actual Hacker.

Is there anything massively wrong with letting the 'wared add their Essence loss to their DP when targeted by Magic? Does it really horribly break anything beyond the Mages' sense of superiority?

Yes. There is. I can tell that you have an extreme bias against mages, but letting the street sammie add 5 dice to his resistance test would make magic completely useless. Not in a "now mages don't auto-win" way, but a "Why bother playing a mage, ever?" way. Mundanes already have several qualities (magic resistance, arcane arrestor, astral hazing), counterspelling from the mage on their team, and the option to have a high Willpower and Edge. Despite the refrain from some people about how "broken" magic is in SR4, it is far weaker than it was in SR3, where a 6D manabolt was more or less instant death.

[Kerenshara]

You know, I hadn't considered it in any particular sense... I mean, the mechanic already exists for healing, right? Now, I would say it only applied to mana based spells, because those are grounding in through their essence as opposed to coming from outside. I don't see where lost essence would help against a fireball. Now against a stun bolt? That's another thing entirely. Then there's the (very old) issue about how magic should really affect things like cyber eyes and their ilk. I'm game for a legitimate discussion on the issue.

Mind you, there's no question this will fall under the umbrella of "yeah, seriously" house rules, as opposed to even "optional" from a sidebar. But as long as the discussion were to stay on the basic ideas and not turn into a flame war on interpretations of wording(s) in the RAW, it could be interesting if nothing else.

[Kerenshara]

Yes. There is. I can tell that you have an extreme bias against mages, but letting the street sammie add 5 dice to his resistance test would make magic completely useless. Not in a "now mages don't auto-win" way, but a "Why bother playing a mage, ever?" way. Mundanes already have several qualities (magic resistance, arcane arrestor, astral hazing), counterspelling from the mage on their team, and the option to have a high Willpower and Edge. Despite the refrain from some people about how "broken" magic is in SR4, it is far weaker than it was in SR3, where a 6D manabolt was more or less instant death.

Sure, if applied in a general way. But I was thinking more selectively. And not as a simple OR threshold or a general dice pool mod. And before anybody jumps in, I prefer playing spell-slingers, so I am approaching this from a fluff and consistency perspective as opposed to the crunchy game-balance perspective.

[Larme]

You know, I hadn't considered it in any particular sense... I mean, the mechanic already exists for healing, right? Now, I would say it only applied to mana based spells, because those are grounding in through their essence as opposed to coming from outside. I don't see where lost essence would help against a fireball. Now against a stun bolt? That's another thing entirely. Then there's the (very old) issue about how magic should really affect things like cyber eyes and their ilk. I'm game for a legitimate discussion on the issue.

Mind you, there's no question this will fall under the umbrella of "yeah, seriously" house rules, as opposed to even "optional" from a sidebar. But as long as the discussion were to stay on the basic ideas and not turn into a flame war on interpretations of wording(s) in the RAW, it could be interesting if nothing else.

That's an interesting idea for a house rule, but it would really only help players. Most NPCs have little if any cyberware, even your elite grunts still have plenty of essence.

It's not really a problem that's solvable by house rules, IMO -- either magic works against mundanes, or it doesn't. Either mages or useful, or they aren't.

The one idea I could think of would be a Full Defense option for resisting magic. That's where you roll Willpower + Edge or something (and are still allowed to add edge or use it for rerolls as normal), but it eats up your next complex action just like full defense. The explanation being that you have to focus all your willpower on resisting the magic and can't do anything else.

Then again, while that gives mundos a better fighting chance, it still doesn't mean much. Someone who's forced to go on full defense is pretty much dead anyway, unless they have the ability to take cover and be safe for a round. Full defense is nice for players because it lets them dodge to live another day, but for NPCs it's pretty meaningless because they'll probably just die anyway.

Also, such a rule wouldn't just give mundos a fighting chance, it would be nerfilicious if mages were faced with any of the normal modifiers that mess them up -- background counts and visibility modifiers can already screw up casting, especially when a mundane resists with Edge.

So here my whole thing: Shadowrun is a game of shoot first. If the mage shoots the sammy first (with a spell, obviously), it's good night, assuming normal conditions. If the sammy shoots the mage first, it's also good night. That's just how this game works. Everyone has broken abilities, because everyone who's twinked out can one-shot their opponents if their tactics work out as they want to. One-shotting just happens in a quasi-real world game. I don't see what the big deal is if that one-shotting happens by a spell, or by a grenade. Sure, you can argue that grenades are too loud, but what about a neruo-stun grenade? Odorless, colorless, just a little hiss, lasts in the area for a whole minute, 10S damage... That's even better than a stunbolt because it is unaffected by background count and doesn't cost drain, not to mention that you can bounce it around a corner, or set it up as a booby trap. The game is full of ways to take people out like nothing, magic is just one of them. It's harder to resist against magic, but magic also has the potential to kill or knock out the person using it. That's the tradeoff that's existed in Shadowrun for generations, it's a part of the game, and you can't really fix it and still be playing Shadowrun.

[Heath Robinson]

If we instead put this into the context of a court of law and a weird social system - there are Lords and Commoners, and both accuse each other of entirely spurious charges on a regular basis. The word of a Lord can be countered by the word of another Lord, but the word of the Commoner can be countered by possession of a charm that both Lords and Commoners can possess. In order to be safe from being convicted of a spurious crime you need the active protection of a Lord, but the Lord can just buy a charm and be reasonably safe of a Commoner's attempts to get them convicted. People come along and claim that this is all balanced and idyllic because you just have to bow and curtsy to your Lord and they will defend you from other Lords.

Is that fair? Because that's basically analogous to how I see the system currently. This is cutting away a lot of complexity like Spirits, mind. Even Lords can't save a person from the Priests, though they can certainly control a few Priests.

[Synner667]

Something similar got mentioned recently [sorry, i can't remember where or when], but my personal view is that in an ideal way, essence rating should have an effect on how someone is affected - high essence makes magic more effective, low essence makes magic less effective.

Practically, it does change the way magic is used, and what it means to be mundane.
Maybe mundanes should have a magic value of 1, to indicate their connection to the manasphere/gaia/astral space - with appropriate "defence" or resistance based on that ??

In effect, essence 6 is the default - modifier +/-0, the standard value to which magic is practice and the base value for results, etc.

Except, as some people have noted, sometimes the essence value does make a difference to how magic affects someone [healing, for instance], SR isn't very consistent about this.

[Stahlseele]

Mundanes without the correct edges/flaws get shafted by magic one way or the other.
deal with it.

[kzt]

Mundanes without the correct edges/flaws get shafted by magic one way or the other.
deal with it.

It's easy to fix as a player. Everyone takes a mage, everyone gets counterspelling.

[Stahlseele]

Yeah . . wait, no . . i frigging hate magic, no matter if it's on my char-sheet or on someone elses . .
Closest would be a Magic 1 Adept with 1 point in Magical Talent so i can get Counter-Spelling.
And then load up on Ware. As long as i don't go under 1 point of Essence it should work.
Or, in SR4, play Fomori, with Astral Hazing and Magic resistance. Only problem being, that SOMEONE in the Group wants to be a Magician.
And the GM will most likely make it so that we will have to do things like letting the mage levitate or heal or make us invisible . .

[kzt]

If everyone took hazing that would be cool too.

[Draco18s]

Closest would be a Magic 1 Adept with 1 point in Magical Talent so i can get Counter-Spelling.
And then load up on Ware. As long as i don't go under 1 point of Essence it should work.

Uh...any 'ware and his Magic drops to 0, which I believe negates the whole point of having gotten it...

[Larme]

If we instead put this into the context of a court of law and a weird social system - there are Lords and Commoners, and both accuse each other of entirely spurious charges on a regular basis. The word of a Lord can be countered by the word of another Lord, but the word of the Commoner can be countered by possession of a charm that both Lords and Commoners can possess. In order to be safe from being convicted of a spurious crime you need the active protection of a Lord, but the Lord can just buy a charm and be reasonably safe of a Commoner's attempts to get them convicted. People come along and claim that this is all balanced and idyllic because you just have to bow and curtsy to your Lord and they will defend you from other Lords.

Is that fair? Because that's basically analogous to how I see the system currently. This is cutting away a lot of complexity like Spirits, mind. Even Lords can't save a person from the Priests, though they can certainly control a few Priests.

Ok, that is a really hard analogy to follow. Are you saying that mages are the only thing that can protect mundanes from other mages? Because for the most part, the streetsam will go before the mage, shoot him in the face, and win. It's not so much that the streetsam needs the mage's protection, it's that they both need each other. Mages will get geeked without someone fast on the draw to defend them, and streetsams need mages to defend them from spells.

Now, you're free to dislike the way the game is set up, but that's the way Shadowrun has pretty much always worked. Shadowrunners are glass cannons, dealing death left and right, but the one time they don't act first against a powerful threat and it's curtains. To the fastest gun goes the victory, and that's for both mages and mundanes. Of course, SR4A is more forgiving with the Full Defense option, but it's not like that really saves you, it just delays your execution. Once you start going on full defense, you're screwed as it is. Against magic, you don't have that same ability to delay the inevitable, but that's really the primary difference. I mean, who can really, with a straight face, say that an airbursting neurostun minigrenade isn't as good as, or even better than a stunball?

[LynGrey]

Something i've always had to scratch my head about is the fact that Magic is Directly tied to Essence.. the more 'ware the less connected you are with the astral realm. In earlier editions it was incredibly hard to heal low essence samis, but attacking them with combat spells was the same. Let alone in the fluff of the book it states that mages attack your astral self not your physical body and thats why magic is "invisible".. but if 'ware takes away from your astral self... so wouldn't it in theory make it harder for magic to target you?

either way, i have no idea how to model this because providing mages with more DP or more resisitance wouldn't model it correctly i would have to say as a minus to the mage casting the spell.. but how much? and this would make the Sami that loads up on body and willpower enhancement reallllllly unstoppable.

[Draco18s]

Something i've always had to scratch my head about is the fact that Magic is Directly tied to Essence.. the more 'ware the less connected you are with the astral realm. In earlier editions it was incredibly hard to heal low essence samis, but attacking them with combat spells was the same. Let alone in the fluff of the book it states that mages attack your astral self not your physical body and thats why magic is "invisible".. but if 'ware takes away from your astral self... so wouldn't it in theory make it harder for magic to target you?

Because when you're throwing raw magic at someone to hurt them you don't care if they're part machine: hurt the flesh, hurt the metal, all the same. Not to mention that the flesh is already so fucked up with all that metal in there that is not that hard to hurt the flesh even more.

But when you're healing someone, you can only heal the fleshy bits and they need to heal back into their connections with the metal bits correctly. Tricky business.

[Stahlseele]

Uh...any 'ware and his Magic drops to 0, which I believe negates the whole point of having gotten it...

Technically yes. But not if you rule that ware only affects the maximum, not the current rating of your magic, as long as your magic is below your maximum.
Yes, it's a House-Rule. So is most everything else at some point in time, sooner or later.

[Cthulhudreams]

IF you want to make mages less effective against people, you need to give them three dice pools to resist magic - two all the time, and a third when protected. Then it works like Franks Matrix rules.

Downside is that this won't do what you want. It will kill combat mages, but indirect magical actions are still powerful and not replaceable - so maybe a different solution.

[Dakka Dakka]

Use the same character concept with MAG 2 and it works without house rules. Now imagine an awakended character with Magic 6(1) and ware worth 5 points of essence, counterspelling 6 and a houserule that lets lost essence affect the spell defense pool. Combine this with a fomori and magic is pretty much useless.

[Stahlseele]

Yes, perfect for me. Only problems will be Spirits like that.
Which would not be the case with Astral Hazing. But every mage and their grandma would want me dead.

[knasser]

One of the big building blocks of Shadowrun is that magic is restricted to magicians. That's fluctuated a bit through the editions, but it is essentially true.

Which I have always liked. I'm a little nervous about "Dawn of the Artifacts" for that reason as I have worried it's going to break this with "magic items" in some way. I should have learnt to trust the 4th Ed. devs by now, but I still dread waking up one day and finding everything has been mucked up (TM's were bad enough for me and they would be mild in comparison to mundanes using magic).

EDIT: Back on topic, I think this could work in terms of flavour, but in terms of balance it's wrong. It would severely hamper magicians at precisely the moment they don't want to be hampered (when fighting a cybered-up BBEG). Also, one of nice things about Shadowrun is how everyone can kill everyone else. A prepared Samurai in the right circumstances is going to wipe the floor with a mage. In other circumstances, the mage will kill the Samurai without blinking. (Unless they have the spellcasting geas: Must Blink). Shadowrun is about planning, preparation and treachery. I see rules tweaks like this as moving away from the Rock, Paper, Scissors that I find so delightful, and more toward Rock, Rock, which is dull.

My thoughts, anyway.

K.

[Chrysalis]

First of all, all this balance stuff is bullshit. Shadowrun is not balanced, never has never will be. Against a possession mage, the well-rounded street sam will have to be using rockets as close combat weapons.

Personally, I like the idea that the less essence you have the less likelihood of being harmed by certain TYPES of magics, I fail to perceive how subtly altering someone's mind is any different from healing. Sure if you are throwing fireballs at the street sam you have the usual environmental effects to deal with, no more different than the mage with a flamethrower.