[X] My Assistant

[TeaTime]

So, I'm all hating on these deus ex machina Corporate Attack Helicopters coming out of nowhere and ruining the ending to a perfectly good, highly profitable run. And I'm looking at you to solve the problem, Mr. Mage.

Can anybody recommend good spells to hurt high Body+Armor vehicles (Citymasters, Stonewalls, Aguilars)?

(I'm thinking elemental attacks might be the way to go, but I'm not sure how vehicles resist things like Electricity or Sand)

[Marwynn]

Spirits. Have one materialize inside a vehicle, like a Fire Spirit. Or just have it rip apart rotors or wheels.

Trid Phantasm one of their ground vehicles to look like yours, friendly fire isn't friendly after all. Mentally Manipulate the pilot (if any) to make a wrong turn. Apart from that I have no idea how to blow up one of these. A Citymaster has a body of 16 and Armour of 20. That means it can roll 36 dice. If you can throw Lightning around that can defeat that...

Perhaps "Melt Electronics" would work.

[TeaTime]

Spirits are a good though, and I like the idea of going after exposed vulnerable points.

The opposition is a bit too smart to fall for Trid Phantasm (I figure they're using IFFs), and as much as I'd like, I'm not going to get clear line of sight to Control the pilot.

But you're right, 36 dice against a Lightning Bolt- it might as well be 9volt.

Still, there's gotta be a way...

[McAllister]

Are you dead set on hurting it? A Bind spell would really ruin a chopper's day if you stopped its blades from spinning, and, IIRC, you're just rolling a Spellcasting test against its Body (and Counterspelling if relevant). In general, lots of things (even a moderately hard Physical Barrier, for example) will ruin an aircraft's day; they tend to be delicate, and lightly constructed.

As for tank-like groundcraft, could Shape Asphalt (or 6th world equivalent) be used to make a road mushy, such that the vehicle sank a few inches in and became immobilized? Honestly, I think your choices are that (or Glue, or some other Manipulation-based disable), go for an illusion-based disable, or overcasting your indirect combat spell like mad. Force 11 should do the trick; since the vehicle will be rolling very few dice to oppose you, you'll get some nice net hits, and the armor you're rolling against is only 10. You're not going to one-shot it, but then again, nothing is.

Oooh, if you can beat OR 6, Ignite might get you somewhere, and if you can get 5 hits, Levitate will lift over a ton. And what if you slapped an Armor/Physical Barrier spell over the barrel of a cannon? Basically... it's time to get creative with Manipulation spells.

[RunnerPaul]

As for tank-like groundcraft, could Shape Asphalt (or 6th world equivalent) be used to make a road mushy, such that the vehicle sank a few inches in and became immobilized?

One of the primary advantages of tank treads are mobility over rough terain, including soft ground. The 70 ton M1 Abrams exerts a ground pressure of only 15 pounds per square inch, about twice what a standing person exerts, or about half of what the average car exerts. Add that to the fact that the engine's force is getting transmitted to the road surface through a contact area thats larger than the four small contact patches of a set of car tires by a couple orders of magnitude, and it becomes rather difficult to make ground soft enough to get a tank "stuck in". Both Russia and Germany actually have tanks that can ford rivers at 3-4 meter depths when the optional snorkel is equipped; if those tanks don't get bogged down in the soft muddy bottom of a flowing river, I doubt anything the Shape Asphalt spell could do would even phase them.

[LurkerOutThere]

I'm not sure why people think there should be a simple spell solution to something that takes multiple RPG's to take out.

But i'll be over here grousing about the games increasingly disparity of magic over tech.

[rathmun]

I'm not sure why people think there should be a simple spell solution to something that takes multiple RPG's to take out.

But i'll be over here grousing about the games increasingly disparity of magic over tech.

An assault cannon can also reliably take out an assault helicopter fairly quickly, with damage 10, AP -11 (with AV rounds)

An Aguilar GX is body 16, armor 16, so that assault cannon is going to (with 1 net hit) average 4 damage (8 if you call). But only 1 net hit is unlikely, since attack helicopters are not exactly small targets.

Also, an AV rocket is a bit more threatening than that. 16P AP-6. if you connect (after scatter) it will average 7 damage. if you call the shot it will do 11.

An indirect spell at force 10 is comparable in performance, with the added benefit of having an elemental effect. You just need to be willing to take the drain.

[Blade]

The problem is not only their high Body, but also their high Object Resistance. A good way to go around these problems is to use your magic to affect it indirectly. Levitate an object in the blades (or make a physical barrier there, or something like that), have a spirit materialize inside and have fun with the pilots (if there's any in there. If there isn't, let the hacker handle it)...

[darthmord]

The problem is not only their high Body, but also their high Object Resistance. A good way to go around these problems is to use your magic to affect it indirectly. Levitate an object in the blades (or make a physical barrier there, or something like that), have a spirit materialize inside and have fun with the pilots (if there's any in there. If there isn't, let the hacker handle it)...

A prime example of this from another game with Magic Resistance... cast your spell at the ground and let the resulting effects take care of Mr. Magic Resistance.

Example: You are going up against a guy with 95% Magic Resistance and all you have are spells. Cast your Earthquake spell at the ground and let the resulting effects finish him off. Casting a fireball at the guy will only piss him off.

Given you want to take out a helicopter, levitate a large, semi-hard object into the rotor blades. Then let physics and gravity take over. Sometimes the secret to being an effective Mage is knowing where to apply the magic rather than having the best magic.

You want to mess up something with treads? Get something tough stuck in the treads. Got a problem with a tank? Use your magic to shove a lightpost down the tank barrel. Use magic to move a barrel of something explosive under the tank and have your gun bunny shoot it (or press the detonator to blow it).

Simply using raw magic to pump death and destruction into a vehicle... while it warms the dark recesses of my soul to funnel that much mojo into something, the resulting Drain is NOT something I'm interested in dealing with.

[nezumi]

Your best solution? Another rigger.

The odds are stacked against you for magic. You have to contend with:
An OR through the roof and high armor, making most direct attacks nearly impossible
The pilot(s) hidden from view, making spells on them difficult or impossible
A wide array of sensors, making illusions very difficult
For tougher vehicles, you can safely assume they're warded, further complicating things

The advantage of magic here is versatility. You can't easily attack the vehicle directly, but you can attack around it.

1) Use spirits. By the rules, spirits can appear inside of (unwarded) vehicles, or on top of or whatnot. Telling an earth elemental to manifest above a helicopter will cause some damage. Or smurf it; send 6-10 watcher spirits to bother the pilot, adding to his driving TNs. (Our house rule is spirits can't get anywhere the caster has not been or cannot get to, to prevent this.) Nature spirits 'accident' ability is very, very good here.

2) Work the environment around the vehicle. Ice sheet is great against fast-moving bikes. 'Create rock' or something like would work well against helicopters. Or if you have a 'shoot spidey rope' and aim for the rotors, that could do some damage. Flood out streets, make passages unstable, create ambush points, whatever. This is especially good in conjunction with someone with some real punch. If you can direct the vehicle, or just distract it, that gives the guy with the RPG a chance to do some real damage.

3) Think 'out of the box'. Pilots know about trid phantasm, and know to trust their instrumentation. However, vehicles generally rely on IR and ultrasound detectors to notice things like obstacles, and oftentimes these controls will be running outside of the pilot's immediate control. Make up a spell on IR and ultrasound only, that gives the 'sound' of a wall somewhere, and cast it the opposite from where you want the vehicle to go.

4) Also consider using spells to help disguise yourself, or gain better intelligence of the area. Again, rely on your party. If you find the best sniper spot, or discover these choppers before they get close, or can make noisemakers or disguise the party, these all put you in a better tactical position.

[CanRay]

Against Hard Targets (Tanks and Armoured Vehicles), you need Anti-Tank weapons. That includes Anti-Tank Spells, which require so much strain that the magician's head assplode unless they're really really good.

But this is Shadowrun. If you're facing these things, the object of the game at this point is to RUN!!!

[Marwynn]

I think Sand spells might actually have a good chance of gumming up the works. Melt Electronics (Acid) seems like it may not work.

The trick with Trid Phantasm isn't really to create wholly new vistas, but rather modified ones that are to your advantage. "Clean up" a side road that you took. Or add even more debris on the ground.

It all depends on the OR of their sensors, probably 5+.

[KeyMasterOfGozer]

On a run I was on, an attack chopper had our team pinned. The group's decker tried to hijack the vehicle, but the GM decided the pilot was jacked in for security with a cable, not wireless. Being the industrious mage, I conjured a spirit and sent it to materialize in the cockpit and pull the plug. Dumpshock! Crash!

[Earlydawn]

I envision tanks in 2070 to be the same as today.. but with much better sensors and survivability systems. As mentioned, the drains required to cast against tanks would kill most mages, but that doesn't make magic useless. Clever use of self-exposure or illusion spells could lure the tank under a bridge, followed up by a Shape Concrete spell to dump the majority of the span on it. Even smaller overpasses should be able to effectively mobility-kill a tank. A called shot with any kind of user-made sonic or concussion-based spell should also be able to hit a tank hard enough to throw a tread.

In my mind, tanks would probably be studded with all kinds of sensors, rarely popping a hatch or opening a physical vision slit. A well-placed flamethrower or fireball spell should be able to blind its thermal gear. Also, waiting for the tank to fire a HE round and then popping a physical barrier a foot in front of the gun barrel could probably blow off external equipment and royally screw up its sensors. The radiator to the rear would probably be vulnerable to fire spells.

You've got a lot of options, but it's still fundamentally the same as having an ATGM or explosives; you've gotta be able to pick your battles.

As far as helicopters go, I would think it would be easier. If the tail rotor isn't shrouded, lift a piece of concrete in there, or, as someone intelligently pointed out, make a cylindrical physical barrier right through it and watch it shred itself apart (for this exact reason, I would think most 2070 choppers would have tail shrouds). I would also think that a sufficiently juiced lighting bolt should screw up its flight systems and force it to disengage. Other options include strong sand spells to the intakes, or using a manipulation spell to reduce air density and force it into a spin.

Why is everybody assuming that a hacker would be the guy to deal with a chopper, anyway? Just because networking is huge in SR4, doesn't mean you can literally hack the planet. The most I would think you could do would be feeding it bad coordinates on its tacnet, or forcing a nosegun into a maintnance mode or something. And the latter would probably take input from the cockpit.

[SpasticTeapot]

All you need is a magna-poon and a good throwing arm.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Spirits. Have one materialize inside a vehicle, like a Fire Spirit. Or just have it rip apart rotors or wheels.

Trid Phantasm one of their ground vehicles to look like yours, friendly fire isn't friendly after all. Mentally Manipulate the pilot (if any) to make a wrong turn. Apart from that I have no idea how to blow up one of these. A Citymaster has a body of 16 and Armour of 20. That means it can roll 36 dice. If you can throw Lightning around that can defeat that...

Perhaps "Melt Electronics" would work.

You don't get to roll dice to resist the damage from a Powerbolt... If it beats OR then damage is inflicted... that Body 16 Citymaster is just looking for a Force 11- Powerbolt with 5+ SUccesses and it is toast... (the more successes the less the Force of the Spell needs to be... but for something like a Citymaster or Nightsky Limo you will probably need to overcast it to stop it in one casting... if you don't mind a softer approach, the Force 6 with the requisite 5+ Successes will generally render vehicles nonfunctional after just a casting or two...


Keep the Faith

[TeaTime]

You don't get to roll dice to resist the damage from a Powerbolt... If it beats OR then damage is inflicted... that Body 16 Citymaster is just looking for a Force 11- Powerbolt with 5+ SUccesses and it is toast... (the more successes the less the Force of the Spell needs to be... but for something like a Citymaster or Nightsky Limo you will probably need to overcast it to stop it in one casting... if you don't mind a softer approach, the Force 6 with the requisite 5+ Successes will generally render vehicles nonfunctional after just a casting or two...

Well, with help from Edge, a Force 11 Powerbolt with 5+ Successes is quite doable. Is it just as simple as beating object restistance?

[Marwynn]

That's because Powerbolt is a Direct spell. Lightning is treated like a ranged attack and I was actually wrong. You don't factor Body but rather you double its armour (p 204).

So that means a Citymaster has 40 dice to beat a Lightning spell, or any other Indirect spell.

I'm a bit confused though, it says that direct combat spells only use the Object Resistance to deal damage. That'd mean that Citymaster would have an OR6+ as a vehicle. Is there a rule somewhere that says Body becomes OR?

Nope, I've never cast a direct combat spell at a vehicle before either...

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Well, with help from Edge, a Force 11 Powerbolt with 5+ Successes is quite doable. Is it just as simple as beating object restistance?

Agreed, it is doable, even without the Edge expenditure.... Just most probably very painbful for the caster... and very devastating to the target...

Not sure what you are asking about teh Object Resistance though... Is What just as simple as beating Object Resistance?

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

That's because Powerbolt is a Direct spell. Lightning is treated like a ranged attack and I was actually wrong. You don't factor Body but rather you double its armour (p 204).

So that means a Citymaster has 40 dice to beat a Lightning spell, or any other Indirect spell.

I'm a bit confused though, it says that direct combat spells only use the Object Resistance to deal damage. That'd mean that Citymaster would have an OR6+ as a vehicle. Is there a rule somewhere that says Body becomes OR?

Nope, I've never cast a direct combat spell at a vehicle before either...

Yes, the resolution mechanic for Indirect Combat spells is different from that of Direct Combat Spells... In the case of the Citymaster, it has an Object Resisatance of 5(+) and if you beat the OR, then you deal damage directly to the object (the Citymaster in this case) with no regartds to teh Armor or the body rating...

So, for example, if you cast a Force 8 Powerbolt against the Citymaster and generate yourself 10 successes (for example purposes obviously), you would remove the threshold Hits (5 in this cse) leaving you with 5 Net hits above threshold... add these 5 Net hits to the Base Force of the Spell to obtain 13 points of Direct Damage to the vehicle... not quite enough to disdable it completely, but enough to provde a penalty of -4 to any vehicle actions taken... do this twice and the vehicle is disabled...

Note that The body of the vehicle does not ever change... the Object resistance is the threshold to affect the object... anything over the OR adds to the base damage of the spell to casue it harm...

Keep the Faith

[Stahlseele]

Restricted Target Powerbolt(Tires)

[Marwynn]

Ahh thanks for clearing that up Tymeaus Jalynsfein.

So it seems we need a Direct Physical Spell and Powerbolt isn't helpful here because it specifically uses the Body rating for living and unliving targets. And I don't think an unrestricted target one exists, but a single target "Forcebolt" would have a DV of F/2+1 (Direct, Physical, Instant).

That's all sorts of useful actually. With an OR of 5+ then there's a reasonable chance of affecting a vehicle (with board power levels) with reasonable drain.

[Stahlseele]

There's Slay and MAssacre for living beings, there's similar spells for things.
Use one of those for tires.

[Marwynn]

What if it's a chopper? A hovercraft? A Tank?

And of course that doesn't help much when your objective is to destroy the vehicle (and people inside). A general spell solution works best.

That said, an Area Effect Demolish Tires would be pretty fun. Aim in between a couple of cars and instant traffic jam. Hmm...

[Stahlseele]

Ah, yes, Demolish, That was the Spells Name i did not remember.
If it's a Chopper? Try something else.
If it's a Hovercraft? Try something else.
If it's a tank? Try to get away as fast as you can and don't look back.